Field notes

A confession in a corridor, a crypt that held nothing but nails, dinner with a fiend on a perch, a song nobody taught anybody, and a letter from the Ravens of Barovia. By morning, the nails had a name. All will be well.

Milivoj confesses

We picked up in the orphanage corridor, with Milivoj trying to shoulder past us to reach Felix. The children are fine. The bones aren't, and one of us could see plainly that he knew exactly where they'd gone. Sirius explained that removing bones from a church of the Morninglord is a capital offence, to be carried out through him, the Morninglord's vessel. Milivoj's first fear was the guard. Then it came out.

"Look, look, you don't understand. I needed the money. Three kids have gone missing."

• Lazlo, Hans and Franz ran from whatever Felix was doing and won't survive out there. At the Blue Water, two hunters said they could probably find them, for 300 gold, since it meant giving up their own hunting for days and going into the woods, where it's dangerous. Milivoj is not good at bargaining.
• As he left the inn, a stranger stopped him: he'd overheard, and he could get Milivoj the gold. All he had to do was one small thing.
• The stranger wore a deep, deep cloak and kept his face hidden. Definitely a man. "He had very nice shoes." And a short black beard, which, Milivoj pointed out, describes about forty per cent of the men in Barovia.
• The instructions: take the bones to the Vallakovich crypt in the graveyard, leave them there, and come back the next day. The next day there was 300 gold waiting. He paid the hunters, and they're out searching now.
• The man had told him the bones were "just a trinket".
• He won't apologise. "It was necessary. I'm not gonna apologise." If the town finds out, it's the gallows, or worse, the Reformation Center.

Sirius's view was that the penalty is clear, and it's "only two hands. He'll still be able to walk." He argued that Fëanor was having a crisis of faith, which made Sirius the most senior clergy present, and that this was liturgy, "a 3,000-year-old religion", and he doesn't make the rules. The rest of us pushed back. We're outsiders who'd be cutting a local man's hands off within a day of arriving. Motive and repentance should count (Sirius agreed they generally do). And what matters is getting the bones back. Somebody suggested compromising by cutting off one hand. Sirius: "You make a very compelling case for something that has no liturgical basis." Sentence is deferred until the bones are back, not withdrawn.

Claudia came back from checking on Felix ("He's okay") to find us manhandling her groundskeeper, and Milivoj told her himself: "Claudia, I stole the bones from the church." We asked her to keep it quiet, or the whole town would be in a frenzy. She and Father Lucian are "partners in this enterprise, kind of", and she'll keep him. "Milivoj, promise me you will stay here." "Yes, ma'am."

The locket, and the Abbot

We told Claudia what was in the locket. She admitted: "I mean, I opened it." Asked who in Barovia could deal with it, she answered reluctantly:

"If there's someone in this Morning Lord forsaken place who can do something about a demon, a proper demon, it'll be the abbot, which it pains me to say."

• There's something like a schism in the Morninglord's church here, though she's not sure the Abbot knows or cares. In Vallaki there's Father Lucian, "the best of men", doing good works every day. High above Krezk in his abbey is the Abbot, whom the Morninglord has blessed with far mightier powers.
• "He can heal people, body and mind. There's stories he can raise the dead."
• But he's "a much less nice guy". He sits behind his walls and broods, and doesn't help anyone outside them.

Another reason to go to Krezk. We're keeping the locket rather than leaving it where it might be dug up or opened by a curious hand. (See Carry the Locket to the Abbot.)

Ernst at the door

As we left, a man was waiting outside the orphanage: Ernst Larnak, in the service of Lady Fiona Wachter. She had noticed that we'd "entered the town and immediately set about doing good works", and she'd be delighted to have us for aperitifs and dinner that evening. We had an errand first. Ernst said, very politely, that she had cleared her evening for us, gave directions, and said they'd be waiting with bated breath. (The DM showed us his portrait. We remember his shoes.)

The crypt

The Vallakovich crypt stands among the family mausoleums behind St. Andral's. Its door was unlocked. Behind the ornate front there are steps down to a rough dirt-and-stone passage, a few turns, and a dirt room with coffins slotted into alcoves. We didn't open them. "Give us ten sessions."

Someone had been in there within the last few days, and on the floor lay a handful of long iron nails. They weren't ordinary nails: they were custom work, made for one particular job by one particular pair of hands. Drew, who can use basically all the tools, could tell that much, and that a smith would know more. She pocketed them.

And note where the handover happened: the Baron's own family crypt. "Either it's someone to do with the Vallakoviches, or it's someone who wants us to think it's something to do with the Vallakoviches." "If I was gonna do a dirty deal, I wouldn't do it in my home."

