- Zack tries to saw off Izek’s demonic arm. He can’t saw it, so he starts chopping. Eventually he cuts it off, minus an 18" gouged out section of floor or so. Collateral. Whoops.
- Paloma asks Brume to tend to Victor Vallakovich, since he was knocked unconscious by Zach. Brume asks why she’s worried about him, and Paloma doesn’t really have a good answer. She just thinks Victor could be a good friend.
- Paloma talks to Victor. He asks why she’s in his house. She keeps equivocating, but eventually admits they came to kill Baron Vargas Vallakovich.
- Victor says “Took you long enough!”. She asks if she can escort him outside to safety, and he replies with something like “Don’t you think I’m safe in my own house? And if I’m not, shouldn’t I already know the way out?”
- Eventually he agrees to stay safe, and promptly disappears after casting some spell.
- Brume searches the library. He finds 38 gold in Izek’s pouch, 3 keys in the desk, and grabs a few books from the hundreds, perhaps thousands that are there. One is a book of horrid poetry, written by someone named Vogon. The second is a book that looks like it’s on advanced alchemy, although Brume can’t make much sense of many diagrams, and lots of words are unfamiliar too him. The third is a “religious” book: “Volo’s Guide to the Gods: All Gods Poop, Divinely”
- Exploring the other rooms before the main bedroom, Brume comes across the wedding dress that’s in pristine shape and kept wonderfully clean. He decides it’s part the dress from one of his dreams and takes it.
- Paloma questions his new attire. Brume says her socio-gender constructs aren’t applicable in a time and place such as Barovia, and bitch he looks hot in that wedding dress anyways.
- Okay, maybe that last bullet point didn’t happen. But it totally should have.
- Brume opens the door to the Baron’s room, hoping to not get hit with an axe like last time.
- The Baron’s two large, angry, and territorial looking mastiffs (Solya and Vedma) guard the door while the Baron is behind them, rapier drawn. Baroness Lydia Petrovna is behind the Baron, whimpering in fear. They also see a draw cord on ceiling that presumably leads to attack.
- Brume tries to cast Hold Person on the Baron but it doesn’t succeed.
- One of the dogs gets its teeth into Bogdan and drags him to the ground, growling while its jaw is clamped on the monk’s forearm
- Paloma, thinking only of the pretty puppies (and not the being-chewed-on-monk), casts Speak With Animals and gets the mastiff to agree to loosen his bite on the monk in exchange for some jerky.
- Brume tries to talk the situation down with the Baron, but the Baron is angry and beyond reason. THIS IS HIS TOWN, HIS FAMILY HAS OWNED IT FOR GENERATIONS. HIS SHITS HAVE MORE PEDIGREE THAN YOU UP-JUMPED PISSANT PEASANTS. Etc etc.
- He refuses to surrender. Instead, he commands the other mastiff to sit on Bogdan and put its teeth near the man’s throat. He asks then, near insane with rage, if the party would pay the price of their friend’s life to take him out. Brume tries to reason more, but the noble won’t hear it. He commands the dogs to attack, and they do, nearly killing Bogdan.
- Brume, desperate to save his friend and not really understanding how frail the Baron is behind his braggadocio, unleashes his full power in a devastating Thunderwave, instantly killing one dog and the Baron both. The two corpses slam into the far wall and nearly explode, falling in a shattered lump that’s barely recognizable.
- Bogdan frees himself from the other mastiff and applies “stick to the forehead” in return, knocking the large dog unconcsious
- During this, Brume hears thumbs and growls from the nearby locked closet. One of the keys from the desk opens this closet and behind it is a dragonborn.
- The creature is Kheldar. He was kidnapped by the baron for being a “monster” in town, and savagely beaten and tortured to see if more of his kind were about, and what new kind of monster he was to work for Strahd.
- The party introduces themselves (Paloma is more curious than afraid, despite never having seen a dragonborn before – or even knowing what they were). Kheldar re-arms himself and grabs a cloak from the Baron’s closet to try and hide his head/face.
- Brume takes that Baron’s body (head only?) and has Zack carry Izek’s demon arm and they deliver them outside to the mob.
- Lady Wachter gives a speech about how the Baron’s days are over, and how she plans on making Vallaki better and safer. She has three steps for now: make sure the Baron’s family or possibly allies aren’t going to try and get revenge, rid the empty houses of any vermin and/or zombies hiding in them, and restore the flow of wine from The Wizard of Wines (since wine is the chief source of happiness for most Barovians)
- Brume & Zack go back upstairs
- Paloma wants to keep the unconscious mastiff as a pet. She tries to talk Bogdan into carrying it. The argument does not go in her favor.
