Session 17 - The Shrine of the White Sun

3rd Day of the 4th Quarter of the Moon of Songs, Season of Wines, Year 766.

Days in Barovia: 6. The moon waxes gibbous.

Gatecrashers

As the vampire ex-adventurer made his offer, Dickie thumbed the necklace of prayer beads with one hand; as he focussed, one of the aquamarine beads crumbled into dust as its divine energy was released, infusing Dickie and both Bullingdon brothers with a holy warmth. With his other hand, the manservant hurled a flask at the archer in the shadows. The vampire threw up its arms and the flask shattered upon it, coating it in glistening, flammable oil.

“Light the bastard up!” Dickie shouted, in one motion drawing his sword, turning back around and stepping towards the moustachioed vampire. Paris clicked his fingers, and a magical spark ignited the oil; the vampire’s cloak and leathers engulfed in flame. “How about that for the light of the Morninglord?”

The spiked vampire knight roared gutturally and charged towards the Bullingdon Boys, closing on Clarence, trying to wrestle him close and pull him into the spines on his armour. Clarence managed to slip away from his grasp but the spikes still ripped at his robes and flesh; Clarence, stumbling back, encased himself in an arcane armour of crackling frost.

At a gesture from the vampire in front of him, a crown of jagged iron appeared around Dickie’s head, and his mind was filled with wrath. With preternatural speed the creature of the night stepped away from Dickie and circled around the Bully Boys to the protection of its allies. Paris, recognizing the iron crown from earlier that day, backed away from the enchanted manservant.

Cornelius, who had been carrying Ireena, had let her to the floor. He pushed the wooden stake taken from Van Richten’s wagon into her hands, saying “Defend yourself with this!” before launching himself at the vampire attacking his brother, flailing fists finding their way past the spikes.

While the fires consumed the cloth of the archer’s clothes, the flesh that burnt and seared regrew as quickly as it was consumed. Even aflame, the creature was able to knock an arrow, and Paris was struck; the long ebony shaft protruding absurdly from his elegant robes.

“Bloody vampires! Bloody wizard vampires!” Dickie shouted, frothing slightly, charging after his enchanter; not the reaction the wizard vampire expected, and the Bullingdon rapier flashed towards the creature’s face. Dickie’s assault broke the vampire’s concentration and the jagged crown disappeared, although Dickie’s fury seemed unaffected by the change.

The spiked knight attacked Cornelius and Clarence with reckless abandon, but Cornelius invoked his divine power in a warding flare that diverted the attack. When a spiked gauntlet crunched into Clarence, the young Bullingdon was unperturbed- with a cold white flash his arcane armour responded to the assault, icy magic blasting the assailant.

“And you always complained when I tried to wrestle with you, Clarence!” Cornelius quipped as his brother again evaded the reaching grasp of the armoured vampire.

Clarence called over to the vampire wizard, “Pick on someone of your own magical calibre!” and to demonstrate, summoned his eldritch energy to blast the knight before him.

“I don’t think so,” the wizard retorted, snapping his fingers, focussing his magic to quench Clarence’s assault; but his spell in turn failed- “What?!”- as the bronze left hand within Clarence’s robes absorbed its power.

“I thank you for the gift that you have given me- I’ll make sure to return it to your friend!” Clarence cackled, channelling his arcane energy into the vampire in front of him. The armoured figure was pummelled down to one knee and let out a rattling gasp. A hand shakily went to its head, but Cornelius stepped forward and ripped the spiked helm clear off, throwing it aside: Cornelius grabbed the head and brought it down onto his knee, and there was a sickening crunch, and the thing went limp.

“They have the girl – take her!” shouted the archer as it threw off the flaming cloak. One hand held the bow and the other drew forth a long, wicked dagger, and it started towards Ireena, but Cornelius intercepted him. A gnarled Bullingdon fist slammed into a jaw, which was thrown out of joint, but snapped back immediately; the long dagger flashed and sliced at Cornelius, and with a flourish the clean metal was suddenly coated with a black, viscous liquid.

