Session 21: The Lost Soul

General Summary

In the cold, silent hours before dawn, a window slammed open at the Blue Water Inn, ushering in a breath of frost and a message scratched into the icy glass:
"Help Victor. Please."

The plea led the party to the attic of the Baron’s mansion, where a solemn and exhausted Victor Vallakovich confessed the truth: his friend, Stella Wachter, had been rendered a ghost—her soul stranded in the Ethereal Plane after a failed teleportation experiment. Her body remained intact, but her spirit grew fainter by the day, tormented and pursued by a phantom known as a gallows speaker.

Victor’s plan to restore Stella’s soul involved an ancient ritual capable of transporting mortals into the Ethereal Plane. To perform it, he would need a night hag’s heartstone—a wicked relic tied to fiends that feed on mortal dreams.

To learn more, the players studied Victor’s prized tome, Ethereal Entities: Denizens of the Unseen Realm by Mordenkainen. In its darkly poetic chapter "Night Hags: Matrons of Malevolence", they discovered the horrific truth: these cunning creatures corrupt mortals in their sleep, bartering for their morality, and stealing away their souls upon death to store as trophies in soul bags. A night hag’s heartstone allows her to pass freely into the Ethereal Plane, becoming an insidious dream-hunter.

Victor revealed that Stella had spotted just such a hag lurking in the dreams of Barovian refugees camped outside Vallaki’s walls. The party set off immediately.

In the Refugee Camp

Among tents hunched like bones at Vallaki’s edge, the party spoke with the worn and wary Emeric and grief-stricken Magda. They soon learned of a mysterious peddler—Morgantha—who had sold dream pastries to the refugees for months. Some suspected she offered more than comfort in a crust.

The truth emerged from a broken man: Franz, a widower, confessed that he had sold his own children—Myrtle and Feodor—to Morgantha two nights prior, in exchange for dreams. Now wracked by illness and guilt, Franz pleaded for forgiveness the party could not grant.

Morgantha, it seemed, had disappeared the moment the deal was done.

A Change in Power

Before returning to Victor, the party attended a historic ceremony in the town square: Baron Vargas Vallakovich, worn and weary, publicly abdicated. Standing on the scaffold meant for the Festival of the Blazing Sun, he declared:

“My rule has failed you. As of today, I step down as Burgomaster. In my place, Lady Wachter will take up the mantle of leadership.”

The crowd applauded uncertainly. Then Lady Fiona Wachter addressed Vallaki with cool authority:

“No citizen shall be punished for failing to smile. We move forward with reason, not delusion.”

"May Vallaki find sanctuary in the mercy of the mists, and may we come together stronger, more united, and more prosperous than ever before"

She ordered the release of all prisoners from the stocks and abolished all future festivals, save those on holy days.

Father Lucian, quietly watching from the crowd, voiced with dry amusement, that he has not previously heard the phrase “find sanctuary in the mercy of the mists” before, but that it is reminiscent of a passage he once read in a prayer book dedicated to Ezra, goddess of the Mists. He wonders aloud whether Vallaki shall soon see a religious revival of a different kind, then chuckles wryly and moves to return to St. Andral’s Church.

Return to Victor

Returning to Victor’s attic, Victor gave them learned of two ways of which to obtaina heartstone:

• Attempt to bargain with Night Hag in exchange for a loan of her heartstone - they must likely bargain something of great value - Hags are legendary dealmakers, and can be trusted to hew to the letter of their word—but only the letter.
• To obtain the heartstone by force, the they will need to incapacitate or kill the hag - However, this is far more difficult for multiple reasons:
• First, hags tend to gather in covens of three, a practice that makes each hag stronger and provides easy access to allies.
• Second, night hags in particular can use their heartstones to flee into the Ethereal Plane as soon as they feel threatened—an escape mechanism that can’t be counteracted. To prevent the hag from escaping into the Ethereal Plane mid-combat, you will need to seal her in a binding circle before initiating hostilities.
• Victor also advises the to obtain silvered weapons, which will be needed to bypass the hags’ strong demonic defenses.

The Heart of the Windmill

The player's tell Victor of Franz's words, he recognizes the "twisted, onyx-black stone" as resembling the description of a night hag's heartstone provided in Ethereal Entities.

Victor isn't sure what Franz meant about "the heart of the windmill."

He's sure it's not a heartstone, because night hags always keep their heartstones on their person.

Victor recalls seeing information about the windmill in an old book of records in his father's library.

Upon retrieving the book, Victor opens it to reveal a blueprint of the windmill, located alongside the original assignment of land from Baron Boris Vallakovich to Gustav and Elisabeth Durst.

He points out excitedly that the design for the millstone contains a compartment built into its side—likely as a place for storage. If the hags are hiding something other than a heartstone in the windmill, it's likely located in that compartment.

The Binding Ritual

Victor anxiously informs the players that he has been unable to find a means of performing the binding ritual. Turning to the relevant page in his spellbook, he shows them an illustration that depicts a binding circle, but complains that the book itself provides no information about how to actually create one.

Soon thereafter, Stella’s spirit was seen excitedly gesturing from the spirit mirror. As he interprets her handsigns, Victor’s eyes widen and his face pales.

Victor reluctantly reveals that Stella claims to have seen a similar binding circle while exploring the Ethereal Plane, but on a much larger scale: an enormous circle that surrounds the entirety of Wachterhaus and prevents her from entering the grounds.

Stella has been attempting to enter the estate in order to communicate with her mother, but has failed due to the circle’s presence.) Stella suspects that her mother, Lady Wachter, might know how to create one to bind the hags as well.

Stella, through Victor, suggests that the players visit Wachterhaus to request Lady Wachter’s help in binding the night hags. Stella warns them that her mother is a cautious and skeptical woman, especially where the Vallakoviches are concerned; if Lady Wachter doesn’t believe the players’ story, they will likely need to ask her to disable Wachterhaus’s protective circle in order to allow Stella to show her presence.

With time dwindling and Stella’s soul fading, the party now faces a dangerous decision: lure a night hag into the jaws of this ancient circle… or confront her on her own terms.