The ledger
Quests & Threads
The party's ledger: what we have to do next, what we still owe and to whom, what worries us, and what we have already done.
If we owe it, fear it, or cannot stop thinking about it, it is written down here.
Right now
It is the evening of the festival, and we are standing in a doorway inside the Reformation Center with Izek at our backs. On the other side, in two armchairs, sit the twins, Ilimir and Ivalice. They work for the Burgomaster, they call the change of government a coup, and they have just decided that we are going to be "annoying to clean up". Nobody has rested since the square. The two courtroom guards behind us are asleep and tied.
It has been a long afternoon. The Baron ordered Izek to kill Sirius, and Fëanor's silver lance killed the Baron. Lady Wachter's raven turned out to be an imp. Osric cut it down, and she cried "Oh, my compact." Then she surrendered, the crowd did not accept it, and we did not stop them. Strahd came down out of the rain on a burning horse, told us the bones have spoiled his view of the town, drank a man dry in front of us and told us not to be boring. Ireena is acting burgomistress because we said her name in the square, and her first order sent us here.
What we have to do next
In the order we mean to do them.
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Deal with the Twins
The elves who run the Reformation Center say they are "cleaning heads", and they will not stop for Ireena.
Ilimir and Ivalice, brother and sister, are elves who offered their services to the Baron about thirty years ago, by Izek's count. They change people's minds with magic ("they have no small magics"), they keep a few guards of their own who "might not be entirely their own selves", and Izek tries to stay out of their building. We opened their door on the evening of the festival with Izek at our backs and told them the new Burgomistress wants it all stopped. They said they work for the Burgomaster, called it a coup, agreed with us that the devil is a monster, and described their work as "making them think right. Cleaning their heads." Their last words were "This is going to be annoying to clean up."
We are standing in their doorway, tired, with initiative about to be rolled. Izek asked us to try not to kill his guards, and so far we haven't. First we stop them. Then we find out what "cleaning" means, and who else in Vallaki has had it done.
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Free the Prisoners
Ireena's first order as burgomistress: empty the Reformation Center. Henrik is somewhere inside.
Ireena gave the order in the Baron's mansion, on her first afternoon in charge: "Please dismantle the Reformation Center as much as you can. I do not want it to be going on." And: "Empty the hall. I don't want that kind of thing in Vallaki anymore." Izek reckons it holds about two dozen people at a time. One of them should be Henrik the coffin maker, arrested the day before the festival for "harbouring the seditious elements" that came out of his shop. He told us the truth about the bones and the crates when it was dangerous to, and he is in here partly because of what we did next. Udo Lukovich, whom we found chained up in the Baron's mansion, was picked out of this building's intake.
So far we have been through the courtroom and one office, full of logbooks with lines like "aversion therapy tried, successful". Nobody has been let out yet. The two courtroom guards are asleep and tied, and alive, and need remembering on the way out. We keep telling each other there are innocent people in here. Next, once the twins are dealt with: find where the prisoners are kept, count them, and get every one of them home.
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Keep Ireena's Government Standing
We said her name in the square. Now the chair has to hold.
The square chose Ireena because Sirius proposed her and Father Lucian, glancing round nervously, said "she has my support". Izek follows her because he serves "the Office of the Burgomaster". She has never governed anything ("I suppose I need to get inducted"), and she is afraid the town will slide into anarchy the moment we turn our backs. Minutes after she was chosen, the devil stood in the same square and called it "not too untenable. She is of the right stock." He also said he has always given her her space, and that he cannot watch us here any more with the bones back in place.
While we are at the Reformation Center she is writing to her brother Ismark, and we promised to get the letter to him; the Morninglord provides. Sirius has told the whole town to come to church in the morning. After that we mean to head west, which means leaving her with Izek, Lucian and a town that has just watched two rulers die.
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Go West to the Winery
The wine that keeps Barovia going has stopped coming, and the Martikovs who went to find out why have gone quiet.
Danika asked on our first night at the Blue Water, taking care to say she was not commissioning us: the Martikovs own the winery down south, and the latest shipment was several days late, which is not common. "Our family wine keeps this entire bubble afloat." It has not come since. Urwin has watered the inn's wine to half, then to a tenth, and now serves one meal a week. He sent Danika and the boys down to the winery to see what was wrong. Muriel's partner Falkon went to report to the clan there and never came back: "I reckon there's something afoul in the winery." Roger's band, forty-odd years ago, were warned off it at a dozen miles.
