Session 19 – To Make The Angels Weep

4th Day of the 4th Quarter of the Moon of Songs, Season of Wines, Year 766.

Days in Barovia: 7. The moon waxes gibbous.

Dead Ringer

“Well that was about the most unpleasant experience of my life,” said the voice in Cornelius’ head. “So. Things haven’t quite gone to plan.”

“Yes Dickie, I agree, things haven’t gone to plan,” Cornelius said into empty air.

The manservant, having said nothing, let out a confused “Err, what?” and Van Richten’s voice again spoke into Cornelius’ mind.

“Ah. I forgot you were an idiot. It’s not Dickie. It’s me, Rudolph Van Richten.”

Cornelius scoffed, turning on his brother who with regularity spoke into his mind without moving his mouth. “Clarence, you can stop pretending to be Rudolph now, it’s not very funny- we’ve just killed the man.”

“What do you mean, pretending to be Rudolph?”

“Using the voice-in-the-head thing you do, pretending to be Rudolph, which is very insensitive in light of what has just taken place in this room!”

Clarence reached out telepathically to his older brother… but was rebuffed, his mental intrusion hitting some solid barrier, just as when he had reached out to Van Richten’s mind. He paused, shaking his head.

“The ring must be some sort of… abjuration against divination. I can’t reach your thoughts, brother.”

Cornelius heard Van Richten. “Your brother is correct. In addition, the ring stores my soul and allows me to communicate telepathically with whoever wears it.”

“Oh.” Cornelius frowned. “You know, I’m not really sure I like the idea of having old Rudolph there floating around in my head.”

“Well I don’t really like the idea of being in a ring, to be honest with you. So maybe we can work together to sort this out.”

“Fine.” The rest of the Bullingdon Boys were only hearing half of the conversation.

Paris asked Clarence and Dickie, as they stood by bemused, “What exactly is… Does Cornelius think he’s talking to Van Richten?”

Cornleius waved his apparently ring-less hand in Paris’ face. “Van Richten’s soul is encased on the invisible ring on my finger Paris, you’re a wizard, you should know this stuff.”

As it happens Paris did know about this; he was familiar with stories of spells  and magical items that could store a soul- the Phylactery of the Lich, the Magic Jar ritual, the Imprisonment of Minimus Containment and, in this case, the Ring of Mind Shielding. The ring, invisible when worn, acted as a ward against unwanted mental intrusion, scrying and the like, and also contained a failsafe in which if the wearer were slain their soul would be stored in an empty ring, as had Van Richten’s.

“Ah yes, I’ve made a horcrux of my own,” he lied, “I know precisely what is going on here.”

Cornelius suggested that as Paris was more knowledgeable perhaps he should wear the ring and communicate with Van Richten through the veil of death instead. Paris was more than happy to, and accepted the ring from Cornelius, slipping it over his own finger, where it became invisible once again.

“Heeello? Caaan yooou heeear me?” Paris spoke slowly and clearly.

The voice spoke in his head with some irritation, “Yes, I can hear you. Which one were you again?”

“Paris Digby, mighty wizard!”

“Oh.”

 “I have been chosen as the most qualified to bear thing ring and converse with your soul!”

Clarence rolled his eyes at Paris’ one sided conversation. “You do realise undoubtedly he does not require you to speak outl-“

“Shush, Clarence, I can’t hear the soul!” Paris closed his eyes in communion. “Do you have any instructions for us mortals?”

Paris heard a telepathic sigh. “Luckily I believe I have a way out of this,” Van Richten said. “Relay this to your group. You recall I had a plan to kill Strahd, that involv-“

“Oh, everyone, he has a plan to kill Strahd, listen up!” Paris called at his companions.

Cornelius frowned. “I thought we had a plan to kill Strahd!”

“Wait, wait-“ and to the ring, “Carry on.”

“It involved the ancient hag, and I was unwilling to explain further.”

“Yes?”

“Paris,” Cornelius interrupted, “Is there a way you can make it so we can all hear Rudolph speaking?”

“I will relay the information in just a second! We’re having a conversation, don’t interrupt.”

Van Richten continued. “My plan to kill Strahd was to take a hairpin from the witch- in itself a powerful magical artefact- and then, there is a ritual-“

“Is it the Zone of Truth?”

