Lessons from the Mists: Session 35 - Repercussions

Welcome back to Lessons from the Mists! This week, the heroes save Yeska from the Wachterhouse, reconsecrate the church of St. Andral, and set terrible plans into motion that they were not intending... Let's get started!

The Recap

The heroes burst into the ritual chamber underneath the Wachterhouse and Mary Sue Ann begins combat by casting fireball right into the middle of the room, killing several of the cultists. Angvar and Ylenia charge in and quickly take down the other cultists, but one of them raises the corpses to fight again. Angvar steps into the ritual circle, and takes some necrotic damage but is empowered by the magic. The vampire spawn fights to the death, and quickly, the room falls quiet after the heroes slaughter every last cultist.

They search the area. Mary Sue Ann finds incense and some ritual components, including ceremonial daggers, on the tables in the chamber. The ritual notes are in books that look new, and handwriting that looks familiar. She surmises that these are the writings of Fiona Wachter herself, and they detail sacrificial rituals that will bestow power unto Strahd. They find the keys to the door leading out of this room and enter the prison. Inside, Yeska is in a cage covered in ritual carvings in his skin. Another man sits in a different cage who says his name is Mikael. The heroes are suspicious of Mikael and interrogate him, and he says that he is no one of importance. Mary Sue Ann lets Yeska out and cleans his wounds while Ylenia provides magical healing for him. The voice of Shaelan-Thel tells Mary Sue Ann inside of her head that Yeska will bear these scars forever. Is it not better to end his pain? Mary Sue Ann demands to know what she is talking about, but Shaelan-Thel continues to speak cryptically and doesn’t provide an answer.

The heroes clear out the last secret passageway out of the cellar and plan their next move. They decide that they will have Mikael escort Yeska back to the orphanage and the heroes return to the Blue Water Inn to gather the bones of St. Andral. They will attempt tonight to reconsecrate the church to make Vallaki safe once more.

When Mikael refuses to follow the heroes’ instructions, Angvar intimidates Mikael into escorting Yeska back to the orphanage. They gather the bones from the Martikovs and shortly decide that it may be good to have Yeska and Milivoj assist in the reconsecration ritual because they know the rituals and the church well. They return to the orphanage and gather the two boys (Milivoj resists, but Ylenia tells him he must and he eventually obliges). They also learn that when Mikael dropped the boy off, he extorted Ms. Claudia Belasco into giving him money.

At sundown, the heroes arrive at the church of St. Andral with Milivoj and Yeska and begin their reconsecration. Yeska and Ylenia find a few tomes of prayers to the Morninglord to assist in their consecration. Mary Sue Ann casts the ceremony spell she gained from the Tome of Strahd. Kane offers his divine connection to the ritual, and Yeska and Milivoj take up the prayers. Angvar waits outside, watching. Near the completion of the ritual, he hears inhuman screeches from across town. He prepares his weapons and tells the others company is coming. Within moments, almost a dozen vampire spawn descend on the church of St. Andral, and its initiative!

Rather than being a fight to the death, this combat encounter is primarily about defending Yeska and Milivoj as they complete the ritual. However, the heroes drive away almost all the vampires with a combination of two spells. Kane uses Channel Divinity to turn undead which makes all of the vampires flee, and then Mary Sue Ann casts wall of fire around St. Andral’s tomb to ensure that no vampires can harm them. The vampires are driven away from the church, and with a final flash of light, the ritual is complete. Angvar smells burning leather and pulls the coin from the devil that took his brother out of his coin purse, and finds it red hot. He tells the others the church has been reconsecrated - the proof is here for them all to see.

The vampires have fled back to their nest, and the heroes decide to follow after a short rest. They follow the trail of charred footprints all the way back to the burnt out husk of the old Reformation Center. They find a small crawlspace into a subterranean level. When they descend, the heroes all find their ears popping and then go deaf. At the bottom of a set of stairs they find a chamber with a glowing blue crystal orb suspended in the air inside a circular cage. Ylenia uses detect good and evil to find undead signatures - the last stragglers that descended upon the church earlier. Angvar destroys one vampire in the tunnels and then assists Ylenia in finishing off the last of them when it tries to flee again.

Meanwhile, Kane and Mary Sue Ann inspect the magic glowing orb and find a silence spell is being perpetually projected out of this object. One can attempt to remove it, but Mary Sue Ann fails on her Arcana check to take the crystal and its magic fades. Upon reflection, the heroes remember notes from the Reformers about the worst punishment one can find in the Reformation Center. The worst detainees were brought into the basement with chambers of sensory deprivation. No light, no sound. This object provided the lack of sound.

Shuddering at the implications of this but glad to be rid of  the vampire nest, the heroes return to the St. Andral’s church and retire for the night in the safety of the newly consecrated ruins.

Then I told my players about what they see, but the heroes are unaware of it. This cutscene plays out.

Willemina’s eyes fluttered open. Her first sight was that of Fiona Wachter crouching over her, a dagger pointed down at her. “What happened here?”

“Some foreigners came in, I’m sorry my Lady, I thought they were friends of yours! I offered to cook them food as preparations were already underway--” But she spoke no more as Fiona drove her dagger down into Willemina’s throat. Her only noises were whimpers and gurgles.