It has a promise on it now too. After their mother died in the square, Karl and Nikolai told us the inn was running dry, and we gave them our word: shut down the Reformation Center, then go to the Wizards of Wine. Danika's route is to stop at Krezk, if they let us in, and turn south from there; about a week's travel. Once the Center is dealt with, that is where we are going.
-
Carry the Locket to the Abbot
A demon in a rusted locket, bound for the one priest Claudia thinks could deal with it. Nobody opens the lid.
The shadow demon that rode Felix, and then Drew, is shut inside Felix's old locket: rusted, oval, an X scratched into the lid, and an inscription inside in Celestial that none of us can read. Sirius worked out the rules. The locket holds the demon to this world. Breaking it would only set the demon free somewhere else. It cannot get out on its own; someone has to open it and look. Claudia has opened it, Drew opened it "for the lols", and Sirius opened it on purpose to pull the demon back in. It has lived in Drew's bag of holding ever since she made the bag.
Claudia named the only person she thinks could handle it: "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." Father Lucian offered to keep it for us; we decided it was safer where it was. The abbey is above Krezk, and Krezk is on the road west. Until then, nobody opens the lid.
-
Find Ernst
Lady Wachter's man. Last seen slipping a bloody dagger into his boot.
Ernst Larnak brought us Lady Wachter's first dinner invitation, told Sirius how the Reformation Center killed his elder brother, and took the bones of St. Andral from Henrik under threat. At the festival, after a shout from the edge of the crowd that the guards had stabbed someone, we saw him slide a bloody dagger into his boot. Later it was his voice crying "They broke into our house. They robbed a hospital." When the riot was over he had gone, and nobody could find him.
His mistress is dead, and we did not stop the crowd that killed her. He has nobody left to serve and every reason to hate us. As one of us put it: "He is gonna shank us at some point." We have no trail. If he is still in Vallaki, we would like to find him before he finds us.
-
Find Victor
The Baron's son. His own book says what he did to Stella, and he left by a door that only opens once.
Victor Vallakovich took half an hour out of Sirius, two days out of Fëanor ("a nice boy, boy height"), and, we think, something out of Izek, who cannot remember ever climbing the stairs to his attic: "Every time I go up there, things seem to change around." He skipped the festival, which nobody was allowed to skip. When we kicked in his door that afternoon, the room was empty apart from his book and a teleportation circle on the floor, still warm. Fëanor read it as single-use, damaged and untraceable. The book is his own account of breaking Stella Wachter, one memory wipe after another, "and that's how he learned how to be a good mind mage."
We have no idea where he went, and no trail to follow. Barovia does not let people out, so he is somewhere in it. Stella, and her brothers, deserve to see him answer for it.
Promises we have made
To whom, and what for.
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A Cure for Stella and Lydia
Victor broke Stella's mind, and the Baroness only smiles. We told Stella's brothers we would look after her.
Stella Wachter has lain barely awake for three years. Victor's own book says why: he wiped her memory once by accident, was horrified, noticed nothing bad came of it, and kept going, "round and round and round until it eventually broke her". When their mother died in the square, Karl and Nikolai asked us what would happen to their sister. We said Ireena is her friend and we would look after her, while somebody muttered "When are we good at taking care of people?"
The Baroness, Lydia, failed Sirius's Zone of Truth without seeming to notice it, sang a hymn to the crowd in a voice like clockwork, and smiled at nothing with her husband's blood on her. Father Lucian has taken her into the burned church. He gave us the only lead we have for either of them: "there's an abbey near Krezk, which has someone of great priestly might who can do great healings of both the body and minds." Headmistress Claudia told us the same about the abbot, and added that he helps nobody. A lead, not a promise, on the road we were taking anyway.
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Go Back for Radu
Our word to Vasha: we will come back and see off the hags. Her mate Radu is still chained in the mill.
At the windmill, Granny's cart held a woman bound in a silver net. We took her with us when we fled, and flee we did: two of us were turned into frogs, Clover was smashed, and three hags laughed us off the hill. By the fire that night the woman, Vasha, told us what was in the pies. It was her arm, and her mate Radu's, hacked off and grown back again and again. Radu is still chained in the mill.
Vasha stayed behind to watch the place. "I would really appreciate you coming back and trying to help mount a rescue, but I'm not going to expect anything of you." Our answer was "You have my word that we will come back and attempt to vanquish these hags, with you or without you." If we ever meet the pack in the west, she says the words "Radu and Vasha need help" might buy us a hearing before Kiril's wolves tear us apart.
The mill is back east, two days short of Vallaki, and we are about to go west. We have not forgotten.
-
Rebuild St. Andral's
Sirius, watching it burn: "And then we shall rebuild it stone by stone, once it is finished burning to the ground."
