- at Saint Andral’s Church, the party takes a short rest
- Brume and Kheldar experiment with Lady Wachter’s amulet. It has the appearance of the The Four Quarters emblem on it. The apparent age of the wearer is lessened, so the wearer appears several years younger. It’s affects seem variable based on the age of the wearer. It’s illusion only, as when the amulet is removed so is the seeming.
- the party asks Father Lucian Petrovich if he has ideas on where to keep Lady Wachter. He doesn’t want his church turned into a prison and suggests they use the manacles that held Udo Lukovich back at the Burgomaster’s mansion.
- Stella Wachter wakes up, and has reverted back to meowing like a cat. Her state of lucidity she exhibited before after Brume cast Lesser Restoration on has vanished.
- Brume is unhappy that Stella has reverted. He’s starting to feel like his best efforts keep being wasted in Barovia. After talking about her with Father Lucian, he suggests a possible solution. He’s heard rumors that the waters at the Shrine of the White Sun (at Krezk) are especially holy and have very strong healing powers. Perhaps they could help.
- the party heads to the former burgomaster’s house. There they lock up Lady Wachter, still gagged, to keep her out of trouble. They talked about going to the Blue Water Inn, but didn’t want Nikolai and Karl Wachter to see her tied up as she is.
- Victor Vallakovich is not back at the mansion
- They party decides they need to inform Urwin Martikov (as prospective Burgomaster) of their actions with Lady Wacther. Bogdan tries to pay the servants to go, but they refuse to leave for any amount of money at night time. “No point in being rich if I’ll be dead, dearie!”
- Deciding someone needs to watch Lady Wacher, the party splits. Zack, Brume, and Kheldar stay behind to guard Lady Wachter while Paloma and Bogdan head to the Inn to meet up with Urwin.
- On the way there, Paloma spots something reflecting the light of Bogdan’s torch. She examines it and finds a brass-looking spyglass. Oddly, when viewing the Inn through it (the only thing with enough light to see), it appeared as if it were raining even though it wasn’t.
- Talking to Urwin, they explain what happened with Lady Wachter.
- Urwin says he’ll speak more with his wife Danika but thinks he’ll accept the role of Burgomaster. He says it would go more smoothly if the party could convince Victor to back him, as Victor is next in line for the role based on traditional inheritance.
- When asked what he would do with Lady Wacher, Urwin suggests banishment for her. Send her with a fortnight’s worth of supplies into the wild blindfolder so she didn’t know where she was, and tell her she was exiled from the town. He suggested the wolf hunters, Szoldar Szoldarovich and Yevgeni Krushkin would handle her for payment.
- The party asks the two, and they agree to guard her for 10g each per day (double their normal scouting/guide fees since Lady Wachter is presumably dangerous).
- Bogdan and Paloma realize they haven’t heard from Ireena and Ismark, and ask Urwin about them.
- The innkeep tells the two that their friends went looking for them, accompanied by Vaz.
- The two return to the burgomaster’s mansion, explaining what they learned to the rest of the party.
- They take turns guarding Lady Wachter
- Brume catches her trying to unlock her manacles with a hairpin and gives her a stink eye, warning her not to try again
- Brume has another dream. Brume sees a young priest standing in a bright sun beam. The priest wears an amulet of the Morninglord, but it flashes white with its own inner light as well of that of the sun reflecting off of it. The young priest blesses a family of peasants around him, but each person he lays his blessing upon becomes sick, writhing in pain as their limbs deform. The sunlight stops shining down on the young priest but he doesn’t seem to notice. He keeps blessing family member after family member, moving from the older generations to the new, even as darkness falls around him, never realizing that those he bless come to harm, until finally the sun no longer shines on him at all.
- The next morning the servants have made a wolf-bacon breakfast for the party. They explain that they worked here for the Vallakovichs, but with them gone they hope the party will pay for their services. Bogdan gives them a silver for the breakfast.
- The party goes back to the Blue Water Inn, and there’s a full crowd there. Rictavio, the two wolf hunters Yegeni and Szoldar, Urwin, Danica, and their boys Brom and Bray.
- Rictavio helps the party out and manages to cast Detect Magic on Lady Wachter’s amulet. He tells them it only has magical auras of illusion, and is not a casting focus
- The two wolf hunters head to the burgomaster’s place to guard Lady Wachter
- The party heads toward Saint Andral’s Church, and along the way run into Ireena, Ismark, and Vaz.
- Those three went looking for the main party. They went to the Lady Wachter’s and saw no one there, and then stayed the night before coming back to the Church this morning
- Vaz and Ireena are flirting quite a bit. Vas has a couple of daggers and is super excited about becoming an adventurer finally. He gets disarmed by Bogdan easily, but manages to snag the dagger right back, slightly impressing the monk.
- Back at the Church, Lydia Petrovna, the former Baroness, is helping Father Lucian tend to Stella as well as just general maintenance and cleaning of the church.
- Paloma and the party talk to Lydia about Victor. She doesn’t think her son was ever engaged to Stella, or at least wasn’t to her knowledge. Stella had been around a few times but Victor never really showed any interest in her. This doesn’t seem to jive with the story Lady Wachter told of her daughter.
- Father Lucian says that for his penance in causing so much chaos, Brume should attempt to restore some order. He sets him the task of putting a burgomaster over Little Barovia, as no one has really stepped up with Ismark and Ireena gone from town and Kolyan Indirovich dead.
- The party visit’s Vasili von Holtz’s house, but he is not home. The maid acts like he is almost never home. There is a small toy dog named Hanz that attacts Paloma’s attention.
- The party, after exploring a bit while talking tot he maid, write a letter in Vasilli’s study and leave it for him, saying they wish to talk to him about the crates they found at Henrik van der Voort’s coffin shop.
- They head towards the Arasek Stockyard to meet with Victor for his lunchtime meeting with Paloma.
- On the way, two ravens are behaving oddly. Paloma uses Speak With Animals and finds out the two birds are squabbling like kids, and don’t realize that the ranger can talk to them until it’s too late after they’ve been “talking” to themselves for a while. They flee in surprise.