The Cult of the Morninglord (or History of the Church, Part One)

Starting a multi-post deep-dive into Barovian religion with an overview of the Morninglord might have been the smart approach, but I can’t say that much planning went into deciding to write these posts. Instead, this is not part one as I already started this research with a dive into St Andral, but there will hopefully be more on the Morninglord to follow, and who am I to pass up a chance to reference Mountain Goats deep cuts?

Any Realms-savvy dungeon master or player will recognize and connect the title and symbols of the Morninglord to Lathander, the Forgotten Realms’ god of the dawn, the god of beginnings, of spring, birth, and renewal (SCAG p. 32).

We’ve already learned how the Cult of the Morninglord (CotM) supplanted the worship of Andral in Barova. Andral’s worship had died out in the 4th century, Barovian Calendar, but the CotM would not arrive for at least another century.

The worship of the morninglord came from the confused memories of an outlander (i.e not from Barovia/Ravenloft) child saved from Strahd von Zarovich by the elf vampire Jander Sunstar.

We learn from the 3.5E Ravenloft Player’s Handbook (2005) that

The Cult of the Morninglord was born late in the fifth century, after the faith’s founder claimed that when he was a young boy, the Morninglord appeared to him in physical form and protected him from the roaming menaces of the Barovian night.

(p. 67)

This boy’s name and more of his history is detailed in the Ravenloft Gazetteer Vol 1.

One morning in 475 BC, a young outlander boy named Martyn Pelkar stumbled out of the Svalich Woods. Few could predict that the boy’s ramblings about his salvation at the hands of a “golden morning lord” would spawn a cult that somehow made inroads in the hearts of the naturally suspicions and cynical Baroivans.

Ravenloft Gazetteer Vol I, p. 18
An early symbol of the morning lord. A round sunlike symbol drawn on a stained and torn parchment resembling a styalized sun over a road.
The Symbol of the Morninglord, from the Ravenloft Player’s Handbook (3.5E, 2005)

The story seems to go that the boy was in fact saved by Jander Sunstar, the sun elf vampire featured in Vampire of the Mists— the story is not so explicitly told in any of the source books I read, but appears to happen in that novel per a citation in the page for the Morninglord on Mistipedia, a Ravenloft Wiki.

The mantle was eventually picked up from Martyn “the Mad” Pelkar by his first acolyte, Sasha Petrovich, and they gathered a congregation at the “Sanctuary of the Blessed Succor” in the Village of Barovia (Gazetteer I, p. 24). Sasha (aka Alexi) is another character featured in Vampire of the Mists.

The Gazetteer goes on to describe how the center of worship moved to Vallaki and then to Krezk forming the cult’s largest center of worship, the Sanctuary of First Light (what would become the Abbey of St. Markovia in 5E, yet another subject for another day).

The Gazetteer gives us the greatest picture of the worship of the Morninglord, so it is disappointing to find it out of print, even on the Dungeon Master’s Guild and Drive Through RPG, where many of the older Ravenloft books (including the Sword & Sorcery 3.5E Player’s Handbook) are available as PDF and/or for print-on-demand.

It seems poor Martyn combined his Lathander catechism with the sun-elf form of Sunstar to create a sort of bastardized, Ravenloft-specific variation to the Faerun god of the dawn. The promise of a salvation and the end of the darkness became a small beacon of hope for just enough Barovians that the cult was able to establish a foothold, and ultimately enough of a following in Barovia. The Ravenloft Player’s Handbook (3.5E) touches on the “Unspoken Agreement” between deities and the Dark Powers of Ravenloft, and how the absence (or at least distance) of deities can lead to “theological shifts” and divergence in the faith and tenants of a god’s followers between the material planes and the lands within the mists (p. 64).

Out-of-game, if product licensing had been a little different for Sword & Sorcery, the Player’s Handbook and Gazetteers might have been that much more explicit about names for the Ravenloft Pantheon— instead alluding to similar symbols and epithets without name-dropping a Forgotten Realms™ name like Bane or Lathander— an interesting sidestep also seen when comparing Critical Role’s 2017 Tal’Dorei Campaign Guide to the Wizards of the Coast-published Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount (2020).

