Session 8 field notes

Roger's terrible story, a town's worth of gossip, the night Lily's pie curse broke, and a morning at the orphanage that ended with a demon in a locket and a groundskeeper who swears he never touched any bones. David was away, so the table ran Fëanor. All will be well.

Roger's tale

Sirius set the wine down at the old man's table. Roger: "You poor sod. You missed it. Oh, it's happening again." And: "I bet you've just been dealt some cards and been told you have a great destiny. Am I right?" He pulled a battered handful of cards from his jerkin and threw them on the table. "I had a destiny once. Turns out the destiny's a crock of shit." Then he drank the wine and told us how it ended for him, so that it might not end that way for us.

Forty-five years ago Roger was a pit fighter in Waterdeep. His band came through the mist much as we did, fought "some demonic wolf creature" on the way, and got a mixed welcome.
An old woman read their cards. Their gift of knowledge led them to Krezk: "a big old gods-forsaken glowing pool" and "some big old powerful priest". They never got inside.
Halfway from Vallaki to Krezk, something stepped into their path: half raven, half man, "beak as long as your arm". It said, "Greetings, friend. I come in peace."
"We thought we'd learned our lesson at Barovia, that everything lies and everything is dangerous. We all struck at once with ferocious force, with silver and magic, and slew it where it stood." Then came a great cawing, hundreds of ravens crying out in anguish. "I think back on this day again and again and again. I think it was the day we lost."
From then on the land turned against them. Krezk had been forewarned and wouldn't let them in. A whisper network ran ahead of them everywhere, calling them a bad sort. "That bloody winery down south wouldn't let us within a dozen miles."
Weeks of getting nowhere later, back in the village of Barovia, the devil appeared in the street, said they were being boring and needed some incentive, and killed every other person standing there.
The village lads insisted on marching on the castle, and the band couldn't stop them, so they went too. At the gates they met not the devil but his emissary, "what I now know as a dusk elf", who told them they'd been a disappointment, that it was too early, and that they hadn't gathered enough strength. He killed the lads and Roger's friends.
He spared Roger for one reason: "to spread the message to the next ones who come. 'Don't be boring.'"
Overhead, a dark figure on a fiery flying steed. Afterwards the devil came to Krezk and to the village of Barovia and said, "This is your punishment for the sins of the mist walkers," and killed hundreds.
"For some reason, I think it's because of the church, Vallaki was spared." It was the only place that would take him. He's been a farmhand here since, drinking away his sorrows.

He burned his own trinket. "My destiny's over." He won't help us, and after that story he's earned the right: "I am done. I had friends." He told us, twice, the one thing he'd do differently: "Don't kill the ravens." And: "Strahd slaughtered hundreds on our account. Try and be interesting, at least." He'd happily see us settle down in Barovia instead. We told him no: if we don't try, it may happen again.

Two readings, side by side

Roger's band was told of "a gift of knowledge, a gift of faith, and a gift of strength. A destined ally in a place we'd face the devil." Their first three cards match ours: the Healer, the Paladin, the Avenger. The last two don't.

Their ally was the Raven. They killed him on the road, and never knew it until too late.
Their last card was the Artifact, "where we'd find him". Ours is the tomb of the only man he ever envied. Different roads to the same devil.
Their Krezk pool is our own first card: high water aglow with the light of the sun, hidden behind the walls of man. Two readings, a lifetime apart, point at the same place. It's the best lead we hold.
After the raven-man, nothing else moved for them. Everywhere they went, people had been told about them first.

The lesson we took: recognise the ally before your sword does.

Roger's gazetteer

"Spill the tea, Roger." He did.

The Baron's father ruled with an iron fist, through fear, until he died suddenly about fifteen years ago. He wasn't ill. His son took over and didn't seem very sad, and now it's the "all is well" version of Vallaki.
The square: gallows and stocks, always up. They don't often hang people, but the stocks are basically always full.
The Workyard: the paper mill and lumberyard. You'd be shocked how much paper Vallaki produces. (Now we know where the flyers come from.)
The Guard district: a smithy, and the Reformation Center. "People go in there and come out wrong": incredibly fake smiles, sometimes forgetting their own family, saying that all is well in Vallaki and nothing else. A friend of his came out not the same person.
The north district, where the well-to-do live. A noblewoman there, Wachter, "makes noises about being for the people" and comes perilously close to criticising the Baron, but she's the richest and has her own resources. She runs a book club and outreach. "No one that powerful stays that powerful without being rotten in Barovia."
The residence district and farm plots, where he works; and the shopping district, "the place in Barovia where you can buy things and sell things".
Izek, the captain of the guard: a huge right arm twice the size of a man's, red, "like somebody grafted a demon's arm to it". Merciless. Don't get on his bad side.
The lake to the north has been haunted for four years or so. There's a wailing woman; the fish are gone and so is the fishing. (Lake's haunted.)
The dusk elves camp near the Vistani outside town, "almost like a drow, but not quite", made for daylight. There are only men left. The devil killed all their women, and they're a dying race.

