Session 11 - A Tower of Bronze

1st Day of the 4th Quarter of the Moon of Songs, Season of Wines, Year 766.

Days in Barovia: 4. The moon waxes gibbous.

Glory Be

A hush fell through the church as the glow of Strahd’s radiant destruction faded. Beyond the doorway, symbol of the Morninglord upon his chest, stood Cornelius Bullingdon. The rain stopped. The clouds… parted. Sunlight silhouetted Cornelius, and for a moment the church was dappled in kaleidoscope as it blossomed through the stained glass depictions of pious saints.  “A miracle! The Morninglord’s blessing!” came Father Petrovich’s cry.

Then, thunder rumbled; and the clouds closed over; and the rain began to pour anew. Little joy or awe lit the faces of Vallaki’s townsfolk, cowering among the pews; fear was written there, and some confusion, and on many the familiar slack expressionlessness that seemed common among Barovians.

Cornelius raised his fists in triumph as he entered the church, and raised his voice too, singing the Towton Beating Song. Clarence, Paris and Dickie, scattered around the church, joined in enthusiastically, while the townfolk watched in ever growing bemusement.

Vargas Vallakovich, standing at the front of the church where he had retreated from Strahd, clapped his hands enthusiastically as the singing ended. “Yes, yes excellent! My goodness Cornelius, you’ve done it! You killed him! We are all free! Do you hear that everyone? All that I have done has paid off, we-”

Cornelius unceremoniously shoved the baron aside and turned to face the congregation. “Oh, excuse me Cornelius, please, do-“

“Quiet, baron. People of Vallaki! I know what you are all wondering in this moment. You are wondering… Who is this great saviour who defeated the devil Strahd?”

“They don’t need to wonder, Cornelius,” the baron interrupted, “They all know who I am!”

“Not you. Who is this mighty hero who has avenged so many fallen before the devil? Tell me his name, so I may proclaim it from the rooftops, and say to every man I meet, “That man is the finest of men”! I will tell you – his name is Cornelius Pfeffil Bullingdon the third: marquis of Saxonia, saviour of Barovia, mighty servant of the Morninglord!”

Paris, Dickie and Clarence- alone among those within the church excepting Vargas and Victor Vallakovich, who joined in- began to clap but Cornelius held out his hands for quiet.

“But Cornelius Bullingdon does not work alone – oh no. My success is owed to my mighty and powerful friends. My brother, Clarence Bullingdon! Mighty and powerful wizard, master of many magics-” Clarence, still in the frontmost pew, turned to the citizenry and took an elaborate bow- “His teacher, Paris Digby, arch-mage!” Paris waved demurely from the back of the aisle- “And of course, my loyal and faithful manservant, Richard Tah… Tuh… Um, Turner? Richard Turner?” Bren “Dickie” Tanner sighed. “These are the Bullingdon Boys! So cheer for us, citizens of Vallaki! Cheer bully! Bully! Bully!”

“Oi! Oi! Oi!”

“Hooray! Hooray!” the thin cheers of Victor joined the Bullingdon Boys’, but the crowd was looking at this point almost bored; an atmosphere of resignation similar to that among the crowd when the Baron spoke during the Festival of the Blazing Sun.

“For goodness sake!” The baron shouted at the crowd, “Would it behove you to be happy for once? Couldn’t you even crack a smile? What have I been telling you these past years? All will be well! And now, finally, thanks to our friends the Bullingdons, finally! All is well!”

“All is not well, Vargas,” a voice from the crowd responded. It was the burly inkeep with the black streak in his beard; the man who had spoken against the executions earlier in the day. You think if the Devil could be defeated by throwing him into a church some other idiot wouldn’t have done it by now? All you will have done is anger him, and it is the good folk of this town who will pay for it, Vargas. Not you, not your friends. As always.” The innkeeper gathered his family and left the church; townsfolk were starting to trickle out now the excitement was over and the exit was unblocked.

As the other Bullingdon Boys gathered with Cornelius, he delivered a small on how, while they did not expect a payment for defeating Strahd, they would accept any charitable donations; but this bequest fell flat upon the gathered peasantry of Vallaki.

Father Petrovich put his hand on Cornelius’ shoulder. “Truly it was a great victory over the devil, and the Morninglord showed his power. But I do not feel the full radiance of our lord on this land- his light is yet distant. Strahd von Zarovich is tied to this land in ways I cannot explain. If he were truly gone… It would be more apparent.”

