Lessons from the Mists: Session 15 - The Festival of the Blazing Sun

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This week, Vallaki's political turmoil explodes, and the heroes get in way over their head when exploring the Reformation Center. Let's get started!

We begin with the heroes heading towards the Reformation Center. The heroes discuss for quite a while what their goal is, and how they would go about infiltrating the prison. Eventually, they solidify their plan: Ylenia and Mary Sue Ann would go inside while invisible to find out what is going on within and confront the elves while many of the guards are at the Festival of the Blazing Sun. Meanwhile, Kane would draw a map of the Reformation Center outside using his skills in cartography, and Guinevere in the form of a spider would indicate on the map where Ylenia and Mary Sue Ann were within the walls, and whether or not they were safe. Angvar and Kane would wait outside and be ready to come inside and save them if they were caught. While they are planning, thunder rumbles overhead, and the sky begins pouring rain.

With this plan in mind, Mary Sue Ann casts Invisibility on herself and Ylenia, and they walk into the front doors. She forces them open with magic, as if to make it seem like a strong wind blew them open. The two guards stationed in the court room are startled and move to investigate. While they investigate the door, the two invisible heroes sneak by them and make their way to the door at the end of the court room, where they were taken through the last time they visited the center. Ylenia unlocks the door with her thieves’ tools, and they slip through.

The next room they explore is an office with a cot that seems built for a very large individual. They piece together that this is Izek’s office, and rifle through his things, the most noteworthy of which is a skeleton key. Taking this, they leave the office and try the next door. However, a magic ward was placed on this that Mary Sue Ann misses, and it triggers a trap that deals thunder damage to the both of them and creates a loud noise. They flee back inside of Izek’s office and hide.

Before long, a couple of guards investigate the office, but are unable to find the two invisible women. However, one of them spots dribbles of water on the ground, and tells the other to alert the others they have intruders. The guards leave the office.

Outside, Angvar and Kane begin to hear distant noises of a loud crowd, coming from the direction of the town square. Unsure if these are sounds of joy or horror, Angvar goes to investigate, leaving Kane alone with the spider as the only person who can rescue Mary Sue Ann and Ylenia. The spider makes no indication they are caught. Yet. Bells begin to ring inside the prison.

Ylenia slips out of a window in Izek’s office to the outer yard to attempt to find a way into another room from the outside, and manages to get inside. She quickly takes in the room - a warm hearth, plush rugs and pillows, two desks and many, many books. She opens the door of this office to the hall, and just as she opens it, she sees two guards escorting the elves to the office, saying they heard a disturbance here. The elves see the door to their own office open, but no one behind, and say, “I believe we found our intruder.” Ylenia, in a panic, slams the door to the office and escapes through the window into the outer yard. The elves burst into the office, hunting for an invisible person. Mary Sue Ann waits inside Izek’s office for Ylenia.

Angvar finally arrives at the town square, and takes in the scene. Baron Vargas Vallakovich and his wife stand atop the gallows with their wicker sun behind them. They are surrounded by dozens of guards, but one of those guards is in a noose, ready to be hung. The crowd cries out in anger and pleading, begging to spare the guard’s life. A lone figure stands atop one of the fountains in the town square - Lady Fiona Wachter, who proclaims the baron a petty tyrant whose actions are cowardly. The crowd takes up Fiona’s cries of rebellion, and all hell breaks loose. Angvar sees a figure within the crowd stab a nearby civilian, then blame it on a guard. The figure is a man within a hooded cloak, and the crowd erupts in violence, rushing the stage and colliding with the wall of guards. Angvar slips through the violence, seeing civilians bash in the heads of guards with stones and tear them limb from limb, but he is scarcely bothered by it. His target is the hooded man who attempts to slip away from the carnage. When the hooded man turns down a nearby alley, Angvar rushes to catch him, and he is revealed to be Ernst Larnak. Ernst looks up with a smile at Angvar, and says, “Hello, Angvar. Found your brother yet?” His eyes flash with fire.

The elves search the outer yards of the prison for the invisible intruders, and Ylenia sees one of them cast a spell, but is unsure what its effect is. The caster begins to sense something in Izek’s office, then calls the guards back in to apprehend the intruder. Ylenia gets back inside the open window, then tells Mary Sue Ann they need to leave. They make their way back into the courtroom, still invisible, with the elves hot on their tail, seemingly able to sense their presence. At that moment, Kane enters the courtroom just as the elves leading four guards enter the room, and attempts to cast Hold Person on the two elves. The woman fails, the man succeeds. It's initiative!

Ylenia quickly breaks her invisibility by running to the female elf and smiting her. Because she is paralyzed, both attacks are crits, and she kills her in a single turn. The male elf screams in horror, but Ylenia tells him they can bring her back.

Meanwhile, Angvar beats Ernst Larnak to a pulp, attempting to interrogate him where his brother is, but Ernst insists Izek is his brother, and that Angvar is a fool. Ernst laughs through the pain, and a horrible voice fills Angvar’s mind and he sees red, ordering him to kill Ernst. Angvar obliges, and Ernst turns to dust.

