Session 20 - Professional Assassins... but not janitors

General Summary

• Lady Wachter is standing at the top of the stairs
  • The skeletons are her pets
  • She keeps calling us the saviors
  • More hooded figures are coming into the room with knives in their hands
  • She agrees to take another of Damia's strands of hair
  • She does not see the need for our protection, and is starting to politely lead us out
  • Ariah convinces her to have a meeting with us in private. Lady Wachter sends her servants home to rest for tomorrow
    • She leads us through some secret tunnels
    • We pass a servant on our way to the dining room. She is wearing the same amulet as the skeletons
    • Ernst is also in the dining room, as well as some servants providing refreshments
    • Damia tells her that Gob told us Izek Strazni is coming back with a small army
    • Richard talks up Gob and how dangerous he is, and that he is a king
    • Ariah asks for her step by step on tomorrows proceedins
      • They will apparently shout loudly and be threathening
      • They have no plans for violence
      • It will be a problem if we're standing close to the Burgomeister
      • Richard convinces her to lead us to the other, more private living room. Ernst is standing outside the door, and the curtains are closed
      • Her best tip for tomorrow is to not show up. She could hide us in her basement
      • We manage to convince her that it will be smart to tell us her plan
        • They are not the only ones with plans tomorrow
        • The town rising up against Vargas was not part of the plan. It will happen because of what happened with the vampires
        • The cult is about 30 people, there will be thousands of normal citizens in the crowd tomorrow
        • There will be someone hiding behind the stage
        • Their original plan was to rile people up, but they will do that themselves if there is a spark of something
        • The plan is to kick it off after the sun has been burned
        • When Vargas holds his speech, they'll shoot off "fireworks" (she means magic) and she will rally the crowd
        • She'll be lighting the fireworks herself, as the sign to begin. It will be done after the sun burns.
        • She is not certain Ireena will survive the rally. The people doesn't know her yet
        • Ariah picks up on something being off with Lady Wachters answers. She is lying
        • Lady Wachter will not be suggesting herself as Burgomeister, but her followers might
• We try to assassinate Lady Wachter
  • As she is distracted by Richard and looking out the window, Jonathan pulls a head-sized burlap sack over her head and tightens with unsettling familiarity.
  • The closing off of air silences her
  • Damia hurls out debris and (rapidly rusting) cutlery from her component pouch
  • Ariah manifests dark shackles to hold Lady Wachter in place
  • Richard places a chair under the doorhandle, trying his best to ignore the political assassination happening beside him
  • Damia comes back for another barrage, causing Lady Wachter's lifeless body to go limp in Jonathan's grasp
  • Damia's last attack shatters a window
  • Ernst politely knocks on the door and asks if Lady Wachter dropped a glass again
  • Jonathan crits on impersonating her and convincing him that everything is fine
  • Richard gets Damia to put a strahd coin on her
  • He makes two punctur wounds on her neck
  • He is way to casual about ways to disfigure corpses, mentioning that he has had to dispose of unruly servants
  • Jonathan gets rid of the blood on the carpet with Prestidigitation, and Ariah fixes the window with Mending
  • Richard casually dumps Lady Wachter into our human-sized burlap sack, and throws her into the thornbushes outside the window
    • He crit fails, then uses inspiration to roll a 2
    • She lands halfway out of the sack and on the lawn
    • Jonathan jumps out to hide her, but the knives embedded in her stick her to the ground
    • Ariah jumps out to help him, but her cloak gets stuck on the bush
    • She abandones it and they manage to get the corpse into the bag again
    • Damia casts Reduce on the corpse, allowing Ariah to hide it deep in a bush
    • Jonathan tries to free Ariah's cloak, but gets it more stuck than before
    • Ariah cuts some thornbushes to lay on top, with help from Damia and Richard
    • Then she activates her wings and flies Jonathan and herself back into the room
    • Her amulet grows a tad heavier
  • Jonathan uses Disguise Self to look like Lady Wachter. He wears the strahd amulet
  • We take a deep breath and exit the room
    • Jonathan explains to Ernst that she will be leaving with us due to some urgent business
    • She denies the use of a carriage
    • Ariah mentions that Jonathan teleported out
• We then walk back to our room, fake Lady Wachter in tow
  • Jonathan notices some people looking at him and whispering. Some of them bow (wearing cloaks like the ones in the basement)
• Back in our room we cover all the windows and barricade the door
  • Richard sleeps better than every
  • After a few hours Damia hears the hag, telling her that she will not be allowed to sleep before she has given them three more bottles of children's tears
    • She sneaks out and heads towards the orphanage
    • It has become frightingly natural to stab the toddler in the finger to make them cry
    • As the toddler is crying, she hears someone coming up the stairs
    • Damia uses her wind to jump down on the lawn, and safely hurries back to the inn with three filled flasks
    • The flasks are put under her pillow
  • When Damia wakes up, she notices that her nose and nails have grown and she has the beginning of a wart
• Ariah brings up Damia's changed appearance, and offers to listen
  • Damia tells the group that there were concequences for the event at the windmill
  • They turned her into their kin
  • She has to to their bidding almost every night. She tells us about the children's tears she has collected twice
  • They have a lot of control over her, and when she does she slowly turns into one of them
  • She explains her process of waking up the toddlers, making them cry and leaving
  • She shows us her amulet, and says "that doesn't mean I am free of this"
    • Jonathan sees a quick glimpse of a finger in the amulett
    • Damia says that the amulett is their way of taunting her. It contains the finger of a child.
    • She does not answer when asked whose finger it is
  • If one of the hags in the windmill dies, Damia takes their place (they have a ritual to fully turn her into a hag)
  • She hopes we can seek help in the City of Krezk
  • Ariah tells them what she knows about hags
    • They use old nature magic
    • There are always more of them
    • And they need eachother to live (?)
  • She also mentions that her mentor could tell us how to kill them. He was last seen heading out to hunt a powerful vampire
• Damia looks at the strahd amulett, and sees necromancy. We theorize that it might allow Jonathan to control skeletons

Plan

Figure out our plan for the festival, make sure everyone is on the same page.
Jonathan can seamlessly extend the duration of Disguise Self by casting it again.
He disguises as Lady Fiona Wachter. The festival is supposed to run as normal until the sun is burned, at which point "Lady Wachter" sends off "fireworks" (magic) and holds a speech to stir up the crowd.
After that we want her to publicly nominate Ireena Kolyana as new burgomeister (new person = new perspective. Priest of the Morninglord bla bla).
To achieve this, we need to keep Ireena safe from the protestors. Maybe have her join "Lady Wachter" for her speech?

Report Date

15 Mar 2023