This was met by incredulity from Clarence and Paris. They’d seen him get vaporised – he’d disappeared – of course he was dead!

“Wait, Paris, wait,” Cornelius murmured as the Wizard protested; then, raising his voice: “If Strahd is not dead, I promise that the Bullingdon Boys will hunt him down. If Strahd appears again, we will fight him once more. We will travel the length and breadth of Barovia, and spread the light of the Morninglord as we go.”

The baron grasped Cornelius’ arm, glanced lengthways at the crowd, and in a lowered voice asked “But he is dead, isn’t he, Cornelius?”

“I mean, he looked pretty dead?” Cornelius whispered back.

“He’s always looked pretty dead!”

“He looks like he’s been turned into dust and ashes! Some smoke!”

The baron glanced nervously to the spot where Strahd had disappeared, as a voice cut across the church – “Father! Is the feast finished yet? I want to go on my adventure!”

The Bullingdons, Vargas reminded them, had already been paid in part for Victor’s “field trip”. Clarence assured the baron that they would be taking the boy with them. Referencing their recently acquired map, Clarence thought they could reach Lake Baratok before nightfall that evening; and the rest of the party agreed that they shouldn’t tarry in the town any longer.

“Goodbye father! I’m going on an adventure!” cried Victor, and with that, the Bullingdon Boy’s left Vallaki.

…

The Bully Boys left Vallaki by the sunset gate, and followed the road west. After a half-hour of trudging through the rain the road came to a four-way intersection, branching away from the road they were on to the northeast, southwest and southeast. There was a fallen signpost which once correctly aligned indicated that Vallaki and Ravenloft lay behind them; Berez to the southeast, Krezk and Tsolenka Pass to the southwest, and Lake Baratok, their destination, to the northwest.

“’Scuse me lad, you know about this Berez place?” Dickie asked Victor.

“Berez? There was a village there, but it washed away in a flood. What you get for making your village below the waterline in a swamp, that’s what father says. No one lives there anymore.”

The northwest branch climbed gently, becoming a dirt trail through the woods within half a mile. The trees grew closer and roots and foliage covered the path. A few miles further along the path, the sound of voices trickled through the trees, and the Bullingdons saw a group of men approaching the road from the woods to the north.

It was a group of muddy, weary Vistani, who stepped into the road ahead of the Bully Boys. After an initially terse exchange, Victor revealed he was the baron’s son, and the Vistani were suddenly much more interested. They laughed off Cornelius’ claim to have killed Strahd, and told the party they were searching for a little girl called Arabelle. Dickie recalled a Vistani in the village of Barovia who had been doing the same; it turned out the girl was the daughter of the leader of the band of Vistani these belonged to. The party hadn’t seen her, and the Vistani let them be.

The Most Merciful Thing in the World

Some time later, continuing along the path, they came to a cold mountain lake enclosed by the misty woods and rocks bluffs. Thick fog creeped across the dark, still waters. The trail ended where a causeway juts into the lake; at the end of this spit there stood a tower of bronze.

              

The metal gleamed as if new, and the structure appeared seamless; as if the great cylinder had been cast as a single piece, some eighty feet tall. Before the end of a trail, as if someone had drawn a circle centred on the tower, the foliage – grass, shrubs, weeds, flowers – stopped, as if the land beyond has been sown with salt.

Parked just before this terminus was a barrel-topped wagon spattered with mud, similar to the wagons of the Vistani. The lake was very still, very quiet, except for the creak of the trees in the wind and the occasional croaking of frogs.

The line beyond which nothing grew – the terminus – stood Dickie’s hairs on end. He snapped a green twig from the branch of a tree and threw it across; nothing happened. “Well, that’s reassuring,” he said aloud, not really reassured.

“Indeed,” intoned Clarence. “Shall we see if someone’s in that wagon, then perhaps pitch camp for the night before exploring the tower further in the morning?”

No light came from the wagon, which looked well maintained if road-weary. Clarence called out to anyone inside, with no response. Cornelius, never one for subtlety, approached the wagon and threw open the back door. There was a faint tinkling and a whoosh, and he managed to twist in place and dodge as a bottle on a wire swung through the door; the bottle carried on past him and shattered on the lip of the wagon’s roof. The alchemist’s fire within ignited, catching Cornelius with patches of liquid ember.

“A fiendish trap!” Cornelius shouted, patting himself out. “Dickie, I think you should go in first!”