There is more to the story presented in the Gazetteers that didn’t make it into Curse of Strahd that bears interest, including a “secret society” of undead hunters within the church known as The Dawnslayers, followers of Sasha Petrovich’s legacy dedicated to destroying undead, and vampires in particular (Gazetteer I, p. 24). The legacy of the Dawnslayers would make for an interesting chapter with a cleric or paladin of the Morninglord in Curse of Strahd, but I feel I may have missed the boat for that in my current campaign, as I don’t know that we will be returning to Krezk this late in the story, and I think I’d rather spent the time with the Keepers of the Feather and their worship of Andral.

I couldn’t find much more about The Morninglord (Church OR Cult) in the 2E “Red Box” source books or the later Domains of Dread, noting only that according to Domains and Denizens, “Barovians do not frequent their churches, for they feel that the gods have abandoned them” (p. 8). Both Domains of Dread and the 3.5E books also discuss the Cult of the Morninglord’s following among the Gundarakites, ethnic natives of Gundarak, a valley adjacent to Barovia that Strahd conquered following the Grand Conjunction (Domains of Dread, p. 59, Gazetteer I, p. 24). Because Gundarak, and really, any domain beyond Barovia, is excised from Curse of Strahd, that aspect of the church didn’t factor into my research, but might be an interesting thread to follow were one to expand Barovia from Curse of Strahd‘s three villages to a larger setting drawing from the previous editions.


References

Curse of Strahd (5E, 2016)
Domains of Dread (2E, 1997)
Domains and Denizens (“Red Box”, 2E, 1994)
Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount (2020)
“The Morninglord” Mistipeida: A Ravenloft Wiki. Accessed 2020-04-21.
Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (5E, 2015)
Ravenloft Gazetteer Vol I (3.5E, 2002)
Ravenloft Player’s Handbook (3.5E, 2005)
Tal’Dorei Campaign Guide (2017)


The Church of the Morninglord: St Andral

With two clerics (one a cleric of The Morninglord) playing through Curse of Strahd, I find myself fielding a number of questions about the church’s locations and history, and trying to piece together the information as it comes. On a second pass through St Andral’s Church in Vallaki, our curious cleric was examining the empty reliquary under the alter. Father Lucian had disappeared that this point, but she asked if she (as a cleric of the morning lord) was familiar with who St. Andral was, and rolling well enough, I proceeded to tell her… well, I proceeded to panic, as I realized the book gives us next to nothing about St Andral.

What we know for sure:

I was shocked to realize the Curse of Strahd hardcover gives us nothing except the following:

  • St Andral’s bones rest beneath the alter in the church in Vallaki. We don’t have a map to go on, but we can assume the church is slightly larger and slightly grander than the church in Barovia, although the book tells us to re-use that map if needed.
  • St Andral’s remains are indeed blessed and hold have some level of sacred power, as the will hallow the church grounds when returned.

Given these limited details and the need to answer the question, I decided in the moment that St. Andral and Lugdana, the paladin who carried the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, were now the same person, and gave a brief bio she might have reasonably recalled with a high roll on her history check—

St Andral was a paladin in the early days of the church when is was known as “The Cult of the Morninglord”. The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind was delivered to her by an angel in the form of a raven, which she famously used to destroy a nest of vampires.

But What Else Do We Know?

It may be too late to incorporate all of these details into the canon established on the fly, but it’s always interesting to dive into the lore and see what else we can find in the annals of D&D history.

Fair Barovia

St. Andral’s Church and Father Lucian appear in Claudio Pozas’ Fair Barovia (4E, Dragon Magazine #207), but doesn’t give us much more in the way of new information— only:

The Morninglord was originally a religion brought to Barovia by traveling adventurers. In time, that religion was mixed with the traditional Barovian worship of hallowed saints of the past.

In addition to St. Andral, other Barovian saints include St. Ecaterine, St. Bogdan, and St. Markovia.

Fair Barovia, Dragon Magazine #207, p.51

For more of Fair Baroiva and its relationship to Curse of Strahd, I can’t recommend enough this excellent article from Powerscore RPG. Saints Ecaterine and Bogdan and their relics both appear in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5E) alongside St. Markovia.

