Through the Mists

Session 28: The Bones Really Tied the Room Together

At a glance

Summary

The morning began with plans for a home beyond the Mists. Richten House was now the company’s bastion, and its heirs chose the rooms that would serve them: barracks and garden for Rage, Arcane Study and Workshop for Carver, and Séance Parlor and Library for Ignatius’s occult and mundane studies.

Down in the Blue Water Inn’s taproom, Ignatius and Carver found Hyskosa already eating a light breakfast. Rage was still asleep. They discussed the previous night’s horror, describing the animated house as something occult that could only be harmed from outside once it awakened. Today’s errands seemed quieter: a toymaker and a church. Hyskosa said the church shone with a powerful, blinding aura.

Ignatius began to say that he had a question. Hyskosa supplied its subject before he could ask: what Van Richten had said about him. The seer had not been present for that conversation. He cast bones and a rat’s tail for a reading, and the morning abruptly lost its ordinary shape. To Carver, the tail lay still. To Ignatius, it flopped and rolled toward him, then seemed to crawl onto his body. He flung his pouches to the floor and cowered. Rage arrived in time to see him retreat outside, claiming a need for fresh air.

Ignatius recoils from a detached rat tail among Hyskosa's casting bones while Carver watches in puzzlement at the inn breakfast table.

To Carver, it lay still. To Ignatius, it was coming closer. Image details

Hyskosa was reluctant to speak of Darkon. When he had written the Hexad, he said, its words had flowed through him without yielding their full meaning. He could not say whether Azalin had completed the ritual, and he could not recall its details. There had been many prophecies. Futures were fickle things; touch them, and they could move. The discussion reminded him of Cassimir, an ancient dusk elf living outside Vallaki who, he said, had endured in this land since before Strahd.

Ignatius returned after gathering himself. Rage used Van Richten’s truth trinket and asked Hyskosa whether he had lied that day. He said he had not. Asked why the hunter distrusted him, Hyskosa blamed Van Richten’s hatred of the Vistani and suggested that the man was hiding something from both the party and himself. Hyskosa also said he would kill Strahd if he could.

The bones and tail were a seer’s tools, he explained, their positions revealing possible futures. For greater insight he pointed toward Madame Eva, whom he considered more skilled than himself. She lived southeast, off the road. Ignatius questioned her loyalties, recalling Van Richten’s claim that she served Strahd. Hyskosa offered a different account: Eva played a long game, leaving clues and helping adventurers while unable to oppose Strahd directly. She had motives of her own, and might somehow bestow ultimate power within Barovia. It was a formidable promise, and still only the seer’s account.

On the way to the toymaker, smoke drew them back toward Watcher House. The building sat displaced from its foundation, still smoldering. Militia milled around several cloth-covered bodies, and Izek stood farther down the street. Then came the soft voice of the burgomaster, walking two mastiffs so enormous they approached the size of small hippos. All would be well. Tomorrow there would be a parade and festival. Everyone must smile. The townspeople did their best, giving the company its first sight of Barovian smiles under circumstances that made them difficult to welcome.

The burgomaster walks two enormous mastiffs past frightened smiling citizens, covered bodies, and the smoking ruins of Watcher House.

All would be well. Everyone must smile. Image details

Outside the toy shop, something small and furry darted from the ground to the roof. A tiny, strangely masked face appeared at a window and vanished. Inside, a heavyset man in colorful silks lifted a little monkey onto his shoulder and greeted them with his motto: “Is no fun, is no Blinsky!” The monkey was Piccolo, a gift from Rictavio.

Blinsky brightened at their compliments, and Carver found a fellow craftsman whose toys deserved close attention. They relayed Izek’s request that he continue his work. In a corner stood the explanation: numerous dolls of the same woman, each at a different stage of completion. Every time Izek inspected one, he demanded another detail be changed. Blinsky said the commissions were enforced with threats.

Carver and Blinsky examine wooden dolls at a workbench while Piccolo perches on the toymaker's shoulder and matching female dolls line a shelf.

A fellow craftsman, a watchful monkey, and the same woman’s face again and again. Image details

Rage bargained for the entire collection. Fifty gold bought the dolls, and Blinsky seemed delighted by the prospect of no longer seeing Izek. He added a gift: a doll with interchangeable heads. Business had been poor, he said, and his clockwork masterpiece had gone missing. If they could recover the clockwork man from Strahd’s castle, he would make them any toy they wanted. They left with the likenesses of a woman still unnamed and another reason to think about the castle.

Their next errand took them toward St. Andral’s Church, passing a group of Vistani lingering outside the southern gates. Women’s voices carried from the church before they reached it. A crowd waited to enter, with an older man tending to the mourners. Nearby, a young gravedigger leaned on his shovel and complained of too much work for too little pay. It was usually busier at night, he said, and things were getting worse. Pressed by Rage, he admitted that the church’s sacred protection had been broken, then returned to his work.

Inside, Father Lucian gave the trouble a name. The bones of St. Andral had been stolen. Without them, the church could no longer protect the people who gathered there at night. The company showed him the chest of bones recovered from Watcher House, but he rejected it: those were a family heirloom, kept safe or kept secret, not his missing relics.

Lucian had told a terrified young woman about the bones beneath the church floor to reassure her. She feared death, hunger, bats, vampires, rats—almost everything. She was the gravedigger’s sister, and the priest suspected she had taken them. The relics must be returned before anyone discovered that the refuge was no longer sacred ground. The company agreed to help, and Lucian turned back to lead his congregation in prayer.

