Session 9 — The Innkeepers Were Birds The Whole Time

Session 9 — The Innkeepers Were Birds The Whole Time

Sable had claimed the darkest corner of the tap room and was watching everyone. The man watching everyone else had mutton chops and ordered two wolf steaks. Danica and Irwin ran their inn. Everybody was having a perfectly normal evening in a fortified mountain town cursed by an undead vampire lord. And then the night started.

What Happened

The session opened mid-evening at the Blue Water Inn, the party dispersed across their various coping mechanisms. Celeste and Merich had settled at the bar with Danica, who was explaining that the inn was out of shots (they don't do shots; they serve wine) and also running low on wine because the shipment from Wizard of Wines Winery was overdue. Irwin's father Davian Martikov owns the place. They have a complicated relationship, which is to say they don't hear much from him. There may be infestations in the fields. They are managing.

Celeste offered to look into it. Danica marked the winery on the party's map: northwest, up near the mountains. This is now on the list of things the party intends to do.

Sable Burrowbane was not at the bar. Sable was under the bar, metaphorically speaking, having rolled a 26 on Stealth and achieved a state of being that can only be described as not there anymore. On a Perception of 23, she identified the man in the corner as someone Danica addressed by name: Rictavio. He had a booming voice, an easy laugh, and mutton chops. He ordered a wolf steak and another wolf steak to take to his portly friend. Danica did not ask who the portly friend was. She is a woman who does not ask follow-up questions unless she already knows the answer.

On a Nat 20 on the hunters' table, Sable confirmed Zoldar Zoldarovich and Yevgeny Krushkin were in high spirits, had eaten many steaks, and were not violent about it. They asked Danica for more stakes in the way that men who hunt wolves for a living ask for things: matter-of-factly, with the underlying implication that everything in their life is a logistics problem to be solved.

Brother Moro spoke with Ismark Kolyana and Ireena Kolyana. Ireena wanted to check the church in the morning. Ismark wanted to back her up. They shared the evening quietly off to the side, behaving like people who have been through a great deal and are currently choosing not to talk about it.

Moro asked the wolf hunters if they'd ever encountered a very large talking wolf with a burning sigil on its chest. They had not. They were fascinated. They wanted to know the size, the voice, whether the voice box might have magical properties. The other one wondered aloud what a head like that would look like mounted. They were given a description. They filed it under future quarry and went back to their steaks.

Ismark confirmed what he knew of Strahd's history, which was more than most. The short version: Strahd was human once. He loved a woman named Tatiana. Tatiana fell in love with Strahd's brother Sergei instead. On their wedding day, Strahd murdered Sergei, believed himself the superior man and saw no reason the situation couldn't be resolved through violence. Tatiana, upon learning what had happened, ran through the castle gardens and threw herself from a tower rather than be claimed by Strahd. She has been dead for approximately two centuries. Strahd has been looking for her face in women ever since. He sees it in Ireena.

No one knows precisely how Strahd became a vampire. Some say corruption. Some say he drank Sergei's blood and made a pact. Some say the curse took him. He has been ruling Barovia for roughly two centuries, and vampires predate him, so he is not the first of his kind — just the most locally relevant.

Strahd has appeared at Ireena's home twice. He charmed his way in. He bit her both times. He did not turn her. He seemed, after the second visit, frustrated — which Ismark noted and which is not a word that usually applies to someone who has been running an uncontested vampire fiefdom for two hundred years. Ireena doesn't remember the details clearly. Her memory goes soft whenever she tries. Her eyes, she says, were blazing with hunger.

The party asked whether Ireena knows anything about her origins. She doesn't. Ismark recalls that his father found a young girl abandoned in the Svalich Woods on a hunting trip when both Ismark and Ireena were children. She didn't know how she'd gotten there or who she was. Kolyan Indirovich couldn't trace her to any family and kept her. Nobody came looking. Nobody came looking until Strahd.

