Path of Righteousness#
Characters#
- Sephire — Oath of Vengeance Paladin / The Fiend Warlock
- Minerva — Circle of Stars Druid / Life Domain Cleric
- Froggo — Gloom Stalker Ranger / Rogue
- Asep — Battle Smith Artificer / Bladesinging Wizard
Away This Session#
- Kairos — Soulknife Rogue
- Verdian Suyanti — College of Glamour Bard
Session Overview#
Sephire’s Perspective — T=36.00 Hours to Festival#
Sephire did not sleep well in Strahd’s castle.
He woke to cold — not the natural cold of stone walls at night, but the deliberate cold of something that had entered the room while he slept and decided to wait. The hall outside his chamber was filled with dense fog, thick enough to push back against him when he tried to walk into it. The only paths remaining open were the chamber behind him and the library ahead.
He stepped into the library.
The cold followed.
Sephire drew on his divine sense. A humanoid undead — close. Very close. Somewhere in the dark between the shelves. He reached into his bag and confirmed the book was still there. It was.
Then a voice came from above him, from somewhere on the wall of books itself:
“You have something that are not supposed to be taken…. oh fool mortal!”
A mummified figure lunged from the shelves.
The fight was harder than the Ghouls had been. Whatever this creature was — a Vampire Spawn preserved past the point of recognition, its flesh long since dried to parchment over old bone — it had been here for a very long time and it fought like something that had been waiting for exactly this. Sephire held his ground, and when the creature began to weaken he pushed forward until it stilled.
But not before they spoke.
“My master tasked me to make sure nothing ever goes in and nothing ever goes out.”
“I know your noble task, but so am I in a task to retrieve this book. If you allow this I will return it after I use it.”
“Your solution is not fitting, mortal. I already promised my master that I won’t allow something goes out and something goes in.”
Sephire looked at the creature — a century of loyalty, desiccated and alone in an abandoned castle, still keeping a promise to someone who had not returned — and asked the only question that made sense to ask.
“Why do you keep doing this anyway? Isn’t Strahd gone already? It’s been centuries.”
“He still in here. He turned into a stone.”
Silence.
Sephire thought of the Deep Purple Netherese Stone sitting in HAWA’s safehouse. He thought of what Asep had deduced on the Pequod — that the Stone functioned like a commune|Commune spell, reaching toward a divine being. He thought of the book in his bag, titled ‘Guide of Selune Bodies Manipulation.’
“Which stone do you mean? Do you mean the stone that is deep in this castle?”
The creature said nothing.
Then it offered one more thing, unprompted — something that had clearly been sitting in it for a long time, the kind of information that accumulates weight when there is nobody to tell it to:
“Someone who has Strahd’s bloodline also came here recently. A Dhampir.”
Sephire thought of WARGA LOKAL. Of the way he moved through Ravenloft like someone who knew where the walls were before he touched them.
“You mean the pale man who was with me? How can that be? Did Strahd transfuse his blood to him?”
“No… my master had a lover.”
The creature said nothing more after that. It set its feet. Sephire set his.
“So — mortal. Let us finish this. Our ideals and our promises have collided with each other.”
One final exchange. Sephire struck last.
The fog dissipated. The library returned to normal — dusty, silent, a hundred years of undisturbed knowledge surrounding one man standing over what remained of the most loyal creature in Barovia.
WARGA LOKAL appeared in the doorway shortly after.
“What happened?”
“Seems like a Vampire Spawn was after us.”
“Then we must go now. It’s not safe here.”
Sephire agreed. But before he left he found something that hadn’t been there before — or perhaps had always been there, waiting to be earned. A locked box beneath the bed in Strahd’s private chamber. Old. Ornate. The lock yielded to his touch as if it recognized something in him.
Inside: a 03.PlayerLog&Handouts/Mechanics/CLI/items/deck-of-many-things|Deck of Many Things. Twelve cards. Ancient illustrations. And on the inside of the lid, in handwriting that hadn’t been used in a century:
“For the guest who earns the right to leave.”
WARGA LOKAL watched without comment as Sephire drew a single card.
The Ruin.
A one-time use disintegrate|Disintegrate spell — DC 17, stored in the card until Sephire chooses to spend it. The card crumbled the moment it was drawn. The box closed by itself. The rest of the deck was gone.
They left the castle together as the first light touched the road back to Vallaki.
Froggo, Kairos & Asep’s Perspective — T=74.00 Hours to Festival#
Two dead githyanki-mpmm|Githyanki on the floor of the second floor of The Loudest Inn.
Asep stared at what he had done. Not at the bodies specifically — at the fact of them. The Magic Missile had been instinct. Pressure and instinct and the wrong combination of both. He had sworn something once and it had survived every test until tonight and now it hadn’t and the room smelled like ozone and copper and it was very quiet.
He went downstairs without speaking.
