In which our adventurers enter Vloki, and attempt to solve a mystery.
I was out sick last week so here is a summary of our activities while I was out according to Talna's notes and everyone's recollections when I returned. (They played Sadun for me while I was gone after I texted pictures of my character sheet to the group.)
We woke up and breakfasted outside the Windmill where we had ended the previous session. Balazar told the group he died, but Talna said "yeah, but then Gilligan gave you mouth to mouth and brought you back" and the group dropped the subject. Elle and Sadun still in the dark that Balazar might be undead.
Elle then conversed with the raven that perched on the door to the windmill. It cawed out "Danger! Here!" and Elle gave it some food. Then an old lady walked out of the windmill, and the bird saw her and said "Oh shit! Bye!" and flew away. So Elle talked to the old lady, who was selling meat pies. Apparently finding nothing wrong with this, Elle bought two. At this point the group heard wood break inside the windmill, and the old lady looked distressed and went back inside. Loud yelling ensued, and something impacted the closed door from the inside, so of course Balazar kicked open the door. Inside is a Satyr yelling at the old lady in a stinky kitchen. (The Satyr is a new player, Jaro, the sorcerer, who I met this week). Two people come downstairs at the commotion, and reveal that all three of the inhabitants of the windmill are witches. A fight ensues, one of the witches gets doused in oil, another uses a lightning bolt on Talna, Sadun and Elle, knocking out Sadun and Elle. Talna revives Sadun and runs away after throwing a bottle of alchemists fire. Sadun follows Talna out, picking Elle's unconscious form up on the way out.
Balazar then tries to blow out the alchemists fire, "accidentally" breathing fire on the oil soaked witch instead. The group outside sees a broom break out a second story window. Elle shoots it with an arrow, and blood drips down. Then Elle's spell causes thorns to grow from the arrow and envelope an invisible figure on the broom, but the broom escapes. It starts to rain, which puts out the fire. Elle parkours up the outside of the windmill while Jaro does the same inside. Elle ties an actual knot, allowing Talna to climb a rope up the side of the windmill after her. They find a bunch of kits clothing on the second floor, and Talna discovers a large sword with a rose on the handle. She gives the sword to Balazar. There are also a number of barrels, one of which moves. Talna lifts the moving barrel and goes to throw it out the window, but Elle stops her. Inside the barrel are two children, stuffed inside. Jaro manages to talk them out of the barrel, and Elle asks about them. They are a 5 year old girl and a 7 year old boy, probably orphans, and they are from Vloki. They are covered in crumbs. They explain that the meat pies the witch was selling are drugged, and the children were going to be eaten. Talna finds a large number of children's bones on the first floor, giving a rough estimate of 16 unfortunate victims of the witches. Talna buries the bones.
The sword Talna found is determined to be magical, but Balazar is unable to attune to it (player's note, because he's evil and the sword is good-aligned). Sadun gets the sword instead, so she will now be swinging a great sword instead of a great axe.
The group continues traveling by wagon/Tenser's Disk, and arrive at Vloki. They do bring the children with them. Outside Vloki are a number of wolf heads on pikes, and the gates are closed. A city guard asks them their business. At this point the party does what we always do, debate telling the guard everything right in front of him, which does not incline him to let us in. Balazar also keeps suggesting we kill the children so we can be rid of them, in front of the guard, which is not helping our case.
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And that was the session I missed. So this week I arrived to find the group arguing in front of a guard about killing children and telling the guard what we were there for. We have another new player this week too, in addition to Jaro, a half-orc barbarian names Graves. However, he ends up having to leave early due to an emergency at home, before he can be introduced to the group. Hopefully next week!
Anyway, we continue to fail at being tactful in front of the guard. Sadun suggests that maybe the guard can just take the children, and we'll sleep outside the gates (which we've done before) just so the children will be safe, but finally Irena steps forward and pleads our case, explaining who she is and where we are from. The guard relents at this, and allows us in with some reluctance. The people inside seem happy enough, but they do noticeably part in front of our strange and not at all human group, giving us plenty of space.
