Session 13 — The Sun Sword Was in the Tiger's Wagon

Session 13 — The Sun Sword Was in the Tiger's Wagon

The party had just destroyed six vampire spawn and found the stolen bones of St. Andrew. This was good. The man responsible for harboring them was downstairs crying into a guard's vest. This was also fine. By the end of the session, they had recovered one of Strahd's most hated relics, adopted a saber-toothed tiger, and conducted what may be the most inconvenient act of larceny in Vallaki's recorded history. Progress all around.

What Happened

The session opened on the second floor of Henrik's Coffin Shop, which now contained six piles of ash, a concerning quantity of splinters, and a teleportation circle carved into the floor that nobody had noticed until just now. Celeste extracted ten vampire fangs with the confidence of someone who has thought about this before. Sable Burrowbane reached into five of the six corpses with maximum manual dexterity and came away with three desiccated vampire hearts pulsing with residual necrotic energy. The other three crumbled. Efficiency is not guaranteed.

Merich lit up Divine Sense, got nothing in range, and then identified the floor sigils as a teleportation ritual circle — a conclusion shared with the party by Celeste (Arcana 16). He scratched it out with his sword. The party found the last unopened crate, which contained the bones of St. Andrew. Nobody said anything profound. The bones were found.

Downstairs, Henrik van der Voort was still weeping under his workshop table, which appears to be where he does most of his thinking. When the party asked who sent the vampire spawn, he confirmed: Strahd. When asked why, he said it was money and protection. When asked why the bones were here, he said he had given them to the vampires, who used this building as a teleportation staging zone into Vallaki. He hadn't realized what he was enabling until too late. He didn't know where Milovaj was. He had last seen the boy three days ago. He cried a significant amount during all of this.

Outside, the Festival of the Blazing Sun had begun. The streets had filled with unhappy village children dressed as flowers, followed by sorry-looking adults carrying a ten-foot wicker ball. The Baron Vallakovich and his wife followed on horseback, smiling in the determined way of people who have decided to have a good time regardless of input from the universe. The wicker ball was doused in oil, hoisted onto a fifteen-foot scaffold in the town square, and then it started raining. The Burgomaster tried to light it himself. It did not light. A single laugh rang out from the crowd. The Burgomaster had the guard arrested for laughing, had him tied to the back of his horse, and departed. The wicker ball hung there, wet and unlit, while the townspeople went home muttering.

Merich dragged Henrik to the guards at the town square and attempted to report that the coffin-maker had been conspiring with Strahd to introduce vampire spawn into the city. The guards expressed skepticism about the existence of vampire spawn, pointed out that nobody had evidence, and spent more time consoling a weeping Henrik than they did investigating the accusations. Merich left, having accomplished something between "civic responsibility" and "yelling at a wall." Irwin got a more useful briefing later — Merich returned to the Blue Water Inn and reported the teleportation circle to him directly. The Keepers now know how things were getting in.

Sable and Brother Moro took the bones to St. Andrew's Church. Father Lucian Petrovich looked up from whatever he was doing, was handed the bones, said thank you with audible relief, and asked if they could help him re-bury them since he was an old man and the floorboards were heavy. The three of them pried up the floor, reinterred the bones in the tomb beneath, and put everything back. It took about half an hour. Father Lucian gave Sable four flasks of holy water, which is the most direct good news Sable has received in several sessions.

Everyone returned to the inn and took a long rest. Celeste's ring took four more points of damage and stored four more points. Merich's hit point maximum was restored. Brother Moro cleaned up. The party had a brief discussion about their remaining objectives and then went to sleep, which was the correct choice.

Some hours later, they were awakened by a distant crash, a roar, and men screaming. Sable was out the door before anyone else had fully identified what they had heard.

The eastern side of town. On the main road, a saber-toothed tiger was prowling toward them.