The Middle of the Night. Everyone rolled D4s. Merich rolled a four. While the rest of the party got tapping on windows, Merich got a raven in his room, standing on his footlocker, going through his things. The door he had locked was now unlocked. Human footprints led from the hall into the taproom and out the front door, which was also now open.

Merich followed them. Sable, looking out the window, spotted a silhouetted man and a raven — the bird had just landed on the man's shoulder, they appeared to converse briefly, and the man started moving — and went out the window at 21 Perception and 19 Stealth. Celeste saw all of this from her window and elected to go downstairs and look casual against the bar. Brother Moro stayed to check on Ismark and Ireena, confirmed they were fine, told Ismark to put some pants on and lock the door, and then did something else entirely.

Sable shot the fleeing figure in the back of the shoulder at 90 feet: 9 piercing plus a Dreadful Strike charge for 10 psychic. The figure grabbed his shoulder, grabbed his head, turned around — and it was Irwin.

On a Perception of 26, Sable identified him. Then she got very close to his face and asked what the hell he thought he was doing, and at that point Danica stepped out of the shadows with feathers receding back into her skin.

She was a raven a moment ago. She had been the raven at the window.

Back at the inn, Brother Moro found the master bedroom — too clean, too staged, clearly not where they actually sleep — and inside it a trapdoor up and a hidden door in the south wall. The attic contained four straw nests, a locked iron strongbox, a small window to the outside, and two trapdoors that opened into the master bedroom and the boys' room, respectively. The boys were asleep in their actual beds, not the nests. The nests were empty.

The hidden door led to a loft above the stables. Hundreds of ravens. Roosted, calm, doing raven things. Under a pile of hay, a chest. Moro rolled a 21 on Stealth navigating the birds. He found the chest. Two ravens near it were startled when he pulled back the hay. They flew downstairs. The rest ignored him.

The street scene concluded in the tap room, over pints of Purple Grape Mash Number Three. Danica and Irwin sat down and explained themselves, which they did not do particularly well.

They called themselves the Keepers of the Feather. It is an order of wereravens — founded by wereravens, though not all members are. Their lycanthropy is considered a gift, bestowed by a wind spirit named Rebog, obtained through ritual and months of transformation and meditation. Their family is weraraven. Irwin's father Davian Martikov owns the winery to the north. The Keepers' mission is to gather information, find allies, and accumulate tools sufficient to one day defeat Strahd and free Barovia.

They had heard what the party did at the mill. They wanted to know if the party was working for Strahd or against him. The raven at the window was an intelligence operation. It was not, they acknowledged, intended to wake anyone up.

Sable was not mollified. She shot the man, healed the wound with a slap, had a full shouting argument in the street, and then continued not being mollified after returning to the bar. The world, she noted, has tried to kill them continuously since arriving. Nothing has been honest. Everything has had multiple motives. The Keepers made excuses rather than apologies, which Sable logged under concerning.

Merich cast Zone of Truth, and then did not use it because he decided it wasn't worth the spell slot. He rolled a 15 on Insight instead, believed Danica was telling the truth, and reasoned that mutual hatred of Strahd was a sufficient foundation for cautious cooperation. He asked whether the Keepers knew anything about a Vistani man named Miro who had gone missing near Ravenloft. Danica said she would look into it.

Brother Moro raised the Taroka reading — the holy symbol buried at a crossroads of life and death among the dead. Danica confirmed that the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is something the Keepers have been searching for since their founding. They believe it will be a significant aid in ending Strahd. Moro remembered the crossroads from before the prophecy: the Ivlis Crossroads, where there were gallows and graves and undead.

Danica and Irwin, also noticing Ireena for the first time with the rest of the party, exchanged a shocked and knowing look. There is a toymaker in town, Danica said. If you visit his shop, you will understand.

Sable went to stand in a small park near the inn, which is not technically the woods but was the closest available option. The rest of the party went to sleep. The winery, the church, the toymaker, and the graveyard at the Ivlis Crossroads are all still out there. The city has a festival that never ends and a Burgomaster who presumably has opinions about it.

Key Decisions

NPCs Met

Locations Visited

Items Found

Loose Threads