Danika and the late wine

Danika, behind the bar, told us to keep our heads down with the guards, who are very touchy. Asked whether any good needed doing, she lowered her voice:

The Martikovs own the winery down south, and the latest shipment is several days late, which doesn't happen. If it doesn't come, they may have to start limiting how much people can have. "Our family wine keeps this entire bubble afloat, the bubble of Barovia."
If our travels take us west, would we look in on the winery? "We're not commissioning you." It's about a week's journey: stop at Krezk if they'll let us in, then go south.
Krezk folk are insular. Their abbey has a powerful priest who "could be helping us, but he's not". We might have to prove ourselves, or provide some service, to get in. Martikov wine gets in everywhere.
Life here: "We survive. The baron has his festivals you have to attend. We attend. You just smile and wave." Don't get sent to the Reformation Center. Sirius asked whether his oath ought to have him doing something about the government. Danika: "If anything, our problem is we have a surfeit of justice." Sirius: "Justice that is blind and has no soul has no place in this world." Danika: there are a hundred guards out there, and the alternatives may be worse.
The lake: they've lost several of the lads to it. People get ensorcelled; a couple of them walked into the water right in front of their friends and drowned.
Sirius asked her to fill in some of the blanks on his map.

When Sirius mentioned that the old man had been barred from places after killing a raven-man, Danika said: "I think he has been forgiven, but that was bad. Don't do that." One of us was watching her closely. She winced at the mention of the creature's death, and she was very unhappy it had come up. Sirius told her ravens bring justice and goodness and the only light in Barovia he's seen yet. She likes Sirius: "you seem like you're trying to bring the lights."

The bard

The brightly dressed fiddler (so bright he could not be mistaken for a Vistani) has the most splendiferous moustache in Barovia and plenty of wax for it. His jar reads Riptarvo's Finest Wax, so Riptarvo he is until we're told otherwise. We traded him the story of the Durst house.

"It sounds like you encountered one of Strahd's fishing hooks." He said the name, out loud, in a taproom. Told it's against the law: "Ah, the laws are for the little people." (Sirius then told him about the three-times summoning. Somebody at our table also said it once, by accident.)
On the Reformation Center: there's far more to it than meets the eye. He believes they use dark magics. Stay out if at all possible.
He asked if all of us had found ourselves "recently empowered". "Those entwined in fate can find themselves overly boosted very quickly."
"He isn't a god. He is a monster. There will be ways and means. Do not find yourselves bamboozled by his propaganda."
He's heard stories of ancient bargains, and of ancient creatures who once held power in this land, fey rather than dragons (though dragons are often involved in the tale), tied to the land, and of that power being usurped.
Sirius: what was stolen from them by He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named can be reclaimed. The bard looked at him very sharply. "That is a very astute thing to say, sir." "I intend to reclaim at least one of those things." "Many have said such a thing, sir."
If we want help from the universe, we might want to prove ourselves a bit more. "I'm leaving now. I shall watch you with great interest." He went upstairs. He lodges here.

One of us read him: he's downplaying himself, and his own opinion of himself is fairly high. Our verdict: that was no mere bard.

The Wachter boys

The two rowdy lads in the corner are Lady Wachter's sons, Karl and Nikolai. They drink themselves silly every night, and their mother sends her manservant to cart them home, often in a cart. Sirius brought three mugs and complimented their ruffs ("Height of the Vallakian fashion"), and was bullied into chugging. They teased Lily about her height, and she hid behind Sirius's legs. Their mother gives them a stipend and is a bleeding heart for the people.