The wizard, fuming, stepped back from Dickie, flinging out a hand: a shimmering green arrow streaked towards the manservant who was nimbly able to avoid the magical projectile, which splashed into the cobbles. The stones hissed and bubbled as Dicky laughed madly in the vampire’s face.

The cobbles then jump and shook as Paris caused the earth itself to tremor; the undead caster tumbled to the ground, but Dickie kept his feet as the street they stood upon was churned into a mess of stone. The manservant strode across the broken cobbles to the prone wizard. “You hurt the people. You hunt my friends. You try to mess with my head. I’ll kill you. I’ll bloody kill you! Again, and again, and again!”

He smashed a vial down onto the vampire at his feet, which hissed and cried as the holy water splashed over its flesh, then thrust at the creature with his rapier as it squirmed. “Just go,” it managed to cry to its companion, “Tell the master she is free!”

Afraid the archer may escape, Paris turned, flourishing his wand. “Freeze!” he shouted, firing a ray of frost at the vampire. Since acquiring the wand from Lady Wachter, Paris’ attempts to use it had not always been successful: the beam often going astray, sending lines of frost up walls or freezing patches of grass instead of his foes. Not so this time: the bolt of cold energy threw the vampire back as it was struck full in the face. “Yes! Paris Digby, master of ice!” he shouted.

Cornelius followed this up with a flurry of punches, pummelling the vampire relentlessly; it tried to pull away, but he grabbed it and pulled it back into another punch; it collapsed, sagging, and Cornelius continued to smash it with his fists until only a bloody, unmoving wreck remained.

Where Dickie’s rapier struck the remaining vampire, the flesh did not reknit as the holy water supressed its unholy regeneration; in desperation, the creature cast a spell, and momentarily shrouded in silvery mist… vanished. Dickie, startled, looked about, and noticed a flicker of movement in the darkness outside of the town’s gate. “You don’t get away!” he shouted, charging towards the movement, “You die, here and now!”

Paris, Clarence and Cornelius followed the screaming manservant as he ran out of the gate. “Dickie! Dickie, this is not behaviour becoming of a high class valet!” Cornelius shouted, then, catching sight of Dickie’s quarry, showed his athletic prowess in closing the gap and throwing a diving punch that staggered the escaping vampire: the Bullingdon fist followed by a Bullingdon blast from Clarence, searing eldritch energy dealing the killing blow. As the body fell, Dickie furiously stabbed his rapier into it, over and over again.

“Get Ireena and lets leave!” Cornelius shouted back to Paris and Clarence, still within the boundary of the town. Dickie, in a moment of thief’s clarity, added “Search the bodies!”

“Well I’d search this body, Dickie, but you’ve poked it full of holes!”

From the corpse of the archer, Dickie took the black longbow, the envenomed dagger – blade now clean metal once again – and the slightly singed, wide brimmed hat. On the wizard, Paris found a magical focus: an orb he determined capable of arcane alchemy, changing the nature of a caster’s spells. Clarence thumbed through the wizard’s spellbook but found nothing he could transcribe to his tome.

Ireena was cowering on the cobbles where Cornelius had left her, clutching the stake. “Did, did he escape? Do I need to go back to the church?”

Dickie growled at her “He’s dead. Forever.”

Cornelius suggested they get away from Vallaki post-haste, and have Paris summon the Golden Bully Hut so they could rest. Dickie especially seemed in need of a calm down.

Go West

On the Old Svalich Road once again, they headed west, as they had when they left on Victor Vallakovich’s ‘field trip’ days earlier.

They travelled swiftly on the road, Cornelius’ light illuminating their way, until they passed over the Luna River and reached the crossroads. Gentle rain began to fall and distant thunder rumbled, and Paris summoned the golden bully hut. Dickie lay down with his new hat over his face, and fell asleep immediately.

Cornelius espoused the virtues of the Bully Hut to Ireena as Paris completed his conjuring. She was very impressed, although confused as to why they were only showing her now; they had slept in tents on the trip from Barovia to Vallaki.

Safe within the hut, the night passed without incident. Come the morning, Cornelius woke everyone, tried to lead them in morning prayers and demanded eggs cooked “sunny side up”. 