Froggo, still moving through the room with the practical focus of someone who processes things later, found a heavy-crossbow|Heavy Crossbow among the Githyanki’s equipment — engraved with alien geometric patterns, clearly not made in this plane. He stowed it and followed.
At the bar, Steven the Dwarf waited with the particular patience of a man who has seen worse.
“You done? Here is your gold.”
Asep didn’t look at it.
“Just give it to my friend.”
He walked outside.
Froggo descended the stairs a moment later. Steven looked at the crossbow. Then up at Froggo.
“What’s wrong with your friend?”
“Something heavy, maybe.” A shrug. “So — is it okay that there are two dead bodies in the second floor?”
“Two dead bodies??? What did you do, boy?”
“You were winking when we went up. We thought that was okay.”
Steven’s expression shifted into something more businesslike.
“Well. It’ll cost ya. Thirty gold a piece for removal. So taking it from your payment — you’ll have forty gold left.”
“There are also some arrows stuck in the walls. And sword marks.”
“Sword marks. How many?”
“Around… thirty?”
“Thirty. Each one costs three gold. That’s ninety. You OWE ME fifty gold.”
Froggo considered this with the expression of someone doing arithmetic they don’t like the result of. Then:
“What if I help you remove the bodies myself? There’s a river outside the big window on the second floor. Tonight, eight hours from now, I come back and we handle it together. No removal fee.”
"…Like that, huh. Fine. Eight hours. You come back and clean the mess you made."
“Of course. Now — I need to find someone who knows about the Thieves Guild.”
Steven studied him for a moment.
“Thieves, huh. I know someone who knows someone who knows someone. Find four lampposts that burn on whale oil — not magic, whale oil — and there’ll be someone waiting. Then you say: Dimana ada cahaya rembulan, disitu kami berada. I think it’s kami not kita. One of those.”
“Whale oil lamps?”
“Most lamps in this city are magical. Only four burn whale oil. Find them.”
Froggo said his piece and left to find Asep.
Asep was outside, not cooling down exactly — just existing somewhere that wasn’t the room. Froggo gave him the short version of what Steven said. Asep listened. Then he said that he was going to try to reach Sephire at Castle Ravenloft, that someone should.
They parted ways at the intersection. Froggo went to find Kairos. Asep went toward the main gate.
Asep’s Perspective — T=68.00 Hours to Festival#
The main gate was closed.
Asep, still wearing his disguise-self|Disguise Self as a Vallaki guard, approached with the particular confidence of someone who has a plan and is about to discover the plan has a hole in it.
“Where are you going, soldier? The city is in lockdown. Nobody goes in, nobody goes out. Orders are to sterilize the city until the Festival.”
“Lockdown?”
“You haven’t heard?” The senior guard looked at him more carefully. “Where are your standard-issue weapons?”
“I am an artificer. This is a weapon I constructed myself.”
“That is simply not allowed. Get to the barracks. Requisition standard-issue equipment. NOW GO.”
Asep went to the barracks.
He found an empty bed and lay down on it in a guard uniform that wasn’t his, in a city he couldn’t leave, having killed someone an hour ago with a spell he cast without thinking.
The barracks were loud with guards preparing for Festival duty. Nobody looked at him twice.
He stared at the ceiling.
Froggo & Kairos’s Perspective — T=72.00 Hours to Festival#
Four whale oil lampposts in a city where most lamps run on magic.
Froggo’s approach was direct: climb a building, get a view of the street grid, look for the four that burned differently. A patrol guard saw him partway up and challenged him. Froggo talked his way past it with the particular confidence of someone who has no good explanation and commits to it anyway. The guard left unconvinced but unable to articulate why.
Froggo jumped rooftops for a while. Then he fell. Tis but a scratch, and he had what he needed — the fourth lamppost, and the dead end wall beside it that every other lamppost led away from.
He found the button. The wall opened. A stairway descended.
Someone was waiting at the bottom.
“Who are we?”
“Dimana ada cahaya rembulan, disitu kita berada.”
A pause.
“You were sent by Steven. I told him it’s kami not kita*.* A sigh. “Oh well. You found us, which means you can probably handle what comes next. Welcome to our security perimeter.”
Froggo and Kairos entered the sewers beneath the Lower City.
Minerva’s Perspective — T=68.00 Hours to Festival#
The royal carriage arrived at Vallaki Castle as the evening settled.
Minerva was not alone. With her: a sword swallower, a fire eater, and a young ballerina — dark curly hair, eyes too wide, holding herself the way people hold themselves when they’re trying not to show they’re frightened. The coachman told them to climb the main stairs. The guard at the top would direct them.
The sword swallower went first. Confident. The fire eater followed. The ballerina reached for Minerva’s hand.
She asked Minerva to walk first so she could follow close behind, holding on.
Minerva said yes.