Irena directs us to St. Andral's Cathedral, where she should be safe from Strahd, being a holy building dedicated to the Morning Lord. Jaro mutters about false gods, earning a glare from Talna. It might be awkward if we have an irreverent satyr along with our short-tempered cleric...
Inside the cathedral, we see a priest and a group of people praying. Elle breaks the solemn prayer session with a shout: "I have children!" Several people shush her, but the priest looks up at us. Irena and Ismarck depart to find somewhere for Irena to stay.
After the prayers the priest approaches us, and introduces himself as Father Lucian. We explain the children's situation, but he says no children have been reported missing. However he is willing to take them in. Talna does most of the talking as a fellow person of the cloth (she put on her vestments for this), and agrees that it would be best if the children stayed here, as our quest was not safe to bring them along. Lucian asks what quest we are on. Unwilling to say outright, we intimate that we are out to defeat Strahd. The priest picks up on it, and explains that the church used to be a safe haven from Strahd, but recently the bones of the saint were removed from the church grounds by parties unknown. As the holy aura of the saint's bones repellent the undead, it it no longer as safe as it once was. Gilligan, Talna glance at Balazar, and then all three of them say simultaneously "You don't say." Elle shoots the three of them a look but decides to ask about this later.
Considering this was supposed to be sanctuary for Irena, the group has a brief conference while the priest sends the children off to their new rooms. We decide that since we promised we'd bring Irena to a safe place here, we'd best try to recover the bones for her benefit. Questioning the priest, we learn that aside from Father Lucian himself, only a young choirboy named Yes knows that the bones of the saint are what make the church a safe place. Yes apparently was having trouble managing his fear of life in Ravenloft, and the priest told him about the holy power of the bones to comfort him. The priest has not told anybody, not wanting to raise panic just before the Burgomaster's festival (another ceremony that is supposed to keep evil at bay).
We're a little suspicious of everyone at this point. We ask how Father Lucian knows the bones are gone, and he explains that he discovered the theft when he found that the crypt had been broken into.
We ask where we can find Yes, and Lucian nods to a boy, around 7 years old, who is shelving some books on a bookshelf behind us. Talna yells "Yeska! Get over here!" When Yeska sees our group however, he flees from us. Gilligan casts a quick spell which causes Yeska to freeze in place, and Talna lifts the boy up and carries him back over to us. (I can't imagine what Lucian is thinking at all of this...)
Jaro bluntly asks Yeska where the bones are, but he shakes his head in terror. Elle tries a calmer tact, asking if he told anyone else about the bones. "No, I didn't" Yeska tells us. Talna detects that he is holding something back though. She tries really hard at being nice to the poor child. "We're all here to help Father Lucian. Father Lucian is a nice person, yes? So it's ok to tell us what you know."
Yeska admits to Talna that he told the gravedigger, a teenager named Millavoj. Possibly Millavoj bullied Yeska into telling about the bones... Father Lucian tells us that Millavoj is probably outside working on a gravesite right now.
(At this point, Balazar was feeling ill and had to leave early. Graves followed soon after.)
Talna makes a snide remark about selling children being preferable to working with them, and Father Lucian tells her she really should work on her people skills, considering she is also a holy servant of the gods...
We go outside and find Millavoj digging a grave. Walking up to him, we ask if he's been bullying Yeska, but he ignores us and keeps digging, not even looking up. Jaro asks him if he knows where the saint's bones are, and when Millavoj attempts to ignore us further, Jaro throws dirt on him. Millavoj looks up at us at this, and is noticeably taken aback at our appearance. "I didn't take any bones!" he protests, but once again Talna is adept at reading people, if not speaking to them. She nods to Elle, who goes into mob enforcer mode. "It would be a shame if someone around here broke some bones..." says the three foot gnome, who manages to put all the menace of a 19 on the intimidation roll into the sentence. Millavoj, terrified of this band of demons, admits he did take the bones, but he gave them to Henrich Vanderwort. In fact, getting the bones was Henrich's idea, and Henrich gave Millavoj money to feed his younger siblings in exchange. We ask about this Henrich person, and learn he's the town's coffin-maker. "If the bones are what keep this city safe, how will taking them protect your siblings?" Talna asks with biting insight. Millavoj looks away from us, ashamed at this realization. Elle, who has several younger siblings herself, feels sorry for the boy, and gives him some of her food and five gold pieces to get him and his siblings through the next month or so.
