Session 27 — The Wife's Favour

Area: S — Village of Krezk

Context

The party left Castle Ravenloft and went west to Krezk — the first movement on Strahd's session 26 offer to travel his lands. They did not walk there: the crossing was a portal, and Strahd controlled who went through it and in what order.

Krezk had never been touched by play before this session. The Abbey of Saint Markovia stands above the village, and the Tome of Strahd is still where the reading put it.

Nobody accepted. There was no answer to give. Strahd did not put the offer to them a second time — he told them. They were travelling his lands with him, and that was the end of the question.

The Armory

Before the portal, Logi walked the castle alone and went into the armory.

He found nothing of note, and it did not come up again.

The Favour

Mark was not allowed to travel with the party. Taara asked for it. She does not like him, and she asked her husband to keep him out of the trip.

Strahd granted it, and said so in those words — that he was listening to his wife, and giving her what she wanted, because he wants what is between them kept good. It read as a husband indulging a small unkindness.

It was not that. He took her request and did something else with it.

She asked in front of the whole table. Her reason was Vess: she believes Mark killed her — the version Strahd's book wrote into her at the session 26 breakfast — and she would not travel with the man who did it. Strahd granted it out loud, for everyone to hear.

The Portal

The party went through — Myra with Kyra, Taara, Logi, Khione and Yager. Mark went through last — invisible, and unable to be interacted with. Whatever the rest of them could have done about him at that moment, they could not: he was not there to be spoken to, touched, or argued over.

The party knows Mark was left behind. That is the version they are carrying: he did not come. They do not know he came through the portal at all, they do not know Strahd teleported him away, and they do not know where he was taken.

Krezk

The party arrived as the burgomaster's highest guests. Dmitri Krezkov received them with everything the village has to give — no gate refusal, no bargaining for entry, no wine to deliver first. The walled village that turns strangers away politely opened for these strangers.

The villagers are a little shivery about it. Not hostile, not fleeing — off, in a way that stays inside ordinary manners. They act normal, and the normal is a fraction too careful.

They came as guests of the lord. Strahd's name was spoken: the party were received as the guests of the lord of Barovia, and the village's careful manners are wrapped around exactly that.

The Shrine of the White Sun

At the pool on the north end of the village stands the shrine the ancestors of Krezk built to the Morninglord — the Shrine of the White Sun.

Khione prayed there first. The Morninglord answered her: he confirmed he is the morning god, that he gives life, and told her not to trust anybody. She asked him for guidance. He told her she would have to find it herself.

Taara prayed there after. The Morninglord spoke to her about connecting with the people. Only she could hear him. As they spoke, some of the mist over the shrine thinned, letting a little light onto it.

The mist closed again once the prayers ended.

Burgomaster Krezkov's House

The party stayed the night there.

The Hunt

At the end of midday, Khione, Taara, and Logi went hunting in the woods outside the village.

It was a good hunt.

Where It Stands

• The party is in Krezk, housed and honoured, one member short and aware of it.
• Mark is in the abbey madhouse, teleported there by Strahd at Taara's request, and the party believes he never left the castle.
• In the madhouse Mark chose, unprompted, to kill about forty of its sixty mongrelfolk. Strahd had arranged it and left. It was an illusion — the mongrelfolk are alive and the Abbot has lost nothing — and Mark does not know that yet.
• Taara got the favour she asked for and does not know what it bought.
• Nobody in the party has been to the abbey. The scarecrow in the garden has not been touched.
• The Cleaver of the Last Cut grew to the length of a greatsword on about forty cuts. Mark cannot put it down, the party has not seen it, and it sheds at most two cuts a night — about twenty nights to shrink back.
• Khione and Taara have each spoken with the Morninglord at the Shrine of the White Sun; a little of the mist over it thinned while they did, and closed again after.
• Khione, Taara, and Logi hunted the woods outside Krezk at midday, and it was a good hunt.