At the top of the stairs a guard with a manifest wrote them down. He used a word for them that Minerva heard and filed away. Fresh products. She looked at the manifest and saw another ballerina already checked in — earlier in the evening, before their carriage arrived.
They were directed to the entertainers’ changing room. Inside: performers of various kinds changing without self-consciousness, costumes everywhere, the practical noise of people preparing to be looked at. Minerva used druidcraft to conjure her moon druid dress — elegant, appropriate, her own. The ballerina had nothing suitable.
Minerva found her a dress from the rack. It was too open. She used druidcraft again to adjust it, and when there wasn’t enough fabric she used her own robes to cover the girl while she changed.
A large man guarded the door to the main hall. He looked at the ballerina and shook his head — there was already a ballerina inside, he didn’t want to bore the guests with repetition. Only Minerva could go in.
The ballerina’s hand let go.
Minerva went through the door.
The party was elegant in the way that expensive things are elegant — everything beautiful, nothing warm. Entertainers moved through the space performing for clusters of nobles who evaluated rather than watched. The attention in the room moved in a specific pattern that Minerva couldn’t read yet but could feel.
She performed. Stars filled the hall. Some guests drifted toward her, appreciative.
Then the Crown Prince tapped his wine glass and the room focused.
He thanked his guests. He gestured toward the entertainers and said that if anyone was pleased with a performance they were welcome to approach the entertainer directly to arrange a show. He said the word the way people say words that mean something else.
Then he introduced HAWA — a Selûnite cleric studying Barovia’s lunar patterns — and asked his guests to assist her research if they could.
HAWA was already looking at Minerva by the time her name was spoken.
They found a moment together in the movement of the party. HAWA spoke quickly and quietly:
The Thieves Guild had an operative in this room. A private investigator named Radovan Czeslav Voss was also present — unusual, worth noting. She was going to the castle library. She wanted Minerva to come.
Then she moved away into the crowd.
Minerva stood in the middle of the party, in the middle of the stars she had summoned, and thought about what she had just walked into.
Before she could move, Adrianna appeared at her side.
Not the woman she had seen in the audience with gold-lined robes. The first Adrianna — the one from the Cabaret, the one who had supposedly gone home to Barovia City.
She was here. She was watching the room with the specific, calibrated attention of someone who was not simply attending a party.
Minerva asked her directly what she was doing here.
Adrianna looked at her. Then at the room. Then back.
“Everything that will happen here is for the benefit of the people of Barovia.”
She didn’t say anything else.
SESSION END.
Key Learnings#
- Strahd von Zarovich turned into a stone. The mummified creature in Ravenloft’s library confirmed it directly. The Deep Purple Netherese Stone in HAWA’s possession may be his prison — or his anchor to this plane.
- ADAM|WARGA LOKAL is Strahd’s son. The creature revealed that Strahd had a lover. WARGA LOKAL is a Dhampir. The implication is direct. He has been maintaining his father’s domain — alone — for a century.
- The Thieves Guild entrance is marked by four whale oil lampposts in the Lower City. The password to gain access is:
- Dimana ada cahaya rembulan, disitu kami berada.
- Note: kami not kita. Steven got it wrong.
- Froggo and Kairos have entered the Guild’s security perimeter beneath the Lower City sewers.
- Asep is embedded in Vallaki’s guard barracks. He cannot leave the city. He is currently inside the Festival’s security apparatus without intending to be.
- Radovan Czeslav Voss was identified by HAWA as a private investigator attending the Crown Prince’s party. HAWA considers his presence unusual.
- Adrianna is inside Vallaki Castle — not as an absentee but as an active operative. Her words to Minerva suggest she is working toward something that will resolve at the Festival.
Who Did They Meet?#
Sephire:
- A mummified Vampire Spawn — Strahd’s personal guardian of the library. Destroyed.
- ADAM|WARGA LOKAL
Froggo & Kairos:
- Steven the Dwarf, The Loudest Inn
- The Thieves Guild Dungeonkeeper — at the base of the whale oil lamppost stairway
Asep:
- The senior gate guard — Vallaki main gate
- Vallaki guard barracks, various guards (none suspicious of him yet)
Minerva:
- Alice — a young ballerina, dark curly hair, first-time attendee at the Crown Prince’s private gathering. Minerva covered her with her robes while she changed. She was turned away at the door to the main hall.
- HAWA
- Adrianna — present at the Castle party, confirmed active, watching the room
Items of Importance#
- Deck of Many Things — The Ruin Card
- Drawn by Sephire in Castle Ravenloft.
- One-time use disintegrate|Disintegrate spell, DC 17.
- The card crumbled upon drawing. The rest of the deck is gone.
- Githyanki-Engraved heavy-crossbow|Heavy Crossbow +1
- Found by Froggo among the dead Githyanki’s equipment.
- Alien geometric engravings. Not made in this plane.