The Windmill

Where

In a woodland clearing on a rise beside The Road West, a day's walk west of Tser Pool Encampment and two days short of Vallaki.

Status

Theirs, for now. The coven is whole and Radu is still chained inside. We gave Vasha our word that we would come back.

First seen

Session 6, at dusk, with a full moon somewhere above the clouds. Left: Session 7, at speed.

The place

Ireena wanted somewhere better than the open road to spend the night, and ten minutes later there it was: an onion-domed windmill leaning forward and to one side, as though trying to turn its face away from the grey sky. Tattered sails, grey brick walls, windows grimed over on the upper floors, a rotting wooden platform all the way round and a flimsy door. Ledges and fences step down the rise towards the road. Rolling off the whole place, warm and sweet and wrong, came the smell of fresh herbs and freshly baked pies.

Behind the mill, at the edge of the trees, stands a henge: several large standing stones. We never got close enough to see what, if anything, is carved on them. There was screaming.

What happened here

Our plan was to sweep it for evil, destroy any evil we found, and sleep there. We fell back to the road first so Fëanor could cast his ritual. Five minutes into it, Granny came down the road pushing her cart, like a hot-dog seller. Lily stood in the open and asked to buy more pies. Pressed, Granny admitted it cheerfully: "They are enchanting pies, I will admit." Then, as Sirius edged round towards her cart, we heard muffled screaming from inside it.

Granny ran for the mill faster than any old woman has ever run, shrieking "Bella! Offalia!"

Lily opened the cart and found a grown woman inside, gagged and wrapped in a net. She begged us not to cut her loose: "I am cursed. This net is silver. It's stopping me turning." She had been bitten by a werewolf, the moon above the clouds was full, and the silver was all that kept her human. Her partner, a werewolf born and not bitten, was a prisoner inside. "If you can save him."

Sirius and Osric vaulted the fences to the door. It burst open on three hags, and one of them had Granny's face, warped and purple. "You shouldn't have poked your nose in, dearies." We learned their names from the fight: Morgantha, who was Granny; Bella; and Offalia.

How it ended

Badly. "Ooh, you lot are spicy, aren't you?" Bella turned Sirius into a frog ("You, winged one") and Morgantha did the same to Osric. Lily ran straight into the coven, scooped up both frogs and took Morgantha's claws across her back for it. Offalia looked at Lily with eyes like inky voids and said "It would be unwise to attack our best customer." Drew set all three on fire and threw acid at two of them, to no effect. Fëanor's light hurt Morgantha, but not enough; she soaked up more than seventy points of damage and only looked a bit hurt. Then she smashed Clover to scrap: "And take your toy, too."

"That's it, right, you three dearies run. Don't come back." We ran, dragging the woman down the hill in her silver net. The hags stood in their doorway laughing, and then went back inside. The frogs turned back into people an hour later.

The night after

We walked until we couldn't smell pies. Then the woman in the net, Vasha, told us what the pies are made of: her arm, and her partner Radu's arm, cut off again and again and left to grow back. We cremated every pie we had. Lily, whom the pies had hooked hardest, was tied to a tree that night for her own good, and for several nights after.

One of us knew what the hags were: night hags, much stronger as a coven of three, and much weaker if one of them is taken away.

In the morning Vasha told us about her pack far in the west and decided to stay near the mill, watching, to be close to Radu. We gave her our word: "We will come back and attempt to vanquish these hags, with you or without you."

What we owe here

• Radu, still a prisoner inside. See Go Back for Radu.
• The coven, whole and smug. See our word, above.
• The henge, still unexamined.

Open questions

• Can we catch one of the three alone, on a pie round, before the next full moon?
• How many other people in Barovia are eating Granny's pies right now?
• What is the henge, and does it have anything to do with the lady of ravens on Sirius's card?