The steady rain washed the road with mud. They trudged through the grey morning for long uneventful hours, finally reaching the side road to Krezk around midday. The broad branched north, and climbed a rocky escarpment, ending at a gatehouse built into a high stone wall reinforced with buttresses. The wall enclosed a settlement on the side of a snow-dusted mountain spur. The tops of snow covered pines and thin, white wisps of smoke were visible from within.

The somber tolling of a bell came from a stone abbey clinging to the mountainside high above the settlement; the steady chime was almost inviting, a pleasant change from the silence of the road, the oppressive fog and rain. It appeared that a switchback road clung to the cliffs, leading up to the abbey from the town.

The air up here was colder than in the valley below. Two square towers flanked the stone archway in the wall, in which a pair of massive, ironbound wooden doors stood closed. KREZK was carved into the arch above the doors.

Atop the parapet four men in fur hats, clutching spears, watched the approach of the Bullingdon Boys nervously.

“Everyone put on your charming faces,” Dickie said quietly.

Cornelius turned to his wizard. “Paris, perhaps you’d like to announce us?”

“Well hello there!” Paris boomed up to the guards. One shouted in reply, “Who are you?” as another began to disappeared behind the wall, presumably climbing down.

“I? I am Paris Digby, mighty wizard, famed across Barovia for my magical prowess.”

“And who are you travelling with, Paris?” Cornelius prompted.

“And, er, this is our fearless leader, Cornelius Pfeffil Bullingdon the third. And his brother, who is also a wizard. And his manservant Dickie.”

“You forgot his titles,” Clarence reminded him. Dickie jerked his head at Ireena, who Paris had forgotten to mention.

“Oh and this, er, this is a… cousin of ours…”

“A cousin of ours?” Clarence whispered.

“I don’t want to reveal her identity,” Paris muttered back, “they could be in league with Strahd!”

“Why would they be in league with the devil?”

“This is our cousin Mary!” Paris shouted to the guards.

Ireena looked bemused. “Why have you brought me here if they are in league with the devil?”

“Err… I’m just making sure, in case… in case they’re captured and tortured later?”

“You’re getting paranoid, Paris,” Cornelius chastised. “You also neglected to mention my titles, or our accomplishments in vampire-slaying and villain-defeating. Or Morninglord-prophet-eering!”

“I think we should keep it on the low-down,” Paris said, “we’ve just massacred an entire family of nobles.”

“What?!” Ireena cried, “Who did you kill? I, I should have stayed in that church!”

Cornelius explained how the baron of Vallaki’s family had died in a tragic fire for which no one, especially not the Bully Boys, were to blame, and in fact they had tried in vain to save them, and she herself had seen the baron set upon by the mob which clearly wasn’t their fault.

“You murdered them, didn’t you,” Ireena accused him, “I shouldn’t have come with you, I should have stayed- why did I ever come with you.”

Paris said to her, “Look, Ireena, calm down. There were circumstances that we’ll explain to you later-“

“Explain them now, Paris!” Cornelius commanded.

“The whole family were in league with Strahd!”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing in this damn country makes any sense,” Dickie muttered.

“But, even Vargas… Surely he wouldn’t have, I mean, you never know with people but-“

“Honestly, I will explain it all later,” Paris assured her.

Meanwhile, Cornelius had turned back to the gate where the guards were staring on in confusion. “I do not believe my companion Paris introduced us adequately. We are the famous Bullingdon Boys; I am Cornelius Pfeffil-“

“Hold on, hold on, let me get up here!” A voice interrupted him. The voice’s owner, a handsome woman of middle years, appeared next to the guards looking somewhat flustered. She leant over the parapet. “Now, say it again? What’s your business here? What do you want in Krezk?”

Cornelius made his usual introductions, explaining they were at Krezk to go to the abbey and be baptized in the pool, using the power therein to defeat Strahd once and for all.

She frowned at him. “Ah… No.”

“What do you mean, “no”?”

“Well, we don’t need any truck with you vampire slayers– we don’t have any vampires in Krezk. We don’t need enemies of Strahd bringing trouble here.”

“We do not bring trouble anywhere we go!” lied Cornelius.

“You’re misinformed, anyway. No one goes up to the abbey anymore, but the pool isn’t even there. The shrine is in the town.”

