Episode 8 · Session VIII
Don't Be Boring
An old man's warning, a taproom full of secrets, and a small boy in an attic who is only mostly himself.
Roger drinks our wine and tells us how the last Mistwalkers came through, what they killed on the road, and the message the devil sent back with the only survivor. The rest of the taproom has secrets too, and a bard with a magnificent moustache has noticed us.
In the morning Lily wakes up free. Then we walk into an orphanage looking for a bone thief, and meet a boy in the attic who introduces himself as Mostly Felix.
Stay past the credits.
The recap
Session 8 in about 2 minutes. The full record is in the field notes.
Roger took the wine, and then took us apart. "You poor sod. I bet you've just been dealt some cards and been told you have a great destiny." Forty-five years ago his band came through the mists just as we had and traced their gift of knowledge to a glowing pool at Krezk. Halfway there, a creature stepped out of the trees, half raven and half man: "Greetings, friend. I come in peace." They had learned that everything in Barovia lies, so they struck first with silver and magic. The devil killed a whole street of people because the band had grown boring, a dusk elf killed the rest of them at the castle gates for coming too early, and Roger was spared to carry a message to whoever came next: "Don't be boring." Afterwards the devil punished Krezk and the village of Barovia for their sins. Vallaki was spared, Roger thinks because of the church.
His first three cards matched ours. His ally card was the raven, the one they killed. "Don't kill the ravens," he told us, twice.
The taproom gave up its other secrets. Danika, the landlady, told us her family owns the winery in the south and the latest shipment was days late. When the raven-man came up, she winced. "I think he has been forgiven, but that was bad. Don't do that." The Wachter brothers told us the Baron's son Victor had driven their sister Stella mad. "We will have our revenge." And the mustachioed bard, whose wax jar said Riptarvo, called the Durst house one of "Strahd's fishing hooks", and when Sirius said that what was stolen can be reclaimed, looked at him very sharply. "That is a very astute thing to say, sir." He went up to bed with "I shall watch you with great interest."
In the morning, Lily woke free of the pies.
At the orphanage we expected a thief and found a victim: Milivoj, a kind young giant who tells the children stories, lying under a curse no healing would touch. A boy called Felix, the headmistress told us, had been found a month ago beside his stabbed parents, covered in blood and unhurt. His things were in her drawer, among them a rusted locket with an X scratched on the lid. Drew opened it for science.
In the attic the light dimmed around a small boy whittling with a kitchen knife. "I'm, well, Mostly Felix." "I'm Mostly Sirius." The rest of Felix wanted "the more muscly specimen downstairs", and when Drew slipped away to have Milivoj tied down, it poured out of the boy as black smoke.
It took Drew over, and she met Sirius's eyes and said "I'm sorry" as it ran her towards Milivoj. It reached into Osric's chest and drained a quarter of his life. It tried to take Sirius and couldn't. "What the fuck are you?" "I am an angel, sent from the celestial realms to end you unless you repent." Light did what swords couldn't: Fëanor's guiding bolt tore it to tatters, Sirius's shining blade finished it, and the smoke poured into the open locket. Sirius shut the lid. It cannot get out unless someone opens it.
Then Milivoj woke, and we asked him about the bones. "I didn't touch any bones, no. What are you talking about?"
We stopped there, in the orphanage corridor, with the locket shut in Sirius's hand.