Meeting the movers and shakers in Barovia

General Summary

The party meets with Ismark, Irina, and Father Donavich

Excerpt from Seir’s Little Black Book (Session 8/6/20): Penned in Borokin’s hand, via dictation

After getting cleaned up, we headed over to Ismark’s place. As we walked down the road, we passed the house with the sobbing- a woman sat outside, though she was not crying. Another woman walked by and handed her a meat pie.
Ismark invited us inside his house. It’s a mansion by some words, but rather plain and run-down, with the gates in disrepair and weeds. I’m not sure I can trust a man who takes such little care of his lodgings. There were heavy claw marks on the building, which Ismark claimed to be from wolves. Letho and Khaylen also saw some pawprints and bare human footprints, which may indicate something interesting. The windows of the building were also barred shut from the inside.
I realize now I pointed out the marks to Ismark from a distance despite pretending to be blind.
Ismark rapped three times on the front door, then one more knock (perhaps some sort of code?). A pale-skinned woman answered (Irina), who gave Ismark a hug. Ismark told her that she should go away, presumably he doesn’t want her to get involved with us.
The inside of the mansion looks nicer than the outside, which warmed my heart a little. There were a lot of holy symbols placed throughout the building, most of them related to the sun. There was a lack of diversity amongst them- almost all related to one god. O said that, while some of them were related to the well-known sun god, some were of a bizarre make and form that were unfamiliar.
Ismark sat us at a dining room table. He poured himself a glass of wine with a shaky hand, and welcomed us to his house. Letho asked him for dinner, and he went to make a pot of stew. There were some unfamiliar meats up on his wall, which he said was wolf. Apparently wolf is a commonplace thing to eat in this area. The stew was fairly good, all things considered.
He asked us to do a “fairly large favor” to him- he says that the area is too unsafe to Irina, his sister. Apparently, the surrounding creatures have become more brazen in their attacks on the village, and she has attracted the attention of Strahd. Ismark doesn’t want to leave as he is is the Burgermaster (Mayor) of the village. Strahd stops by the town occasionally, but usually sends his tax collectors. He apparently lives in a castle overlooking the village- of course, I can’t see it, but Khaylen says it looks quite large dramatic, of an older architectural style. Apparently it lies a few miles out.
Irina looks like she’s an adult, so half of me wants to say that she should be able to make her own damn decisions.
Ismark says the castle has been around since before he was born, but predates the arrival of Strahd. However, since he moved there, it has warped and change.
Letho asked about what Strahd had done that was so bad, as he left potions for us. “My order has abducted children in the past.” Ismark said that Strahd is a complicated figure. People disappear, but nobody can prove Strahd has done anything. However, supposedly, the mists that engulfed Barovia appeared when he ascended.
The mists supposedly prevent people in the valley from leaving, but not coming in. Ismark asked us to take his sister to another community in the valley; there are apparently two. Strahd has not been seen in one for centuries, and the other is isolated. I think I’d rather go to the large city than Kresk, which is apparently very small and nobody has heard from it for a long time.
Irina came in at that point: she pulled down her scarf to reveal pinpricks on her neck. It looks as if she has been bitten? Thoradin asked a question to this effect. It seems as if she has been attacked by a vampire, though Khaylen offered the word that sometimes people just bite each other (it seems to be an animal thing).
From what I know, vampires have several types of bites. They can feed, they can turn someone into a thrall, and they can transform someone into a full vampire. However, Irina took a bite of garlic, so she seems fairly human still. She said she’s been bitten twice.
Letho said that he isn’t sure he wants to take her into this other town, risking us angering Strahd. He also let slip his and my connection to some strange dark being, which understandably made Ismark a little jumpy. I honestly do not know if Strahd was the one who took my eyes?
Irina said she’s willing to leave, as long as she can bury her father first (apparently a heart attack took him? That seems odd in this setting, but the man’s a bit hard to read and I was a bit pickled). Ismark offered us some compensation (fifty gold).
I suggested that perhaps what we were planning on doing was not that subversive- it was not as if Strahd had specifically asked us to not let Irina leave the city. If he really likes this woman so much, why would he be against kindly escorting her out of a ramshackle, wolf-ridden city?
Apparently these vampire bites are some form of courtship? I don’t know why he couldn’t merely ask, or maybe just find a woman who’d be more into him. He lives in a great big castle in a land of ruins, I’m sure he could pick up someone happier about the whole thing. Letho seems pretty gung-ho about the thought of living in his castle. He’s very enthusiastic about this whole “staying neutral” thing.
Zin suggested that, if she becomes immortal, Irina could just wait out Strahd to forget about her. However, we don’t know if vampires are immortal- just that Strahd has been around for centuries.
Khaylen brought up that, well, if someone is continuously kidnapping people, they probably are “using up” people.
Letho says his order used to kidnap and indoctrinate children because nobody wanted to be a part of his useless death-omen cult. Oh, sorry, Borokin, The order of the mystic lake, I must still be a bit drunk, just ignore what I say.
Khaylen asks about Madam Eva. Ismark says that the Vistani camp outside the city, but apparently the Vistani here are loyal to Strahd, not Madam Eva. The Vistani are the only people allowed to leave this land. Maybe, once we deal with Madam Eva, we can use Khaylen’s connections to try and get us out.
Honestly, I just want to get out of here, but I probably need to get along with everyone else- go after this lady, then we can goddamn escape. Maybe I’ll be able to pick up some eyes along the way.
We were pointed towards the church in the north, where the father was being buried. Apparently a Father Donovich resides. I asked if he knew anything of divine magic, either to regrow my eyes or dispel whatever nonsense has been placed upon me. Ismark says that he probably doesn’t know anything too powerful, but it’s probably worth talking to him anyway, even if it is just to have him look at me and say what exactly is wrong with me.
We set out to our day tasks. Khaylen said she’d hang with the Vistani, while O disappeared off to do whatever it is she does with her time.
Letho asked me to go look around with me and you for masks in the town. You were an excellent seeing-eye man, by the way. A small child appeared in our path, asking Khaylen, the giant cat, to help with their kitty. It was recently dead, probably of starvation. Khaylen, thankfully, was honest with the child about the animal’s condition and comforted them.
According to Khaylen, after we split up, there were a couple people gathered around the general store. Most of them looked like hunters. She went to the Vistani and brought up the orb around them, outlining what happened in the house earlier. The Vistani said that the dark lord apparently has such eyes everywhere, and perhaps Khaylen could sell it for materials, though not to anyone local.
O apparently witnessed a fight between two men over a paper bag. She tried to cast a spell to make wolf noises nearby, but was unsuccessful in her attempts at intervention. One probably killed the other, and ran off with the bag. She also discovered a very unpleasant house, permeated with the scent of death. Upon looking in, she saw a dead body twitch. O knocked, and the body’s head rolled to look at her. It started moving towards her, so she ran off. As she moved away, she saw the meat pie lady, still moving about with her cart. O asked her for some food, and convinced her to give her a pie.
Thoradin and Zin went to go nap in Ismark’s building, though it was the “one-eye-open” sort of resting. They were taken to a child’s room, apparently Irina’s when she was a child. While looking around, Zin spotted a piece of paper tucked away somewhere. It had a lot of drawings on it, with a depiction of a malevolent-looking man with an unusually large, clawed arm. As Thoradin was about to fall asleep, he spotted a very familiar doll in a yellow dress on one of the shelves. The doll he thought was in his bag was no longer there.
Letho, you, and I found a lady selling textiles out of her house. You asked her to make some masks, and she said she’ll have them ready by tomorrow morning at one silver each.