“What? No it wasn’t… Gods help me. The ritual is to imbue the needle with the blood of the Barovian royal line. Then, I would use the needle, enhanced by Strahd’s own bloodline, to trap his soul in the ring. That was my plan.”

“Right?”

“But obviously that’s not going to work now. Because I’m in the ring.”

“Did you not intend to get in the ring?”

Van Richten’s thought-speak dripped sardonically. “I did not intend to be turned into a horrible half-man, half-beast creature and be forced to kill myself to escape that form and be trapped in the ring, no, that was not originally part of my plan.”

“But you seemed so put together.”

“Well. The Abbot took me apart, and I didn’t like what he put back.”

Paris relayed the half of the conversation unheard- Van Richten’s plan- to his companions.

“Could somebody explain to me why it seems so impossible just to stake Strahd like we did with that other woman?” Cornelius asked, frustrated at hearing yet another overly-complex, not-enough-staking plan to defeat the vampire.

“And, who are the monarchs of Barovia?” Dickie asked- Van Richten’s plan required royal blood.

“Hold your horses!” Paris said, “all will be revealed. I am the container of all knowledge!” Clarence raised an eyebrow. Speaking to the ring, Paris asked, “So, what’s the new plan?”

“It’s the same plan, in reverse. We take the hairpin, imbue it with the blood, but rather than trapping Strahd’s soul in the ring with it… we find a suitable host, and push my soul out of the ring, into the host. Then I have a body again!”

Paris asked hesitantly, “Wouldn’t that be a little unfair on the host?”

“Well, that depends on the host.”

“Wouldn’t you be happy just to… Die? Peacefully?”

Van Richten said, “No. No I wouldn’t be happy just to die! No! My work isn’t finished. I have to slay the vampire, and take revenge for my son. So I would not be happy just to die! All you need to do is find the witch, get her needle, complete the blood ritual, and use the needle on a suitable host! Then I’ll have a body and we can kill Strahd.”

“I don’t mean to be rude but why do we need you to kill Strahd?”

“You think you can do it without me?”

“Cornelius thinks we can just stake him in the heart.”

Van Richten responded to this suggestion with a mental harrumph.

Paris repeated the conversation to the others, and then pulled the ring off. In a hushed whisper, he said “I don’t think he can hear me when I’ve got the ring off. Sounds like the poor chap’s gone mad. I’m very happy to help up to a point but I don’t like the idea of putting his soul into the body of an unwilling host. Isn’t that just what this Abbot’s been doing?”

Clarence shrugged. “The Abbot has been combining human and animal forms through alchemy. It’s very different.”

“If we put Rudolph’s soul in the body of the wife the Abbot was making,” said Cornelius, a gleam of intrigue in his eye, “he won’t be able to talk to us! That could be advantageous.”

“But, if we want to put him in a body surely it’ll be to help us?” asked Paris.

Dickie spoke up. “Before we put his soul in a body anywhere, I’ve still got questions about his plan. What is a witch’s hairpin? Where do we find it? What’s the royal line of Barovia? What’s the ritual? There’s lots of missing information.”

“Look,” Cornelius said sternly, “I think we’ve had enough success defeating Strahd on our own, without the help of Rudolph or anybody else, and without this stupid needle nonsense. So I say we chuck the ring in a ditch and carry with what we were doing before without anybody’s help, as we’ve been doing well enough on our own.”

“Well, we can decide whether to keep the ring or not once we’re out of this frankly horrendous abbey,” suggested Paris.

This was generally agreed upon. The mind-shielding powers of the ring may be useful as many of the vampires they had encountered had exhibited mind altering powers, and they were under no compulsion to follow Van Richten’s plan if they didn’t want to. Paris put the ring back on and reassured Van Richten he’d have a new body just as soon as they could get him one.

…Where Angels Fear To Tread

Meanwhile, looking about the operating theatre, beyond the corpse of Van Richten’s man-monster form and the surgical implements, Dickie found the monster hunter’s things piled neatly in a corner- clothes, jacket and sword cane. Paris, ever the fashionista, took the coat and cane.

On a side table Clarence found what he had been looking for- tomes of alchemical secrets, placed where the Abbot could reference them while operating. The contents were too complex and obtuse for Clarence to comprehend initially, but he put them in his pack for later study, cackling quietly.

The Bullingdon Boys left Van Richten’s mutilated body on the slab, and checked the rest of the floor- the nursery held only broken cribs, and the morgue was bare except for a raven at the window, who cawed and flapped away when disturbed.

