The Burgomaster's Funeral
General Summary
Excerpt from Seir’s Little Black Book (Session 8/20/20): Penned in Borokin’s hand, via dictation
Periwimple carried in the casket with the help of Ismark and Irina. Those of us attending the funeral went out into the graveyard, where they brought the casket to an open grave near some headstones marking his family members. The service for Coleon (spelling?) was brief, yet respectful. After things are over, Ismark and Irina settled in the grass nearby. They asked us if we wanted to see the vigil as the man’s spirit passes on. It sounded interesting, as they said that it was a wondrous sight to behold and apparently it wasn’t disrespectful for me to stick around even when I never knew the poor chap. There wasn’t any food (Zin despaired at this) but Ismark said there was stew left at the house. Zin apparently left to go and look around the church after Donovich retired. He found some holy symbols. They also found some books on “the uses of logic” with regards to some war against diabolist heresy. Apparently, he also found an unused bed, which raises questions as to where Donovich sleeps (probably one of the locked rooms). He also found a derelict room with a trapdoor, though it was locked. Zin picked the lock, but heard a stron bang against the trapdoor and hastily tried to relock it before hearing someone begging to be let out, with a humanoid voice loud enough to probably not be a child. Father Donovich ran in and relocked the trapdoor and screamed at Zin to get out, followed by some obscenities and racial comments. Zin happily obliged, shoulder-checking the man on the way out. The man’s last words were something along the lines of “don’t mess with me or my family ever again”. Those of us at the funeral saw some random comings and goings. A visitor came in from the center of town. He wore a hood as he approached, and appeared to have eyes. He approached Ismark and Irina and bowed to them, saying that Strahd sends his best wishes before walking away. We heard a choir of screaming as he walked by. It seems the sound is coming from inside my brain. The man walked away, brushing hair to reveal pointed ears. Ismark says that he’s Strahd’s tax collector and general lackey, Rahadin. Supposedly the screams are from the souls of those he’s killed. I pointed out he was probably signalling to Irina and Ismark that he knew what they were doing. Khaylen and Thoradin tried to follow this tax-collector. Getting closer, they could make out the specific words in the screams (mostly pleas for help). However, the man walked behind a building and completely disappeared. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had gotten ahold of some sort of teleport. Us in the graveyard saw an eerie green light surround everything. As it started to appear, Irina and Ismark began huddling and, very slowly, from some of the older graves, we saw a spectral form step out of the ground. Irina directed us to watch. The first few were simply dressed ghosts, but mixed amongst them we saw a strong-looking woman toting a sword, a human with a bow, a broad-shouldered dwarf with an axe, and archaically dressed mages with beards done in styles unseen in centuries, if not millennia, with pointed hats. As more and more people stepped out, the old mages and adventurers became more common. I waved in front of them, but they seemed to be unable to sense me. Some passed through me, filling me with an intense cold. From where O was standing, the group of ghosts seemed to be approaching her. She moved around them and saw that they seemed to be walking towards Strahd’s castle, miles away. Thoradin asked Ismark and Irina about the precession of ghosts, but they shushed him as a final figure rose out of the ground. It appeared to be their father. He appeared to briefly recognize his children before setting off towards the castle. Irina told us that this is the march of the dead. They all rise and journey together, though Irina has no clue why they go the direction they do. Nobody follows them because getting close to the castle is a dangerous proposition. Apparently these processions have been happening for a very long time. Rahadin visiting a funeral, however, is an unusual circumstance. I’ve read about ghosts before, but I’ve never seen a single thing like this before. At this point, we regrouped with Zin, or rather Zin being followed by Father Donovich. At the time, I was fairly ready to side with Donovich on the matter, as I assumed that Zin was stealing something. Khaylen decided to magically charm the Father before figuring out what was happening. She’s a novice caster, and the spell didn’t go through. Zin tried to claim that he was just looking for snacks, and Letho chided him. I tried to calm down Donovich, while Khaylen tried to calm down Letho. As I put my hand on his shoulder, he fell to the ground, crying about how Zin (I think) was trying to kill his son. I fully believe Zin was probably up to nothing good in there, but Zin’s not a killer. It seemed to be mostly a misunderstanding. Apparently, Ismark thinks this son (Doru) is dead- he got up to something involving Strahd and disappeared a year ago. Thoradin discussed this with him. There was no public burial for the boy. Zin told us about the trapdoor at this point. Khaylen once again tried to charm Donovich, but mostly for the noble purpose of calming him down. She asked him to rub her arm and she purred (it was a little gross?). Donovich told us he was afraid someone would kill his son, because the man is apparently a monster. Khaylen asked him to talk about