Lessons from the Mists: Session 32 - Rumbles of Rebellion

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This week, the heroes learn more about what is going on in Vallaki, attend a clandestine meeting, and hear the tragic story of the dusk elves. Let's get started!

The Recap

Angvar and Ylenia stand with Izek Strazni in a shadowed alley. He tells them there is trouble about town, and he must speak with them. Angvar asks how he has been since Fiona’s uprising, and Izek replies that he has been in hiding. She is looking for him and Victor Vallakovich as the last remnants of Vargas’ rule. Angvar also asks about his dreams, which Izek says have been growing more terrible. He says he thinks he killed his mother and father.

Izek invites both of them to a meeting in the basement of the Karushkin warehouse at the Arasek stockyard. He has much to discuss with them, but later. Angvar and Ylenia agree and say they will bring the others. Izek tells Angvar he knew they would inevitably meet again, and then disappears into the alleys.

Meanwhile, Kane and Mary Sue Ann are decoding the Tome of Strahd at the Blue Water Inn when Angvar and Ylenia return. They tell the others about Izek inviting them to a meeting, and all agree to go. Before then, however, Kane and Angvar want to investigate the warehouse while Ylenia and Mary Sue Ann check in on the orphanage.

Mary Sue Ann is greeted by Ms. Claudia Belasco at the orphanage, and while Ylenia distracts the headmistress, she speaks to Milivoj about any further information he has about the missing bones of St. Andral, but he doesn’t know anything. He has not been contacted by the hooded man again since Fiona’s uprising, but says that she has agents sniffing about town for someone or something, he doesn’t know what.

On their way to the stockyard, Kane notices a couple guards blocking an alley. Further in, a few other guards are investigating some shapes on the ground - bodies. Kane asks what the disturbance is, and one of the guards investigating the bodies recognizes him. He remembers Kane protecting wounded Vallakians when vampires first attacked Vallaki. The guards show him the bodies, which are two Vallakian commoners with their throats slit and their eyes removed. Kane is able to determine the wounds are clean, and wonders if there are necromantic rituals that require eyes.

Meanwhile, Angvar waits outside of the alley, and sees a familiar face cross the thoroughfare, waving and smiling at him: Ernst Larnak. Angvar follows, like a prowling predator. Ernst takes a seat on a couple of crates at a crossroads with a handful of Vallakians milling about - in public view. Angvar asks what happened to him, and Ernst replies that he must return home to reconstitute, but he cannot leave - same as any other person in Barovia, and so he must live with his wounds. He recognizes an entity that has shown interest in Angvar: The Five Headed Destroyer. He also tells Angvar that his brother is in a dangerous position, leading a rebellion against Strahd’s number 1 fan, Fiona Wachter.

Ernst gives Angvar an offer: Join Fiona Wachter, give Izek over to her. He will die, but death is “a temporary annoyance here.” Get close to Strahd, kill him and seal away his patron, making the way for Ernst to rise as Lord of Barovia to use this Domain as a way to glut himself for eternity. In exchange, he and his brother will act as strong right hands for Ernst.

Angvar tells Ernst that when he is done with him, there will be nothing left, and leaves. He crushes the nearby stone with his hand, and leaves Ernst. Angvar meets back up with Kane, and they are off to the warehouse.

Kane and Angvar arrive at the Karushkin warehouse. They scout it out, and find it rather inconspicuous. Kane notes entrances and exits, but is unable to get further information without getting closer to the warehouse. Angvar notices a raven watching them nearby, and comments to Kane that if Ylenia were here, she would say they follow the raven.

Later that night, the heroes arrive at the warehouse. Descending the stairs, they come to a low ceilinged, wide room underneath the warehouse. Roughly a dozen Barovian commoners are within, in addition to four faces they recognize, and one they do not. Izek Strazni, Piersym Rowley, Anya Trevali, and Yonvich are all here. Mary Sue Ann asks who the woman she does not recognize is: a woman in her late 30s, with a streak of grey to her hair and piercing grey eyes with a scar on her cheek introduces herself as Muriel Vinshaw, a simple goat herder.

