Session 19 - The Red-haired Prisoner and the Serpent-Witch

General Summary

Alexios Antipatakes - a traveler, is poking around the corpse-village battlefield and finds a pair of boots. Locals confront him, and say that he is disrupting a burial ground.
He is taken and presented to Rurik, who asks the other party members: “What do you make of THAT?” - meaning Alexios’ unusual appearance: 6’3”, red haired, very hirsute. Furry. Hrefna decides he is a troll. Earth Troll is Alexios' self-description at one point.
Taking Hrefna’s suggestion, Rurik questions a prisoner about the city under siege, and the status of forces and conditions within the city walls. All party members are present for the interrogation of the prisoner by Rurik, who demonstrably grabs a hot poker and threatens the prisoner to start talking. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way," he offers. "The easy way is this [the poker]. The hard way is the Blood Eagle.”
The PCs neither encourage nor discourage the threatened torture. The prisoner does not reveal anything of value and is taken away.
Rurik puts Alexios into a wooden enclosure and has him tied up. Vasilii shapeshifts into a spider, and watches. Alexios begins to antagonize another prisoner, and a guard comes and jabs him with the blunt end of the spear. He is eventually put in a pig pen.
Alexios’ belongings are searched by the guards, who find his scroll of pedigree and turn it in to their superiors. The Irii scroll states that he is of noble heritage, a bastard who is now a recognized heir of a noble landowner. His family was granted land by the Irii Tsar, per Vladimir's halting reading of the scroll. The name of the Tsar's office (basileos) has the same linguistic root as Vasilii’s name.
Vadim gets restless as the day wears on, and begins another circuit of the city walls, looking for developments, vulnerabilities, etc. He smells cooking meat coming from the city walls, which is inconsistent with the news from the day before that sanitation is poor and food is running out. What gives? Later, he learns that this is a pagan feast day in honor of Dazhbog.
At a certain point on his circuit of the walls, Vadim hears a woman’s voice in his head. “How do we know we won’t be taken if we meet you outside the walls?” He doesn’t have the presence of mind to ask a question back, but returns immediately to inform his comrades of the uncanny message.
We meet with Rurik and tell him what Vadim experienced. Rurik: “I will not send any of my people to capture their negotiators.” With this assurance, the PCs, including Alexios, arrange to meet the presumed Serpent-Witch outside the city walls, on foot. She demands up front payment of 200 rubles and 500 after delivery of the commander of the city guard. She doesn’t offer to release the Prince of Ladan’, and on our side, we didn’t bring that option up either.
The serpent-witch says she will reach out again to see if there is a deal. She says that we should not send more magical messenger birds her way, as she does not want to be found out to be negotiating with the enemy. She turns and walks back toward the city walls.
Vadim sends his wolverine Chrevougodnik after her at a discrete distance to observe how she gets back into the city. Vladimir turns into a cat, which Alexios observes and gets excited about, and also investigates. He learns there were three human-sized beings, based on the deformation of the grasses in the area.
The wolverine returns to Vadim, who understands its speech, and reports to Rurik: two women and a man showed up to the meeting, though the other woman and the man could not be seen. The man had a “wolfy” smell about him. He also says that the wolverine saw a gate open and close in the wall, and shut behind them.
We debrief. Speculation that Sigurd Karlsson, who never arrived at Rurik’s camp, is in league with the enemy prince, is voiced. We also discuss the serpent-witch's assertion during parley that Rurik does not seem to be very motivated to rescue his own prince - there are no ladders, no siege engines, etc.

Report Date

13 Apr 2025