The church (or cult) of the Morninglord deserves its own space in another post, but if we want to learn more about this “traditional Barovan worship”, we can look next to Sword & Sorcery’s Ravenloft Gazetteers for third edition.

The Church of Andral

The Church of Andral predates Sergei von Zarovich’s ill-fated wedding in 351 Barovian Calendar (BC), having been founded in 168 BC to worship a sun god known as Ahndrel or Eundrel. By the fourth century BC, the church had died out, eventually supplanted by the worship of The Morninglord (Ravenloft Gazetteer Vol 1, p. 16).

One option might be, perhaps this is a good reason nothing is known about St. Andral himself— the name remained in the recesses of the church history as the worship of the Morninglord became more established in Barovia (which only happened after the mists descended on the valley). Andral became forgotten, the god demoted to saint with no other miraculous events or valiant martyrdom attached to his name. The bones could belong to anyone, given power by others’ faith in their divinity.

One other fun fact I learned in this research that doesn’t have much bearing on our St Andral is that according to the same Gazetteer, the leader of The Keepers of the Black Feather, Keeva Sixtywinters is, in fact, a cleric of Andral, the last keeping the original faith alive (p. 38).

Lugdana

So with nothing else on St Andral, what else can we learn about Lugdana, the Paladin? Her only mention in Curse of Strahd is in the entry for the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind.

The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is a unique holy symbol sacred to the good-hearted faithful of Barovia. It predates the establishment of any church in Barovia. According to legend, it was delivered to a paladin named Lugdana by a giant raven — or an angel in the form of a giant raven. Lugdana used the holy symbol to root out and destroy nests of vampires until her death. The high priests of Ravenloft kept and wore the holy symbol after Lugdana’s passing.

Curse of Strahd, p. 222

The holy symbol has its own place in Ravenloft’s history, but Lugdana appears previously in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, which seems it be, like Curse of Strahd, a semi-reboot of Barovia stripped away from the second and third editions’ expansive Ravenloft settings. I couldn’t find mention of her in any of the 2e or 3e books.

Alongside much of the same information about the holy symbol, we learn “[Lugdana] was among the earliest settlers of the valley” (Expedition p. 214). Lugdana would later die battling a fiend named Chernovog (cue Mussorgsky) summoned by a band of witches at Lysaga Hill— a location that does not exist in Curse of Strahd, but perhaps could be combined with Yester Hill instead (Expedition p. 217).

Where to Go From Here

I’m keen to explore the “Church of Andral” aspect of the Barovian church and the Keepers of the Feather’s relationship with the “old ways” in our campaign, I think it would be an interesting place to go once the Martikovs learn the party has acquired the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. We’ve only just learned the family’s secret and their relationship with the birds of the valley, and I’m sure the party will meet them again soon. As is often the case I wish I’d know just a bit more and had done this research before the questions came up, but many times we don’t quite know where the party will end up next and don’t anticipate exactly which clues and mysteries we need to have ready for them.

——
Sources

Curse of Strahd (5E, 2016)
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (3.5E, 2006)
Fair Barovia (4E, Dragon Magazine #207, 2012)
Ravenloft Gazetteer Vol. 1 (3.5E, 2002)

Arabelle’s Fortune Telling

I was scanning through the 4e module Fair Barovia this morning, looking for the encounter at the base of Tser Falls to adapt into “my” Barovia for this evening’s game, when I came across this module’s version of the Tarokka reading again, here given by a grown-up Arabelle.

Powersore RPG has a fun lore deep-dive into past versions of Barovia that spends a fair amount of time on Fair Barovia and the various connections between the NPCs featured in both. Fair Barovia is interesting as it cannot be nailed down as a clear sequel or prequel— For example, Kolyan Indirovich, burgomaster of the Village of Barovia, has not yet found and adopted his daughter Ireena, while Arabelle is a grown woman and a gifted Vistani seer in her own right. Given the cyclical nature of time and generations in Barovia, I’m not sure it matters too much anyway. Best not to think about it too much.