Father Lucian

On the way to dinner we stopped at the church. Told that Milivoj had taken the bones: "I suspected as much. He's a good lad at heart." Told why: "He never did listen at the sermons. Oh, Milivoj." He'll be having words with Milivoj, and with whoever's been rummaging in the crypts. The Wachters, he says, have spread their wealth around and seem reasonable sorts. He asked us not to tell Lady Wachter about the bones, and we didn't. Sirius washed in his rooms ("We're not exactly a bathhouse here. We are a church") and came out looking marginally better.

Dinner at Wachterhaus

The house is in the noble district; the Burgomaster's is in the military district. It's the nicest house in the district. Fëanor, at the door: "This place stinks of new money." (It's at least five hundred years old.) In the entrance hall, a raven on a perch watched us with intelligent eyes.

Lady Fiona Wachter: "My dears, my dears, welcome. It is good to see do-gooders in Vallaki." Someone asked to kiss her hand ("No need for that. We're all equals here"). Her hand was warm, a living human's. Somebody said "All is well." "There's no need for that here. I have thick walls. The baron's madness does not extend here."

What she told us:

• The Baron "is no true lord. He is a pretender. He is a weak man. You feel free to report me to the guards, but I don't believe you will. I believe I have your measure." He takes people into the Reformation Center and breaks them.
• Ten years ago her husband died, and she believes the Baron was responsible, though she can't prove it. Her husband was a commoner who took her name. "It was romantic."
• Three years ago she arranged for her daughter Stella to marry the Baron's son, Victor, to gain a foothold, she freely admits, and steady the town. "That beast of a son broke my daughter in some way." It's "merely her mind"; her body is fine. Father Lucian couldn't help. She's not fit for company.
• She wants the Baron and his whole family crushed, "literally, if I can". Sirius argued her down from including the Baron's wife. "He and his son both are dead. They just don't know it."
• The job: find proof of what Victor did to Stella, and she'll pay 50 gold. Proof would bring the town over to her side. Sirius wants commitments to the church as well.
• She says Strahd's name freely. He's "not harmed me in particular". She started to say "I have protect… this house…" and didn't finish. "We've been here since before Strahd. Strahd is a Johnny-come-lately. He's just a creature."
• She confirmed that he flies across the sky on a fiery steed. "He is a rock slide. He is a force of nature. You have to bend to his whims." Someone said she must have a great deal of power of her own. "Yes, I do." The Baron, though, is "just a man who we can topple."
• The village of Barovia never recovered from "the slaughter forty-odd years ago".
• Krezk is insular, with its abbey and its pride in its glowing pool. Her rumour mill doesn't reach that far.
• The winery is the Wizards of Wine, owned by the Martikovs. Her agent says the wagons haven't come this week. She has a plentiful cellar, which she would share with anyone working to better Vallaki.
• The werewolves are to the west, nearer Krezk. They pick people off, and she hears they capture children.
• Izek has "what can only be described as fire powers" and a demonic right arm. He's the Baron's creature through and through. The Baron raised him after he was "found with his arm". "He will not be swayed. He will have to be crushed." We'll have to deal with him "together". Asked her preferred method: "I am a mere weak woman. I prefer to have my agents stab, slice, behead."
• Her soup kitchens are known to every beggar in town. The Vistani are "just rot".
• Ireena, of the noble Kolyanovich family, shouldn't be sleeping in a common inn. Would we pass on an invitation to live under her roof and protection? We said we would. We haven't.
• She raised one more thing while two of us were out of the room: her sons have made friends with a local drinker, Bluto, in whom the lady of the lake takes a particular interest.

The name test. Sirius wouldn't say it ("I'm a very good-looking man, and I've heard that if you say it three times, he turns up"), and warned our hostess she was on two out of three. One of us then said "Strahd" five times at the dinner table. Nothing happened. It seems to matter who says it.

We showed her the nails. There are two smiths in town: the one in the shopping district does fine work and proper armour; the Workyard smith does nails and ordinary jobs.

The raven that isn't a raven

During dinner Sirius quietly opened his divine sense. Lady Wachter herself is neither fiend nor undead. But there was a fiend somewhere towards the corridor. Fëanor slipped away to cast his own detection, and the two of them excused themselves to the bathroom together ("There's something in your teeth"; "We are close followers of the Morning Lord"). Lady Wachter observed that such behaviour isn't really seen as appropriate in Barovia.

In the corridor, it was plain: the raven is the fiend. Sirius had never checked a raven before, and it hit him hard. In the bathroom: "That's a fiend, the raven." "I know." Sirius could destroy it with his sword. Fëanor: "I don't trust her as far as I can throw her." Sirius: "You have a lot of prejudice towards rich people." Fëanor: "Yeah, but this is more than that."