We leave the church, leaving Balazar behind to rest. The rest of us set off to find the coffin-maker's shop across town. As we move through the streets, we pass a shop with wooden toys in the windows called "Blinksey's", which jogs Gilligan's memory. Talna glimpses a man inside the shop with an animal on his shoulder as we pass, and Gilligan presses his face against the glass. The man waves at Gilligan, as does the monkey on his shoulder. Gilligan backs away in terror, babbling about the strange tiny furry human he'd seen sitting on the larger man. The group laughs at this and presses on.
We find the coffin-maker's shop. The windows are boarded up. Talna moves to kick down the door but we stop her in consideration of being in the middle of town. We try knocking instead. There is no answer. Talna tries the doorknob, and a voice from within shouts "we're closed!" Elle goes around the back of the building, looking for another way in.
(Fun quote from this point in the evening: DM: "When you have to roll inside on a smile..." Talna: "You know it's Talna smiling.")
Gilligan moves to the side of the building, and peers through a crack in the boards. Talna knocks again, and Gilligan is able to make out movement in the dark. Talna casts her Dancing Lights spell, putting the lights inside the door, allowing Gilligan enough vision of a person to use a magical Command Word: Exit, impelling the person to unlock the door and start to leave the building. At this point, Talna grabs the man who emerges, stifling his shouts. Sadun heads around back and gets Elle, who was working on picking the back door's lock.
Talna, Gilligan and Jaro drag the now struggling figure inside, shortly followed by Sadun and Elle, who shut the door. Nobody outside seems to have noticed our activity. Sadun sets to work tying the man to a chair while Elle, Gilligan and Talna all demand the location of the bones from the man (presumably Henrich...) He relents quickly. "Ok, ok, they're upstairs in the bedroom! Just let me go!"
Elle asks if anyone else is inside, and the man says no, so she and Jaro head upstairs. At the top of the stairs are two doors. Elle goes left and Jaro goes right.
Meanwhile, Talna continues to interrogate Henrich. "Why did you want the bones?" "Some guy named Vazeeli asked for my help getting them. He said it would be good for business!" "Yeah, it will be good for you when everyone starts dying around here..."
Jaro finds himself in an upstairs kitchen. Cabinets full of dried goods line the walls. On the other side, Elle finds what seems to be a large drafty storage room, full of crates marked "junk". She opens a crate... and the DM cuts to the rest of us.
Talna asks for the exact location of the bones, and learns they are in the dresser. She shouts upstairs "The bones are in the dresser!" and Jaro shouts down "When I find the bedroom I'll look for that!"
Back to Elle! Inside the crate, is a pale woman, who opens blood red eyes, and opens a fang filled mouth... she's found another vampire spawn! This isn't good, last time we barely kept Talna alive... The vampire rises out of the crate and hits Elle hard, and Elle screams loudly. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees two more crate lids lift as more vampires emerge. Time for initiative!
Elle tries to talk the vampire out of biting her. "Can you not...?" but rolls a 3 on her persuasion test. "But I want to," the vampire replies, and tries to hit Elle again but misses with her first attack. On her second attack however, she is able to grab Elle. Jaro runs into the room at the sound of Elle's scream, assesses the situation quickly (in the dark no less) and sends an earthen hand that tries to flatten one of the vampires, but the vampire resists it. He then follows up with a lightning bolt, but the vampire dodges it. The second vampire moves over and also hits Elle with a claw attack, leaving her on a single HP. The third vampire moves towards Jaro at the far end of the room.
Sadun, hearing the scream, also rushes upstairs. She sees the outline of a human backside, and hurls her hand axes. One goes wide but the other buries itself in the back of the vampire threatening Jaro.
Downstairs, Talna says to Henrich "you'd better not move until we sort this out," and runs upstairs, shouting holy words of Turning Undead as she goes. Two of the vampires are shaken, and start to move away, but the one holding Elle remains steadfast. Gilligan follows Talna upstairs, channeling the divine favor of Helm.
And there we broke for the night. Dun dun dun!
To be continued!
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