Part 2: A Controversial Proposal (Khaylen)

When we met Ismark, we met his sister, who has attracted the gaze of Strahd. They both feared for her safety, now that their father had died, so they requested our help sequestering her to a larger city. I wouldn’t wish the expected fate Ismark described on any woman, a fate I had seen too many times before. I committed to spurning Strahd, convincing the rest of the party that visiting this larger city would benefit is anyway.
I returned to Blood on the Vine to offer Strahd’s orb to the vistani owners, whose advice was that I could fetch a modest sum for it in another town. Unhelpful, as I wanted to be rid of it before the journey in the morning. I then pressed them for information about another city in Barovia that Ismark had mentioned, as well as the vistani camps nearby, hoping for a lead to get us to Madame Eva’s door. I often felt like I was the only one who remembered why we all came to this awful valley.
When it finally came time for Ismark the Lesser’s funeral, I took a moment to scope out the church grounds. It seemed like Letho, Thorey, and Seir would be enough of a presence for our group. I saw O and Zin hop the fence into the graveyard, so I quietly followed them. They didn’t find much, so I returned and joined Seir and the others at the ceremony.

Continued from Seir’s Little Black Book (Session 8/6/20): Penned in Borokin’s hand, via dictation

Letho, Thoradin, and I headed to the church a little before services started in order. Zin and Khaylen came with us but didn’t go into the church, and apparently O snuck in nearby as well. Lord knows why they feel the need to sneak around a graveyard. They apparently found the Durst family crypt.
The church also looks a bit run-down, and quite old. It has a belltower. The doors were also scarred by claw marks and burns.
I knocked and asked for Father Donovich. He’s an old, balding man with tired eyes. The pews inside the chapel were wrecked.
I took off my blindfold and showed him my face- he responded with shock. He says he’s seen someone with my affliction before, and he met a man with it, but he could not help him. The abbot at Cresk supposedly has stronger magic and can help me- perhaps we’ll have to go to that place, after all. Supposedly, the man was corpse-cold, but otherwise did not do anything like go mad. Though the man was only with him for two days before moving on, so I don’t know if my sanity has much time left.
He told me about the Morning Lord- the god representing the sun and light, scarce in Barovia. Apparently he’s one of two, the other being Mother Night.

Report Date

08 Nov 2022

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