Izek starts this meeting by thanking everyone here, and tells them what they are doing is brave. Izek is leading a rebellion against Fiona Wachter, and he believes he has a few ideas in order to overthrow her. He says he is doing this because despite the terrible decisions Vargas Vallakovich made, he was the closest thing to a father that Izek had, and wants to honor his memory by deposing the people that murdered him. The other reason is due to Barovian succession law, if no burgomaster’s heir survives, leadership passes to the highest ranking military officer in the town. That would be him.

He then tells the meeting of his ideas for deposing Fiona Wachter: A vampire nest is somewhere in town, and if they were to destroy it, Fiona Wachter will no longer have the forces that Strahd gave her, though no one knows where it is. The church has lost its consecration, and Vallaki will be protected from vampires if it is made into a sacred place once more. The movers and shakers in this town have all joined Fiona Wachter’s cult to Strahd. One can get close to her by infiltrating this cult. Finally, the vampires make themselves known in public once a week at the bloodlettings, and says this is a good opportunity, and he’s open to ideas about how they can exploit this.

Mary Sue Ann speaks up first and says that they have leads on the bones of St. Andral, and say they can probably help with that, but they have much on their plate they would like to deal with first. She is not convinced of this little rebellion, and thinks they must establish themselves further before the heroes throw their lot in with them. The rest of the heroes agree, and the meeting winds down, the heroes take their leave.

Angvar tells the others about his meeting with Ernst in private, and the heroes have a lengthy discussion about what they must do to untangle this knot in Vallaki. First and foremost, however, Mary Sue Ann would like to go speak to Kasimir Velikov, the leader of the dusk elves, for information regarding the Amber Temple.

The next morning, the heroes arrive at the Vistani encampment outside of Vallaki and meet Kasimir Velikov, who they find tending to a dying dusk elf. They go to his hovel to speak in private. Mary Sue Ann leads the conversation, and asks him about Patrina Velikovna. He ruefully sighs and tells him that Patrina is his late sister, and that story is tied up in Rahadin and the fate of his people.

Long ago, King Barov was at war with the dusk elves, and Rahadin was one of their greatest military advisors. The dusk elves were losing, and Rahadin begged the dusk elf royalty to surrender, but they would not listen, and so he went to King Barov to stop the fighting. Barov agreed, on the condition that Rahadin would lure the dusk elf royalty to him, which he slaughtered. The dusk elves hated Rahadin for this, but he joined Barov’s court, and eventually served Strahd who went on campaign against enemies of his family, and the dusk elves eventually found refuge with the Vistani, who Strahd would not touch.

In the years following Strahd’s rise as lord of Barovia, Kasimir’s sister Patrina attempted to woo Strahd to seal up the breach between their two peoples and gain power for the dusk elves once more, but she was pushed aside for “that peasant girl,” Kasimir says while looking at Ylenia. Strahd ascended to a vampire, Barovia was cast in shadow, and the dusk elves became prisoners along with everyone else.

That was, until Patrina hatched a plan to seduce Strahd in the years between Tatyana’s reincarnations in order to drive a stake through his heart and kill him. She worked alongside Rahadin, until Strahd told Rahadin he was aware of her plan - but did not know about Rahadin’s involvement. Rahadin ferreted her out of the castle, and back to the dusk elves. Strahd interrogated Rahadin, who told him all. Strahd offered Rahadin a choice - either Strahd would eradicate all of the remaining dusk elves, or Rahadin himself would kill all the women, so they would have no future. Rahadin chose the latter. Just before she died, Patrina cursed Rahadin to forever be haunted by all those he murdered that night.

The heroes are shaken by this information and the crimes Rahadin committed against his own people.

Then Mary Sue Ann asks what he knows about the Amber Temple. Kasimir relays to them much information the heroes already know, but with one crucial exception: in his years of research, he knows the path to the temple, and believes inside there is a way to return his sister to life. He will guide them there, but only if he comes along too. The heroes agree to this, but tell him they must fix a few other problems first. Kasimir says he has waited this long, he can wait a little longer.