Sirius said it with the roof coming down, having just walked back into the fire for the sunburst statuette (sighted on the way in, blind on the way out) and handed it to Father Lucian: "Lathander lives in our hearts, not in our places." Then he asked Izek whether Vallaki has a fire brigade.
The church is roofless and mostly ash, but the walls stand, and since the night we carried the bones home the ground under the altar is holy again. Lucian sleeps there and is thinking about getting some architects in. "The church is the people and its rituals, not the roof, and never has been." ("The roof helps.") After the festival Sirius also told the whole square to come to service in the morning. Nobody has laid a stone yet, and we are about to leave town, so for now the promise is his, and ours.
-
Come Back for Felix
"We'll be back, Felix." Osric said it over his shoulder in the orphanage attic, and we meant it.
Felix came to St. Andral's a month before we did, found unharmed and soaked in blood beside his stabbed parents. At the orphanage he was only "mostly Felix". The rest was a shadow demon that left the other children bruised and pushed a boy called Cedric out of a window. We swore to Claudia that no harm would come to him, climbed into the attic, and drove the demon out. It went into Drew for a while, and Sirius shut it in Felix's old locket. When the fight moved downstairs, Osric checked that the boy was still breathing and told him "We'll be back, Felix."
Claudia says he is okay. We have not seen him since. We still don't know who he was before, who killed his parents, or how much he remembers. Next: go back and see him, properly, before we leave for the west.
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Keep an Eye Out for Gertruda
Mary's daughter, missing. We would not promise to find her. Mary heard a promise anyway.
The night we brought Lancelot home, Mary begged us to find her daughter. Gertruda is blonde and in her mid-twenties, and she was gone one morning without a note, probably out looking for the dog. We told Mary the truth: we "can't promise something that we can't guarantee". We offered our level best and a watch on the road. She took Lancelot home anyway, saying "You've promised now. I've heard you promise."
Ismark thinks Gertruda is almost certainly dead. If she isn't, he says, she is in the castle, or with the witches in the ruins of Berez to the south, who take in wayward young women. We are keeping an eye out, which so far is all we have done.
Errands still on the books
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Look for Bluto
The Wachter brothers' drinking friend walked north to the haunted lake to "right a wrong". Long overdue.
Bluto is an older, dour man with a black beard, like most men in Barovia, who drinks with Karl and Nikolai at the Blue Water. Lady Wachter told us over dinner that the ghost of the lake, a lady, "takes great interest in him in particular". That same night her sons asked us to find him. He had gone north to the lake a couple of days earlier, talking about righting a wrong, and had not come back. "Who amongst us doesn't have a bit of a problem with a drink?" Mama, they said, would pay "70 gold, 80 gold? Whatever you want, really." Danika's view of the lake is simpler: it is haunted, and lads from the town have walked straight into it and drowned.
It is three hours' walk each way. We said yes, told the Ravens in writing we'd be going "in the next day or two", and then Vallaki happened every single day. Mama is dead now. The brothers still want their friend back. We keep meaning to go by way of the lake when we leave. Is Bluto inside the sea monster yet?
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Find the Missing Orphans
Lazlo, Hans and Franz ran from the orphanage, and from Felix. The hunters sent after them have not come back either.
The children at St. Andral's told us first: Lazlo, Hans and Franz had run away just over a week earlier. Claudia thinks they ran because they were afraid of Felix. Milivoj stole the bones of St. Andral for them. Two hunters at the Blue Water said they could probably find the boys, but wanted 300 gold to give up their own hunt and go into the woods, and a cloaked stranger with very nice shoes offered Milivoj exactly that for moving the bones. "I had to do it to save those kids." The hunters took the money and went.
Nobody has seen the boys or the hunters since, as far as we know. Lady Wachter told us the werewolves to the west "capture children". Nobody asked us to look, and we have been busy, but three boys are out in Barovia on their own. Next: ask at the Blue Water after the hunters, and keep our eyes open on the road west.
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Read the Unreadable
The Druid Priestess' Tome: a dozen leather pages of rituals, in a script none of us can read.
It came out of Lady Wachter's iron strongbox along with the devil's letter and her coin: "no more than a dozen pages, entirely crafted in leather and deer hide", pictures of druidic rituals, celebrations for the turning of the seasons and the worship of nature itself, with a little writing in Druidic beside the diagrams. Could any of us read Druidic? "We don't." We still have it, waiting for someone who can.