Arabelle’s Tarokka reading offers a small boon (or curse!) in a specific location based on the suit and face of the card drawn. The module’s reading uses a handful of cards from a standard deck of cards, but can easily be adapted to the Tarokka deck we’ve grown to love. I’ll weigh our adapted list in favor of boons since I see this reading as a potential reward for saving Arabelle from the lake, but as with everything else in this wretched valley, there is still a certain amount of risk when playing with fate. For this reading, we’ll only use the low deck (1-10 of the four suits).

To start, we’ll identify the locations where the effects of the reading apply:

Coins: (Diamonds): Krezk / Monastery / Fidatov Estate
Swords (Spades): Argynvostholt
Stars (Clubs): Berez
Glyphs (Hearts): The Winery / Yester Hill

You could swap out any location, including Castle Ravenloft or the Amber Temple, but I chose these four as I expect the party will need their full faculties in the final two dungeons of the game.

The Fidatov estate is the manor home featured in DDAL04-09: The Tempter, one of my favorite modules from the Curse of Strahd AL season. Check out this chapter of Fleshing out Curse of Strahd from the CoS subreddit for an idea on how to integrate the estate with Krezk, and I’ll try to write up a post on running the estate within a Curse of Strahd campaign as well— it was one of my favorite “side quest” sessions the last time I ran the campaign, as there is no better reward for a DM than dropping a cursed honeypot in front of a bunch of greedy PCs who will greedily snatch up piles of gold despite knowing it is 100% cursed and a bad idea.

I assume when I do this reading, the party will not have visited any of these locations, so we can look to the descriptions given for the treasure locations in Chapter One for ideas on how to describe the locations without explicitly naming them (Curse of Strahd, pp. 12-15).

Have each player draw a card (or Arabelle draws for them). The suit determines the location, while the value applies the affect from the list below. Have Arabelle read the italicized text when the card is drawn.

  1. Advantage on initiative rolls
    Danger lurks around every corner, but your reflexes are heightened in this place, and your guard remains up where your companions may falter.
  2. Disadvantage on initiative rolls
    Blades will be drawn when you least expect it.
  3. Bonus 1d4 to health gained from second wind (Fighter), dark one’s blessing (Warlock, Fiend patron) and hit dice rolls
    Your blood will sustain you in this place.
  4. Automatically roll 51 on Barovian nightmare d100 rolls. This does not affect haunting from a Night Hag if the party has made an enemy of Morgantha and her daughters.‡
    Rest easy in this location, for the first time in too long, an easy, dreamless sleep comes to you.
  5. Advantage on INT/WIS/CHA ability checks and saving throws
    Your soul is shielded from from evil in this place.
  6. Disadvantage on INT/WIS/CHA ability checks and saving throws*
    Your soul is laid bare and vulnerable in this place.
  7. Advantage on STR/DEX/CON ability checks and saving throws
    Strength courses through your veins, you draw newfound power from this place, finding yourself capable of new feats.
  8. Disadvantage on STR/DEX/CON ability checks and saving throws*
    The place saps your life, atrophying your very being and wasting away as long as you remain.
  9. Advantage on Concentration CON saving throws†
    The weave is closer in this place, your connection and concentration stronger for it.
  10. Disadvantage on Concentration CON saving throws†
    The weave is thin and frayed in this place, your connection to your magic holding by a thread, easily broken.

* One of the Fair Barovia possibilities limits the curse to until the character is bloodied (a 4e term, reaching half hit points or below), and in the same light, the broad curses on checks and saves could end once the PC reached 0 HP for the first time in the chosen location. If you wish to do this, add “…but ebbing life sustains you.” to the prophecy.
† If you draw either of these for a non-spellcaster, quickly roll a d8 and use that result from the table instead.
‡ To add an unfortunate twist on this one, (or you’re not a sadist penalizing sleep as I do), when resting, the character falls into a deep slumber, and cannot be woken except by taking damage, after which they will gain no benefit from the long rest.


Credit where credit is due, some of the above lines (and of course the core idea) of the table above are adapted or lifted directly from Fair Barovia, by Claudio Pozas, published in Dungeon Magazine #207. The original reading can be found on page 47.

