Lady Wachter and the Burgomaster

Area N3: Burgomaster's Mansion / Area N4: Wachterhaus, Vallaki

Status (as of session 24): Running without the party. They passed through Vallaki (sessions 18–22) without engaging either side, and the town's politics kept moving after they left. Decide offscreen before Vallaki matters again: did the Festival of the Blazing Sun happen, and what did it cost; has Lady Wachter made her move; is Udo still in the closet. Myra and Kyra were last in Vallaki (sessions 22–23) — whatever happened there, Myra saw the start of it.

The Split

Vallaki has two competing authorities and only room for one.

Baron Vargas Vallakovich runs the town through mandatory festivals, public stocks, and his enforcer Izek Strazni. His logic is delusional but internally consistent: if everyone performs happiness loudly enough, Strahd's shadow will lift. The Festival of the Blazing Sun is days away — a wicker sun being built in the town square to be burned. Attendance is required. Anyone expressing doubts is arrested for "malicious unhappiness" and put in the stocks with a plaster donkey head. Two of his household staff have gone missing this week and he doesn't know why.

Lady Fiona Wachter runs Wachterhaus (area N4) and has been waiting for her moment for years. She does not believe the festivals will save anyone. She believes Strahd is a fact of life in Barovia, not a problem to be solved, and that the only sane response is to govern the town in a way that keeps Strahd satisfied rather than provoked. She has a devil cult. She has eight animated skeletons in her cellar. She has a pet imp named Majesto who sits invisible at cult gatherings and occasionally drops electrum coins to reinforce her followers' faith. She will help the party overthrow the burgomaster. She will not help them fight Strahd.

The Sides

If the party sides with or helps the burgomaster: He is dangerous in the way that petty authority with dungeons is dangerous. He will demand they attend the festival as special guests and publicly endorse his "All will be well!" He will not tolerate disrespect. His two mastiffs follow him everywhere. If he decides the party is a threat, he sends twelve guards, then Izek, then a mob. He cannot be reasoned with on the subject of his own delusion.

If the party sides with Lady Wachter: She is a careful and patient woman who has been playing a long game. She will receive them in the parlor of Wachterhaus and explain what she wants: the burgomaster removed. Her specific ask is that the party kill Izek Strazni first — she can handle the rest. She is polite, precise, and absolutely not going to become their ally against Strahd. If the party agrees and then tries to use her against Strahd, she will end the agreement.

If the party does neither: Vallaki's politics will surface anyway. Izek patrols the streets. The stocks are occupied. People in the town square will ask the party what they think of the festival. Whatever they say will get back to someone.

Izek Strazni

The burgomaster's henchman. A large man with a fiendish right arm that protrudes from his sleeve — oversized, mottled, wrong. He can conjure fire from it. He is the real enforcement mechanism of the Baron's authority and has a history of violence that everyone in Vallaki knows and no one discusses.

He is also, privately, obsessed. Izek has been commissioning dolls from Blinsky the toymaker — one a month, each one a closer approximation of a woman's face and figure that exists only in his dreams. He does not know her name. The dolls are in his bedroom at the mansion (area N3j), arranged on shelves and piled on the bed, dozens of them, all identical. He has not told anyone about this.

He is dangerous in a fight and should be treated as such. Lady Wachter wants him dead before the party does anything else. This is not unreasonable — without Izek, the baron's actual coercive power collapses.

Victor Vallakovich

The burgomaster's son lives in the mansion attic (area N3t) and avoids his parents at all costs. He has carved a skull into his door and hung a sign that reads "ALL IS NOT WELL!" He found a spellbook in the library years ago and has been teaching himself magic since. He is currently attempting to cast a teleportation circle. His circle is wrong — fatally wrong, and he doesn't know it. Two household servants have been disintegrated testing it.

He is not an ally of his father and not an enemy of the party. He is a young man in a bad situation using the only tool he has found, pointed at the only goal that feels real: leaving. He will not help the burgomaster against the party. He will not help the party unless they can offer something that matters to him — information about his circle, access to better spell components, or a genuine path out of Barovia that isn't his own broken teleportation ring.

Victor's circle is drawn in chalk under a rug in the attic. A DC 15 Arcana check reveals it is catastrophically flawed. The servants who tested it were disintegrated, which the party can discover from the baron's records (two household staff vanished in the past week — noted in the mansion's books as missing).

The Locked Closet

In the baron's mansion (area N3m): a man named Udo Lukovich is chained to the wall, badly beaten, wearing nothing but a loincloth. He was arrested for carrying a sign suggesting the Vallakians feed the baron to the wolves. His mother, Willemina Rikalova, prays for him every night at St. Andral's Church. The baron has the key to his chains. The chains break with 10 damage. If freed, Udo will eventually tell Father Lucian what was done to him.

Freeing Udo without the baron's consent is a crime. If it's witnessed, Izek mobilizes the town guard.

The Cult

Wachterhaus has a cellar and a secret room beneath it. The cult meets in the room — a stone chamber with a black pentagram on the floor and five chairs. Four cult fanatics, robed in black. Majesto, the imp, perched invisible on the fifth chair. The ritual is theater: Lady Wachter reads her manifesto, Majesto drops electrum coins, the cultists believe something answered their prayers. They are not wrong that something responded. They may not have been told what.

In the cellar: eight skeletons buried in the dirt floor, animated and waiting. They will not attack anyone who says "Let the dead remain at rest" before crossing the floor. Only Lady Wachter's household and cult members know the passphrase.

The Difficulty

There is no version of this that ends with both the baron and Lady Wachter happy. The party can help either, neither, or work around both — but Vallaki's politics are a pressure system and they are standing in the middle of it.

Helping Lady Wachter removes a tyrant and replaces him with a Strahd-collaborator. Helping the baron means endorsing a man who has been putting children in the stocks for inherited unhappiness. Doing nothing means the Festival of the Blazing Sun proceeds, the baron's confidence grows, and Izek continues patrolling.

The more specific problem: if the party is passing through Vallaki on the way to Ravenloft at Strahd's invitation, Lady Wachter may find that useful — and tell them so.