Fiona sighed and wiped the dagger of its blood and tossed the rag on the dining table. “You may come in, my Lady,” a voice echoed from further within the cellar.

Fiona crept down the hall and beheld the sight of a massacre. A half dozen of her cultists dead to blade and sorceries, and her esteemed guest destroyed. Ernst Larnak emerged from the adjoining room. “The boy is gone, my lady.”

“It’s the work of those travelers. I should have known they were agents of Vargas. Even after death his treachery still haunts me. Damn it all.”

“My lady, if I may, they were lying to you from the first. I delivered your invite to them the first time they were guests in your house.”

“I thought so. It does not matter, we will arrest them and feed them to my Lord’s children at the next bloodletting.”

“My lady. They are skilled combatants, it could mean the death of many of your guards.”

“Hmm. Where do they stay?”

“My agents say they stay at the Blue Water. They are close with the Martikovs.”

“Good. Burn the inn to the ground. Take the Martikovs captive. They must turn themselves into me or the Martikovs will die.”

“My lady, is that wise? Without the inn, the people will--”

“Do not question me Larnak.” 

The spymaster cringed, then asked “If we drive them out, should we not kill them after they’ve surrendered?”

“No. They may be worth more alive. That girl is a fool, but Strahd will reward me greatly for bringing her to him. What he does with the others I care not.”

“It will be done, my lady.” Ernst bowed and exited the cellar.

Fiona remained, staring at the corpses. “Death need not be the end.” A voice whispered in her ear. She whipped around. “Who is there?” No one else was in the cellar.

“One who offers your husband a second chance.” The voice oiled.

A pause.

“Tell me more.”

And that’s where we left it!

So How Did the Session Go?

This was one of those interesting sessions where basically NOTHING went as I had prepared, but the players had a good time and I was able to use all the parts of the prep buffalo! So let’s talk about how that went.

So, the final combat of the five room dungeon underneath Wachterhouse went way easier because of fireball. Classic. No problems there, if the players get the drop on enemies, they’re all clumped up, sure, let them have it. I could have decided that some people in the Wachterhouse above heard an explosion downstairs but that’s complicating things one degree too many in my opinion. I wanted this dungeon to be fairly straightforward.

Next, the roleplaying encounter with Yeska and Mikael. I decided to reuse a plotline that never got touched after Fiona Wachter took power where several criminals held in the Reformation Center escaped when it burned to the ground. One of them is a serial killer that's stalking the streets, another is a violent criminal named Perun Svobada (also from MandyMod’s Fleshing Out series). Perun was found and recaptured by Fiona’s guards and is being held here until the next bloodletting. He’s a bad guy, drunk and abusive, but not a psycho like the serial killer. His is a fairly mundane brand of evil, and he does everything he can to talk the heroes into letting him out, which they do. He isn’t the type to harm someone like Yeska, so that resolved just fine, but he did try to get money out of Claudia. None of this was planned, but its just an understanding of the character for me to decide what is happening offscreen with him.

I had prepared the vampire nest to be a set piece encounter featuring a bunch of vampire minions from Flee, Mortals! However, the heroes decided they wanted to reconsecrate the church, and so I took that encounter and made it a “defense” combat objective which they pulled out all the stops for and won really easily. One of my players said “have more vampires show up!” but I said no, this is all the vampires in town. 11 vampires is a lot for a town like Vallaki! I wanted to reward the players with their clever thinking, and that clever thinking meant no more combat!

I know why my player said that, he wanted more combat. However, I think it's worth remembering that 5E is a game about attrition. When the heroes get to keep going adventuring without spending more resources, that's a good thing! As I have thought about this more, I am really excited to play a proper dungeon crawl where I think the rules are going to shine because the game will shift into “push as far as your resources allow” mode. That will be VERY interesting. But if you want a game where more combat means your stuff gets cooler over time, that’s Draw Steel!

So the heroes chase the creatures back to the Reformation Center’s ruins where the nest is beneath, and they kill the rest of them. The silence orb is a detail taken from MandyMod’s Reformation Center adventure - a small detail now that the place is in disrepair. I did come up with on the spot that the heroes could take the orb out of there and use it as a new treasure, but that required a check the players failed.

Now, the cutscene. I wanted to complicate the narrative if the heroes wanted to raid Wachterhouse but not complete the job (that is, confront and maybe kill Fiona Wachter). If the heroes were to go upstairs and murder Fiona, no cutscene, obviously. But to raid her cellar, prevent the ritual in which they were going to sacrifice Yeska to Strahd, and then not finish the job? That will have consequences. Consequences I am very excited to play out next week - because not just the heroes are in danger, people the heroes care about are in danger! Also, Fiona might now be in league with a Dark Power. We’ll see how that develops!

One of my players after the session was commenting on how she was feeling as a higher level hero. She said that she forgot how badass the heroes are here because the vast majority of the population of this setting are normal people. She had to remember that a fight that seemed pretty normal to them would have wrecked any other normal person. And then said how she was dreading the next session because there are different ways to target heroes that are super strong - target the normal people the heroes care about. Which is exactly what I was doing. That feels like the danger I was going for is working!

I think I have it in me to write a more complex blog post about cutscenes and the use of dramatic irony in TTRPGs, but that's for another time. For now, I refer you to this Matt Colville video where he talks about that.

Until next time!