- The master bedroom is a mess. The Baroness, Lydia, has passed out from shock. The party carries her to Victor’s room and leave her laying in his bed for now.
- they then go explore the attic, coming back to the door where Bogdan got shocked a lot before
- they search the door but don’t find any clues as to what caused the lightning, so Kheldar opens the door … and gets lit up with lightning for his trouble. He manages to stay on his feat, although his scales smell highly of ozone now.
- Inside, it’s much like Paloma remember seeing. There are 6 undead cats (cat skeletons, really) roaming around that she decides are fluffy and has to capture into a sack, for safekeeping.
- there looks to be a teleportation circle on the floor, the best the party can figure. Kheldar thinks it looks more like a dragon egg.
- they find clothes in a trunk that seem to belong to the butler and a lady’s maid. the clothes are covered in a thick, jelly-like ooze that smells like rotten fruit.
- they leave the attack and take the clothes to the servants in the first floor. Servants agree that they belonged to the butler and lady’s maid, and are freaked out enough to leave in case whatever happened to the two missing people happens to them to.
- they take Lydia to the Saint Andral’s Church so her brother, Father Lucian Petrovich, can attend to her.
- While there, Father Lucian discusses what happened and says Brume should seek penance in the morning during the next sunrise service.
- meanwhile, Paloma took the bag o’ dead cats to an “empty” house. The house turned out to have five swarms of rats in it, that viciously bit the ranger … until she freed the little devil kitties. The rats fled in fear, the cats chased in morbid enjoyment, and the ranger shut the door, making sure to remember which house to come back to later.
- She took the mastiff into the church when she got back.
- <what>
- the party realizes they left Ireena and Ismark with the mob and Lady Wachter. They hope they can meet up with them at the Festival of the Blazing Sun
- Paloma and Bogdan tell the rest of the party what happened in the basement of the Wachterhaus with the cult of The Four Quarters.
- They decide to look into that after the festival or maybe another day, since Ireena and Ismark are alone
- They go to the town square for the festival, rain turns into a full on thunderstorm for a while and then abets just before the festival starts
- At the festival, Lady Wachter leads. She lights a large wicker ball on fire, symbolizing the lights of Vallaki returning the sun to brightness. She several attendees each get a small featureless wicker doll, that they light on fire, and then toss “into the sun”. This is the act of Vallakians burning away the monsters with the light of the day and The Morninglord returning to strength.
- Urwin Martikov, innkeep of the Blue Water Inn, passes out free wine to the villagers in celebration of the Baron’s demise.
- Brume remembers hearing about Bluto the town drunk/fisherman, and seeks him out to talk about Lake Zarovich and the Mad Mage. Bluto thinks the lake is cursed, since he can’t get fish; and with no fish he can’t afford to live and buy wine. He stears clear of the Mad Mage, but he has seen him from a distance.
- Bluto says maybe there’s a monster in the bottom of the lake that needs a sacrifice or something. Brume questions him on it, and he laughs at the joke of a sacrifice, saying he doesn’t know what would break a curse anyways. But then he left weirdly and abruptly.
- After lots of drinks from everyone, depleting a large portion of the town’s wine, screams start happening
- a sabretooth tiger is chasing Nikolai and Karl Wachter through the streets as they flee, and behind the tiger runs Rictavio.
- The tiger gets held back by Brume’s Gust of Wind, but not before it catches the scent of Paloma.
- Rictavio says the tiger won’t hurt anyone if not attacked, and the party avoids it.
- Then Rictavio sees Paloma climbing a nearby building and swears, because the one type of people the tiger does hate is Vistani.
- After many tense moments, Brume’ Gust of Wind and Rictavio managed to calm the tiger down.
- Apparently the Wachter boys had freed it from Rictavio’s wagon accidentally. Rictavio claims he has it because it’s from his circus days. When asked why it hates Vistani, he looked at Paloma like he was nervous or afraid of her reaction, and said it was because another troupe of Vistani had mistreated it when he first arrived.

Treasure:

• 38g in Izek’s pouch
• Wedding Dress. It kinda makes Brume look fat, though.
• VIctor’s spellbook
• book on alchemy
• book of Vogon Poetry
• book entitled “Volo’s Guide to the Gods: All Gods Poop, Divinely”. Totally good for shits ‘n’ giggles.
• Baron’s breastplate