Sirius

Sirius is a Waterdeep nobleman with the blood of angels in him, a paladin sworn to the Oath of Devotion ("I'm being the most boring paladin. It's a classic"), and the only man any of us knows who greets every dawn by simply not going to bed. He takes things literally ("Actual little birds?"), takes sarcasm at face value, and takes his vows more seriously than anything. He is sincere, generous and brave, and very often the last to work out what's going on. He is also, it turns out, astonishingly persuasive.

He introduces himself as Sirius Black. When the mist took him he was chasing his feather down an empty street calling on the bystanders to assist him.

From Waterdeep

He told the whole story as the price of a night at Tser Pool, and the Vistani called it a good trade. A family of vineyards (two wineries, which he admits he wasn't very good at looking after). A heroic grandfather, also called Sirius, and a wastrel father who never deserved the feather. Drinking fine vintage by the side of the street at thirteen. At fifteen his grandfather pressed the raven feather into his hand and sent him to a boarding school for priests, where they drilled into him a love for the sun, the light, and his fellow men and elves.

He trains with the battle-warriors of Waterdeep's great church of Lathander, though his noble blood keeps him from being sworn to its paladins, and he's known for turning up to training three sheets to the wind. His circle includes the Bellweathers, two of whose daughters he was once engaged to at the same time, and "the uncle we do not talk about". His mother told him a weekend job was beneath him.

He knew Fëanor's family before any of this, and warmed to him at once as a fellow follower of Lathander. Fëanor, it turns out, had admired him from afar. They walked into the mist together hand in hand.

The feather

A raven feather from his grandfather, pinned to his cloak (and to his nightclothes). Its family meaning is simple: "for good, and bring good to the world". In Barovia, ravens mean luck. Ismark called them a good omen, Ireena called them boons, and Lady Wachter said you can trust anyone with a raven.

That last one hurt. Lady Wachter's own raven turned out to be a fiend, and Sirius found it with his own divine sense in the middle of her dinner party. It put "a dint into the mythology I was creating of my family and Barovia". That night a note from the Ravens of Barovia appeared in our locked room: That being is no true raven. He sat down on the floor with his head in his hands, in relief, and then wrote back: "Dear Ravens of Barovia, firstly, might I note how cool your name is?"

The blank card

At Tser Pool, Madam Eva called him an imbecile twice and made him draw from the right deck. Then she refused him a reading of his own: "Even if you wanted a reading, I could not give you one. Your fate has already been read." She handed him a card anyway, and he sat holding it, transfixed. To the rest of us it is blank. To him:

"I saw a lady of ravens on my card, who is tied into my present and past, and I think is part of a secret towards addressing the land. And she told me that what was stolen is not fully owned, and the land can be reclaimed, which has only added steel to my resolve. And I think her ravens are our friends."

She seems familiar, though he's never met her. He linked her to his grandfather's feather himself. When he repeated her words to the bard, the bard looked at him very sharply: "That is a very astute thing to say, sir." See The Reading.

What Barovia has done to him

The bite. The first night Strahd came to call, the whole household was charmed, and the devil chose Sirius: "Offer me your blood." "That sounds like an entirely reasonable idea." Strahd took him by the hair and drank, not deeply, as a token of fealty. It cost him strength until he'd slept. In the morning: "I've got the Blood of Angels running through me. Barely scratched." We tested him: fingernails fine, wall-climbing declined, and a powerful craving for a slightly charred bacon and egg roll. He promised to tell us if blood ever starts to seem like a good idea. The black pudding test is still pending. When Strahd stood in front of him again in the square at Vallaki, he never mentioned it.

The memory. In the Durst house he couldn't remember how he came to follow his feather, and forgot he had it. (Drew blamed the vinegar wine.) Then, in the Baron's mansion, he went alone up to Victor's attic. He came down thirty-five minutes later remembering a pleasant four or five minutes with someone facing away from him, in an empty room, "like when you remember you were talking to someone in a dream". "I was either drunk very rapidly and then got better, or something strange happened." He has since told Izek, in front of the whole town: "Your memory has been tampered with, friend, as has mine."

