Lessons from the Mists: Session 9 - The Haunted Orphanage

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This session, the heroes attempt to find a new home for the orphans they have been protecting, and attempt to exorcise a foul haunting at the local orphanage. Let's get started!

The next morning, the heroes go over their options for what to do in town, and decide to investigate the orphanage to determine if it is safe to bring Ludo, Myrtle, and Freek. When they arrive they are greeted by a teenage girl named Mila with a toddler on her hip. Mary Sue Ann asks to speak to the owners, and Mila says they can wait in the common room while she gets Mrs. Claudia Belasco. The common area is chaotic and loud, over a dozen orphans of varying ages playing, drawing, chasing each other, but Ylenia notices first that each of the children has some small bruising on their limbs, places that are not hidden by their clothing. A girl named Danya approaches Mary Sue Ann, reaching into the wizard’s pocket, but Mary Sue Ann slaps it away. Mary Sue Ann wants to know more about what’s been going on at the orphanage, and Danya tells her that some boys went missing a few weeks ago, and she thinks there’s something in the walls. This place doesn’t feel right. A boy tugs on Kane’s clothing and asks if he has come to help Milivoj. He asks if Kane is a priest and has come to bless Milivoj. Kane says he’ll do what he can, but is interrupted by the arrival of Claudia Belasco, whom the orphans call Ms. Witch as they get into line.

Claudia brings the heroes to her office to speak with them. Mary Sue Ann and Ylenia lead the conversation, saying that they came across some orphans on the road that were trapped by hags, and want to find them a good home. However, they also ran across some wolf hunters looking for missing orphans, and they have come to determine if this orphanage is safe. Mrs. Belasco ensures them that there is no safer place in Vallaki for misplaced children, and tells them that indeed some orphans went missing recently, but one of their oldest, a young man named Milivoj, hired the wolf hunters Szoldar Szoldarovich and Yevgeni Krushkin to find them. She says he is a fine young lad, and much of his coin goes toward helping the orphanage. Ylenia asks what job he has, and the headmistress replies he is the gravedigger at St. Andral’s church. The heroes nervously look at one another: could he know where the bones of St. Andral have gone?

Ylenia asks if they can speak with Milivoj, but Mrs. Belasco says that is not possible, he has taken ill. He has a sickness that has grown over the last three and a half months, and a few days ago he has not woken up. He is kept away from the other children lest it spread. Father Lucian has already visited once, but Kane and Ylenia declare that they are healers, and could maybe help him. The heroes go to look in on Milivoj, and see he is not well. He sleeps fitfully, clammy, sweaty, pale and feverish, with dried bile and blood on his lips. Ylenia uses Divine Sense and sees a fiendish presence encapsulating him. Kane examines him, and is able to deduce this sickness is magical in nature, and cannot spread. Mary Sue Ann Identifies him, and sees lingering necromantic essences draining him of life. They tell Mrs. Belasco that he is being corrupted by a fiend, and she is horrified. She asks if they have the expertise to solve this issue, and the heroes assure her they can solve this. Back to the office for more questioning.

The heroes barrage her with questions about the recent happenings at the orphanage, and they learn that before the three boys ran away, another tragedy struck the orphanage. A young boy named Cedrik fell out of a second story window and died. He and the three missing boys were bunkmates with another boy named Felix. The three missing orphans have been at the orphanage for most of their life while Felix is new after his parents were murdered. The only thing Cedrik had on him when he died was a locket that Mrs. Belasco kept and shows the heroes, with a Celestial inscription inside. The heroes put together the timeline of events and learn that Felix arrived at the orphanage 4 months ago, Milivoj got sick 3 ½ months ago, Cedrik died and the boys went missing 1 month ago, bones of St. Andral went missing 3 weeks ago, wolf hunters hired 2 weeks ago, and Arabelle went missing 2 days ago.

