Lessons from the Mists: Session 33 - The Secrets of Wachterhouse

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This week, the heroes meet the Mad Mage of Mount Baratok, and then infiltrate Fiona Wachter's mansion to search for the bones of St. Andral. Let's get started!

The Recap

We begin this session with the heroes travelling to the shores of Lake Zarovich to find the Mad Mage of Mount Baratok. They get into one of the abandoned canoes on the lakeshore and paddle to the north side of the lake and climb the side of the monolithic mountain.

After some time, the heroes break through a tree line and see an elk atop a rocky outcropping with lightning crackling up its antlers, watching them approach. It transforms into a man before their eyes with a torn and dirty robe, long tangled hair and beard streaked with grey, his eyes crackling with eldritch energy. He says “Servants of the devil! You will find only death here!” and attacks!

It’s initiative! The Mad Mage wins the initiative and blasts them with a lightning bolt. Ylenia attempts to get through the madness to the man within. She surrenders her weapon and tells him they need help. It seems her pleas are affecting him, but he still casts spells at the heroes. He transforms Kane into a rabbit, and while Angvar attempts to restrain him with a net, the Mad Mage misty steps out of the net. However, when Angvar trips him and holds him at spear point, Mary Sue Ann reasons with him and tells him they seek to destroy the devil. At last, the Mad Mage is pacified and invites them to talk.

He leads them to a shimmering doorway a short ways away that he enters. Inside, the heroes enter the foyer of a huge, dilapidated mansion. Tattered tapestries hang from the walls, and piles of detritus litter the floor. He offers them tea in dirty, cracked teacups. The heroes, led by Mary Sue Ann, ask him questions about his identity and what he knows about how to defeat the devil. He tells them he was a magnificent wizard in his homeland, but he does not remember his name or much about his friends. He sought out new challenges elsewhere after conquering all the evils of his homeland, and found a misty realm ruled by a dark tyrant, and believed himself a savior. However, all the knowledge in the world was no use against the devil, and he lost a great battle. He has resigned himself to his fate, and believes Barovia will be his tomb. He has no interest in rising up again against the devil.

He tells Ylenia that Strahd is this place, and as long as Barovia stands, he will too. The magic here is strange and does not behave in the way he expected. Barovia is like a living nightmare, and Strahd sees all, hears all.

Mary Sue Ann searches the trash around the mansion for anything of use, frustrated at how useless this conversation has been and finds a magical shield she gives to Ylenia. The Mad Mage does not care much. He says someone wiser may succeed where he failed, and maybe it is the heroes. Or maybe not. And he laughs mirthlessly.

Mary Sue Ann calls him a coward, and a disgrace of a wizard. The heroes exit and find their way back to Vallaki. She is incredibly frustrated at the Mad Mage, but Kane and Angvar just feel bad for the broken man.

On their way back to the Blue Water Inn, Kane sees another crime scene: the serial killer in Vallaki seems to have struck again. One of the same guards that talked to him before waves him over for help, but Kane notices a few key differences with this body: The eyes have not been removed from this corpse, and the wounds suggest a struggle and the murder weapon is a serrated blade. He also recognizes the victim: Bluto Krogarov. He tells the guards he wants to speak to the body, but they are wary of the magic. After a little convincing, they allow it. Kane learns that the killer was a Vistani man with a mustache and pointed beard that attacked him while he was alone, pissing in the alley. The heroes believe this killer is Arrigal.

When the heroes return to their rooms at the Blue Water, they decide that their next course of action should be to search for the bones of St. Andral at Fiona Wachter’s mansion the next day. Before they rest, however, Mary Sue Ann tells the others that she has the ability to commune with something through the Tome of Strahd.

She also wonders aloud why the curse that she has suffered in Faerun has not manifested itself here. She has known the other members of her party for a while now, and they have grown close in the time they’ve spent with one another, but she has not disappeared from them. Why is that? Could it be that the curse does not take hold in Barovia? Or is this entity that she has allied herself to is holding back the curse? She also says that the entity that has been contacting her has wanted to keep their alliance a secret, which Ylenia finds suspicious.