They discussed what to do next. Dickie was all for getting away from the Abbey as quickly as possible. Paris didn’t want to leave Vasilika, and Cornelius demanded revenge for Van Richten. Clarence thought for a moment, and decided that if he were going to steal the books it would be better not to have their owner hounding him; he backed revenge.

With revenge decided, what remained was how they would enact it. Cornelius suggested they get the Abbot alone, where he could not summon hordes of ravenous Belviews to descend on them. Or maybe they poison the pot of gruel. Clarence suggested Paris and he had many magical methods for dealing with large mobs; Paris, however, was not so keen to throw fireballs at the innocent, even if they were insane. Maybe they could turn the creatures against him; although they would have to contend with the flesh golem guardian. The Belview’s were, for the most part, locked up, and Cornelius recalled that causing bedlam had not gone particularly well for the Bully Boys in Vallaki.

Paris asked Van Richten’s advice, which was not to test the Abbot, and certainly not to release the Belviews from their internment. “Rudolph says he has every confidence in us,” Paris told his companions.

Cornelius decided he could challenge the Abbot to a duel. “A battle of the sword. One man against the other, no magical tricks, no assistance. A straight-up good-old honest fight, and of course I will easily defeat him.”

“But if things did go wrong, we could always back you up,” offered Paris.

“Of course! We’d cheat. Like in all my duels at university. I remember the motto of my old society- ‘Never Challenge Anyone To A Fight Unless You’ve Got Boris Hiding In The Bushes With A Crossbow’.”

Straight faced Dickie said “My lord, it’s good to see that you have been constant through all your days.”

Decided on their plan, they rested in the hospital room briefly; Clarence, under his constant glamour, still held wounds from the lightning strike at the pool that needed treating. Cornelius put in a little practice with the Bullingdon rapier, practice he sorely needed if he were ever going to wield it in anger. Dickie discussed some of the finer points of swordsmanship in Cornelius’ earshot, without going so far as to give him advice directly. Paris rambled a half-conversation where he feigned modesty at Van Richten’s unheard praise; from the monster hunter in the ring came only sulky silence.

With an errant swish of the blade, the ancestral rapier went flying from Cornelius’ fingers, skidding across the room. He turned to his companions and made sure it was very clear that if it looked like he was losing, they should not hesitate to leap to his rescue.

The Bullingdon Boys left the residential wing and passed back along the curtain wall, avoiding the inmates below. In the belfry room, the horned and two-headed manservant of the Abbot, Clovin Belview, was playing a soft and gentle song on his viol. He made it clear he did not want to be disturbed, as his other head was sleeping. They headed downstairs.

The Abbot, young, handsome, clothed in a simple homespun habit of brown wool, stood with hands clasped behind his back, staring out of the west window. At the far end of the long wooden table, the corpse-bride Vasilika sat patiently.

Cornelius, with a glove borrowed from his servant in hand, strode down the stairs towards the Abbot. “Abbot! I wish to speak to you.”

The Abbot turned, an eyebrow raised. “Ah, Cornelius. You’re still here?”

“Yes. We are still here. We investigated your abbey, and found you had performed heinous experiments on one of our friends, Rudolph Van Richten. What say you?”

The Abbot frowned apologetically. “Ah. Yes… Perhaps my anger was a little misplaced, and perhaps there was some pride in it as well. I thought the man could be taught some… Humility.”

“Well, if you want to see what misplaced anger, and pride, and teaching humility looks like, I’ll teach you! I challenge you to a duel!”

Cornelius swung the glove at the Abbot’s face, but was arrested as the Abbot’s hand moved lightning fast from behind his back to clasp the wrist of the assailant. “Now, now,” the Abbot murmured, and in Cornelius’ head the Abbot’s voice said “You can still turn back from this path, Cornelius Bullingdon.” Cornelius glanced over his shoulder at his party, a look of some regret on his face.

Paris reacted first as the plan fell at the first hurdle. His spiritual weapon appeared, as Paris called down “Threaten our leader and feel the wrath of the Golden Bully Sword!” and the huge blade clumsily buffeted the Abbot.

