Act 1, Scene 10: Vallaki: Diplomacy

For the second time that day, our heroes had split their party three ways.

Osrin headed into the inn for a glass of wine and some espionage, finding Rictavio at her side soon enough. The pair exchanged a few words before settling into a comfortably grumpy silence — a familiar ritual, for Osrin. She heard precious little for her trouble, aside from gossip about her own party and the gruff exchange of a pair of wolf hunters who seemed to spend most of their time around each other and seemed thoroughly unenthused by the reality of their wives and children waiting at home for them.

Meanwhile, Ayduin, Ri-An, and Grghshnq chaperoned Ireena and Vasili, with Vasili focusing the bulk of his attention on Ireena, though he took the time to spill the tea about the Lady Wachter. He advised them not to bring up her husband, who had died some time ago, or her daughter, who had gone mad after an engagement gone wrong to the burgomaster's son, who Vasili happily informed them was kind of a little shit.

Stopping at the tailor's, Ireena asked if they had any means of salvaging Sylvain's bloody, torn clothes — at the looks on Savva and Anfisa's faces, she hurriedly paid for them to make him a new outfit instead, to pick up the following morning, and advising Ayduin and Ri-An to lie and say it had cost a fraction of what it did if Sylvain asked. Ri-An received her lovely dress, and all other freshly tailored clothing was retrieved.

Asking if she could make one more stop, Ireena grabbed a couple of healer's kits, keeping one to herself and giving Ayduin the other. She might not be that useful in a fight, she said, but the least she could do is make sure she had the means to stabilize our heroes, if they were going to continue at their current rate of near-death experiences.

Back at the Blue Water Inn, Sylvain and Bodaway had a bath, debriefing on the day's events so far. They bonded over their mutual inability to go 24 hours without almost dying, especially if doing so would involve walking away from a fight, and discussed who owed who a drink. They also enjoyed the second(?) of many conversations that day about Vasili not being trustworthy.

Not long after, Bodaway took a moment to pay his respects to the Raven Queen, having so recently invoked her. In return, he received a vision. You see a half-elf woman and are somewhat startled at the similarities she bears to Sylvain — not physically, though she’s of similar height and build. Her hair is dark and thick and loosely curled, pulled back into a bun that somehow gives the impression of being haphazard and effortlessly elegant at once. Her skin, too, is a deep, deep brown, her cheekbones broad and her lips full and faintly curved with amusement. Rather, it’s the way she carries himself, the way Sylvain tends to carry himself when he’s not too winedrunk or exhausted; there is an innate grace to her that you know can only partly be nature at work, the rest a careful curation of mannerisms. You realize she is at the gates of Vallaki, but… a Vallaki of long ago, you think. Even at a glance, you know the town you’re looking at is much smaller than the Vallaki of today; its walls, too, are more standard, its ends not sharpened to the brutal spikes they are now. Around her stand a motley group: a massive armoured goliath, a human woman covered in elaborate tattoos and wearing heavy furs, a half-orc woman rippling with muscle, a half-orc man with his cloak’s hood drawn up over his eyes, playing with a dagger, another half-orc woman, eyes wary, fingering a ring which seems to glow faintly with arcane power, and somewhat incongruous in a party of such gargantuan stature, a little gnome wearing religious robes. The half-elf woman, you realize, is addressing Vallaki’s guards on their behalf, and despite their appearance and the obvious willingness of some of their number to fight if they must, as she speaks, the guards relax; they smile; they begin to joke. As she leads her party in, she drops a wink over her shoulder at them, radiating confidence. You see her again, as she wakes, meeting the eyes of the human woman you saw before, who looks exhausted, keeping watch while the others sleep by the side of the road. The human’s gaze shifts instead to the hugely muscular half-orc woman you saw before, and the half-elf’s gaze shifts as well — you can see that she appears to be deep in sleep, except for her eyes wide open, staring sightlessly. The half-elf shifts to the human’s side and they begin to speak in low murmurs; you cannot hear the conversation but by the end you can see the human is shooting the half-orc looks you don’t like, looks that usually came before a bad fight back in the day. The half-elf sees those looks too, and unlike you, she smiles.