his fond memories of his son while waving us off. All of us headed in behind Zin, who unlocked the door. We headed into the cellar and locked the door behind us. The room was dark and wet, with signs of rot. A gaunt shape huddled in the corner. Doru told us he was hungry and began biting his hand. Letho and Zin noticed that he had fangs- probably a vampire. From what I know, vampires eat nothing but blood. I’m not sure as to what they want besides human blood. I offered to get him some livestock blood, though he said that, since he hasn’t eaten anything in a year, he needs human blood. Zin told him that none of us would attack unless he attacked us, so of course he chose to just attack us. Zin hit him hard with his sword, and Thoradin made an effective crossbow shot. However, unfortunately, in the confusion, Doru managed to grapple Zin. Letho tried to compel the guy into a duel, but the spell failed and he instead just had to attack him. O and I cast our usual spells, though O seemed upset at the thought of fighting the man. I didn’t want to fight Doru either, but it wasn’t as if I was going to just stand about and let him kill Zin. Doru seemed to be healing from our blows terrifyingly quickly as we kept on attacking. He began to climb onto the ceiling above us, and then decided he needed to drop on the floor in front of me (lovely!). He grabbed me- frightful creature, he is. Letho helped me out of the jam, and we all just wailed on him. O cast an unfamiliar cantrip that lengthened her fingernails and she took a wild swipe at him, ripping Doru open. He then started trying to run away. With a spell, Letho ran ahead of him to the door and blocked his exit. Since he seemed to be too hurt to do much more to us, I tried to advocate for trying to restrain him (I felt bad for killing the boy after promising we wouldn’t do something like that). However, O got a tad overzealous and knocked him down. A few moments later he was dead. Ah, more dead. Letho brought up the good idea that we should bury him, or at least get it arranged. Some want to lie to Father Donovich, which I find to be quite distasteful. O ran up to Donovich first. She was horrified by the conditions Doru was in, and she flew at the man, shaking him and cursing at him. She tried to punch him, but it didn’t do much. This snapped him out of the charm. He ran back towards the church, but Khaylen tackled him. We had to confess to him what had happened, but he was understandably inconsolable. Khaylen, so far, gave him a rather fantastic little talking-to about how he could recover from grief and find happiness again. I am very impressed by her, sometimes. Father Donovich says he wants to have a proper funeral for his son, after getting a good night sleep. Our group makes plans to not be in this town sooner rather than later. Khaylen, Thoradin, and Letho went to stay at Blood on the Vine, while the rest of us slept at the manor.Part 3: Red Skies At Dawn (Khaylen)
When Father Donovan pursued Zin from the church hysterical, I (rightfully) assumed tha Zin had been caught stealing yet again. I really do need to teach him some tricks sometime. While Donovan yelled, Zin told me what he had stumbled upon: a trapdoor that was hiding a person underneath. I tried to calm the priest, hoping to learn the deeper trauma that was clearly under the surface of his anger. As I spoke to him, I felt the magic well up inside me, and I recited an incantation from the spell book we retrieved from the Dursts’ manor. It took a few tries, but I managed to magically push him to trust me, and that trust helped me get through his anger to help him identify what was troubling him so. Donovan told me of his son, who had been turned into a monster. He thought he was protecting the child. I’ve met men of his type in many cities, it’s an understandable but misguided mindset, and extremely unhealthy. I stayed with him, helping him remember his son’s life, not his current state, whatever that is now. While he told me about his son’s drawings, I motioned to my compatriots to release the child, trusting them to find the right path. Do I regret leaving it to them? To Seir? Or O? I think not, but I’m sure I’ll wrestle with this choice for a while yet. When they returned, some bloodied, darling O led the pack, her eyes burning with disgust at the clergyman. Lashing out at him with her fists she screamed: “You monster! How could you keep him trapped? Without food? Alone? You would do that to your own son?!” The man dashed for the church in a fit of rage, realizing what my friends must have had to do. I caught him before he got too far, and he crumbled in my arms in grief. Between sobs he defended his actions, explaining that he would only be feeding the beast, that outsiders would kill Doru if given the chance. He poured out his heart as the sun set in the west, slowly coming to terms with the truth he had sequestered away for a whole year. I gently coaxed him from the edge, and then led him up to his room to sleep. I awoke the next morning to a loud ring, and I was struck with a vision. A silhouette of a man, thin against the blood red sunrise, hanging by the neck from the tongue of a church bell. The body rose as the bell swung back, his weight pulling against that bell’s throw. As I squinted into the dawn of the dream, a second toll came. Then a third ring sounded, pulling me back into my bed in Blood on the Vine. I let the premonition settle, glad that the father was alive, but shaken by the vividness of my waking dream.
Report Date
07 Nov 2022
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