The Abbot released Cornelius’ wrist, taking a half step back. “You DARE?!” he cried, and threw his hands forward; pure white light began to shine from his flesh, and the back of his robe billowed and buckled. As the light grew painfully bright, the robe fell away, revealing a pair of enormous snow-white feathery wings; and the abbot stood transformed in the glow, a huge Adonis, a perfect form, beautiful and terrible to behold. This angel’s eyes were of solid radiant light, the wooden holy-symbol shone as gold or platinum upon his chest, and in his hand he held an enormous golden mace.

“YOU DARE!” he roared. The mace flashed towards Cornelius, but in a flash of his own Holy Light the Bullingdon deflected the blow; but the backswing caught him in the midriff, and where the mace struck Corenlius’ clothing was left singed and glowing white.

The gentleman pugilist replied in the manner he knew best: striking with his fists, landing a flurry of blows and throwing the angel to the ground. As the Abbot fell, Dickie was upon him, leaping from the stairs, the blade of his dagger black with poison. Where the blade struck, darkness crept over the Abbot’s alabaster skin. The angel cried out in pain, and slammed the butt of its mace on the ground.

Blinding radiance erupted from the mace, engulfing the Bullingdon Boys, searing their clothes and flesh. As the great wings beat, buffeting Cornelius and Dickie, the Abbot rose into the air as Paris and Clarence threw errant rays of frost and eldritch energy where he had lain. The angel swept down on Clarence on the stair, reaching for him with one perfect hand- but the grasp faltered as a shock of pain from the poison ran through the Abbot’s body. But Clarence couldn’t avoid the mace, a falling star that struck a devastating blow.

“Fleeing to the air won’t save you from the Bullingdon Boys!” Cornelius cried, directing a bolt of holy light at this foe. But the light eschewed the angel, diverging around the figure as Cornelius scrambled up the stairs to put himself between his brother and the Abbot. Dickie rushed to join Cornelius but wasn’t able to get an angle on the abbot as he pushed past Paris, and then the mace lit up again, releasing a blast of light once more.

Seared by holy energy, Paris screamed, pointing his finger- flames erupted about the Abbot and singed and burning feathers fell from the great wings. One hand clutched the blackened wound on its side, and as it sagged forward Clarence, flesh raw from the holy light and only on the brink of consciousness, encased himself in his magical frost armour.

Paris reached down to his apprentice, and the red skin cleared and faded as magical energy healed Clarence. The Golden Bully Sword continued to pursue the angel, crashing into its back; again, the great wings beat, and the Abbot flew backward from the stairs. His hands grabbed Dickie by the shoulders, and even weakened by the poison is was able to heave the manservant off the stair. The angel turned as it flew back across the room, and as it spun it released Dickie, hurling him through the window in a crash of glass. Dickie tucked and rolled, and miraculously passed inches between two gravestones, landing sprawled in the thin grass.

“You fiend! That’s my manservant!” Cornelius leapt from the stairs, wrapping the Abbot and dragging him to the ground, the striking with fist and knee. As they crashed to the floor the angel turned its terrible gaze fully upon Cornelius, who shrunk back in fear.

Dickie rolled to his feet, and without hesitation sprinted back at the wall of the abbey. Full speed, he scrambled up the stones to the broken window, and coloured glass crunched beneath his boots as he stood. The dagger was still in his hand.

“I bet you weren’t expecting this, you billowing bastard!”

Dickie leapt from the window ledge, dagger clasped in both hands, towards the Abbot’s back. The blade crashed up to the hilt through the angel’s skull. Cornelius saw the wicked tip of the blade come juddering through one of those beautiful, shining eyes, which turned into a black pit, along with its twin. The wings withered and Dickie was surrounded by a downy rain as feathers fell around him.

The Abbot’s hand came up to its head, clutching at the protrusion, feeling around the hilt and blade and wound. “No… No… Where are you… Morninglord, where have you gone?” the holy symbol faded, and was but simple wood again; the golden mace fell to the floor and scattered as beads of dissipating light. “Don’t leave me! It’s… It’s so dark… So dark…” blind black eyes stared at Cornelius “So dark… Is this what it’s like for you? How do you bear it?”

“No,” replied Cornelius, suffusing himself with a holy white glow, “this is what it’s like for me.”

Dickie drew back the blade, and the angel, the Abbot, crumpled to the ground, dead.

Skipping Town

The door burst open and the Abbot’s flesh-golem guardian, who must have been summoned when they first assaulted the abbot, charged into the room; but the horrific construct was too late, its creator was already dead.