Ignatius lifted a floorboard in the chapel. Beneath it lay an empty crypt, ten feet square and five feet deep, with evidence that something blunt had pried the opening apart. Among the mourners, one woman’s grief had a different cause: her son, a shoemaker, had been imprisoned for speaking against the burgomaster at the last festival.

They found the gravedigger, Milivoj, in the cemetery. Rage charged him, seized his shirt, and demanded the bones. There were bones everywhere, the boy retorted, but his sister had not taken these. Rage activated his truth trinket and threatened to take a finger. Milivoj confessed. The coffinmaker had been asking about magical bones; when his sister told him of the relics, he stole them and sold them for seventy-five silver.

With Rage’s arm around him, Milivoj led the company to the coffinmaker’s shuttered shop. Rage pounded on the door. A voice eventually insisted the business was closed. When the man refused to open, Rage broke the door down and entered the darkness, leaving the gravedigger horrified. More threats followed: the coffinmaker should explain himself before Rage began taking limbs. He yielded. The bones were upstairs, in the bedroom wardrobe.

Rage found them where the coffinmaker said they would be. He entrusted them to Milivoj with orders to go straight back to Father Lucian. On the floor of his shop, the coffinmaker cowered and admitted that someone had hired him to obtain the relics. Ignatius could not draw out the name. The bones were on their way back, but the person who had paid to leave the church defenseless remained beyond their reach.

The gray-bearded coffinmaker cowers on his workshop floor as Rage stands with his axe lowered and Ignatius questions him beside the broken doorway.

The bones were on their way back. The employer still had no name. Image details

Key events

  1. The company chose its six bastion rooms at Richten House.
  2. Hyskosa described the uncertain origin and meaning of his Hexad and named Cassimir and Madame Eva as leads.
  3. The burgomaster ordered smiles amid the aftermath of Watcher House’s destruction and announced tomorrow’s festival.
  4. Blinsky’s dolls explained the work behind Izek’s search; Rage bought the collection.
  5. Father Lucian revealed that stolen saintly bones had stripped the church of its protection.
  6. Milivoj confessed to selling the relics; Rage recovered them and sent him back to the church with them.
  7. The coffinmaker admitted he had an employer, but Ignatius did not learn who it was.

Decisions and consequences

  • Return the relics urgently. Milivoj carries them back under Rage’s orders; delivery and renewed consecration have not yet been witnessed.
  • Purchase Izek’s commissions. The party now has the dolls, but Izek’s response and the woman’s identity remain unknown.
  • Compel answers. Rage used the truth trinket with Hyskosa and Milivoj, then forced entry and threatened the coffinmaker. Hyskosa’s denial of lying does not independently verify his interpretations of prophecy or other people’s motives.

People and places

  • Hyskosa, Cassimir, and Madame Eva: The breakfast conversation opened two possible avenues into Barovia’s older mysteries.
  • Blinsky and Piccolo: The toymaker and Rictavio’s gifted monkey occupy a shop tied to Izek’s search.
  • Father Lucian and Milivoj: The priest needs the stolen protection restored; the gravedigger admitted the theft and was sent to make restitution.
  • The coffinmaker: Found with the relics and now a lead to the person who commissioned their removal.
  • Watcher House and Vallaki: Smoldering ruins, covered bodies, and compelled smiles mark the morning after the fire.

Clues, lore, and notable items

  • Hyskosa anticipated a question about a conversation he had not attended; only Ignatius perceived the rat’s tail moving.
  • The dolls all depict the same unidentified woman. Blinsky also gave the company a doll with interchangeable heads.
  • Blinsky offered a custom toy for the return of his missing clockwork man from Strahd’s castle.
  • The Watcher family bones are distinct from the stolen saint’s relics.
  • Milivoj received seventy-five silver for the theft; the coffinmaker’s own employer remains unnamed.

Story threads

Rewards, losses, and character changes

  • Bastion selections: Rage—Barracks and Garden; Carver—Arcane Study and Workshop; Ignatius—Séance Parlor and Library. Staffing, orders, and operating benefits were not established.
  • Acquired: Izek’s commissioned dolls and Blinsky’s gift. Rage made the purchase; their eventual physical custodian is unrecorded.
  • Recovered and entrusted: St. Andral’s bones, handed to Milivoj for immediate return.
  • Fear overcome: Ignatius recovered from the reading’s fright and rejoined the conversation.

Memorable moments

  • A rat’s tail moved for one watcher and lay motionless for another.
  • “All will be well,” with two enormous mastiffs at the burgomaster’s side.
  • “Is no fun, is no Blinsky!”
  • The missing bones, as the conversation put it, had really tied the room together.

Open questions

  • Who hired the coffinmaker, and why did they want the church left unprotected?
  • Will Milivoj deliver the relics in time, and will their return restore the sanctuary?
  • Whom do Izek’s dolls depict, and how will he react to their purchase?
  • What might Cassimir know, and what does Madame Eva want?
  • What awaits Vallaki at tomorrow’s parade and festival?

Next session

  • Immediate situation: The company remains in the coffinmaker’s shop, with its owner cowering on the floor and his employer still unnamed.
  • Likely goals: Follow the employer’s trail and confirm the bones reach Father Lucian before the church’s vulnerability is exposed.

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