The heroes split up to investigate on their own. Ylenia asks the orphans about recent happenings while Mary Sue Ann and Kane investigate the second story. Ylenia learns from a teenage girl named Tessa that Cedrik had a crush on her, and that he bragged about stealing a locket from Felix. The three boys that went missing escaped the orphanage on their own accord, there was no break in. Felix is odd, keeps to himself, and plays in the attic even though he is not allowed up there. Kane examines the window that Cedrik fell out of and determines that there are long scrapes in the wood, two sets of four, on the windowsill, determining that they look like fingernail scratching from someone that hung from the window and was pushed out. Mary Sue Ann discovers in Cedrik’s dormitory a set of Abyssal runes scratched into the foot of the bed, and through deciphering from Angvar (who didn’t realize he could read the script until he looked at it), realizes that it says “Dark Dreams”. All the beds in the orphanage bear the same runes, including Milivoj’s.

Armed with this knowledge and needing to confront Felix about what he knows, they ascend into the attic. Angvar sees the boy first, angrily carving a wooden doll facing the only window in the attic. Felix asks what they are doing in his play space, and Ylenia asks him what he’s carving. Felix replies that it’s supposed to be his mother, showing off a screaming crude figurine of a woman. They ask about Cedrik, and Felix says he doesn’t know why everyone was so sad about Cedrik. He only bled a little bit, while his mother bled a lot more. Ylenia presents her holy symbol of the Morning Lord to banish the demon inside of him, and it’s initiative!

The demon, a creature of liquid shadow, emerges and attacks Ylenia who forces it into a corner. Mary Sue Ann runs forward and grabs Felix, taking the boy away from the demon with supernatural speed that she doesn’t understand. The demon dodges all of the other heroes’ attacks, and summons a field of darkness that the heroes cannot see through. Angvar gets up close and attacks it as it tries to flee, which breaks concentration on the field. It targets Mary Sue Ann with a few attacks, but with Kane’s Path of the Grave feature as well as Ylenia’s smites, it is not able to withstand their attacks for long. Mary Sue Ann targets it with Magic Missiles and Shatters it, forcing it to retreat back inside of Felix. The demon/Felix orders them to leave or the child dies. Angvar is not one to be intimidated and knocks out the child, forcing the demon to vacate once more. Ylenia gets the final blow, and Felix is released from its possession, vomiting black bile and crying.

With Felix’s demon banished, the heroes go back downstairs to reveal their victory. Mrs. Belasco is horrified about what she learns but grateful for their help. The locket shattered upon the demon's defeat, and Mary Sue Ann examines it to learn it was binding the demon the entire time. With the demon destroyed, the binding spell failed. Milivoj is awake and weak, but on the road to recovery. Milivoj comforts Felix as he questions the heroes about what happened while he was asleep. He doesn’t remember much, but the heroes have questions for him, and they send the others from the room.

Ylenia interrogates Milivoj on where he got the coin to hire the wolf hunters. After showing that she is an agent of the Morning Lord, Milivoj becomes much more suspicious, demanding to know if Father Lucian set them up. After they all swear that what he tells them will not get back to Lucian, he confesses. He began getting sick and missed work. All of his extra coin goes to the orphans because there’s no one else in this town that would look after them. While he was working one night, a hooded man with a dark beard approached him to look into holy artifacts the church might hide, promising him payment. Desperate, Milivoj agrees and finds the bones through Yeska. The hooded man approaches him once more and asks him to steal them and bring them to the Vallakovich crypt, promising even more payment. He obliges, and finds a sack of coins the next day. Milivoj donates much of the coin to the orphanage to help the children buy better clothing and food, and hires the wolf hunters to find the missing boys. That’s all he knows.