With blasts of eldritch energy, rays of frost, swings of the Golden Bully Sword, strikes of Cornelius’ fists and slashes of Dickie’s knife, the creature was repelled. In its frenzied attack it even started to tear itself apart, the stiches in the flesh tearing loose; under the Bullingdon Boys’ assault it was swiftly reduced to the constituent parts from which it had been created.

Cornelius looked around the room: the fallen angel, the dismembered flesh golem, Vasilika still sat at the table patiently. “Well, let’s go,” he said, and began to clamber out of the window broken by Dickie’s earlier passage.

“Nononono, wait!” Paris said, “Aren’t we going to rescue the construct? And the inmates?”

“They’re beyond saving,” Dickie said, moving over to the hearth. Standing on a chair, he pulled down the sun-engraved gold disk hanging on the wall. The disk, he discovered, concealed a niche in the wall where a crystal flask holding some glittering potion was concealed. “Ooh!”

Clarence collected some of the Abbot’s shed feathers, in the hope that they held some magical or alchemical properties.

“I want to talk to the girl,” Paris said.

Cornelius huffed. “She can’t speak back to you Paris, you know.”

“But she might be released from her spell now or something, I don’t know.”

“Well Dickie and I will be waiting here on the window ledge for when you’re finished.”

Clarence said, “I promised I would help determine the thoughts of the creature for you… However, I do not quite have the… energies, at the moment.”

“Oh, you have betrayed me!” Paris wailed. Regardless, he approached, still sat at the table. She looked confused, and her face was lined with concern as she looked from the corpse of the Abbot to Paris. “Um. Miss? Are you able to nod or shake your head?”

She nodded. And so, Paris was able to communicate with her: she did not grieve the Abbot’s death. She didn’t know what to do with herself, or the inmates. Paris was concerned that the might starve- Cornelius was happy to let them. Vasilika pointed at herself, pointed at the pot, pointed towards the residential wing.

“You want… to be put in the pot?” Paris asked, confused.

She shook her head, and Dickie said “I think she’s offering to take care of them, Paris.”

“Oh. Ah, well, that solves everything. No need to feel guilty! Jolly good show.” He patted Vasilika on the shoulder.

Paris left the corpse-bride some gold, as Cornelius stared in horror, and the Bullingdon Boys left the Abbey of St. Markovia by the window; avoiding the gate and the gravedigger-guards, they hopped over the low wall, and scuttled back down the cliff-face path to Krezk.

The last light of evening was beginning to fade as they reached the bottom of the path. Two of the town’s amateur guards awaited them, in their fur hats. As the Bullingdons approached they stood, hefting their spears, but Cornelius swept past them unceremoniously. “Don’t mind us, we’re just leaving, come on let’s go!”

The guards trailed them as they strode towards the gates. “Hey, you’ve got to be out of the town by nightfall!”

“Yes, yes, we’re on our way, don’t mind us.”

One of the guards had to run to overtake them, in order to have the gate open in anticipation. The party hustled through the gate, Dickie calling “Good health to you all!” as they passed beneath the palisade.

“Lovely town!” Clarence added, and Cornelius- “We had a wonderful time! Come on, Paris, say something nice.”

“Um… Look after the disabled!”

The great wooden gates closed behind them.

Some minutes later, where the road leading down from the town met the Old Svalich Road, Paris began to summon the Golden Bully Hut. Dickie prepared supper, which Cornelius demanded he be served on the golden plate pilfered form the abbey.

They unfurled the map of Barovia, generously donated by the baron Vallakovich before his murder, and tried to work out where to go next. “So,” Dickie said, “As I see it, we can go here-“ he pointed to where they had marked Berez on the map- “and search out some angry ghost. Or go somewhere down here-“ he pointed to the mountains marked on the south of the map- “to look for a glowing sword.”

“I suggest we search for the temple of amber,” Clarence said, “it will no doubt contain many magical secrets in addition to the sunlight sword we seek.”

“It looks like a bloody trek though. Berez is what, a day from here? Going through the mountains looks longer.”

“Berez is almost on the way to the mountain shrine,” Cornelius said, drawing a line with his finger as the crow flies.

Dickie considered it. “If we go off road we could follow the river to the bridge then pick the road up there, maybe?”

“Indeed. So, we’ll head to Berez on the road, then do a little bit of a cross-country treck- it doesn’t look too far- along the river towards the mountains.”

Paris, by this point, was gently snoring.