St. Andral's Church

Where

The far side of Vallaki from the gate, next door to St. Andral's Orphanage, with the town's graveyard behind it.

Status

About two-thirds burned: stone walls standing, roof and pews gone. The bones are home on the sub-altar and the ground is holy again. Father Lucian is living in the ruin with the Baroness Lydia in his care. Sirius has invited the whole town to a service here in the morning.

First entered

Session 7, the evening we arrived, with Ireena.

The place

The finest building we had seen in Barovia: centuries-old stone, a tall steeple, stained-glass windows of pious saints and red suns, two wooden doors standing ajar, and a wrought-iron fence round a grand graveyard of family mausoleums. About a dozen people were praying quietly when we arrived. Ireena sat down in a pew and said she was so glad to be safe at last.

Its priest is Father Lucian: gentle, kind, and more trusting than is good for him. His altar boy Yeska is eight, thinks adventurers are the coolest thing in the world, and now does push-ups, twenty a day, on Sirius's advice, so that one day he can hold a longsword of his own.

The stories said the devil had not set foot in Vallaki for over two hundred years.

The secret

Lucian took us into his little bedroom behind the church and told us the truth in a rush. "Usually, the church of St. Andral is hallowed ground. Evil cannot tread here." The church was built around its altar, and under the altar, in a crypt, lay the bones of St. Andral, dead some seven hundred years. They made the ground holy and kept the town safe. About six days before we came they had gone, and he had felt the church become less holy before he checked. "Right now, it's just a building."

He pushed the altar back to show us: a small, dusty room, six feet high, with a stone slab in the middle and nothing on it.

Only Lucian and Yeska knew the bones were there. Sirius asked Yeska, very kindly, whether he had told anyone. He had: the groundskeeper, Milivoj, who had asked him out of the blue about ten days before whether he knew any secrets about hidden things in the church. "He's so cool, though." See St. Andral's Orphanage for how that went.

We decided not to tell Ireena. If the devil can hear his name when she says it, we reasoned, what else might he hear through her? It was the wrong call. She stayed at the inn with us instead of sleeping on the pews.

What the bones really did

Urwin, once he'd admitted to being a raven, told us what the Ravens' records say. The bones in the church make a hallowing that reaches across the whole city, weaker the further out you go. While they rest in place, no lesser undead can enter Vallaki at all. The devil himself could walk the streets, but never into the church. Take the bones away and the city is open.

Six coffins arrived at Henrik's shop the day after the theft.

The fire

We opened those coffins ourselves, four days early. They were vampire spawn. Four got out into the streets, and a guard ran past us shouting "The church! They're heading towards the church! Defend the church!" When we got there, the church was an inferno. A guard carried Yeska out alive. Inside, Father Lucian stood on his own altar with the sun symbol raised over his head, holding two spawn at bay with nothing but faith: "The power of the Morninglord compels you."

The building fought everyone as it died: blinding smoke, windows bursting, rubble falling, poisoned air. Then Izek came through the back doors, flinging the other two spawn in ahead of him. It became the strangest alliance Vallaki will never hear about: the five of us, a raven who stayed human because the guard captain was watching, a priest who produced a mace from under the altar ("This is my church." Boop.) and Izek, who lost both his guards, Frederick and Petru, grabbed a spawn by the head and threw it into the flames. One of the creatures said something we are still turning over: "The master wants the priest dead." The master did not get him.

All six spawn were destroyed, two at the shop and four here. On the way out Sirius took the sunburst statuette from the altar and, blinded by smoke, carried it out and put it in Lucian's hands. "Remember, Father, Lathander lives in our hearts, not in our places." Lucian: "But this church, it was a symbol for so many."

Outside, Izek stood staring at the fire. "The baron promised me… Evil can't come into Vallaki."

Bones first

The bones were in Wachterhaus the whole time, in a secret room off Lady Wachter's library. We carried them out in the bag of holding, with Sirius bellowing "Blasphemy!" for the benefit of the household, and came back at dusk to find Father Lucian sitting on the steps of his ruined church, holding the sunburst statuette. Sirius began telling him about the letter we'd found from the devil, and somebody said what we were all thinking: bones first.

The altar rolled aside on greased wheels. The sub-altar beneath it had come through the fire untouched. We laid the bones on it together, respectfully, with the Father's hands on them.

And the ground answered. A wave of holy energy washed out through the roofless wreck and beyond it, and for the first time since the fire it felt like a sanctuary. Lucian, with the precision of the truly exhausted: "I'm not gonna say it's a bit late, but thank you regardless. We needed this."

Sirius and Fëanor slept there that night, with Father Lucian, on bedrolls Drew conjured for them, under the rain, guarding the bones. Write it down: we actually won one.

What the devil said about it

As far as we know, nobody touched the bones during the festival. Instead the devil himself came down into the square and told us what they do. They have spoiled his usual ways of watching the town, and they might stop his agents. They do not stop him. "Should I see fit, I may enter." He proved it by landing in the middle of the town square.

Father Lucian stood up in that square and told the whole town that the vampires were real, which is the bravest thing we have seen him do since the altar. Afterwards he took the Baroness, Lydia, home to his church. She stands there smiling. Sirius sent the crowd home with an invitation to a service here in the morning.

Open questions

• Who took the bones, and where are they now? Walked to the end: Milivoj, the Vallakovich crypt, Henrik, Ernst, a secret room in Wachterhaus, and home.
• What was waiting for this building to become just a building? Six vampire spawn. All destroyed.
• Can a hallowing be raised over a ruin? Yes. We felt it roll past us and keep going.
• How far does it reach now? The devil says it blinds him and hinders his agents. Is the town closed to the lesser dead again?
• Who guards the bones? Nobody, at the moment, apart from a priest who sleeps deeply.
• Who built the brick-weighted barricade across the road to the church, before any vampires were loose?
• What does a town rebuild first, with winter coming and one meal a week: a roofless church, or the fourteen houses around it?