Then someone asked about their sister, and the mood dropped. Stella was betrothed to the Baron's son, Victor, about three years ago. "His son drove our sister mad." The Baron says it was a pre-existing nervous condition. "We know what happened. Victor, he did stuff to her." She's not fit to be seen, and she's kept at home in her room. "We will have our revenge, eventually, once we get ourselves together." For anything serious: "Talk to Mother." She'll give us her time.

(Lily, afterwards: Granny always said that when there's a good leader, the ones who follow aren't the best. So maybe Lady Wachter is all right.)

Lily, free

Ireena asked to stay in our room for the night, and did. (Among ourselves: the church isn't set up for her, and it isn't protected.) Lily asked to be tied to the bed one last time, and Sirius slept beside her again. Drew put her alarm on the door and set it so Lily would trip it.

In the morning: nothing. No hour of madness, no craving. "There is no longer any magic influencing your thoughts about the pies." What's left is her exhaustion, and the ordinary horror of knowing what she ate. She apologised for stealing. She passed a second fake-pie test without a flicker, and still offered to be tied up, just in case: "You don't know how long evil magic lasts." Sirius: "Your radiance shines through, Lily. Even when sleep-deprived."

Six days to the festival.

The orphanage

We went to St. Andral's Orphanage expecting a bone thief. The eldest girl, about sixteen and holding the fort, met us on the step: "Hello. Have you come to help me, boys?" The headmistress had gone for a doctor. We said we weren't the doctor, but we were there to help.

Milivoj lay in his bed: a huge young man, mid-twenties, pale and ill. He'd been getting peaky for a month, then very bad three days ago, and this morning they couldn't wake him. He grew up in the orphanage and stayed on to keep the grounds. The girl says he's cool, and kind: "He talks to us. Most adults, they don't give the children the time of day. He tells us stories. He includes us."

Our medicine and arcana agreed, and Fëanor's detect magic confirmed it: it's no ordinary sickness. It's a necromantic curse, something like a bestowed curse but not quite. Sirius's healing hands did nothing.
His room is bare: three sets of clothes and a money pouch with twenty gold in it. We put everything back and took nothing.
Lazlo, Hans and Franz, three boys, ran away just over a week ago. Milivoj was very worried, sick as he was.

Then Headmistress Claudia came in and found strangers in her groundskeeper's room. Sirius told her to calm down and not take that tone. She threatened to punish the children for letting us in, and Sirius told her they shouldn't be. We said the priest sent us. She'll check with Lucian later. "I am Headmistress Claudia Belasco. I run this orphanage. I keep it shipshape and upright." She couldn't get a doctor to come: "We do not have the funds." "I swear we are cursed."

What Claudia told us:

About a month ago a boy, Felix, came to them. He was found in a house in Vallaki beside his stabbed parents, covered in their blood and entirely unharmed.
Since then the other children have had bruises. Felix pushed a boy named Cedric out of a window, and Cedric died. Felix is locked in the attic now.
She thinks the three runaways fled because they were afraid of Felix.
Milivoj "came into some money, don't know how", and hired two hunters to find the boys: pelt traders who come in and out of town and drink at the Blue Water. They're still out looking.

We promised no harm would come to Felix.

Mostly Felix

Claudia had Felix's belongings in her office drawer. One glowed to Fëanor's detect magic with abjuration: a rusted oval locket on an old chain, with an X scratched into the lid. The magic is all that's holding the old thing together. Inside is an inscription, which we think is Celestial, and none of us can read. Drew opened it "for the lols": "If I turn into something, then feel free to make me not something anymore." Nothing visible happened. She pocketed it.

Upstairs, every bedpost carried a faint engraved rune of necromancy. The DM told us what it says: "Mine." Scratch one out and the magic fades. We asked Claudia to set the children to work defacing their own beds, which they'll enjoy.

Sirius put Protection from Evil and Good on himself ("just to make sure I don't get turned into a frog") and went up first. In the attic a small boy sat whittling with a large kitchen knife, and the light from the window dimmed of its own accord. Sirius: "That's a large kitchen knife. Mine's larger, but we're not comparing." Fëanor's spell said the boy was swaddled in necromancy.

"I'm, well, Mostly Felix." ("I'm Mostly Sirius.")

Sirius's charm got the whole plan out of it. It had been at work on "the middle floor", on Milivoj: "it's too late. Milivoj will still soon be mine." This boy is tiny; it wants "the more muscly specimen downstairs". It felt quite safe telling us, because "you're not going to hurt this boy".

