Session 19: Vallaki — First Night

Area: Vallaki

Splitting Up

The party reached Vallaki's main streets and divided. Khione, Vess, and Taara made for the Blue Water Inn. Corvin and Logi went looking for a blacksmith.

Arasek Stockyard

They did not find a blacksmith. They found Arasek Stockyard — a broad, walled yard near the center of town, ringed by locked storage sheds and a warehouse. Gunther and Yelena Arasek ran it together and sold what the town needed at the prices they chose to sell it at.

Corvin crossed the yard and walked toward a wagon parked at the south fence. The paint was peeling. The lettering on the sides read Rictavio's Carnival of Wonders in faded red. A heavy padlock hung on the door. He came close.

The wagon lurched. Something large threw itself against the inside wall. The sound — wood cracking under impact, a low inhuman snarl — was not the sound of something that wanted to stay in there. The sides of the wagon, on close inspection, were dark with old blood.

The Araseks did not comment.

Corvin asked about a crossbow. He was accommodated, at cost; nothing in the stockyard was priced cheaply. Logi bought a ring.

Blue Water Inn

The inn was warm and low-ceilinged, lit by lanterns above the bar and on the tables. The walls were mounted with wolf heads — a dozen at least, evenly spaced. The smell was beet soup, woodsmoke, and wine that had been in the barrels long enough to remember it.

Ravens sat in the rafters. A few more on the railing above the bar. The inn's staff left them undisturbed.

Urwin Martikov ran the kitchen and appeared in the taproom when needed. He was attentive in the way of men who give attention carefully. Danika tended bar.

Vess asked about resistance against Strahd.

Urwin took a moment before he answered. He mentioned the Wizards of Wine — a winery, to the west, outside the walls, in the valley. Whether this was an answer or the beginning of one was not resolved.

Rooms

Two rooms were taken for the night. Ten gold.

Evening at the Inn

The party drank. The wine from the barrels was not good wine, but it was available, and the evening stretched on past the point where quality became relevant.

Urwin found a quieter moment — away from the bar, away from the other guests — and spoke more plainly than he had before. He and Danika were not simply innkeepers. The ravens that roosted in the rafters and refused to be moved on were not simply ravens. The Martikovs were wereravens, and behind that: members of an organization called the Keepers of the Feather, a resistance that had operated against Strahd in the dark for years without making enough noise to be destroyed.

He explained what it was, what it was not, and what it could offer. It could not fight Strahd directly. It could pass information. It could provide shelter. It knew where things were — the Wizards of Wine winery chief among them, a place where the resistance had roots and where something had recently gone wrong.