The wings. His protection spells flare with spectral golden raven wings. In the windmill fight black raven wings burst from his back and his eyes became pools of darkness dripping feathers, and a hag was terrified. On a farm road in the grey, Ireena saw the wings, knelt, and thanked the Morninglord for an angel: "We're blessed. We can't fail." He knelt and prayed with her, and told her his family probably interbred with celestial creatures some time ago. On the night Vallaki burned he flew over the mob on golden wings, sword blazing, and named the servants of Lady Wachter, and the crowd called him Avatar of the Morning Lord.

Since then there has been a rumour in Vallaki that an angel of the Morninglord came down and accused Lady Wachter. Sirius would very much like to meet this angel. "Absolutely not possible. The agents of the Morninglord are radiant beyond all. One would know if one had seen one." His wings, he'll tell you, are made of raven feathers.

Clancy

At Level 5 Sirius called a steed, and the Morninglord sent him a gleaming celestial horse. Mud falls off its hooves. It is the single most conspicuous object in a starving, burned town. He asked, politely, for a slightly more surreptitious horse. It is a draught-horse build with white raven feathers at its fetlocks. He named it: "When Plan A and Plan B don't work, let's just call for Plan C." It is Clancy (the spelling was debated). He took it to the festival as his emotional support horse.

In its first fight, a few minutes after arriving in the world, Clancy kicked a devil's imp with radiant hooves, and later laid its healing touch on Sirius. Fëanor is managing his envy. The table's verdict: "He is better than Sirius."

In Barovia

• Death House. He strapped on the windmill shield the moment the verse appeared ("I have finely honed evil sensors"), was thrown over a banister by a suit of armour, and walked out of the room when the ghost children appeared. He swore his vow on the gift: "I am unable by my vow to parley with a demon, except through steel and righteous fury." At the altar: "We're not murdering a creature here to satiate an evil appetite." He struck the altar instead.
• The village. He talked Bildrath down to a quarter of his outsider prices, and got thrown out for a hypothetical about killing him. In the crypt he told Doru "You may still be saved. Turn to Lathander," then smote him for forty-seven radiant. Then he objected to Fëanor ending the boy with anything so loud and raw.
• The road. He went to help the voices crying in the woods until we pointed out they were floating lights. He told a wolf "We are not squishy food stuffs. There's rabbits in these forests." (The wolf was unpersuaded.) The hags frogged him. He had himself tied up next to Lily so she wasn't alone.
• Vallaki. He carried wine to Roger. He told Danika "Justice that is blind and has no soul has no place in this world." He taught Yeska push-ups and that the coolest thing you can do is keep a confidence. He sealed the orphanage's shadow demon in its locket, after answering its "What the fuck are you?" with "I am an angel, sent from the celestial realms to end you unless you repent." He wanted two of Milivoj's hands, liturgically. He found six undead with his sixth sense ("I meant the number six literally"). He put fifty-seven points of radiant into a spawn in the burning church, carried the sunburst statuette out of the fire, and told Father Lucian: "Lathander lives in our hearts, not in our places." He is, he reminded the priest, literally a holy defender of priests.
• Wachterhaus. He pointed the Wachter sons at their dead father: "Is that Papa?" He swept the bones into the bag and bellowed "Blasphemy!" through the window. He slept in the roofless church beside them so they wouldn't be alone.
• The festival. Wings out, he told the square about the Lord of the Morning, cast a zone of truth on the Baron, sang a hymn with the Baroness, put his shield between the Baron and a thrown stone, and proposed Ireena. Grabbed by the foot by Izek's demon arm and cut at by the guards, he answered with a hug: "I'm not here to fight you, my friend. We both want the same thing." Izek called "Hold." Then he spent the devil's visit getting the devil's title wrong (Baron, Earl, Marquis, "Land") and offering him a ball in Waterdeep or Neverwinter. He sent the crowd home and invited them to church in the morning, and afterwards he prayed with Ireena.

In his own words

"No, I'm serious."

"I've spent my adult life training to protect those weaker than me. I barely know all of you. You seem to be of strong heart, and I would gladly give my life to save yours."

"You are the sun in these lands, Father." (To Fëanor.)

"How confident, on a scale of one to not a bird, would you say that you were?"

"Is that a raven? No, I think it might be a swallow or a starling. No, no, that's a pine cone. My mistake."

"You can make me an angel or a god or uniquely infallible, but I do like wine. I'm not sure that I am cut out for leadership."