Day 9: The Festival of the Blazing Sun

Day 9 (Prizrachnayaluna 13, 735/?)

Third day in Vallaki. The Festival of the Blazing Sun. The party is attacked by cultists and abducts one in return. They meet Arabelle, fight some dire wolves, realize Sylvain has developed A Thing about wolves (Sylvain denies this), go to the Vistani camp, learn about the dusk elves' dark history, and get their belongings delivered by a beleagured and bloodied Ispati.  

Act 2, Scene 1: Vallaki: The Festival of the Blazing Sun

The following morning dawned grey and gloomy, with our heroes fully ready to head out straightaway to avoid the impending festival. These plans were compromised, however, by their mentioning such plans to the Martikovs, who suggested that it would be difficult to leave the city the morning of a festival without a pressing, urgent reason to do so. With Danica noting that if there was any indication that the Martikovs had had prior knowledge of such inadvisable plans it could mean the loss of their inn or worse, it seemed skipping the festival would not be quite so easy as our heroes had originally thought.   Both Sylvain and Osrin set their sights on a morning bath, while Ri-An — discontent with the wear and tear on their fine new dress after the events of two nights before — elected to drop it off at the tailor's for some mending. However, keenly aware that some of the local authorities might be feeling less than friendly towards them, they donned the cunning disguise of masculinity. Though this disguise did fool the town guard, Anfisa clocked Ri-An when they dropped the dress off, but politely pretended she didn't.   Back at the Blue Water Inn, Osrin became a formative moment in Brom's puberty, and Sylvain decided to poke Zantras. Zantras poked Sylvain back in the brain.   With their newly silvered weapons, spear, and chain arriving that morning care of Ispati and a rush order by the blacksmith, our heroes begrudgingly made their way to the festival, with some leaving certain items behind to be picked up from the inn on their way out of town.   The festival did not go as planned — by any parties, arguably — though it did go about how you'd expect a festival to go in Barovia. While sleet pelted down on Vallaki, rendering Vargas's attempts to light the large wicker sun on fire to get the festival going comically futile, Vargas's smile did not dim. Even as a lone guard laughed, sending a thrill of tension through the crowd, he launched into a speech, revealing his grand master plan: blaming the party for everything wrong in Vallaki.   Sylvain immediately piped up, heckling the burgomaster and pointing out his many failures and notable absence while the town was being attacked by vampires, and hot on his heels came Lady Fiona Wachter, taking the opportunity to try to turn the crowd against Vargas instead. At this latest speech, Sylvain added in something along the lines of — and I'm paraphrasing here — "you can fuck off and die too, Fiona."   While Sylvain tried to redirect the crowd, Ayduin tried reasoning with some guards nearby, with mixed results, while around the party, Rictavio, the Martikovs, and their allies closed ranks, trying to stick together amidst the growing murmurs and tension. Despite these efforts, it didn't take long for violence to erupt, with part of the crowd making for the burgomaster and his family, part of the crowd going for Fiona and her sons, and part of the crowd going for the party and their allies.   A brutal battle ensued that saw both Sylvain and Osrin nearly go down, saved only by the deals they'd made, when fireballs rained down on the mob from an unseen source. Danica Dorakova, too, was nearly killed. Ayduin saw Brom and Bray disappear, leaving their clothing behind, and two small ravens flying away towards the Blue Water Inn — while Urwin ran to look after the boys and Rictavio ran for his wagon, a partly healed Danica and one of her allies led the party to the west gate to help them flee. However, one aspect of the riot was not prepared to let them go — the cultists who'd been trying to abduct Bodaway and Sylvain, one of whom Sylvain had knocked unconscious and was dragging behind him. A chase ensued, with the cultists eventually collapsing in exhaustion, and Danica bid the party farewell, promising to send along the belongings they'd left at the inn that morning.   A lone unconscious cultist in tow, they took a path into the woods, seeking out the Vistani, and a chance to recover from the trials they'd withstood in the town.  

Act 2, Scene 2: Flight From Vallaki

Having successfully escaped the riots in Vallaki, our heroes had two goals: to get to the Vallaki Vistani and the dusk elves, and to find out why people had been trying to abduct them in the middle of a riot.   Dragging their bound, gagged, unconscious captive through the Svalich Woods for an hour and a half or so, they came to a stop just shy of the camp, to regroup, wait for the man to wake up, and to question him.   While they waited, they heard footsteps approaching, and found themselves faced with a young Vistani girl, Arabelle. Should she have been wandering around in the woods alone, even as a Vistana? Probably not. Is this kind of behaviour the kind of thing that gets you kidnapped by randoms? Absolutely. Still, Arabelle showed no fear to the party, as gruesomely wounded and battle-hardened as they looked in that moment, and as in possession of a captive they happened to be at the time, and she proceeded to sass the hell out of them. After giving Osrin a brief reading, Arabelle packed up her tarokka cards again and said she'd see them back at the camp.   After a healing touch from Osrin, the cultist awoke, quickly realizing just how dire the situation he'd found himself in was. He proved largely uncooperative, though he confessed — or "confessed" — readily enough that he had no idea who had sent the fireballs into the crowd. When asked about his motivations, he claimed he was trying to fulfill the prophecy, putting our heroes immediately in mind of Fiona Wachter and the prophecy she'd regaled them with over dinner only two nights before. However, when pressed further, the man thrust his head forward to slit his own throat on the blade Sylvain was using to threaten him with.   And Osrin used her newfound ability to stabilize a dying creature on the man, and the party went back to waiting.   After a brief discussion in which Ayduin suggested a charm spell and Sylvain thought of course you'd suggest that, it was agreed that they'd follow Bodaway's suggestion instead, stringing the man up by his feet while they waited for him to regain consciousness.   While waiting for the man to awaken and watching him grow redder and redder in the face, they heard a growling nearby and found themselves face to face with two dire wolves. Ayduin attempted to talk them down but they seemed uninterested in his words, lunging at the party instead. A brief battle ensued, in which Sylvain found himself on the verge of panic at being face to face with wolves again — so obviously unsettled that his companions noticed. With Ri-An suggesting Sylvain try eating the meat to cure his fear and Sylvain suggesting hell no, some of the party set to butchering and skinning the bodies.   Realizing that leaving a man who had been on the verge of death for several hours bound and hanging upside down for a prolonged period of time might result in him dying again, the party lowered the cultist to the ground, though Bodaway made a point of placing a severed dire wolf head on his chest for when he woke up. As soon as he did, Bodaway hoisted him up again, leaving him swinging and spattered in wolf gore as the party resumed their interrogation. However, the man proved utterly unwilling to talk, even when threatened with the creative removal of body parts, and the party accepted him as a lost cause, slitting his throat and hauling his corpse and what remained of the wolf corpses deeper into the woods, so as not to attract too many predators too close to the camp.   And, finally, they made their way to the Vallaki Vistani camp, hopeful for some respite.  