Mary Sue Ann takes out the piece of amber resin she found in the Durst house and casts Commune through the Tome of Strahd. A hissing voice emerges, intrigued and amused that Mary Sue Ann should have found Strahd’s writings. She does not recognize the voice. Her first question: Was Bluto and the other victims killed by the same person? The entity responds no, but they “bled out deliciously.” She asks the entity’s identity, and it tells her that it is Strahd’s patron, the Fanged Shadow, Vampyr. Her final question is where the vampire nest in Vallaki is located, and Vampyr responds “Why would I tell you?”

Mary Sue Ann suddenly feels her consciousness pulled in two different directions by competing powers. Her patron, Shaelan-Thel, tells her that she will protect her. Mary Sue Ann is given a choice: if that commune spell would target Vampyr or Shaelan-Thel from here on out. She decides to contact Shaelan-Thel in the future. Her patron tells her that the altar boy, Yeska, is in danger, he was taken by the devil: Ernst Larnak.

She tells the heroes about what she discovered and they are surprised to hear she spoke to Vampyr. Kane is particularly shaken with this information. They decide that their next order of business is to find the bones of St. Andral at Fiona Wachter’s mansion and discover the fate of Yeska.

In the night, Angvar has a dream of an entity trapped in amber: a thin humanoid body walking on all fours with five protruding wolf’s heads that snarl and snap at one another. It stalks up to the walls of its prison and tells Angvar “Rip and tear him apart. Sever the ties. Then we may take this realm for ourselves.” Angvar is resistant to the shadow’s demands, and the shadow retreats. He wakes up in a cold sweat the next morning, clutching the coin stamped with his and his brother’s faces which burns his hand. Uncurling his grasp, he sees it now depicts Ernst Larnak’s screaming face in place of his own.

The heroes hatch a plan to infiltrate the Wachterhouse. While Ylenia and Mary Sue Ann speak to Fiona Wachter and distract her, Kane and Angvar, while invisible, will break in and find the bones of St. Andral.

Mary Sue Ann and Ylenia meet a servant at the front door who lets them in. Fiona Wachter meets them in the dining room and asks why they have come. Ylenia says that they wanted to see if her daughter has improved at all since they believe Victor Vallakovich is dead. Alas, Fiona says she has not. The two heroes ask about how the people of Vallaki are doing, because they seem to be happier, and Fiona is proud to say that without Vargas’ tyranny, the people are doing better. She says her laws are more sensible. The conversation turns to Strahd von Zarovich and Ylenia lets it slip that they attended him at his castle, which Fiona is intrigued by. Mary Sue Ann says that Strahd favors Ylenia, and Fiona is surprised to hear she did not take him up on the offer of marriage - that might anger the Count. The two heroes now believe Fiona Wachter does not know anything about Strahd’s obsession with Tatyana or Ylenia.

Ylenia leaves for a moment to “powder her nose” and casts detect evil and good to find where the consecrated bones of St. Andral are and to see if Ernst Larnak is anywhere close by. When she returns to the dining room, she senses a fiendish presence beyond a wall where an adjoining room shares the hearth of the dining room. When she returns, she sees a figure just barely visible beyond the flames of the hearth - Ernst Larnak.

Meanwhile, invisible Kane and Angvar climb to the second story where Kane’s locate object is showing where the bones of St. Andral are. Kane climbs into the master bedroom and finds a sleeping man on the bed that matches a man in a portrait above the bedroom’s hearth - Fiona Wachter’s husband. He detects undead, and finds no undead creature in here, but a necromantic aura about the body. He examines it and finds it probably is the effects of a gentle repose spell. Unnerved, he searches the room and finds a foot locker where the bones are inside, locked. A key hangs around Fiona’s late husband’s neck.

Kane signals to Angvar outside to join him and the dwarf sneaks in. Kane takes the key from around the neck of the body and unlocks the footlocker, disabling a trap. Inside they find hundreds of rolled scraps of paper sealed with blank wax seals. They take a handful, and underneath it all they find a burlap sack containing a set of bones. They return the room to exactly as they found it, and escape, none the wiser.