Dickie, who was very much one for subtlety, circled the wagon cautiously. Beneath the mud there was a nice layer of purple paint; the wheels had a golden trim. The driver’s seat was painted with swirling silver patterns that looked mystical. “Something written round the driver’s seat; might be magic but I’m not one to say,” he said in the direction of the wizards.

“Well I’m sure I can tell you either way,” said Paris, taking a closer look at the feature. After a moment, he said “It’s almost certainly unimportant. Just looks like mumbo-jumbo to me, probably done by someone who fancies themselves as a magic user but can’t string an invocation together.”

Within the wagon, which Dickie determined to be free of further traps, were a number of trunks; one covered in claw marks, one embossed with the symbol of the morning lord, another unadorned. A sculpted wooden cage held a chicken; pots and pans hung above a desk on which there lay a pair of scrolls, various tools, some manacles and a lyre with golden strings.

“Best as I can tell it’s safe,” Dickie informed his companions. “Best I can tell it’s… I dunno… wizard shit?”

“Oooh, wizard shit!” Victor exclaimed, climbing into the wagon. With Clarence’s approval, the young man thumbed through his spellbook to find a spell which would detect magic, and cast it. He looked around the room, blinking, and pointed at the scrolls on the desk; at the wooden chest bearing the symbol with the Morninglord; he pointed at Dickie, saying “You’re wearing lots of magic!”, and he pointed to the front of the wagon, to the drivers seat on the other side of the plank wall.

“Now Victor, you’re clearly confused,” said Cornelius, holding up his sun-embossed medallion. “I am the one wearing a magical item, not Dickie.”

Victor squinted at the presented amulet and shrugged. “Eh, magical. A little bit.”

Cornelius laid claim to the chest bearing the symbol of his “great patron”, the Morninglord, but Clarence suggested caution; there appeared to be nothing to stop them looting the wagon after their business in the tower was completed.

Victor was somewhat disappointed to find that neither of the scrolls had the fireball spell; one was necromantic in nature, the other removed curses, both, in his opinion, were boring magic.

Dickie started to set up camp, but Paris stopped him. “No need for tents- I’ve picked up a new trick you might like. Hold on to your hats.”

He waved his hands and a golden, sparkling dome rose out of the ground until it stood a half-sphere ten foot tall. Noticing the lack of any apparent entrance on the structure, Cornelius asked how they were supposed to get in.

“Well,” Paris said smugly, “You simply wave your hands like this-” he flourished extravagantly- “and say the password. Which is ‘Paris’.”  And with that, Paris strolled confidently through the seemingly solid wall.

“Well I suppose it saves us from having to put up a tent,” Clarence said with a hint of jealousy.

Dickie looked glumly at the tents he had been hauling since they reached Barovia. “Indeed.”

The evening light was fading and the party cooked some food, ate, and settled into the golden dome to sleep. After a few hours, Clarence awoke; quietly, he got to his feet, and stepped outside the hut. Despite Clarence’s attempted stealth, the light-sleeping Dickie awoke at his movements. As Clarence rekindled the embers of the fire from their meal, Dickie passed through the wall on the opposite side of the dome, so the structure obscured him from the younger Bullingdon. Clarence returned to the dome, and, not noticing Dickie’s absence, roused Victor.

“Ssh. Come out with me, pupil. There is much that I must tell you,” Clarence whispered into Victor’s mind. They sat before the fire. “There is much that I must tell you before tomorrow, for I believe that you will be called upon to make a decision, and it is one you must make with full knowledge.” Clarence revealed his Tome of Shadows, as Dickie watched from the shadows. “You remember this?” Victor nodded, eyes hungry.

“It was locked with seven chains; bound with seven seals, and warded by seven spirits. For five years I lingered in the mountains, seeking to open the book. I knew it was important to do so but had no idea why.

I dispelled each sigil, killed each spirit, and shattered every chain, until but a single chain remained between me and my prize. Until, at last, exhausted and despairing, I stooped against a chestnut tree behind my hut. The roots of the tree sank into the ground under my bench; but all at once I couldn’t remember it was a root anymore. The words vanished, and with them the significance of things, the methods of use and the feeble points of reference that man has traced upon their surface!”

So Clarence continued, on and on, about how “individuality was a veneer”, “existence was an illusion”, and that there are “many more things that do not exist than ever have been”. He rambled about the limitations of existence and the greater powers that existed beyond the temporal. He cried out to the “Old Ones”, and told a bleary-eyed Victor of his pact with a nameless being who granted him great power- and through service to that being, Victor could obtain the same power.