“Fine! Then we shall go to the shrine in the town and we will remain here only long enough to be baptized and receive the revelation of the Morninglord.” Cornelius turned to his companions, telling them, “I forgot to mention- you’re all going to be baptized, it’ll be good for our PR.” He turned back to the gate and smiled.

“I hope it’s nothing like the Deathswine initiation,” Paris muttered ruefully.

The woman told Cornelius that they’d had adventurers come through before- foreigners- they didn’t need the trouble. Cornelius insisted they would be no trouble, dipping in and out of the pool then going on their way. Paris suggested they could pay to get into the town- receiving an elbow to the ribs from Cornelius, but this perked the woman’s interest.

“I’ll take your gold, but you’d better not cause trouble. I want you gone as soon as you visit the pool.”

The guards opened the gates and the woman descended from the wall to greet them as they entered the settlement. “I wanted to get a proper look at you. I’m Anika Krezkova, burgermeisteren of Krezk. So, your gold?” she snapped her fingers at them, and they gave up the money. “The shrine’s at the north end. I don’t know what it was you called yourself- marquis or count or whatever, but I’m in charge of this town, and you’d better remember it.”

Clarence asked her if the innkeepers from Vallaki were in the town, and she confirmed they had arrived in their wagon yesterday. They were interrupted by a woman’s screaming from one of the small cottages scattered through the settlement, and Krezkova excused herself- “Oh, she’s started-” and strode off in that direction.

They found Van Richten’s wagon parked between two pines in the middle of the settlement. Danika Matikov, who had run the Blue Water Inn, greeted them without much enthusiasm. Van Richten, she informed them, had come into the town with them hidden in the wagon- he wanted to keep a low profile. She and her family were allowed in because of their relations at the nearby winery. Van Richten was not with them- he had left before dawn to investigate the abbey.

Everything Under the Sun

The Bullingdon Boys found the Shrine of the White Sun at the north end of the town. Even under the gray skies, the large pool shimmered and sparkled. Near its shore sat an old gazebo on the verge of collapse. A wooden statue of a mournful, bare-chested man, its paint chipped and faded, stood upon a stone plinth in the gazebo with arms outstretched to the pool as if waiting to be embraced.

“Well, I am of course the prophet of the Morninglord, and although I would have liked to have a crowd I shall of course go first into the pool,” Cornelius declared, stripping naked in the cool mountain air. Ireena looked away as Cornelius stuck a powerful and commanding pose, crying up to the sky, “Morninglord! Shine your light upon me as I bask in your waters!” and he took a running dive into the pool.

As Cornelius’ head emerged from the pool, moustaches dripping, Paris conjured the sound of gentle harps. The Bullingdon scion clambered out, looking around to see if a crowd had formed: it had not. He dropped to his knees, looking up to the skies once more. “Morninglord! I will do as you ask of me. I shall take your light to the darkest places of this land, and I will clear the fog of the devil from its crevices. I take your blessing and it shall be my weapon. Dickie, get me a towel.”

“This is why you brought me here?” Ireena said, stepping towards the water. “To go swimming?”

“Are you sure we’re using it right?” Paris muttered to Dickie, who quoted from the fortune telling: “Look to the west. Find a pool blessed by the light of the white sun.”

When Ireena reached the water’s edge, an image appeared in the clear blue waters.

“Hey, no, look, we did do it right!” Paris exclaimed.

The image was a strikingly handsome man of noble visage, who for a moment the Bullingdon Boys mistook for Strahd… before realizing it was not the devil that they know. Young, and kind, and sad, with no hint of Strahd’s bitter arrogance, this was surely a strong familial resemblance. A voice spoke from the pool.

“Tatanya, my love- we can be together at last! Join me!” A ghostly hand reached up from the water’s surface.

Ireena’s hand went to her chest. “Sergei, it is you… my sweet prince.” She turned to Paris as he grabbed one of her hands, and for a moment it was as if she did not recognize him; then, she said “No, Paris, this is… this is what I want.”

“Who is Sergei?”

“He is my true love. Let me go to him.”

“If she goes with Sergei,” Cornelius whispered to Paris, “We don’t have to drag her around anymore!”