And that’s where we left it!

So How Did the Session Go?

Pretty well, I thought! This is one of those interlude sessions where the heroes are gathering information about what to do and where to go next, and it has felt like the last few sessions were like that, without the heroes taking any dramatic, heroic action to move the story forward. I have been a little antsy to get the ball rolling again.

The more I think about this, however, I think to some degree, this slow period of the campaign is my fault, which is why I wanted to have crazy shit start happening with Ernst Larnak’s return, his cryptic messaging regarding the Amber Temple. However, I could have prevented some part of this as well, but not all of it! So what’s the fix?

I am reminded of Matt Colville’s video on verbs for how I can fix the problems in Vallaki. In that video, he argues that the “verbs” you tell the players, or give the protagonist of a story, matters a lot in how the audience understands what is going on. And when we are at the game table, the audience is your players, who also have an interactive role in the story. If the audience doesn’t know what the objective is, then they are unable to make good choices in how to move forward. At Izek’s meeting, I gave them a few options of leads to pursue, but no answer as to the “WHAT” they are doing.

I think this is an important distinction - WHAT vs HOW. Tell the players WHAT they should do, but not HOW to do it. Telling them the how or restricting them to your “HOW” is where we get into the territory of railroading. However, you are a gamemaster with an adventure you have prepped. That adventure follows the question of “WHAT ARE THE HEROES DOING?” but NOT “HOW ARE THEY DOING IT?” It is up to the players to figure out the how, you are to tell them the what.

Of course, this does not apply to all groups. Some groups of players love to determine their own “WHAT” themselves. However, in writing this recap, I have discovered my particular play group does enjoy knowing the WHAT. And I don’t think I deployed any good verbs or WHATs with regards to the rebellion, because I believed they would make their own verbs. That was a mistake on my part.

There is one retcon I will make at the top of next session because I asked them for rolls I probably shouldn’t have. I picked up that they were still interested in finding the bones of St. Andral more than any of the other leads in this new Vallaki, and asked some of them to make rolls because I think their characters would make leaps in logic I did not see the players making. I did not think this was one of those moments where a failed roll grinds the story to a halt, so I was okay with asking them to roll, and if they failed, they wouldn’t get this information. Which is exactly what happened. But in them basically telegraphing to me they wanted to follow this lead, me telling them that in order to get any solid information to act upon required a roll, and then them failing the roll, meant it turned into exactly the sort of situation I didn’t think this was: A failed roll grinding the story to a halt. So at the top of next session, I’m going to retcon that roll being required, and give them information I think the heroes would think of: Ernst Larnak was behind the bone theft, and though he is more than meets the eye, he still is in the employ of Fiona Wachter. Fiona Wachter’s mansion, if not containing the bones, will have some information about where they are.

What I know is that the bones are in Fiona Wachter’s mansion. I think this will solve a couple issues: That of the heroes not having any solid information to make informed decisions on and now they have a good verb: STEAL THE BONES FROM FIONA WACHTER.

My players, now that they have all the hooks and reasons to visit the major adventure locations, have still been unsure about what order they should tackle them in. I think this is part of the fun of the Curse of Strahd adventure - it is a sandbox adventure where the heroes can get in over their head. However, this is again one of those GM lessons where you have to listen to what your players aren’t saying. At this point, I think that is: They want a clear direction of where to go next. They have been going back and forth on whether or not the Amber Temple should be their next stop, or confronting Baba Lysaga. They posed the question to Kasimir Velikov about which is more dangerous, and I believed him to be in a unique position to answer them. In his own words, I described that Berez should be their next stop.

My players were also not interested in engaging with the Vallaki rebellion, but I still want the world to continue if they are not getting involved - often, for the worse for their allies. In reading and designing some adventures for Draw Steel, I really enjoy how each event or action the players take (or don’t!) has a tangible effect on the story through mechanics. I don’t want it to feel like DM fiat, and certain opportunities will close while others open as a result of not engaging with this story. The specifics of this I have some more time to prepare since they will be going to Berez next, but Vallaki’s story will not stop when the players leave.

Until next time!