Vallaki

Where

Four days west of the village of Barovia along The Road West, past Tser Pool and the windmill. The lake lies to the north, the Vistani camp just outside the walls.

Status

We are here. On the evening of the festival the Baron and Lady Wachter are both dead, Ireena is acting burgomistress, and we are inside The Reformation Center on her first order.

First entered

Session 7, at dusk.

The gate

"This is almost a city." Real stone walls, a wrought-iron gate with a portcullis, a church steeple in the distance on the far side of town, and two guards who, on seeing us, said "Right. Visitors from outside. Get the forms, Ted." / "Right, Frank."

Getting in is an interview. Are you now, or have you ever been, an agent of the devil? In league with the Vistani? With the dusk elves (we didn't know what those were)? With werewolves? Then every weapon you carry is registered, crossbow bolts counted one at a time, and Lily's broom handle too: "You have brought it to our attention, and therefore it must be registered." Leave and come back, and you do it all again. The guard who processed us gave his serial number, 4368, and advised against any criticism of the Baron: "The stocks are ever ready for heads and arms."

Ireena, announced as the sister of the Burgomaster of Barovia, was welcomed properly, with condolences for her father and Vallaki's best wishes to her brother. Vistani are not let in at all.

The laws

• Don't say the devil's name. It is a punishable offence in Vallaki. He is "the devil", and that's all.
• Don't speak ill of the Baron. It is one of the crimes on the list, near the top.
• Attend the festival. There has been a mandatory festival every other week for about fifteen years. We arrived with seven days to go until the Festival of the Blazing Sun, and "failure to attend this festival is punishable by punishment." Children are required, if you have them. See The Festival Flyer.
• Smile. In the square on our first evening, three people sat in the stocks: one had missed a festival because his mother had died, one had been drunk once, and one had said something about the Baron. The passer-by who explained this would not repeat what: "Don't tempt me, sir. Don't try and trick me."

The town

It takes about an hour to walk across. There is a guard on every street corner, fresh festival posters go up over the old ones every day, and every conversation ends the same way: all will be well. And yet, unlike the village of Barovia, people are out after dark here, and there is no curfew. The walls are real.

According to Roger, who gave us the tour over wine:

• The square: gallows and stocks on a dais, five corners, a guard on each. They don't often hang people. The stocks are basically always full.
• The Workyard: a paper mill and a lumberyard (so that's where the posters come from), and an honest smith.
• The guard district: a smithy, and the Reformation Center, where people go in and come out wrong. The Burgomaster's mansion is round there too.
• The north district, where the well-to-do live, and Wachterhaus with them.
• The residence district and farm plots, where Roger works.
• The shopping district, the one place in Barovia where you can properly buy and sell things.

Where things are

• The Blue Water Inn, not far from the church. The only tavern in town, our home, and the Ravens' nest.
• St. Andral's Church, on the far side of town from the gate, with its walled graveyard of family mausoleums. Mostly burned now, but a sanctuary again.
• St. Andral's Orphanage, next door to the church: twenty children and no money.
• The Vallakovich crypt, in the church graveyard: ornate outside, a rough dirt tunnel inside, coffins in the walls. The stolen bones were dropped here, and we found Henrik's coffin nails on the floor. We did not open any coffins.
• Wachterhaus, the finest house in the north district. Fëanor said it stank of new money; somebody pointed out it was at least five hundred years old. Warded, the Ravens say, "to the nines." Lately a hospital. See The House of Wachter.
• The Burgomaster's mansion, in the guard district. The Baron received us in an office at the back while festival floats were built on the ground floor. Victor's attic is at the top: only Sirius went up the first time, and he came down missing half an hour. Now it is Ireena's.
• Henrik's Coffin Works, in the production district by the Workyard. Thirty empty coffins downstairs, no paperwork anywhere, a very expensive alarm ward on the stairs, and six crates upstairs, one with a small silver mark. Burst windows since.
• Celegal's Bowyer, next door to the Coffin Works: a chatty grey-skinned, long-eared elf, and the place to buy arrows and bolts. Most of his customers are the town's two full-time hunters. He paid thirty gold for a heavy crossbow nobody was using ("30 gold and get out"). Ernst later accused us of burgling the poor man with a writ.
• The Workyard smith, big-armed, with a hammer that has been in his family for generations. He talked tools with Drew ("Well done, missy"), sharpens a blade for two silver, and knew Henrik's nails at a glance.
• The shopping-district smith, who sells art and proper armour. Lady Wachter says he is the Baron's man. We haven't been.
• Blinsky's toy shop. Not yet visited. We owe Aragal a toy from it.
• Outside the walls: the Vistani camp, which trades with the town but may not enter it, and near it, Roger says, the dusk elves: a dying people, only men left, because long ago the devil killed all their women. We haven't seen either camp.
• North, three hours' walk: the lake. Lake's haunted.