Mary Sue Ann asks Fiona Wachter about an altar boy named Yeska that was adopted by one of her men, Ernst Larnak. Fiona smiles, and believing she can trust the heroes, invites them to a meeting tonight and pulls out a scrap of paper sealed with blank wax. She says “Come to the cellar, speak these words aloud at nightfall, and you will know the fate of the boy.” Unnerved, the heroes agree, and take their leave.

The heroes meet back up at the Blue Water Inn and tell each other of what they found. Kane in particular is horrified that Fiona Wachter sleeps with her dead husband. The two women believe that Yeska could be some kind of sacrifice for Fiona’s cult, and they must save him.

They find Urwin and Danika speaking in the kitchen with Muriel Vinshaw and tell them about all they found at the Wachterhouse, and ask them to look after the bones of St. Andral. Danika tells Muriel that “they are friends of the family.” and Muriel relaxes - another Keeper of the Feather. The heroes decide its best to attempt to save Yeska before whatever cult meeting Fiona will hold tonight.

And that’s where we left it!

So How Did the Session Go?

It went really well! A sort of disappointing beginning that was made up for a lot in the back half of the session, so let’s get into it.

I decided that I think it best if the Mad Mage could offer a few tidbits of information about Strahd so that the players were not flying blind and making decisions that might cost them dearly without the proper information, as well as a possible magic item they could walk away with. I had the players roll on Magic Item Table F in the DMG and though it was a boring item (a +1 shield), it is very good to increase AC! The other piece of information I wanted to give them is that Strahd can sense magical communications in Barovia to signal to them that if they wanted to cast sending to Van Richten, Strahd would know about it and come to kill the monster hunter.

The combat encounter I ran was a little bit like a Draw Steel negotiation in that they could make Persuasion checks to get through to the man inside in the middle of the combat, with a score I was keeping track of secretly. That worked out well because it incentivized the heroes to not just attack him thoughtlessly. For every check succeeded, his interest would increase by 1 (from 0 to 5). For every failure (which the heroes did not fail!) his interest would decrease by 1.

Having the Mad Mage be a sad, broken man was a choice that resonated with some of my players and frustrated others. He is one of the choices for a destined ally but because he was not in this campaign, I decided that he had little to offer them but some information, a roleplaying interaction, and maybe a small treasure.

My players had some amazing roleplaying conversations in the middle of this session with Angvar’s dream and Mary Sue Ann’s crisis of faith followed by her commune with Vampyr. Because she has a dark power on her side, I decided that she must make a Wisdom check to see if she can resist the pull of Vampyr, which she succeeded on! So her commune now contacts Shaelan-Thel.

The infiltration was tense and really fun to run. I cut back and forth between Mary Sue Ann and Ylenia speaking to Fiona Wachter and Kane and Angvar’s burglary. I never once asked them for Stealth checks because I was more interested in seeing how much noise they were making by forcing open different windows. On a few occasions, I offered them a choice: to make no check and succeed whatever step of the infiltration they were attempting, BUT it would make some noise, OR make a check to see if they succeeded in what they were attempting quietly. I was keeping track of how much noise they were making, and at a certain threshold someone would come investigating the disturbances, which they didn’t get close to!

I did very little prep this session other than knowing where the bones were (I opted to put them in Fiona Wachter’s bedroom without lead lining because I thought their locate object plan was superb). The Yeska reveal, Angvar’s dream, and the commune were all improvised. After the session, I was super jazzed to run again, because this is one of the few times that I felt comfortable improvising a session. I wasn’t flying blind though - I had broad strokes and general ideas for what could happen. I am reminded of Blades in the Dark, because from what I hear, that game runs very similarly to the way this session went. It only makes me more excited to run that game, because I think my players responded REALLY well to the infiltration of Wachterhouse.

For the next session, I made a few notes to define the curse that Mary Sue Ann is dealing with because her in character monologue told me she is interested to see where that’s going! Ernst Larnak and Fiona’s cult are going to sacrifice Yeska to the vampires, which the heroes have to stop as well.

Until next time!