- outside of the Wachterhaus, Brume gags and binds Lady Wachter. He also takes her amulet away since he recognized the insignia of The Four Quarters cult on it. After taking off the amulet, she visibly ages and becomes more ugly/frail looking.
- Upstairs, Kheldar notices that the blankets are oddly piled on one side of the bed. After pulling them down, he and Paloma quickly realize they are looking at the corpse of Nikolai Wachter, the several-years dead husband of Lady Wachter. However the corpse is well-maintained and looks freshly dead, with zero signs of decay. His eyes are covered with coins as if in a funeral rite.
- they find a chest on a high shelf in the closet, solid iron and heavy. Kheldar tries to pry it open with a chisel from his smith’s tools but is unable to do so.
- at this point Bogdan and Brume come back upstairs with Lady Wachter and deposit her on the bed, still tied but conscious.
- Searching the room, Brume finds a set of keys hidden on a hook in the fireplace. Tossing it to Kheldar, they open the chest
- they find out the key disabled a poison dart trap that would have went off had the chest been forced open. Inside the chest is a thin lining of lead, and then a neatly stacked pile of human bones; an entire skeleton’s worth.
- Brume places the bones (just the skull?) in his bag with an attempt to use Speak With The Dead later.
- Brume wants to investigate Stella Wachter’s room as they heard her making cat-like sounds before. He finds the door locked and unable to get in, but Bogdan is able to help out and picks the lock open for him.
- Stella is clearly insane. She’s dirty and skinny, thinking she is a cat.
- Brume gets down low and tries to be gentle. He offers some trail tack biscuits and jerky to Stella. She starts to gnaw on the jerky but throws the biscuit aside.
- He tries to study her, and comes to the conclusion that there’s no physical malaise present and it’s instead simply magical. Using his powers to their fullest, he casts Lesser Restoration and manages to cure Stella.
- Stella starts screaming, freaking out due to seeing a strange man in her room and confusion in general. Brume decides he’s out of his wheelhouse and asks Paloma to come speak to Stella, woman-to-woman
- Paloma has to try and explain things to Stella, while artfully dodging answers like “we may have ever-so-slightly and accidentally bound-and-gagged your mom. But we’re her allies. Sorta.”
- Stella doesn’t remember what happened. Her memories seem to stop the day or maybe just hours before her meeting wtih Victor Vallakovich.
- After coming with Paloma into hero mother’s room, the sight of even more strangers (especially Kheldar) and her mom bound and older looking, causes Stella to pass out in shock
- meanwhile, Bogdan, Zack, and Kheldar explore the rest of the house. They unlock the door to the library and see a bunch of hostile cats.
- Kheldar and Zack figure out that one bookshelf is a fake door, and open it. Inside is another chest. Looking around for a key, they see it hanging around the neck of one of the mean cats.
- Bogdan rushes over to shut the door while Kheldar and Zack get kitty-claws to the face for their trouble. Eventually they managed to cut the collar off the cat and get the key.
- Inside they find a bunch of things, listed below in the treasure section.
- Brume leaves the room for a moment to check on the others, leaving Paloma alone with Stella and Lady Wachter.
- while she’s alone, she sees a folded paper float in through the open window. It’s floating while perfectly flat, not flying around in the wind. It turns out to be a simple handwritten note that says “Meet at the stockyards at lunchtime. – V”
- Paloma finally has her hawk stop playing with the dead imp and bags it up to take with as proof of Lady Wacther’s crimes. (This was Paloma?)
- they leave, with Brume carrying Stella and Zack holding the rope tied to Lady Wachter.

- Maybe 100’ from the Wachterhaus they cross a small brook and see a band of zombies shambling around in the dark. The zombies notice the party
- combat ensues. The zombies slash and bite their way through the group, but fall to pieces with a decent hit. Limbs fly. The party looks like it might be overrun until Brume Turns Undead, and that turns (heh heh heh) the tide of the battle in the parties favor. They spend the next several seconds slicing limbs and heads off zombies and pounding them into mush.
- Feeling tired after such a long day, they decide to adventure no more and head towards Saint Andral’s Church.

Questions:

• Does Paloma tell anyone about the note?

Treasure

• silk bag of 180 electrum pieces (1/2 gold each), each coin stamped with Strahd von Zarovich’s visage
• leather bag of 110 gold
• a very nice mahogany wood pipe
• five scrolls. notarized deeds for parcels of land given to the Wachter Family by Strahd nearly four centuries ago
• a supple leather case containing a manuscript by Lady Wachter called “The Devil You Know”, saying that devil-worship can lead to more happiness than the Baron’s festivals
• The Grimoire of the Four Quarters , which turned out to be fake
• a letter from Vasili von Holtz to one Lovina Wachter. The letter thanks Lovina for her “hospitality, loyalty, friendship over the years”. The letter is clearly very old. Looking through the tax records in the other part of the library, it turns out that Lovina was an ancestor of the current Wachters several generations back.