“Sergei does not live in that pool!” Paris whispered back.

“I saw Sergei when I was in the pool,” Cornelius lied, “you should definitely go with him Ireena. Paris is paranoid, he though the Vallakovichs were in league with Strahd!”

Paris didn’t release his grip on her hand.

Clarence extended his thoughts, probing the surface of Ireena’s mind, where he found something very unfamiliar; an overwhelming love mixed in deeply with a deep sadness.

Paris looked deep into her eyes, trying to see if she was enchanted or ensorcelled; he saw no sign of magical influence, and let her hand go.

“Ireena, just one more thing before you go into the pool,” Corenlius said congenially. “When you’re with your true love Sergei, you clearly won’t have very much time for governing the village of Barovia which is now yours. So perhaps you would like someone to deputise it while you’re gone? Govern the populous, collect the taxes, ensure everything is running smoothly for your return? Perhaps someone close to you, right now, maybe a marquis?”

She ignored him, whispered “Thank you!” to Paris, and reached down to the pool, clasping the ghostly hand with her own. For a moment, the Bully Boys saw a superposition of two Ireenas, as a resplendent spirit was pulled forward, out of her body, into the arms of the man within. Clarence felt her thoughts fade as the corporeal body sunk face first into the pool.

The clouds above broke, and the Shrine of the White Sun was illuminated by a pillar of sunlight. The two spirits, embraced, disappeared in the radiant glow.

“Well at least give us a reward!” Cornelius shouted at the sky. Black clouds coalesced, closing over the sun into a terrible visage of a screaming face, as a cry of utmost anguish echoed from beyond the mountain to the east.

“NO! SHE IS MINE!”

A bolt of lightning crashed from the sky with a terrible CRACK and a flash of blinding blue-white light, striking the pool, electricity arcing over Dickie and Clarence, the blast shattering the decrepit gazebo and toppling the statue.

Paris waded into the pool, grabbing the Ireena’s body. In the pool when the lightning struck, what remained of Ireena was a blackened, charred, lifeless husk.  He dragged it to the shore.

On the plinth where the statue had stood, Cornelius caught a glimpse of something glittering: he ran over to it, and on the plinth, which had been hidden by the wooden effigy, was a platinum amulet shaped like the sun, with a large crystal embedded in the centre: a holy symbol.

“Well, it looks a lot more valuable than the one I got from Vallaki,” Cornelius said as he presented the symbol to his comrades.

“But Ireena’s dead!” Paris cried from the pool.

“She has, I think, moved on to a better place,” Clarence consoled him. “I was in contact with her spirit until it departed… I think she is happier now.”

Cornelius hung the new holy symbol over his neck, hanging next to the medallion of the Morninglord Father Petrovich had gifted him.

“So… Does anyone understand what just happened?” Paris asked, morose.

“Well you’re the wizard, Paris, I thought you might know,” Cornelius replied, inspecting his new regalia.

Dickie hazarded a guess: Tatanya- someone both Strahd and this “Sergei” were in love with- her spirit was in Ireena; Sergei’s spirit was in the pool, they reunited and… Ascended, or something, so Strahd’s upset, because they’ve taken away a thing he wanted. So therefore lightning.

“This spirituality stuff’s all very complicated Paris, you probably wouldn’t understand it.”

“On the contrary, I understand it very well, I was… just testing you.”

“Right. Well, I propose go we see if there’s anything doing at the abbey then get the hell out of here,” Dickie suggested.

The Bully Boys noticed that a number of bells had begun to ring around the town wall. A group of townsfolk were approaching from the main path in the town, the stout figure of Anika Krezkova recognizable at their head. As they approached, Paris began to fret about the fact that they now had a dead body; Cornelius said they would claim the lightning killed her, which was not entirely untrue, and then take her to the abbey to be interred. He quickly threw a coat around the corpse, and lifted it in his arms.

“A tragedy has occurred, burgomeister,” Cornelius called to Krezkova.

“What have you done?” She wore long gloves and a slightly bloodied cotton apron over her thick woollen dress.

“We have done nothing, but nature herself has cast out fair- Ah, Paris, you do the talking.”

