#because nobody wants to be the main focus in barovia

[madammayh3m]

Day 5: Ferrin is a Queen (and also she gets a baby bat familiar, it’s real cute)

It’s a hill... it’s Yester Hill! Plot shit happens to Ferrin, Thais gets a little hint of an origin, we get another fucking Object! Yadda yadda Curse of Strahd spoilers so proceed with caution or whatever.

The two continue on the next day to scope out Yester Hill. Ferrin asks Thais about what happened the night prior, but Thais also has no idea and simply states that she was given a choice. They go to Yester Hill but get hopelessly lost for five hours.

Eventually they make their way there, where Thais gets a strange feeling from one of the burial cairns dotting the landscape; she realizes they are being watched by a group of druids. She opens the cairn where she uncovers Kavan’s spear. She and Ferrin are led by the druids up to the top of Yester Hill where - because both parties don’t speak the other’s language - they communicate through charades and crude drawings that Ferrin is considered Strahd’s heir to Barovia, and that Thais is seen as her protector.

They leave for Vallaki, and on the way, Ferrin questions Thais about her nature. Thais has a memory of a local legend - soldiers in silver-scaled armor that marched against a stronghold of Strahd and, upon being cut down in battle, rose again and again until the stronghold fell. Ferrin notices a glint of silver in the corner of her eye. Looking around, she sees a grave marker in the forest. She points it out to Thais, and the two check it out. Thais leaves some gold as an offering, and explains that there is a local legend that if you leave offerings at abandoned gravesites, the soldiers in silver armor will watch over your travels. Later, as they are traveling, a silver warrior protects them from a group of zombies that was following them.

They finally make it Vallaki, but only after the gates have been shut for the night. They decide to try and find the Vistani and ask to stay at their camp rather than try to bribe their way into the city. When they arrive at the camp, they find two men whipping a teenage boy, Alexei, as punishment for something, along with a few other Vistani men, passed out drunk. Upon noticing them, the leader of the Vistani, Luvash, asks what they’re doing there. Ferrin indicates that they are allies and loyal to Strahd, and Luvash asks for their help finding his missing daughter, Araebelle. The two go search out along the lake and find a figure out on a boat, chanting in a strange language and holding up a small, wriggling bag to throw into the water.

While he struggles to keep a hold on the bag, the two women rush out into the lake on one of the rowboats on the shore, getting there just in time to kill him and save Araebelle, who is hilarious and remarkably unphased by the whole ordeal. She reveals that she purposefully tricked Alexei into leaving her alone in an attempt to set him up with a girl he has a crush on. They reunite her with her father, and he and his brother, Arrigal, take them to go get a reward and then a place to stay for the night. They also pass along a gift from Strahd for Ferrin – the copy of his notes that he promised her, and a baby bat familiar. She reads the notes and the two retire for the night.