You see her once more, and this time she is in a castle you’ve never seen before; it seems vast, and there is a sense of deep oppression to it. You have never knowingly walked on desecrated ground, but you imagine it would feel something like this. She is arguing in furious whispers with the human woman before; it seems they have a choice for which path to take. The more the human denies her, the angrier the half-elf gets; you see her draw her dagger and slide it between her ally’s ribs when she’s distracted by one of their fellow party members, and the vision fades. As Bodaway and Sylvain dried off in their room, Ireena and the others bid good day to Vasili, and Ireena led them directly into the party's main room, asking where Osrin was and, when given the answer, declaring they could catch her up after. Ireena did not trust Vasili, she informed our heroes — in general, the consensus was: no one trusted Vasili. Various reasons were given between this and the several other conversations on this topic, but the juxtaposition between his demeanour around the wolves and his confidence in all other fights they'd seen him in, along with the uniquely fortuitous timing of his arrival both the day before and that afternoon, were both flagged as cause for concern.

Still, they agreed, there was little to be done but to go to the dinner that evening, make as pleasantly neutral an impression on the Lady Wachter as they could, and avoid spending any more time around Vasili if they could help it.

When Osrin came up, Ireena went down to have her own bath and prepare for the day's social engagements, and the party discussed what to do next. They agreed that they'd have to look into the matter of the missing bones sooner rather than later, but that there was little they could do until after dinner. In the meantime, they agreed to alert Rictavio to what they'd learned, so they'd have one (hopefully competent) ally keeping an eye on the situation — in particular the church, which they feared may be attacked while it was vulnerable. Rictavio seemed about as thrilled to hear about all this as anyone could reasonably expect him to be.

Once all of them were in their proper Diplomacy Clothes — some wearing more armour and carrying bigger weapons than others — they made their way to the burgomaster's mansion, hoping not to have any more revelations while they were there.

Upon reaching the mansion, both Ireena and Ayduin noticed a foreboding building some way behind the main house, crowned by a watchtower. Ignoring this, they made their way to the front door, where a maid greeted them and led them to the burgomaster's study. They met the burgomaster, flanked by his mastiffs and with an intimidating figure with an infernal-looking arm behind him, and were somewhat surprised to have a... pleasant interaction. It seemed that the burgomaster's policy of mandatory positivity extended to his interactions with suspicious outsiders, and he seemed satisfied with the account our heroes gave of their reasons for being in Vallaki, and plans for the near future.

The group was somewhat unnerved to notice a tremendous intensity to Izek, the burgomaster's captain of the guard, who was staring at Bodaway kind of like this and had been ever since Bodaway walked in. After wrapping up his discussion with the group, the bemused burgomaster followed Izek as he rushed over to Bodaway and said he had something to show him, striding across the hall to his own room and opening the door.

Inside, Bodaway and his friends found a profusion of dolls, many of which seemed to show the same individuals over and over, in some cases obviously showing them growing up through the years. Most alarming, however, were the several dolls which showed Bodaway himself — not only as he was, but as he had been, including several in-betweens from the human man he once was and how he looked now, many of which Bodaway himself had never seen before. Some confusion ensued — Izek insisted that they were half-brothers, sharing the same father, and that Izek had had dreams of Bodaway ever since he was a child, as well as all their other siblings — all the people represented by the dolls.

Bodaway questioned Izek with some urgency regarding the Artist and how his arm had gotten the way it was — for the first time, Izek seemed self-conscious, saying he'd been born with his monstrous arm. His mother had found herself in Barovia while pregnant with him and, shortly after giving birth, had died. The burgomaster had arranged for Izek to be brought up, and had become the only family Izek had truly known — but now, finally, one of his siblings was here in Barovia.

Izek hugged Bodaway. Bodaway managed not to have a complete nervous breakdown.

