The Festival is Reignited
General Summary
Excerpt from Seir’s Little Black Book (Session 5/6/21): Penned in Borokin’s hand, via dictation
At the baron’s manor: Letho noticed a malevolent presence near a mirror. He asked Izek about it, and Izek stated it may be Wockter or Strahd. Upon Izek saying Strahd’s name, Letho noticed a second malevolent presence tied to the mirror. Izek seemed to think that Strahd sent Wockter. Letho said Strahd again to test what happened, and then Izek immediately left the room. Letho heard a voice coming from the mirror, asking him why he invoked Strahd’s name so many times. The voice identified itself as Strahd. He asked about our party. Apparently he is familiar with what’s been going on, and refers to what we’ve been doing in the area as “cleaning up the place”. Their conversation is brief and not very productive, and basically consists of some greetings before Strahd leaves. Very interesting that such a thing would be in the baron’s house. Letho tried to go and wake up Izek to tell him that Strahd had infiltrated the home, but he couldn’t wake Izek up. He gave up on his plan and decided to go into a room that Izek had warned him off of earlier, saying it contained a imprisoned protester. He breaks open the locked door after a brief flirtation with stealth. Inside, he sees a badly beaten man with nothing but a loincloth and some manacles on. He rather politely introduces himself to him, but he’s unconscious. After slapping him a few times to no response, he starts shouting to get up the baron and his wife, saying that Strahd’s agents broken into the house and tried to free the prisoner. He showed the baron and his wife the unconscious Izek, who then immediately wakes up. Letho tries to convince everyone that Strahd’s agents put Izek to sleep and broke into the prisoner’s room. However, he wasn’t really able to convince anyone of what had happened. At Wockter’s house, we all shared stories with the lady in an effort to reduce the tension. Since she had good wine, Khaylen wanted to stick around. After an unusually pleasant evening, we ended up heading back to the inn. The next morning was bright and busy as the festival began. Many people were out and about, playing instruments. Khaylen and I headed over to the tailor’s, bright and early. After delivering the dress, we regrouped with Letho, and he told us what had happened over the night. We discussed the possibility of Strahd being able to look through all mirrors. We headed towards the stockyard, as I was very interested in seeing if any of the items that were stolen from me could be returned. We passed a woman with dark make-up on reading peoples’ fortunes. Khaylen was offended at her, as she was clearly not Vistani. Her accent was clearly fake, and she was clearly saying generic and fake things. O didn’t pick up on how fake she was, and expressed interest in speaking with her, but Khaylen quickly shut the idea down. In the stockyard, there was a smiling contest, as well as some people throwing things at people in the stocks, in donkey masks. There were also children running about, playing a game of pin the stake to the vampire. Ricktavio’s wagon was still there, abandoned and heavily damaged. Our whole party (besides Letho) went to the wagon. The back of the wagon was heavily padlocked- it was clear that the tiger had broken out the side, which was splattered with dried blood. O looked around for magic on the cart and I climbed in, while Khaylen blocked us. O didn’t spot anything with detect magic, and it didn’t really seem like anything inside was tampered with. There was a torn-up doll, but that was probably an old toy. There were some scratches around the padlock, as well as some grooves on the ground from the cart rocking. It’s clear that someone had been trying to get into the cart from the previous night. There was a hole in the roof of the cart, through which Ricktavio could drop things. I picked up the doll and left the cart, a theory forming in my head. Perhaps the doll was drugged somehow, and that agitated the tiger? There was a general store in the yards, currently manned by one person. Letho headed there first, and the rest of us followed. Khaylen tried to steal something, but was quickly cost, and Zin tried to haggle down the price of some overpriced rope. He then showed Khaylen some of the jewelry he had stolen from one of his hauntings, and Khaylen rather shockedly told him that it was worth a ton of money. It didn’t seem like the merchant had any of our missing weapons, unfortunately. Towards the end of the day, the baron brought out another effigy to burn. He stated a particularly cultish speech about the sun burning away all of the bad in the town, and Izek made sure to stare pointedly at Wockter throughout the proceedings. As the baron began to drop the torch, a few things happened: The effigy began to move, and the sky darkened. As he dropped the torch, it began to rain.
Report Date
08 Nov 2022
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