09/16/2026: Is No Fun, Is No Blinski

In the swamps of Berez, Komzin picks his way through fog that clings like a second skin. He has followed the sound of a cawing raven, and now stands regarding a large, writhing bird pinned through the wing to a plank by a single nail. The nail, Komzin thinks, may have a glamour to it. In any case, the raven is alive, frantic, and making sure the whole marsh knows its woes.

Komzin opts to check the perimeter. Circling the area, he finds a rotted rag doll half-sunk in the muck, its fanged smile stitched wide, its yarn hair gone to slime. A mud-encrusted tag on its chest reads, "Is No Fun. Is No Blinski."

Komzin knows the name Blinski. A friend, he supposes. In Vallaki, over wine, Blinski told him he descends from a long line of toymakers, none of whom were trapped in Barovia the way Blinski has been. That makes the doll younger than it looks, and its presence here mysterious, possibly concerning.

The knight turns back to the raven, which croaks at him in an exhausted, hopeless way. He splits the plank with his blade and frees the bird, but the nail remains embedded in its wing. The raven works at it with its beak, fails, and limps a few steps toward Komzin, grounded and pathetic.

Komzin turns to leave. The bird cannot keep up, and the fog soon swallows it. The knight strides on another half dozen paces.

Then, from the fog, comes the sound of an axe meeting something that does not fight back.

He returns to find a newly dead young man of about twenty years, dressed like the folk of the vineyard. His matted, dark-haired head lies several feet from the rest of him. Feeble spurts of blood jet from the severed neck, less strong with each passing moment. Weapon drawn, Komzin spins. To his right, he sees a very large shadow fading into the mist. It grows faint, then vanishes.

Sensing no immediate threat any longer, he squats to examine the body. A copper bracelet stamped with a raven encircles the man’s wrist. This Komzin pockets. The knight knows nothing of the Order of the Feather, so the bracelet tells him nothing. He does wonder whether this unfortunate young man might be the missing Dinan, the friend Urwin sent him to find.

An outsized axe is lodged in a nearby tree. It is built for work rather than battle, and seems made for hands far larger than his own, in which it would seem greataxe-sized. 

Something startles Komzin, and he wheels. The fog replies in a basso voice, "What are you doing in my swamp?" The mists darken as a gigantic figure approaches him.

"I know you, General Komzin. You may call me Lysaga." Fifteen feet of hag steps out of the murk. Komzin asks whether she is responsible for the boy's death. She does not deny it. The boy was a raven, she explains, and killing him was a favor to her son, who dislikes ravens.

"It is a gift for him.” A few beats pass, as if she is dredging her memory. “You served alongside my son in the liberation of Barovia, did you not?" she rumbles.

Komzin allows that this is correct.

"I will discuss my son with you. I have questions."

She abruptly turns, signaling that he follows her deeper into the swamp. Here, a small house balances on chicken legs. It lurches to meet Lysaga with a rolling gait. She clambers up a rope ladder to go inside. As Komzin waits, scarecrows move in from the mists, closing around Komzin in a loose, unhurried ring of about two dozen.

Lysaga returns with an offer of tea, delivered in the tone of a command. Komzin declines the tea. He does not wish to enter her hut.

Ignoring this rudeness, Lysaga launches into a list of complaints. Her son has not visited in far too long, and no invitation to Ravenloft has been extended. She knows why. A woman: Ireena. Tatiyana.

Komzin confirms it: Strahd's reincarnated love is now at Ravenloft.

“He loves her?” demands Lysaga. She is taking the news badly, or rather the ground does. Her stomping shakes the earth, sprays mud, and rattles Komzin's armor like loose coins. When the tirade finally winds down, Lysaga snaps, ”Does she love him?” Lysaga glares Kozin, ominously.  

Komzin chooses his next words carefully. “I do not know Ireena well enough to say.” Lysaga sends him back to the body of the unfortunate wereraven for her giant axe.

He retrieves it and delivers it back to the witch. Lysaga begins to sharpen it on a whetstone, slowly. While she works, she asks whether this version of Tatiyana remembers Sergei, Strahd's brother. Komzin tells her the truth: she remembers nothing.

”You will deliver this letter to my son when you return to Ravenloft.”

Komzin nods and takes the letter, tucking it into his pack. She does not know that he has fallen out of favor with Strahd.

He warily counts the conversation a success. Nobody else has been beheaded. Yet.

⚔

Krelldutt, Torgan, and Orbart return from investigating the druids of Yester Hill. The druids' cave was found to be empty, abandoned, and now home to an otyugh. Light is failing; not everyone among them can see in the dark, and no one argues for staying. They slog back to the vineyard through an increasingly steady, icy rain.

At the vineyard, a subdued celebration is under way. Davian, the elder, greets them with wine, food, and Fiznik: three feet ten inches of gnome in rune-engraved full plate, shield in hand. A tinkerer and blacksmith, Fiznik is mending the vineyard's tools on his wagon, parked by the vineyard's barn. He has come to sharpen knives and repair the fermentation equipment the blight’s invasion of the vineyard left damaged.

Krelldutt reports that the druids have fled southeast. “Southeast? Possible toward Berez.” His sons exchange looks with Davian. “That is where you sent Dinan to watch, is it not?” Adrian, the old man’s elder son, asks, “And Dinan has not yet returned.”

The old man pauses, frowning. He waits for Krelldutt to volunteer his services. When he does not, Davian Martikov looks at him frankly. "I command no one. But we would welcome any help."

Krelldutt, sighing, assures him he will follow Davian's man to Berez in the morning.

⚔

Fiznik is not a trusting man. Before sleeping, he sets four wards and locks every door and window around the vineyard, then retires inside the barn without posting a watch, because he has, after all, secured the entire estate with magic. His wagon is parked just outside the warded sliding doors of the barn. He shares a stall with his team of mules.

In the depths of the night, he wakes drenched, out of a nightmare: a knight he does not know in peril, an enormous hag sharpening an axe, two more witches dragging another unconscious stranger toward a swamp, the shadow of a great bat over all of it.

A bell rings. An alarm. His alarm.

Fiznik rolls to his knees to ignite his lantern. It has been treated so that its light reveals what is invisible. Soon, it shows him an imp clinging to the axle beneath his wagon, certain it is safe. This allows Fiznik to get close. With a practiced grab, he catches it by the neck and squeezes. The imp confesses that it was sent by Lord Strahd. Fiznik's artificed gauntlets speak in thunder, and the imp does not survive the conversation.

The noise brings Davian and his sons, Krelldutt and Torgan. Krelldutt wonders aloud whether the imp only wanted shelter. Davian asks who sent it, and Fiznik tells them the creature confessed to serving Strahd.

With little else to be done, everyone returns to bed, unsure they will sleep. The ward that woke Fiznik is spent, and he has not rested enough to raise another.

Toward morning another bell rings again, distant and thin, but Fiznik sleeps on, noticing nothing. A second imp has tunneled under the barn door, ducked beneath the gate of the stall and crossed the straw to the bedroll where Fiznik slumbers.

While the gnome’s armor is magically fixed to his body and does not come off, his face is the one part of him not fully integrated with plate.

The imp lifts his visor and stings him in the face.