Chapter 45

Diesel

The group rests for the day, coming to no consensus on what next to do. Erros wakes in the middle of the night to see Dyson leaving the attic. He follows him outside and to the wall surrounding Krezk, where Dyson strolls atop then stands forlorn in the chill night air, deep in thought. Erros, watching from the shadows, waits 10 minutes before returning to his bed, and half asleep he hears dyson return about an hour later. The next morning everyone except Dyson who has slept in, departs after breakfast for the pond and wooden gazebo to discuss in private. They decide to focus their efforts on eliminating the werewolf threat, which would protect Krezk and Vallaki from werewolf attacks, and achieve revenge for Athrin's death and Eliza's inprisonment. They think it would be best to not face them at full strength, all at once or in their den, and realize they need to know more about their schedule and look into the possibility of fracturing them politically. But an even better plan arrises, based on what they know of werewolf infection from Adrian Martikov, they assume Kiril infected several werewolves in the pack, as well as Ghol, so if they could find out who infected Kiril, slaying them would break the chain and rob them of their powers. They needed more info and would peruse the abbot's library before heading out for reconisance of the den

Fabian explains the pond, the faint concecration she senses from the water, they see the statue, they see that the face is Vasili von Holtz. They don't know what to make of that, but explain their dealings with Vasili, Ireena and that she was a vampire, and assume Vasili must be something else. Super old or eternal or something but not a vampire. They also wonder what Strahd will think now that they got rid of the scrying items, and wether or not Strahd is allied with the werewolf den. They conclude that Strahd must have been using them this whole time, and was probably behind his wives play to steal the bones of st andral.

They return to the Krezkov's to find Anna worried about Dyson, and they find that Dyson is in fact an animated clockwork automaton that looks a lot like dyson. They'll very confused, and Erros comes clean that he saw Dyson awake last night and followed him up onto the wall. He seemed lost in thought and troubled, and after assuming he was just getting some air to think, Erros returned to bed and heard dyson come back an hour later. They realized it could have been this thing returning, none of them got a great look at Dyson since the night before. They asked if Dyson had built this for them, like a replacement while they were off adventuring, but the thing could not speak. All of Dyson's things were still there and the thing was wearing dyson's armor. There was not enough time for Dyson to reach the Abbot and be transformed by him. They learned that it was capable of writing, and it explained that it had memories, darkness for a long time, waking up here. They asked if it was Dyson and it didn't seem to understand, but it seemed to think it was an adventurer like them. They asked if it liked the name Diesel, and it said it did, but that it already had a name, and showed off a small plaque that said "Pidlwick II, Is No Fun, Is No Fritz," which seemed identical to Blinksy's catch phrase. They figured they would ask him if they were ever in Vallaki again, and asked Pidlwick if he would accompany them and if he could fight, to which he cryptically said he had before and agreed. Then they traveled back up to the abbey to conduct research for the remainder of the day, before retiring for bed.