Drew had slipped away to have Milivoj tied to his bed and told Claudia: "that is not Felix. He is possessed." The thing noticed. "Do I have to do this early?" Black, putrid smoke poured out of Felix's skin, the boy slumped forward, and a shadow demon unfolded in the attic, all solid black claws and a grin full of razor teeth. "Out of my way."

The fight

Lily went first with a luck-boosted natural 20, and her dagger did far less than it should have. Osric's feint did something, "but not a good thing". Steel, even silver, passes through it like rumour.
It sank into the floor and came up inside Drew, who had the locket in her pocket. The second time it took hold, it made her run for Milivoj. She looked at Sirius as she went, with real fear in her eyes for the first time: "I'm sorry."
Osric checked that Felix was breathing ("We'll be back, Felix") and ran after them. Lily ran ninety feet to reach Drew.
The demon boiled out of Drew among the children. Drew handed Sirius the locket and screamed them out: "There is a demon in the corridor. Run." She led them out to the garden, wild-haired, black smoke still rising off her.
Osric vaulted the banister to stand in its way. It reached into his chest and pulled out a quarter of his life, and it firmed up, feeding on it. "It was fucked up."
Sirius opened the locket, and it pulled at the demon like a current. His blade blazed with the Morninglord's light, and radiant damage ate straight through it. "Demon, if you beg for your life, Lord Lathander may save you. Otherwise, this is going to be painful."
Drew brought Clover out, beeping, and it pulsed good vibes over all of us.
The demon tried to take Sirius and bounced off his warding. "What the fuck are you?" "I am an angel, sent from the celestial realms to end you unless you repent." "Never."
Fëanor's guiding bolt tore it to wispy tatters. Sirius's last blow broke it into smoke, the smoke poured into the locket, and Sirius snapped it shut.

What Sirius understood afterwards (good Arcana, and his angelic nature getting it "at a fundamental level"):

The locket is what keeps the demon on this plane, and it can be used to trap it.
Destroy the locket and the demon goes free, but on another plane.
It can't get out on its own. Someone has to open the lid and look on it. Someone did, once.

We think it should go somewhere safe and secret, perhaps with the priest, even though the church was robbed. We haven't decided. For now the locket is closed, in Sirius's hand. Felix is unconscious in the attic, breathing, and free of it.

Milivoj wakes

Then Milivoj came stumbling into a corridor full of armed strangers, evacuated orphans and leftover demon smoke. "What the heck is going on?" We asked, not gently, whether he'd done something with some bones. "I didn't touch any bones, no. What are you talking about?" We told him about the demon that wanted his body. He didn't know anything about it. One of us took hold of him and insisted.

Out of character, the table's best line of the night: turns out multiple unrelated bad things can be happening in Barovia at once.

Where we stand

In the orphanage corridor, mid-conversation with a freshly awake Milivoj, who denies everything. Ireena is at the inn.
Level 4. Lily is free of the pies, still exhausted. Clover is back. Osric is down a quarter of his life. Lily's luck is spent.
The locket: shadow demon inside, lid shut, in Sirius's hand. Where it goes next is undecided.
Jobs: the bones; Lazlo, Hans and Franz (two hunters are already out; ask at the Blue Water); the late wine (the winery, via Krezk, about a week); the haunted lake; a Blinsky toy for Aragal; Radu at the windmill; the festival, now six days off.
Leads: the gift of knowledge at Krezk's glowing pool; Lady Wachter receives visitors; the bard is watching us.
Standing orders: all is well, don't say his name in the street, don't get reformed, and don't kill the ravens.

Questions on our minds

~~If not Milivoj, who took the bones?~~ Answered, Session 9: it was Milivoj, paid by a stranger, and he lied to us. See those notes.
~~Where did Milivoj's money come from?~~ Answered, Session 9: the same stranger.
Who cursed Milivoj? Was the sickness the demon staking its claim? Is anyone else marked?
Who was Felix before the demon, and who killed his parents?
What is the bard?
~~The Martikovs and the ravens: why did Danika wince?~~ Answered, Session 10: the Martikovs are ravens themselves, and the raven-man Roger's band killed was their great-uncle.
Roger's band killed their ally without knowing it. When our hunter of hunters steps out of the woods, will we know him?
What actually happens at a Festival of the Blazing Sun?