What happened here

• Session 7. Through the gate at dusk. Father Lucian told us the bones of St. Andral had been stolen from under his altar six days earlier. At the Blue Water, an old man stared at us white as a sheet: Roger, the last of the previous Mistwalkers.
• Session 8. Roger's tale. Danika's late wine. The bard said the devil's name out loud. The Wachter brothers told us Victor had broken their sister. At the orphanage we found a cursed groundskeeper and a boy who was Mostly Felix, and put a demon in a locket.
• Session 9. Milivoj confessed to stealing the bones for a man with very clean shoes. Henrik's nails in the Vallakovich crypt. Dinner at Wachterhaus, where the lady's pet raven turned out to be a fiend. Ireena sang a song she had dreamed. A letter from the Ravens appeared in our locked room.
• Session 10. Izek and eighteen guards marched us to the Baron, who hired us to prove Lady Wachter consorts with the devil, and kept Fëanor. Henrik confessed that Ernst had taken the bones, and that six coffins had come the day after. Urwin turned into a raven-man in our room.
• Session 11. We opened the coffins four days early, on our own terms. They were vampire spawn. Two died upstairs and four got out into the streets. Sirius, winged and blazing, told a mob it was the work of Lady Wachter's servants. Someone had weighted a toppled wagon with bricks across the church road before any of it started. St. Andral's caught fire with Father Lucian inside.
• Session 12. All six spawn destroyed. The church lost, and some fourteen houses and shops with it. The whole town fought the fires together, with an average result. Lady Wachter's house became a hospital, stocked well in advance.
• Session 13. We found the bones in Wachterhaus and brought them home. The criers announced that "There are no vampires in Vallaki. There have never been vampires in Vallaki," that the attack was the work of seditious agitators in masks, and that the festival would be tomorrow at midday: "Bring your sick, bring your grieving. All will be well." Izek added that Lady Wachter would hang on our testimony, and that Henrik had been arrested.
• Session 14. The festival, in torrential rain. Both rulers told the town that we would attest for them. We gave the town witnesses instead, and proposed Ireena. Somebody shouted "All is not well in Vallaki!" and the square turned. The Baron ordered Izek to kill Sirius, and Fëanor's lance killed the Baron. Lady Wachter's raven became an imp, and Osric killed it. Lady Wachter surrendered to the crowd and the crowd trampled her to death. We did not stop it. Then the devil came down on a burning horse, told us the bones had spoiled his view of the town, drank a man dry in front of everyone, told us not to stay too long, and left.

Who runs it now

• Ireena, acting burgomistress, proposed by us, supported by Father Lucian, and followed by Izek. She hasn't been formally inducted. She is at the mansion with guards around her and is frightened the town will slide into anarchy.
• Izek serves "the Office of the Burgomaster," whoever holds it. He is with us in the Center.
• Father Lucian told the whole square the vampires were real. He has taken in the Baroness, Lydia, who smiles and answers nothing.
• Victor is gone, by a one-use teleportation circle in his attic. He left behind a book in which he wrote down, in detail, how he broke Stella Wachter's mind.
• The Wachter brothers are alive because they told the town the truth about their mother's bedroom.
• Ernst vanished in the riot.
• Udo, whom the Baron kept in chains to take out his temper on, is free.

Open questions

• Can Ireena hold this town? The devil called her "of the right stock" and said he is patient. He also told us not to stay long. She is staying.
• How many of the guards belong to the twins? Two in the courtroom didn't know their own captain.
• What happens if six coffins open into a mandatory festival crowd? We made sure nobody found out. People died who were alive that morning, but the whole town was not in the streets. We think we did the right thing.
• Who does a coffin maker answer to? Answered. The bones went from Milivoj to the crypt, to Henrik, to Ernst, to a secret room in Wachterhaus, and home. See St. Andral's Church.
• Who built the brick-weighted barricade across the church road, before the vampires were loose?
• Who was the man with the very clean shoes?
• Whom do we attest for? Neither. We attested for Ireena, and the town went along with it.