The burgomaster extended a dinner invitation but the party expressed their regrets, saying they'd already made plans for the evening. Izek said he and Bodaway could talk again the next day, eager to start their long-delayed brotherly rapport. Somewhat in a daze, our heroes left the burgomaster's mansion, and with time to spare decided to check out the coffin-maker's shop to see what they could learn ahead of time.

Ayduin and Ri-An discussed an elaborate plan involving a dance performance to lure the coffin maker out of his shop. Ireena pointed out that perhaps causing a scene in the town square might not be in the party's best interests at the moment, and suggested one might need a permit for public performances. Thoroughly disgusted at the prospect of not being able to dance their way to victory, Ri-An rushed back to the inn to consult the law book.

Meanwhile, the others experimented with the novel concept of knocking, being told via yell from inside that the coffin shop was closed. Upon making inquiries regarding when it might be open, they were again told that it was closed. Following this, they received no more replies. Sylvain discovered the doors appeared to be barred from the inside, and all the windows were both frosted and guarded by iron latticework. Making their way around to the back — Ri-An flipping through the book and discovering that yes, you do need a permit for any public performances in Vallaki — they discovered some potential weaknesses they might be able to exploit in the lattice and, not eager to start something they didn't have time to finish, they made their way up to Wachterhaus, to dine with the burgomaster's rival.

They found the Lady Wachter as gracious as the burgomaster had been, if somewhat bolder in her demeanour. She teased them about their reticence, and had both Ayduin and Bodaway sit at her side, having deemed them the most interesting members of their party. Bodaway confessed he'd spent much of his childhood in prison. Osrin characterized her childhood as, by and large, taken up by stupid shit. Ri-An took several mental notes.

Vasili pulled out a chair for Ireena, presumably that she might sit beside him, and Sylvain slipped into it instead, leaving Ireena free to sit between him and Bodaway. Vasili refrained from murdering Sylvain at the dinner table. After some more awkward conversation, along with some creative performance on Ri-An's part to conceal their general inability to eat the way their companions do, the Lady Wachter showed her cards.

She told them about her life in Vallaki — how as a young girl, she'd lived in fear of the burgomaster, Vargas's father, Vargon. He had been a cruel man, who believed the only way to rule was with extreme force, and her youth had been characterized by regular public executions and the conscription of disobedient children into the town guard.

When Vargon had abruptly died, she and others had been hopeful his son would make a better ruler, and for a time it seemed like he would. But it didn't take long for the people of Vallaki to realize there was steel behind Vargas Vallakovich's ever-present smile, and when it became clear that he was just a tyrant of a different shade, she went on a diplomatic trip to the village of Barovia, ostensibly to network, but secretly planning to go to Castle Ravenloft, to see whether the devil both Vallakoviches had railed against was truly the monster they painted him.

Instead she found a reasonable, considerate, intelligent, charming man, who welcomed her into his home and listened to her concerns. Whatever threat Strahd might present to various people in Barovia, she had never seen him threaten her town — that honour went to two men, both by the name of Vallakovich. Ireena refrained from murdering the Lady Wachter at the dinner table.

The Lady Wachter went on to say she'd also stopped by the Vistani at Tser Pool, to hear her fortune from one of their elders — Madam Eva. Madam Eva had told her that during the Lady Wachter's lifetime, a stranger from a foreign land would come to Vallaki, and that their coming would be the sign of a new age in the town. First, however, their arrival would lead to a great purge, the likes of which Vallaki had never seen. Afterwards, the sun would shine on Vallaki once again.

She returned to Vallaki, and looked into those who had made their way into Barovia from other worlds. She waited, and some thirty-something years ago, outsiders had come to Vallaki. However, they ignored her plea, and moved on, intent on fighting Strahd, like so many had tried to do before. They failed, to no one's surprise save perhaps their own, with one survivor returning with his tail between his legs to work at the town's Reformation Centre alongside other failed adventurers.

So, she asked our heroes: would they ignore her warnings, too? For she had waited many years, and with their arrival, and Rictavio's, along with her age, the time was surely nigh.

Our heroes promised her they would think all of this over, and bid her a good evening. Ireena rage-ate some bread. Bodaway squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.

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