Act 2, Scene 3: The Vallaki Vistani Camp

Having dealt with their pet cultist, our heroes approached the Vallaki Vistani camp, its hill rising out of the mist, dusk elf residences dotting the hillside, each one guarded by a single guard.   At the top of the hill, they passed by a pair of women helping an elderly Vistani gentleman to the edge of the camp to pee, and were directed to Arrigal or Luvash. Finding Arabelle once again speaking to what turned out to be her uncle Arrigal, who welcomed them to the camp but warned it may be a rowdy night, as they were drinking what little wine remained to them as the regular winery delivery was late. The party replied that they intended to remedy that situation soon, which seemed to endear them to Arrigal, who led them into the main tent to meet his brother Luvash, the leader of the camp.   Luvash said they were welcome to stay as long as they liked, and sleep in the tent or one of the wagons, if they so desired. With the knowledge that dinner was still some time away, they went over to Manda, who they'd spotted at one of the cooking fires. They asked where they might be able to clean up before settling in for the night, and she told them to go find her wagon and get Rudolph to lead them to the nearby stream.   With Arabelle steadily trailing them from a distance, they found their exuberant young friend, who happily led them to the stream to get cleaned up, though he seemed confused by the absence of Ireena and Ri-An — Ri-An, of course, still disguised as a man. Assuring him they'd explain everything in time, he was eventually guided away from the rest of the group by Sylvain to give the ladies some privacy. Rudolph expressed a reluctance to leave them unattended in the woods, cementing the suspicions they had that the Vistani had some manner of protection other Barovians did not.   After an initial few minutes of exposure to Rudolph's train-of-thought rambling, Sylvain attempted to redirect his energy by asking him about the Dusk Elves. In return he received a story perhaps more memorable than he'd bargained for: long ago, the Dusk Elves had crossed Strahd by killing one of their own, a woman who Strahd had been courting, and in retaliation Strahd had killed every female Dusk Elf, children included. He had doomed them to a long, slow genocide, as the remaining male Dusk Elves lived out their remaining centuries knowing they were the last of their kind. As a mark of their shame, the remaining male elves had severed the tops of their ears.   Still, Rudolph suggested their leader, Kasimir Velikov, would likely want to speak to them, and suggested they see Celegal Uvarov about any bows and arrows they might have an interest in. He also confided in Sylvain about his latest project: a still he and his brother Atanasie had been working on in order to produce a foreign drink called "vodka."   Returning to the main tent with the worst of the gore washed away, the party reconnected with their Vistani friends and set about making some new ones. Ri-An, though disappointed that Lech was nowhere to be seen, met his hat-making brother Grigori, and commissioned a hat from him. Sometime after dinner, the party heard many wolves howling in the distance, and shortly after a new arrival came to the camp: a battered, bloody, sooty Ispati, who had been attacked by wolves while bringing the party what belongings they'd left behind in Vallaki. After settling in with some food and wine, Ispati reported on what had happened in Vallaki since they'd fled earlier. Much of the town had still been, when he left, in flames, as the mobs had moved on from the town square and rampaged through the town. The inn was almost certainly gone, as the lingering scent of smoke on their bags could attest. Both the Wachter family and Vallakovich family seemed to be fully extinct, though no one could say for sure where the burgomaster's son had gone. They'd even burned down the brothel, though the Reformation Centre still stood.   As the evening wore on, some of the party noticed several Vistani paying close attention to them from around the tent, including Arrigal. However, none of them made any move to insert themselves into the party's conversation, and it wasn't long before Ri-An announced to the tent as a whole that Sylvain would be telling the lot of them a story: the story of what had happened in Vallaki. Quickly realizing that this was Ri-An's attempt at revenge for what they perceived as Sylvain having broken multiple rules — between his mysterious revivification after the fireball and his diving into the mob to take a captive rather than fleeing to safety — Sylvain nevertheless obliged, telling the gruesome tale to a suddenly much quieter tent. Not all who heard the sombre story seemed troubled, however: several Vistani, including Arrigal, looked rather pleased to hear of Vallaki's misfortunes.   Unsurprising, given the town's policy on refusing entry to any of their number.   The rest of the evening was relatively subdued, at least among the party. While the Vistani revelled in the last of their wine, they nursed their injuries and took their rest, trying to recuperate before whatever the rest of the day brought. While keeping watch, Bodaway heard a child's scream in the night, but after a brief discussion, he, Ri-An, and Osrin decided to tell Ayduin and leave it for the morning.