Old To Do:
Deal with Arabelle and the Vistani men. (Reward? Information? Allies?)- Work on the children angle
-Check in with Blinsky (since we’ve found ourselves back in town)
-Ask him and others about Mad Mary’s daughter and her doll
-Should also ask about Morgantha who is kidnapping children and selling dream pastries, maybe she’s living in a gingerbread house, all we need to do is follow breadcrumbs - Check out the mad wizard of Mt Baratok
- Check in on Elgian’s windmill as a potential base of operations
- Check on the wine order from the Wizard of Wines Vinyard
- Check out the marshes that were mentioned (should we take the two guides from the bar?)
- Amber Castle
Vallakii To do:
- I want to talk to Ireena and ask about her doppelganger marionette.
- I want to talk to the Burgomaster and Issac and make common cause (if the group agrees).
- I want to find out what was the deal with the Ricktavio wagon. And I wanted to see what became of Henrick, his house, and the vampire spawn that we battled.
- If time permits, I’d like to see about the mad wizard across the lake
- I’d like to go back to the inn and also see if there might be some suss out some more information, resources or allies
As the party flees the house of Henrik the Coffin maker with the Vampire (or as we soon learn Vampire Spawn) in hot pursuit we notice several things that I will list in no particular order below.
1. They can run on walls. As we ran from them, they often used this ability to gain ground on us.
2. They are fast but only not much faster than we.
3. They are dressed in strange garb but not Vistani clothing. They may have also been outlanders.
4. They heal very quickly. The damage we did to them seemed to be gone within moments of causing it. And much of the damage from our physical weapons didn’t seem to have an effect.
5. They could control bats. They caused swarms of bats to chase us into the church.
6. They seem to be barred from entry to the church once the bones were restored to the crypt but it wasn’t clear that they were bared from entry before that (despite not being invited)
Once we made it to the church we began to harass the vampires and slow their progress against us long enough to restore the bones of St. Andral into the crypt. Upon completion of that task the vampires fled and we were able to rest and recuperate. The priest proved to be a great help in our time of need and provided us healing after the battle was done.
The priest (Lucian Petrovich) took time to question his grave digger further. The grave digger said many of the same things he said to us, that he was trying to pay for food and possible a means of escaping Barovia which is why he stole the bones. He had heard that the Vistani possessed a vial of potion that would allow the drinker to walk out of the fog without perishing. We knew from our discussions with the Vistani that this potion was bunk and told the grave differ so.
Petrovich eventually leaves us to rest in antechambers and conducts services for a small group of his faithful. We watch from the wings and meet a woman named Wilamina who is praying for her son’s safe return. His name is Udo. She says that he went missing after saying something negative against the wolfs head jamboree. We finally wise up and DON’T promise to rescue her son J
We do ask Petrovich a bit more about the festivals and he tells us that the Bergomaster hosts them to “keep the devil Strahd away”. But Petrovich also says that he believes that they are a waste of time. But it does lead us to believe that the Bergomaster may be truly aligned against Strahd and as such, may be a sort of an ally. Petrovich agrees that the Bergomaster is probably not in league with Strahd but he doesn’t take a position on the second part.
He tells us that many people are brought to the mansion to be “cleansed of evil”. When Corina tells us again about the peasant women that were brought to the mansion, he tells us that this is in keeping with the activities of the Burgomaster. He also tells us that when people are brought to be cleansed of evil, purple lights can be seen peeking out of the shuttered windows suggesting that there may be some magic afoot. In sum, Petrovich doesn’t believe that the Burgomaster is in league with Strahd but he also isn’t sure that he would be any kind of an ally to us.
When we wake in the morning we are greeted with a letter from Strahd… a dinner invitation at Castle Ravenloft.