Somebody was listening at the bathroom door. The DM asked for a stealth check, and we rolled a 2. They were gone. A few minutes later we felt the fiend move fast, up the stairs and out, beyond our senses. It was still gone when we left.

Sirius, back at the table, asked her how confident she was "on a scale of one to not a bird". "It's just a bird." A fiend from the lower planes? "You speak madness, sir." Lily mentioned a raven in the woods she couldn't talk to. "Ravens are plenty in Barovia. They are a sign of goodness. You can trust anyone with a raven." It was a gift from a dear friend, about ten years ago. Which friend? "Oh, I can't recall." One of us tried to read her and got nothing: she is very charismatic.

The walk home

We argued all the way. Sirius's first thought was that she knew nothing and the raven was Strahd's spy on her. Fëanor: "Am I the only one who thinks she's evil?" Lily thinks the raven we couldn't speak to may be following us.

• Sirius: if all the ravens are fiends, "that would really put a dint into the mythology I was creating of my family and Barovia. But it shall not eclipse my faith." He means to kill the thing. We talked him out of doing it at dinner.
• Someone reminded us of Roger's band, who killed a raven-creature and were doomed. "Do you not think that we're already doomed?" "Two dooms don't make a blessing."
• Agreed: next raven we see, Sirius uses his sight first. No killing on instinct; it might be a perfectly innocent bird.
• Nobody knows any fiend that turns into a raven. "There are many magics that can make things seem like other things."
• Somebody wondered whether fiends might not like Strahd either. Sirius won't work with demons, but won't stop anyone else.
• Fëanor has turned dark: if something is evil, or we suspect it is, we should just kill it. "I would like to go home sometime. And if I can't go home, then I'm gonna take as many things out with me." Someone said the priest had really gone. "I am a teenager, so."
• Lily sang us a little song she sings when she's feeling low: "Pies, pies, pies, pies…" It's quite difficult sometimes when the world is made for people who are too big and nobody respects people like you. Somebody offered her wine.

Ireena's song

At the Blue Water the band was on stage, bigger than last night, and Ireena was singing with them, the bard among the musicians. The DM shared the words in the chat. They may be allegorical.

Two brothers at the altar and a bride between the two, One wore the morning golden and one wore the midnight blue. The dark one went a-begging to a whisper in the stone, And came back down the mountain with a hunger of his own.

He toasted at the wedding and he drank his brother's wine, The morning fell to nothing and the evening learned to shine. He hung his cloak across the sun and nailed it to the sky, This valley's had no summer since, and none of us know why.

The three at the window are laughing as they spin, They tie a thread around my heel wherever I begin. So I run, and I fall from the wall of the world, They snip it, and they spin it, and they send another girl.

A bride, and then a widow, then a girl beneath the lake, A name the valley whispered once and dropped for pity's sake. He's hunted me through harvest and he's hunted me through snow, He knows this tune by heart, my loves. I wonder how I know.

Red thread, dead thread, snap it if you can, A raven on the shoulder of the shadow of a man. He drank the whole of morning and he swallowed up the sun, The thread slips through his fingers and it never comes undone.

The three at the window keep laughing as they spin, But laughing sounds like weeping when the wheel comes round again. So I'll run, and I'll fall from the wall of the world, They'll snip it, and they'll spin it, and I'll wake another girl.

She jumped down flushed with joy. Her brother never let her sing with a band before. Where did she learn it? "I don't know. I've had it in my head forever. I think I dreamed it." She's happier here; the Martikovs are so friendly. Did we have a good day? We had a day.

Bluto, and the wine

Roger was there, and the Wachter twins. We told them we'd dined with their mother. They had a job for us: their friend Bluto (older, dour, black beard, "a bit of a problem with the drink, but who amongst us doesn't?") went north to the lake a couple of days ago, talking about righting a wrong, and hasn't come back. "We are connoisseurs of art and food. We're not men of arms." They'll get Mama to pay 70 or 80 gold. (See Look for Bluto.) The lake is about three hours' walk each way, north, past the Vistani camp, or out of another gate to avoid it.

They also told us where the raven came from. When their father died ten years ago (they blame the Burgomaster), their mother wrote to everyone, including the abbey, about raising him. Then she disappeared for a couple of weeks, "came back, had the raven, and seems more at peace with herself." Does it do anything strange? "It disappears for a bit sometimes."

The wine is being rationed. At the bar there was no beer and no more wine for the brothers. One of us ordered three waters and one wine and cut it ourselves. The twins noticed. "Quality control issue. We were thinking we should head down to the vineyard." The winery is a week or more away.