After a long day of walking, exercise he was not used to, to have his sleep interrupted to listen to Clarence’s esoteric speechifying, Victor was not at his most coherent.

“Yes… and then I can learn the fireball?” he murmured sleepily.

“You shall become a font of arcane power! One who does not need to study each night from some spellbook, but merely to gaze upon and recognize all things to gain power.”

“Like how, ah,” Victor didn’t try to cover his yawn, “Like how master Paris doesn’t need a spellbook?”

Clarence grimaced. “No… Not like Paris.”

Clarence let his sleepy pupil return to sleep, who rubbed his eyes and walked back into the golden dome – forgetting to wave his hands and say ‘Paris’, but passing through nonetheless. Dickie, bemused what he had witnessed, followed shortly, while Clarence sat before the fire and studied his eldritch tome… finding something new within.

The Frog Remains

The party was roused by rain on their faces as Paris’ dome vanished; Dickie cursing the sky as he woke.

“Paris!” Cornelius called, “Paris, why is the dome gone?”

“I removed the dome because it was time for us all to wake up,” Paris said, thinking quickly.

“Couldn’t you have given us some warning?”

“Um… No?”

Rainwater was beginning to drip from the Cornelius’ moustache. “Dickie, towel me down for god’s sake. And next time Paris, give us some warning before you un-summon the dome.”

“Well next time I’ll know when it’s going to- I mean, yes. Next time there will be some warning.”

The Bullingdons gathered at the edge of the boundary where the grass stopped growing to examine the tower. Despite his architectural education in his youth at the University of Jutin, Cornelius made neither heads nor tails of the structure: had it not been stood before him, he would have declared it impossible.

Dickie eyed the ‘death-line’ with suspicion. Cornelius turned to his brother. “Well Clarence, you’re the one who wanted to come here. I suggest you go first.”

“Very well.” Clarence stepped across the terminus… and was hit by the taste of burnt metal in the back of his mouth, and felt a sudden disconnect from his arcane powers. He staggered, and his appearance shifted suddenly; his skin took on a sallow turn, and he appeared a little pudgier, and blemishes became apparent on his face, as the glamour he used to constantly improve his appearance fell. “This is indeed a powerful place,” he sputtered, as Paris looked at him in horror.

Dickie crossed the line, and spat as the bitter copper taste filled his mouth; otherwise he felt normal. Seeing this, Cornelius followed, but Paris hung back.

“Are, ah, are you really sure we need to go?”

Victor shook his hands as he came through, and complained loudly about not being able to cast spells; tentatively, Paris stepped across, grimacing at the feeling of deflation as he was separated from his magics.

They crossed the causeway extending across the lake to the tower, where a large door faced them, seemingly carved out of the metal of the tower itself. It was locked; Dickie got out his lockpicks, but as he began to fiddle he pulled his hands back sharply. A thin needle, a splinter, placed almost as to be invisible within the lock and prick the finger of any picking it, had just scraped the tip of Dickie’s finger but failed to penetrate the flesh. Nervously, the thief-come-manservant removed the offending object and finished picking the lock. The door swung open slowly.

“You go in first, Dickie,” Cornelius instructed.

Within the tower was a cold bronze space bereft of native furnishings, save a staircase spiralling up the wall. However, it appeared that the room had been recently occupied: a bedroll lay next to an unlit lantern and a traveller’s pack.

“Someone’s already here,” Dickie told his companions, unsheathing his sword. “Probably whoever the wagon belongs to.”

“How are we going to defend ourselves?” Paris asked, despairing at his lack of power.

Dickie rolled his eyes. “Swords, Paris. That thing on your belt? That you use to look charismatic? That’s a sword, you can use that to fight. Swords.”

Paris sighed, looking glumly at the sword he carried but very rarely used. “It’s not even sharpened.”

Among the mysterious stranger’s items, Dickie found a moleskin book; mostly empty, but with a few of the first pages filled. It was the diary of “R.v.R”, who had been using the antimagic field surrounding the tower to hide from Strahd’s divination magic – the Bullingdon’s weren’t pleased to learn of this ability of their foe – having been driven from Vallaki by the baron. Dickie deduced that the book – and therefore, presumably, the bedroll, the pack and even the wagon – belonged to the monster hunter they were looking to find in Argynvostholt.

