Session 18: The Accounting

Aftermath of the Registry House

After approximately one hour, Vess was successfully extracted from the burning building. Logi sustained burns to his hands during the rescue attempt. Vess provided healing once they were clear of the structure.

The Road

The group reassembled on the Old Svalich Road and continued toward Vallaki. No birds were present near the house as they left.

During travel, Khione caught a raven and began keeping it as a food source. The raven spoke. This raised uncertainty about its nature — including the possibility that it was a transformed human child. The raven is in fact a wereraven, one of the Keepers of the Feather, though the party did not establish this. Then the raven escaped.

Later on the road, mushrooms were collected from the roadside. Consumed raw, these produce a perceptual distortion in which the consumer believes themselves to be the object the mushrooms grew on. This was attempted and reflected on afterward as unwise. Consumed cooked, the mushrooms produced a sensation of increased physical strength. Two members of the party reported this effect. Corvin was also involved in their consumption, though the outcome of his experience was not established.

Vallaki — The Eight Children

Several days of travel brought them to Vallaki. The gates were iron-barred, set into a fifteen-foot palisade. The guards — among them Dargos — recognized the party. The deal had been entry in exchange for the witch's death. The witch was dead. The gates opened.

Dargos asked about the witch first. That part was answered. Then he asked about the children.

Lucian Jarov's parents were in the crowd. They had been told someone was coming back. They had been waiting. A villager named Andrei was among those present. The answer was in the party's faces before anyone spoke.

The party told the truth: the children had been consumed before the party ever reached the windmill. The dream pastries that had been sold through the village — some of which people in that crowd had bought and eaten — were made from them. The windmill was now ash and the hag was dead, and none of that restored what had been taken.

The Jarov parents asked directly.

"Did you find them? Were they alive?"

"How many did you save?"

"Did she suffer?"

There was no clean answer to any of these. The suffering question had a true answer: yes, and not briefly — years of it, not the short mercy of a fight. Whether this was said aloud was the party's own accounting.

What the Village Offered

Entry had been the deal, and the village honored it. A place to sleep indoors, hot food, acknowledgment that someone had gone and done the thing the village could not. The hag was dead. The windmill was ash. The fact that it was not enough was not charged against the party in the village's reckoning, though the Jarov parents held their own.