Skirmish at the Windmill

The day started early at the Vistani encampment near Tser Pools. Marillion and Xuza both woke from their respective dreams in the middle of the night to discover, that Xuza had changed their gender. After a brief conversation, Marillion went back to sleep and Xuza joined the night watch.

When morning came, the lost travelers took their farewell of the Vistani, and continued onwards toward Vallaki, the biggest town in Barovia. Their route took them over the Tser Falls, past the road leading to Castle Ravenloft and finally through the second (western) gate of Barovia. The party learned that these gates are controlled by Strahd himself, allowing passage to those he sees worthy, or at least not important enough to block out.

Continuing along, the party came across the old windmill. In spite of warnings from Bart and other Barovians, they decided to investigate it. Nearing the windmill the lost travelers observed an abnormal amount of ravens circling both the windmill and the nearby megaliths. There also seemed to be a noticeable drop in plan and animal life when nearing the windmill. The animals (hoses and dogs) traveling with the party also seemed a bit distressed until Cinna managed to clam them.

Entering the windmill the party were greeted by Bella and Ofallia, the daughters of Morgantha, the old woman who was selling pies in Barovia. The daughters were selling pies, much to the delight of Xuza who had taken a special liking to them.

As the pies were not quite done yet, the party was offered tea. Quite soon the travelers noticed that something was off with the atmosphere in the windmill. After some subtle investigation Cinna discovered a barrel of human bones near the oven. Questions about these soon lead to aggression breaking out. During the combat Morgantha also arrived back at the windmill. The fight ended with Bella and Ofelia dead and a furious Morgantha disappearing to the realm of the dead after making some sinister comments about Geoff and hos she was going to take him away from them.

In the investigation that followed, the party recovered 3 potions and found a kidnapped boy. The boy introduced himself as Freek. Freek had been taken with his sister from the town of Barovia in exchange for pies. The party decided to help him get to the Orphanage in Vallaki. Finally, they also obtained the recipe for the pies that were sold by Morgantha and learned that fresh human bone dust was a central ingredient in them.

The party decided to spend some time burning the interior of the windmill in order to make it more difficult for Morgantha to restart her business. As burning a windmill takes time, night was soon approaching, so the party decided to camp out in windmill. In the night–thanks to some clever Barting–the party managed to capture one of the ravens circling the area and learned that it is a wereraven working for a secret organization. The captured raven urged the party to ask more questions from Urvin Martikov in Vallaki.