The five scrolls we took from the storeroom where the bones were hidden are no longer a mystery. Once we read them, most turned out to be spells we can cast ourselves, and one is Gentle Repose, the spell we are fairly sure kept Lord Wachter looking freshly dead for ten years. They are in the bag of holding, saved for emergencies.
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A Toy for Araba
Aragal pays twenty gold over cost for a Blinsky original toy for his daughter, delivered to his camp outside Vallaki.
On the road west a Vistani rider called Aragal fell in beside us, warned us about wolves and "will-o'-wispies", and explained that Vallaki does not let his people through the gate. Then he asked a favour: "there is a store in Vallaki, Blinsky's Toy Shop. I have a daughter, Araba. She would love a Blinsky original toy… I would pay you 20 gold on top of the cost of the Blinsky toy if you could bring one to me." We said we'd get a nice one. We also asked whether he was a hunter of hunters, and he said that seemed a very grand title to give oneself.
We have been in Vallaki ever since and have not once walked past Blinsky's. Aragal's camp is just outside the walls. It is still the one errand with nothing wrong with it.
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The Lights on the Road
Glowing lights in the trees, crying for help. We decided they were a trick, and said we'd catch them on the way back.
On our first day out of the village of Barovia, a voice called for help from the woods, and when we looked there were glowing lights floating among the trees. Sirius was ready to go in. The rest of us remembered Ismark's warning about glowing lights and told him it was trying to trick him. We kept to the road. Later that day we wondered aloud about going back to kill them before they caught somebody else, and settled on "we'll catch them on the way back", with Sirius torn between his love of smiting evil and his love of the bacon that might lie ahead. Aragal confirmed it the next day: "There's wolves. There's will-o'-wispies. They glow and scream for help."
We have not been back that way. They are on the stretch nearest the village, further east even than the windmill, and every day we spend in the west takes us further from them.
Our map: the Reading
Madam Eva read our fates at Tser Pool, and every word of it is on The Reading. The short form:
| Fate | Card | Where we think it points |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge of our enemy | the Healer | "High water aglow with the light of the sun, hidden behind the walls of man." Roger's band followed the same card to the glowing pool behind Krezk's walls. Our best lead. |
| Protection | the Paladin | "The house of a dragon," and a heart once pure, corrupted by hatred. Osric's own road runs to a house of the fallen dragon. |
| Power | the Avenger | "The shrine of murdered gods." Start in an amber palace of darkness. |
| An ally | the Executioner | "A hunter of hunters." Not Aragal; we asked. The bard left us a vampire hunter's kit and five words. |
| The devil himself | the Broken One | "The tomb of the only man he ever envied." The Vistani say it is written down somewhere. |
And the five threads that are ours alone:
- Osric carries his banner to the house of the fallen dragon, where he must kneel and answer for his blood.
- Fëanor stands at dawn in water where the sun glows still, and chooses.
- Lily has starved the sweet thing that took root in her. Her tooth is for someone who howls in a den of beasts, far to the west.
- Drew's amber keeps a secret her blood has carried for generations, sealed deep in the mountains, and knowledge there is bought dearly.
- Sirius holds a card that is blank to everyone but him. A lady of ravens has spoken from it once: "What was stolen is not fully owned, and the land can be reclaimed."
Watch-list
Not quests. Worries.
- The devil's patience. He told Ireena, to her face, in front of the whole town, while she was charmed, that he has always given her her space and that she will come round eventually. We put her in the chair, and we are about to leave.
- The bones. In his own words, they have curtailed his usual ways of watching Vallaki and might stop his agents, but they do not stop him. Vallaki is safer than it was, and not safe. Whether anyone is guarding them tonight, we don't know.
- The twins' guards. The two in the courtroom did not recognise their own captain and did not look quite in their right minds. Whatever "cleaning their heads" means, it may already be in the ranks.
- Izek's memory. The office in the Center has a cot lengthened with a crate and a chair built for someone very tall, and Izek has no memory of ever being there. He does not remember the attic stairs in the mansion either. Sirius told him in the square: "Your memory has been tampered with, friend, as has mine."
- The letter. Strahd's letter to Lady Wachter was in the Baron's hand when he died, and none of us picked it up. Somebody has it now, or the rain does.
- Lord Wachter. Ten years dead, and kept fresh in his wife's bed by Gentle Repose. The woman who wanted him kept that way is dead, and his sons know he is there.
- "Oh, my compact." Lady Wachter cried it as the imp died. Whatever she had, it went with the bird.
- Who staged the pentagram in her cellar, and who barricaded the church road before the vampires got loose? Both still open, and both now questions about a dead woman's household, which still has people in it.