“I knew letting you foreigners in would lead to all sorts of trouble- Oh, my! You’ve destroyed the gazebo! The shrine!”

“The lightning did that,” Cornelius told her.

“You don’t understand,” Paris said. “This young woman was pursued by Strahd. We brought her here to heal her… When she entered the pool, you might have seen, Strahd’s face appeared in the sky and there was a crash of lightning.”

“But before that,” Dickie added, “a column of radiant light-“

“The light of the Morninglord!” Cornelius explained.

“As we understand it, her spirit left her body and ascended from this place. I’m not a theological man,” Dickie admitted, “but I think she found peace, and freedom from what hounded her here.”

“And the Morninglord has sent us a gift- a reward for liberating the soul of Ireena and thwarting Strahd. This holy symbol!” Cornelius raised the artefact high. Some of the guards and commoners made obsequiousness signs but the burgermeisteren was stony faced.

“So, you mean to tell me, full in the knowledge that this companion of yours was pursued by the devil- when I told you I wanted no trouble- you brought her into my town, and now you’ve destroyed our holy shrine, and you’ve killed this woman! You expect me to be happy her spirit has escaped, or whatever your manservant was talking about? My spirit hasn’t escaped! None of my townsfolk have escaped! You’ve defied the devil- is he going to come for you now? Come for us? Will he lay waste to Krezk as he laid waste to Berez?”

“My dear lady! We are mighty heroes. We have dealt a blow to the devil Strahd! We are one step closer to defeating him for good. You should all rejoice this day!”

“See the symbol the Morninglord gives!” Cornelius preached, “it is his blessing on this town!”

Clarence telepathically said to Cornelius, “Brother, this isn’t helping...”

“Do you have any better fucking ideas?” Cornelius hissed back. Clarence shrugged, gesturing towards the abbey.

Paris continued. “Yes, we brought Ireena here knowing she was pursued by Strahd, but in the full knowledge we could protect- oh, wait, she’s dead... Um. Sometimes… Sometimes heroes have to make difficult choices. And those choices today have led to an incredible result, and you will all be safer today because of our actions.”

Anika Krezkova was not impressed. At all. “I took your money to let you into this town. I’m a woman of my word- I won’t cheat you. But you are not welcome here. If you’re still in this town come nightfall, there will be serious consequences.”

Cornelius stepped up to the woman, leaning over her. “Look. We’ve had a stressful day. We came to your town to receive the blessing of your waters. This I have done, and I have the symbol to prove it. Our friend has died-“

“You broke your word,” she interrupted coldly. Cornelius ignored her.

“We’re going to lay her body to rest in the abbey, and then we’re going to leave. We will continue our mission, and we will defeat Strahd once and for all. And when we have done so, you will find the Bullingdon Boys have no thanks to give to the people of Krezk. Paris, Clarence, Dickie; we’re leaving.”

Cornelius turned on his heel and strode off, the Bullingdon Boys on his heels.

“I don’t care about your dead friend,” Krezkova’s voice followed them, “I don’t care about your friend. You had better be gone by nightfall.”

…

“Why did you tell her the truth?” Clarence moaned as they swiftly headed towards the path leading up to the abbey. A pair of fur-hatted, spear-wielding guards trailed them from a safe distance.

Cornelius turned his angry gaze on his brother. “Do you have another suggestion as to what we should have said?”

“I don’t know… lie?”

“Clarence, if you don’t know, then shut up! We’re going to bury Ireena in the abbey, then we’re going to go to this treasure trove and get the magic sword, and then we’ll defeat Strahd. We should all look to the future- because the future is bright for the Bullingdon Boys!”

“The future is bright, the future is Bully!” Paris quipped.

“Indeed. Bully! Bully! Bully!”

“Oi! Oi! Oi!”

The guards didn’t follow them as they started up the switchback road leading up the cliff face to the abbey. The path was gravel and loose rock; the ascent, slow, and somewhat treacherous. The air grew colder as they climbed. The bells of the abbey began to toll; gentle peals ringing down from the clifftop. But beneath the sonorous chime, on the very edge of hearing, a discordant clamour; a hint of baleful screams and gibbering laughter.