Chapter 53
Consequences
The party ask to enter her house and see her wares once more. She obliges them and they want to buy a few things. She is absentmindedly chasing a frog around her kitchen. Eros asks if he can get a discount on anything he want’s to buy, and she obliges, as long as he fetches a pair of juicy frogs, once she catches hers she’s plum out. Eross and Elsie set off down the hill on a search for a pond while Pieron, Fabian, and Eliza remain to chat. While talking with Jeny, they begin to ask her questions, even casting a truth spell which she doesn’t seem to mind. They ask her about her childhood, her past. She talks of her mother, living outside berez, worshiping at the shrine to the ladies, they ask about the ladies more and Jeny explains she worships them still, but the shrine was destroyed when the clouds came and she and her mother got in an argument and went their separate ways. Eventually these questions lead to her revealing her true form, unable to lie under the spell. Pieron recognizes it as a hag, and the story of her mother raising her outside of the town makes sense. She wishes to know what of their third to create the trio, and Jeny mentions her sister, but that she didn’t know her very well.
When Erros and Elsie return, Jeny slips back into her old lady form, and she devours the frogs. She says she must now depart, she has plans to travel for a time and collect rare herbs she needs to replenish for her magics. She offers that they can stay at the hut if they would like, and when they do they have a near identical dream to the first, this time at what looked to be the shrine Jeny spoke of, someone they assume is strahd pouring blood into the ground, killing the plants.
The party theory crafts about the gods, where the ladies three fit into the dark god pantheon they’ve started to meet, how Strahd is perhaps an enemy of all of this, that’s why he was against the cultists.
In their theory crafting they remember something Madam Eva told them, that they needed a treasure from the den, the jewel around the shrine’s neck. They walk back to the den at mid day, then they talk to the old man outside. They are about to do a plan involving Eliza convincing them to part with the necklace momentarily, but at the last second Erros changes the plan and puts a charm on the old man to fetch them the necklace. They grab it and run before he can realize what has happened, but it rouses the den and they use spicy sneezing powder from jeny to hide their scent and some twig blights with their clothes to scatter their trail. It works, and while they keep up the chase, the party has time to get back to Jeny’s. They prepare to rest, but shortly after, they are approached by Rahadin, Ludmilla and Volenta, and 4 vampire spawn (along with 6 ghouls). Rahadin reads out a decree from Strahd, giving him permission to carry out justice in the slight against Strahd, and that he is too busy planning a wedding to bother with them. Simply give up the one who shot at him and the rest will be free to go. (the latter also says they have fulfilled their purpose and yet he continues to allow them free stay within his lands).