Sable Burrowbane went invisible immediately, which is the appropriate response from a bunny. Brother Moro lit his bullseye lantern and pointed it at the proceedings. Merich got on all fours and made cat noises at the tiger. The tiger was interested. It walked over, sniffed him, decided he was an underfed kitten of unknown origin, and began aggressively grooming him. Merich attempted to stand up and walk away. The tiger, which won a contested strength roll, prevented this. Merich, with Celeste's guidance, won the contested strength roll on the reroll with a 22. The tiger let him up but did not leave. It had apparently claimed him. His name, as determined by Merich, is Stanley.

Stanley is a real saber-toothed tiger, not a construct or a summoned creature. His intelligence is 3. He does not hate anyone in particular. He just wants to hunt small things and receive approval. Sable cast Speak with Animals (Stealth 23; Stanley smelled something but couldn't locate it) and learned that Stanley had been trained with treats and Vistani-style dolls as targets. He is not ideologically opposed to Vistani. He just knows dolls of that kind mean a reward is coming. This distinction is probably meaningful.

The party followed Stanley east to the Vallaki Stockyards, where they found a smashed wagon and two men on the ground. One was dead — missing most of his neck. The other was alive but badly injured. Merich healed him (ten hit points; the man woke up, saw the tiger, and started screaming). Merich talked him down (Persuasion 24). The man confirmed there had been rumors of a tiger in the old man's wagon, that the old man was not present, and that neither he nor his now-dead companion had expected the tiger to get out.

On the surviving side panels of the wagon, faded letters spelled out: Rictavio's Carnival of Wonders.

Rictavio. The solo patron at the Blue Water Inn. Mutton chops. Booming laugh. The man who keeps a wagon at the stockyards and occasionally visits his portly friend — now confirmed as Blinsky. The man the party had been mildly suspicious of since Session 9 turns out to have been hauling one prophesied weapon and a large carnivore around Barovia, apparently as a one-man vampire-hunting operation.

Investigation of the wagon wreckage turned up two things: a Vistani-dressed doll (Stanley immediately destroyed it) and a large ornate brass-handled chest, locked, with a hidden needle trap. Sable spent a luck point to disarm the trap on the reroll (25 vs DC 15). The chest opened.

The contents: a wooden coffer with 75 gold pieces bearing Strahd's profile and six assorted gemstones; a small prayer book with a green leather cover and indecipherable margin notes; a healer's kit; three wooden holy symbols inlaid with silver in the shape of stone sunbursts; a silvered short sword; a hand crossbow inlaid with mother-of-pearl (functionally normal; cosmetically excellent); twenty silvered crossbow bolts; and a worn leather case with gold buckles containing three sharpened wooden stakes, a sack of garlic, a jar of salt, a box of holy wafers, six vials of holy water, a polished steel mirror, and a bone scroll tube with a silver stopper and chain containing a spell scroll of Protection from Fiends and a spell scroll of Protection from Undead.

And at the bottom: a long lead-lined box, also locked.

Sable opened it (Thieves' Tools 28). Inside: the Sun Sword.

The Sun Sword is the hilt of a blade once belonging to Sergei von Zarovich, Strahd's murdered brother. After Sergei's death, Strahd commissioned a wizard named Kazan to destroy it. Kazan separated the hilt from the crystal blade. While he was destroying the blade, his apprentice stole the hilt and fled. Kazan found the apprentice's body later in the Svalich woods, hilt-free, and told Strahd the whole weapon had been destroyed. The hilt is sentient, chaotic good, and extremely motivated to take revenge for the loss of its crystal blade. It functions as a Sun Blade: radiant damage, +2 to attack and damage, extra D8 against undead, and bright sunlight in a 15-foot radius that can be expanded to 30. The blade is sunlight. In Barovia. Against a vampire.

This was one of the Taroka prophecy items. The DM confirmed they had finally found it.

The session ended there. Rictavio himself was not present. His belongings, his tiger, and one of the most important weapons in the campaign are now in the party's possession, which will probably require some explaining.

Key Decisions

NPCs Met

Locations Visited

Items Found

Loose Threads