Dickie closed the tower door behind them and they set up the spiral staircase. It climbed almost the entire height of the tower, and ended at another windowless room of bronze. This room had two features: extending out of the wall, a bench top, upon which a number of strange items were scattered; and in the centre of the room, a cube extended upwards from the floor, above which there floated a left hand of filigree and bronze, fingers and thumb in an arcane gesture. The top of the cube, beneath the impossibly floating hand, wove an intricate pattern, a sigil perfectly etched or engraved.

“Be careful,” Dickie warned, examining the desk: a chunk of amber; some parchment and ink, and a bronze-tipped pen; a length of shattered crystal that may once have been shaped as a sword blade, and a small bronze handbell. He muttered words once spoken in portent: “What you seek lies in a pile of treasure, behind a set of amber doors. A sword of sunlight.”

“Why are you reciting poetry, Dickie?” Cornelius asked.

“It just reminds me of something Madam Eva said to us.”

“Tell me you don’t put any stock by the silly ramblings of that card reader?”

Victor reached out to prod the floating hand, but was stopped as Dickie grasped his wrist. “Careful. This place is dangerous, I think.”

The boy sneered. “What do you know about magic? You’re just a servant.”

“I know plenty about traps,” Dickie growled.

Clarence reached past Dickie and Victor, and touched the hand, feeling cold metal. He pushed it, and pulled it, but it did not budge; it remained floating above the ensigiled cube. The pattern on the cube was familiar to Clarence; as with the tower, as with the severed hand, he had foreseen this in his book. As he poured over his tome last night a ritual, a ceremony, had been revealed to him; a ritual pertaining to this tower, this cube, this hand. He suspected that it would deactivate the antimagic field.

He called Victor to him, and asked Paris to go downstairs – he didn’t want the other magic user to see what was to come. Paris didn’t want to go alone, and even when Cornelius joined him, he harboured some doubts about splitting the party. Dickie remained at the top of the stairs. After what he’d seen last night, he wanted to keep an eye on Clarence.

Clarence opened his Tome of Shadow. He and Victor began the ceremony within. Downstairs, Paris waited nervously while Cornelius poked about at the previous inhabitant’s things. From upstairs they could hear Clarence’s low chanting and from outside the mutter of frogs on the lake. Bellow this mutter Paris thought he could hear a deeper tone. As he listened, it grew louder: Buuuuuh. Buuuuuh. The sound grew closer, until it was outside the door. Buuuuuuh.

“Wha, what is that?”

“Stand behind me, Paris!”

“Baaanderhobb,” the tone rumbled as Paris stepped behind Cornelius. The door swung open to reveal a monstrous figure, ten feet tall with huge orange eyes set wide apart above an impossible maw, a cleft that split the head almost in two. Razor sharp teeth were revealed as the mouth opened, and the bulging sack of flesh around the throat swelled. “Banderhobb.” The huge webbed feet made a horrible slapping noise as it stepped into the tower, upright on its two hind legs, long arms ending in taloned hands, a huge bulging belly, like a frog plucked from a nightmare.

The head turned lazily and the monsters gaze swept over Cornelius and Pairs; disinterested, it moved languorously to the stairs.

“Paris,” Cornelius didn’t take his eyes from the creature, “Is your magic working yet?”

“Ah- no,” Paris whimpered, drawing his rapier nervously.

As the slapping of webbed feet and croaking cry of “Banderhobb” came up the stairs, Dickie was drawn back to his nightmare of a few nights previous. “What’s happening?” he called down the stairs, drawing his sword.

“Could do with a little bit of help down here,” came Cornelius replied. The older Bullingdon then turned to Paris. “Hold still, Paris – it’s vision may be based on movement.” Paris didn’t need telling twice as the monster ascended the bronze staircase, rumbling “Baaanderhobb.”

In his travels, Paris had heard stories of how witches may send a banderhobb to eat naughty children whole.

“Those god damned witches again!” cursed Cornelius, remembering the windmill. “This time I think we need to send them a stronger message!”

“No, no – hopefully it’s just here for Clarence!”

“He’s my brother, Paris! We must defend him!” They trailed the creature up the stairs.

Dickie saw the orange eyes ascending the stairwell, followed by the huge-mouthed face and awful body of the creature. “Saints and demons!” He tried to stand his ground but the creature swept him out of it’s way with one of its long arms, moving into the tower room.

The Banderhobb stopped in its tracks. The great orange eyes regarded the two wizards, engrossed in their ritual. It looked from Clarence to Victor. It looked from Victor to Clarence. It paused for a moment, as if unsure. Two words rumbled from its huge throat: “CLAAARENCE BUUULINGDOOON”.