- The man we got killed. A Reformation Center survivor, sent there for chuckling at a festival, cut down by the skeletons in Lady Wachter's cellar as we walked him out. We never learned his name. What we owe him has not changed.
- The man with very nice shoes. He paid Milivoj 300 gold to move the bones into the Vallakovich crypt: cloaked, face hidden, a short black beard. Not Henrik, whose boots are a workman's. Either he belongs to the Vallakovich family or someone wants us to think so.
- Milivoj's sentence. We agreed to settle it once the bones were back. They are back.
- Can a spawn's bite turn someone? The hospital at Wachterhaus is full of bitten people, and none of us knows the answer.
- Ireena's song. Two brothers, a whisper in the stone, a girl beneath the lake, "and I'll wake another girl." Why is that song in her head?
- Sirius, bitten. The devil drank from him in Ismark's house, then talked with him at length in the square without once mentioning it. The black-pudding test is still pending.
- "One of my pups managed to grab you." Strahd said it in Ismark's house, and we still don't know what he meant.
- The lady of ravens on Sirius's card, and the standing stones behind the windmill, which we have only ever seen from a distance.
- Who is the only man Strahd ever envied?
The heirlooms
Five keepsakes dragged five strangers through the mists. The cards have now spoken about every one of them.
| Keepsake | Bearer | What Barovia has said about it |
|---|---|---|
| A tattered banner with a bird-like sigil, from his Uncle Steven | Osric | The same sigil is carved over the Gates of Barovia and printed on the devil's letterhead. "Your blood marched beneath that banner." |
| A raven feather, from his grandfather | Sirius | "Your fate has already been read." Ravens here are lucky, and some of them are people. |
| A flat stone with a three-pointed star, from his grandmother | Fëanor | The star rings the menhir on the road west. The stone glows at the new moon, in a land with no moon. "The stone in your pocket remembers a fire you have never felt." |
| A lacquered wolf's tooth (a dire wolf's, Lily says) | Lily | "The tooth you carry mends what otherwise cannot be healed." |
| An amber pendant with runes moving inside, passed down her family | Drew | "A secret sealed in amber stone. Your blood has carried the question for generations." |
Kept and done
- A third choice for Vallaki. Two rulers wanted our testimony. We gave the town the Wachter sons' word about the body in their mother's bed, Father Lucian's word about the vampires, a Zone of Truth over the Baron, and Ireena's name. The crowd chose. It was not clean.
- The Baron, gone. He ordered Izek to kill our paladin, and died on his own stage to Fëanor's lance.
- Lady Wachter's plot, ended. She surrendered, the mob killed her, and we stood back. Her imp died to Osric. Her sons lived because Drew asked them for the truth in front of everyone and they gave it.
- Izek, held. Still gripping Sirius by the foot, he listened to a hug and a speech, and said "Hold."
- Udo Lukovich, unchained from a room in the Baron's mansion. He thanked us and walked out on his own feet.
- Victor's confession, found in his own hand in his own attic. He was not there to answer for it.
- The bones of St. Andral, home. Ireena showed us where they were, Sirius carried them out of a window, and we laid them on the sub-altar with Father Lucian. The ground answered. The devil has since confirmed, personally, that it worked.
- Fëanor, mostly returned. Two days short.
- Level five. Drew has a gun. Lily dodges. Fëanor's god answers in area-of-effect. Osric swings twice. Sirius has a horse called Clancy.
- All six vampires of Vallaki, accounted for. Muriel two, Lucian one, Sirius one, Izek one, Osric one.
- Father Lucian, alive, and the statuette out of the fire. "Lathander lives in our hearts, not in our places."
- The massacre that never happened. We opened the crates days before the festival, with the town awake and the streets not full of children. People died who might otherwise have lived. The festival would have been worse. We believe that, and we re-read it when we need to.
- Lily, back from the door. Fangs in her throat, and then fine.
- The confession. Milivoj told us everything, and no hands were removed.
- Clover, smashed by a hag and back on Drew's shoulder. Clover abides.
- The pie affair, closed. Lily is free. The rope is retired.
- The orphanage, saved. The demon is in a locket and twenty children are safe.
- Roger's tale, heard. Don't be boring. Don't kill the ravens.
- Ireena, escorted to Vallaki. Four days, as promised.
- The woman in the silver net, freed. Her name is Vasha. The other half of that promise is called Radu.
- The Reading, freely given. "I have read what may be, not what must be."
- Doru, at rest. "Do what you must," said his father.
- The old burgomaster, buried for Ismark and Ireena.
- Lancelot, home with Mary.
- Rose, Thorn and the maid, buried as we promised. The altar, refused.