Satisfied, the heroes say that Milivoj will have more orphans to look after. They thank him for his help, and tell him to keep out of trouble. They go back to the inn to bring the children to the orphanage, where a drunken guard says that Angvar looks almost exactly like their captain, Izek Strazni. The guard also taunts his dwarf heritage, and asks Danika for more wine, but she refuses. Kane asks what the reason behind the refusal was, and Danika says that they have been running low on wine - they are very late on shipments from their local winery, The Wizard of Wines. The heroes bring the children to the orphanage and Ludo is heartbroken to be separated from them. Mary Sue Ann assures him that it is safest for them to be here rather than traveling with them, and gives them Lancelot to take care of. She says it’s the children’s job to take care of the dog just as it was their job to take care of the children. Ludo says he’s brave enough to do that. It’s a heartwrenching scene.

Shortly after they leave, a man approaches them saying his name is Ernst Larnak and is a servant of Lady Fiona Wachter, and invites them to dinner at the Wachterhouse. News of their saving of the orphanage has reached the Lady’s ears, who has been keeping an eye on them since they arrived. Angvar asks him if she knows or is allies of the burgomaster, and Ernst Larnak assures them they are very much not associated. He does not say more, asking them to come to the dinner in order to speak freely. With that, he leaves.

The heroes make plans to search the town for signs of Arabelle with what hours of daylight remain to them before the dinner, and that’s where we left off!

The entire content of this session is an original adventure, St. Andral’s Orphanage, written by MandyMod to space out the Bones of St. Andral questline. It does a great job of making Milivoj a much more sympathetic character by giving him reason to steal the bones outside of him being a sullen teenager. It’s a fantastic short mystery and by the end, it makes the players feel like they accomplished something major.

This has been my favorite session of Curse of Strahd thus far, and all of it was a community expansion. I think that shows just how much the community makes this campaign shine more than anything in the official writing (which, don’t get me wrong, is still great).

Often when I am running a session with a lot of investigation, I have a bad habit of making sure the players find everything. I get so worried that they will have a bad time if they miss clues or do things in the improper order and most of the time it’s not until after the session that I feel like I could have done better. This session felt like the players were driving the ship the entire time, and the clues were spaced out and in clear enough places that it did not feel like many DnD adventures where it is very easy to miss clues unless you have perfect DM knowledge. I think it’s some great adventure design by MandyMod.

The gradual discovery, putting together pieces of the mystery felt great for myself and the players, but something that I did not mark down explicitly and I had to scramble through my notes to find was the timeline of events. Because Felix’s demon is the cause of Milivoj’s sickness and gives him a more sympathetic, human reason to steal the bones, it is crucial to know the timeline of events from beginning (the arrival of Felix at the orphanage) to the most recent events (the wolf hunters are hired, and Milivoj falls into a coma). When running an investigation, crucial pieces of the puzzle are the order of events, so have that handy and be confident in what you are telling them. It allows the players to really understand the bigger picture when they can understand the timeline.

This entire investigation was also resolved by the end of the session, and I think that sort of pacing is very important in a campaign like Curse of Strahd where there might be long running quests or location exploration that could take multiple sessions. My players were able to begin the investigation of the orphanage and by the end of the session, solve it and feel like they have accomplished an unambiguous good in a land that is so fraught with danger. Not only that, but some of my players were on the verge of tears as the children they had been escorting (only for a handful of sessions!) left their care and found a safe home. To reinforce that unambiguous good, I gave all the heroes Inspiration to help them on the journey ahead.

If you are running Curse of Strahd, I highly recommend using this adventure and if you can, begin and end this adventure in a single session. Players will feel very accomplished by solving a conflict in a single session in a campaign where so many storylines take weeks or months to resolve. Make sure your timelines are in order and easy to reference when the players get a new piece of information, because they will ask about it. And make those NPCs who are in danger (in this case, the children, but can be anyone) sympathetic, unique, and fun to interact with, not annoying or helpless. It’ll go a long way in making the players want to care for these people who should be cared for.

For Next Session

My players are very interested in meeting Fiona Wachter and rescuing Arabelle, wherever she might be, so my prep will focus on those two quests.

Until next time!