At the Reformation Center, Kane tells the elf that he can bring her back, but they require diamonds, and fast, but the elf says he has none. The elf recognizes Kane’s holy symbol of Kelemvor, and asks if they came through the mists from Faerun and what their goals are. Kane says they did, and that killing Strahd is their only way out. The elf tells him there is no way out, and Strahd is immortal. Rising against him would only bring pain, and it is quicker, easier this way. He orders his guards to kill them all, but through Mary Sue Ann’s sorceries, Ylenia’s combat prowess, and Kane’s faith, they overcome the challenge, then leave the Reformation Center.

Angvar returns to the town square, and is horrified by the carnage. He sees a cloud of bats, thousands strong, flying over the town. From that cloud descends a huge black horse, with its mane and hooves and eyes aflame, and riding atop it is Count Strahd von Zarovich. By this point, the mob have tied the burgomaster and his wife to the giant wicker sun. The rain stops, and Strahd congratulates Fiona Wachter, who has taken the stage, on her ascension to burgomistress. A fanatical follower of hers lights the sun, and the burgomaster and his wife burn. She announces to the town, in equal measures, horrified at Strahd’s arrival, in awe of his power, and curious to see what would happen next, that there is no reason to fear their lord. She proclaims to the town that a new age of Vallaki has begun, and they must begin by purging the old ways. She begins to march south at the head of her procession, and Strahd remounts his steed and flies away.

Angvar rushes back to the party who wait for him outside the Reformation Center. He says that Strahd is in Vallaki, and Fiona Wachter has taken power. The burgomaster and his wife are dead, and the mob is descending on the Reformation Center. They must leave. Ylenia cries that there is still Udo inside the mansion to save, and they can’t leave Victor to die. They dash to the mansion, and Angvar frees Udo from his manacles by prying the chains off the wall with a crowbar. Udo is overjoyed to hear that Fiona Wachter has taken power, and Ylenia and Angvar share a look - he’s a fanatic. Kane and Mary Sue Ann burst into the attic to find Victor, but when they arrive, he is gone. Mary Sue Ann studies the teleportation circle - it is intact with no errors. Who knows where he has gone?

Outside, the mob arrives at the burgomaster’s mansion, and the heroes fight through to the ground floor while they ransack the place to escape. When they arrive outside, they begin to see the first orange glows of flames through the windows. The burgomaster’s mansion is on fire. The heroes study their options, then rush to the north gate to find their horses lent to them by the Vistani and escape Vallaki.

When they arrive, a horse thief is attempting to pull one of their horses away, but Angvar intimidates him into leaving it. They mount up, ride through the north gate, heading west, as smoke fills the sky and Vallaki burns.

And that’s where we left it!

We spent a long time after this session decompressing from such a tense few hours. I was very happy to hear that my friend Grace (Ylenia’s player) told me afterwards that it was “an electric session.”

Throughout all of their time in Vallaki, my players were very suspicious of Vargas Vallokovich and his laws, and most of their actions showed that they favored Fiona Wachter over Vargas. I knew that they might not be there for the Festival, but even then, their actions should have a stake in the shift in power. I knew that if they did not take any action during the Festival, that Fiona Wachter would incite a rebellion, and the mob would kill Vargas, Lydia, and then burn the burgomaster’s mansion and then the Reformation Center.

So, what happened with Ernst Larnak? My idea is that he is the devil that Brandyn Ehrenright, Angvar’s commander in the Flaming Fist, sold his brother Thraegar to. More on that later. Ernst is in a strange state in Barovia - he is a devil, and cannot truly die outside of his home plane. However, he cannot leave Barovia either. I am bending the rules a little bit with how devils return to life, but essentially my plan is that he will be a recurring villain, and only when the heroes reach the Amber Temple will they be able to find a ritual to bind him to this plane (which will require his true name, which they might receive from a Dark Power) and kill him for good.

Angvar got contacted by one of the Dark Powers, and this one is by no means subtle like Shaelan-Thel is. It will promise great strength, and requires brutality from its supplicant. Easy for Angvar to do.

The one thing I feel like I screwed up is keeping a more strict track of time while the Reformation Center stealth mission was happening. I think I could have called for initiative much earlier than I did, and that would not only up the stakes significantly with a limit on actions, but also keep it moving with everyone getting a chance to shine. I ran the combat in the Reformation Center alongside Angvar confronting Ernst Larnak, and even though they did not happen strictly simultaneously in the fiction, cutting back and forth between those two conflicts seemed to work really well.

I ended the session by going through the loot and information they found in the Reformation Center, including the elves’ (now they know they are called the Reformers) history as well as the psychological torture they inflicted on the prisoners there. Horrible stuff. I asked my players what direction they are going next, and after some short debate they decided to explore Argynvostholt to see what lies within. I have consulted the book and the Curse of Strahd subreddit, and I think I might just run it as is with some tweaks from DragnaCarta’s old CoS: Reloaded and see how it goes. It’s also probably a good time to introduce Ezmerelda d’Avenir.

Until next time!