Old Bonegrinder (O)

• During the conversations, Bella suddenly becomes more reserved. She hates having to ask for anything, especially of random passerbys, but they don't get many visitors and Bella's mother would never ask for help on her own. Recently, a letter that Mother sent out to a friend in Vallaki was returned to the windmill unanswered. Bella hasn't told her mother about the returned letter yet, but she very much doesn't want her Mother to worry. Bella takes out the letter and hands it to the players. It Reads:

  Vasili, My Dear Friend,

  Yes, of course I would be more than willing to help you with such a horrible problem! I can only imagine what those poor dears in Vallaki are going through. You know very well that I've had my own bad encounters with witches... encounters that have left their marks on my very soul. Children, orphaned or not, should never have to face such evil.

  If you find a way to get the little ones at Andral's Orphanage safely out of Vallaki, I'll be happy to house them in my windmill. There's not much room, here, true. But we have beds and pies to go around.

  Sincerely,

  Morgantha

• Bella worries that something may have happened to Vasili... that perhaps the witch mentioned in the letter got to him. She also worries that if Morgantha sees the unanswered letter, she may go to Vallaki herself. And Vallaki is no place for a old woman like her.
• Bella humbly requests that the PCs look into the matter.

The ground floor has been converted into a makeshift kitchen, but the room is a bit disorganized and has a musty, lived-in air about it. Baskets and old dishware are piled in one corner. Adding to the clutter is a peddler's cart, a chicken coop, a heavy wooden trunk, and a pretty wooden cabinet with flowers painted on its doors.

There is an open, upright barrel in the center of the room.

A large brick oven takes up most of one side of the room. The oven emits warmth and you can smell something sweet baking inside. Surrounding the oven on some shelves are several jars of condiments and ingredients. There's also a couple rubbish bins filled with animal bones and bits of discarded dough

If inspecting the barrel:

As you look into the barrel, the sweet smell of pastries blends horridly with a stench that burns your nostrils.

• The barrel holds glistening, greenish-black demon ichor
• Anyone still addicted knows the smell of the dream pastries right away and gets a craving
  • If anyone looks in the oven, they also recognize them as Dream Pastries
• DC15 survival if bones inspected: the bones are actually children bones

Inside the cabinet:

Wooden bowls full of herbs and baking ingredients, including flour, sugar, and several gourds of an unfamiliar powder. Hanging on the inside of the cabinet doors are a dozen locks of hair. Amid various concoctions are three small, labeled containers that hold elixirs. One is a golden syrup labeled "Youth", the second a red tea labelled "Laughter", and the third a greenish milky liquid labeled "Mother's Milk"

• Youth: magically makes the imbiber appear younger and more attractive for 24 hours
• Laughter: a nonmagical red tea that infects the imbiber with Cackle Fever
• Mother's Milk: a dose of Pale Tincture (Ingested)
• The powder is ground bone: DC 18 survival

\An ugly young women wearing a silk shawl and a stitched gown. Long needles stick out of her tangled mop of black hair, as she sweeps the floor. She is pushing around a few old bones and stirring up a cloud of white dust with her broom. She wears a bloodstained, flour-caked apron. A long, sharp bodkin impales her bundled-up mound of gray hair.

The dirt-caked windows allow very little light to enter this eight-foot-high chamber, most of which is taken up by a large millstone connected to a wooden gear shaft that rises through the ceiling in the center of the room. A stone staircase continues up.

• Unless lured elsewhere, Offalia is here running the grindstone, grinding children's bones
  • unless provoked (or maybe surprised), they're happy to entertain the guests and offer them pies
• They operate the millstone manually since the windmill no longer functions

If Bella is still here:

Another old woman is here sitting on the side of the bed pricking a small child with a needle as she cries

In a rotting wooden closet are three crates, stacked one atop another, with small doors set into them. Next to the closet is a heap of discarded clothing. A ladder climbs to a wooden trapdoor in the nine-foot-high ceiling. A moldy bed with a tattered canopy stands nearby.

• The discarded clothing belongs to children whom the night hags have already devoured

• The trapdoor in the ceiling can be pushed open to reveal the Domed Attic (O4)

• Each crate is 3 feet square

  • The top one is empty, but the middle and lower ones each contain a captive child
  • The outward-facing side of each crate is fitted with a small door that has an iron latch and iron hinges
  • It can be unlatched and opened easily from the outside
• The two captured children (LG male and female noncombatants) were taken from the village of Barovia after being given to the hags by their parents in exchange for dream pastries

  • The boy, Freek, is seven years old (has no soul)
  • The girl, Myrtle, is barely five
  • Their crates are full of crumbs, as the hags are fattening them up
  • If freed, neither child wants to go home, because of what their parents did
  • They both speak kindly of Ismark and Ireena in Barovia, hoping to be taken to them
    • They're very happy to see Ireena

• The hags don't use the bed for sleeping, but they store their treasure in it. Six pieces of cheap jewelry (worth 25 gp each) are stuffed in the moldy straw mattress.

You've reached the windmill's peak—a domed chamber filled with old machinery. There's not much room to move around. Light slips into this attic through small holes in the walls.

• Characters searching this space find a few old, abandoned bird's nests

The four ancient stones near the windmill were erected centuries ago by the valley's original human inhabitants. Each moss-covered stone bears a crude carving of a city, each of which is associated with a different season. The city of winter is shown covered with snow, the city of spring is arrayed in flowers, the city of summer has a sunburst overhead, and the city of autumn is covered with leaves. If the characters ask any of the priests or scholarly NPCs in Barovia about the stones, the characters are told that ancient legends tell of the Four Cities, said to be the cities of paradise where the Morninglord, Mother Night, and the other ancient gods first dwelled.

Several ravens circle overhead, and one pecks at something on top of the stone that depicts the city of autumn. Upon inspection, the characters see the raven is pecking at a dream pastry, and on the ground in the center of the stone circle is a small pile of children's teeth. The hags placed these here to desecrate the stones and as an offering to the entity they worship, the wicked archfey Ceithlenn of the Crooked Teeth.