Shoes, for the record: the bard's boots are curled, gold-plated and very colourful, and he doesn't seem a man for a deep cloak. Lily is a trained cobbler who really knows shoes. And Ernst's shoes, in his portrait, were very nice, fancy and very clean.

(Drew, in passing, on home: her forge in a leaning shed, lens goggles for the fine work, the two fences she set on fire. "And now we have Clover. It was worth those fences. And the sheep were fine after. The wool grew back.")

The note from the Ravens

Upstairs, lying in the middle of our bedroom floor, was a note. The door was locked and the windows secured.

Do not take the fact that Lady Wachter keeps a pet raven as a sign that she is supported by the Ravens of Barovia. That being is no true raven. The Ravens of Barovia

Sirius sat down on the floor with his head in his hands, in relief. He went down and asked the lady behind the bar who'd been in our room. She hadn't seen anyone, and they don't clean it. "If there was a horse's head in our bed, that would've been more problematic, but it was just nice things about ravens and bad things about bad ravens."

• The penmanship is impeccable. How does a raven hold a pen? Theories: a union, a co-op, a Raven Lord with winged hands. It's capitalised, a collective. Maybe they were never ravens at all.
• It seems Fëanor was right about Lady Wachter. Sirius: "I eat my words. Some of them seem like they may possibly still be correct." She can be a bad person without something making her do it.

Sirius wrote back: "Dear Ravens of Barovia, firstly, might I note how cool your name is?" We thanked them, told them we knew the Wachter raven was a demon and not a raven, asked if we might meet, and mentioned that we mean to go to the lake in the next day or two and will be looking out for anyone corvid-like. (Rejected drafts: "beautiful plumage", "XOXO", "please don't eat our eyeballs".) Signed: From us. We left it where theirs had lain, and Drew set an alarm on it. (See The Ravens of Barovia.)

Lily asked to be tied up again, with Sirius beside her. "Yes, please."

Henrik's nails

Morning: grey and horrid, five days to the festival. The shopping-district smith is tied up with the guards and the Baron's faction, so we went to the Workyard, where a man with two large, standard-proportioned arms was firing up his forge. Drew admired his hammer ("It's been in my family for generations. Well done, missy") and showed him her travel hammer. Then she showed him the nails.

"Oh, you've got Henrik's nails."

Henrik is a coffin maker, and he takes great pride in his special coffin nails: they curve a particular way as they're hammered in. Nobody else's do that. His shop is the Coffin Works, in the production district near here, and he doesn't open every day, because people don't need coffins every day. "Usually word gets around that someone's passed away." Drew: "And then suddenly they do." "That's very dark for you to say, missy." He'll try to get word to Henrik about an appointment. Drew told him she'd found the nails and would return them.

He sharpened Sirius's and Osric's swords and Lily's awl and kitchen knife for two silver. Then the jokes about hammers and getting lucky went on too long, and he asked us to leave.

Where we stand

• Leaving the Workyard for Henrik's Coffin Works, nails in pocket, five days before the festival. Level 4. The locket is shut, and Sirius carries it.
• The bones: Milivoj took them for 300 gold from a cloaked man with very nice shoes and a short black beard, and left them in the Vallakovich crypt. Henrik's nails were in that crypt. Milivoj is held at the orphanage on his word. Lucian knows. Lady Wachter doesn't.
• Jobs: the bones (next stop, the Coffin Works); Bluto at the lake (70–80 gold, and we told the Ravens we're going); proof of what Victor did to Stella (50 gold from Lady Wachter); the Wizards of Wine; the missing boys; Radu; the Blinsky toy.
• The locket is for the Abbot above Krezk. Krezk now holds the glowing pool, the Abbot, and perhaps help for Stella.
• The Ravens of Barovia write letters into locked rooms and don't support Lady Wachter. We've written back.
• Lady Wachter's invitation to Ireena is still in our pockets.
• Standing orders: all is well; don't get reformed; divine sense before violence on anything with feathers.

Questions on our minds

• Is Henrik the man with the nice shoes? Answered, Session 10: no. His boots are a workman's, and dirty.
• Who are the Ravens of Barovia? Answered, Session 10: Urwin is one.
• What is Lady Wachter? She went away grieving for two weeks and came back with a fiend and peace of mind. Who was the dear friend she can't recall? What did she trade?
• Where does the fiend-raven go when it disappears, and who does it report to?
• Why is Ireena's song in her head?
• What wrong was Bluto going to right, at a lake that drowns men?
• The Abbot heals minds and raises the dead. What is he, and what will he want?
• Who was listening at the bathroom door?
• Five days to the festival, and the church still isn't hallowed. Can we get the bones back in time?