Learning A Bit More Every Time We Draw Blood

Vampire spawn are nothing to laugh at at level three. I’m once again finding I need to re-adjust my expectations for Barovia, and I’m beginning to understand how deadly this early campaign really can be. When we entered Barovia a year and a half ago with the players I’d gotten to known over two years of Out of the Abyss, they were packing some serious firepower. Between the fact that we were starting with six player characters, and the fact that most of them were fairly well optimized builds designed for packing a serious punch (Especially with our Sharpshooting Monster Slayer Ranger and the Scorlock blasting away, they had no issue burning through the undead’s hitpoints), those first few sessions of Curse of Strahd were a little less harrowing than all the stories had prepared me for.

I found I was not really challenging them until they found themselves in a place they had no business being just yet, and were met with the harsh reality of sandbox campaign books run by a DM still wet behind the ears— diving headlong into a region they had no business being at just yet, and losing two PCs as a result. One accepted the uncertain offer, the other did not. And once again, ss all of this happened before, all of this will happen again. This time, right out of the gate I’ve found myself with two dead PCs within two sessions.

Death House Lives Up To Its Name

It’s actually been three sessions since I updated on Curse of Strahd, two of which finished out Death House. I ran with the updated/alternative Death House I mentioned in my last post, and I think it worked really well. The updated story basically makes Walter (the infant son the nursemaid cares for upstairs) part of the shambling mound in the dungeon, giving the party a shortcut if they choose to fight the monster— when the shambling mound uses engulf, the restrained player has a chance to see Walter, and if they sever his connection to the mound, it collapses, and they no longer need to fight it.

Session two covered the rest of the house (basically level three and attic, plus part of the basement), including some fun RP when our fighter was possessed by the bossy twelve-year-old ghost girl. Between sessions two and three, we found our fourth player, and we rounded out the party with a monk. The player asked if she could be from Barovia, and I said there wasn’t really a great fit for her in Barovia, but we dove into some of the 2e and 3/3.5e Ravenloft source books, and dropped her monastery in Darkon. I gave her some vague references to van Richten and Ezmerelda I’ll hook into later (she doesn’t know either by name), and she gave me 2.5 pages of backstory to work with, including a love-interest NPC she’s looking for who has some vague history with Barovia and/or Strahd too. I’m still figuring out exactly what I’ll do with her, but I’ll figure something out.

I gave her a variation on “creeping mists” once again, another of the dreams I’d used in the past, but this time she woke up in the father’s (otherwise empty) coffin of Death House’s family crypt. The rest of the party heard her pounding and shouting, and introductions were made. Eventually, they made their way through he rest of the catacombs, refused to sacrifice anyone on the bloody alter, and shambling Walter attacked.

Once the shambling mound was defeated, the party still had to get out, and since they skipped out on the room with the trap door, took the long way all the way back to attic of the House. I’ve seen a lot of DMs complain about the last act of Death House, the house coming to life and trying to kill everyone with noxious fumes and slashing scythe blades, but I love it, especially as the shambling mound feels like it should be the “end of dungeon boss and now we get treasure” moment, and instead everything goes to hell. By the time they reached the front porch, three we unconscious and rolling death saves. The rogue landed a natural 20 and popped back up gasping for breath, and was able to stabilize her companion. The monk was not so lucky.

Death’s Dark Vignettes

The DM’s Guide for Curse of Strahd’s Adventurer League season includes an alternative to faction charity resurrection for Ravenloft— a deal with the dark powers where the character gets to return to life— at a cost. I used these last time I ran, and it was the craziest, most exciting thing to happen in the early game, when Sumu, the poor cleric, took a lighting bolt between the shoulder blades at Yester Hill (aforementioned “victim of the sandbox” session). She was dead and gone, until she wasn’t. Sumu awoke with a second face on the back of her head, a malevolent Edward Mordake whispering horrible things to her and the rest of the party ad nausium. The DM’s guide has a few options (I think four or six  on the table) but there’s an additional full d20 list to work from too.

Last year I came across this excellent Reddit thread with options and ideas for presenting this offer to the player. I’ve used the scenario  presented by the original author twice, and sketched out a couple more inspired by the scenarios given as well as my own ideas. Here, the monk took the offer, and returned with a humpback— and disadvantage on DEX ability checks and saving throws. I’m not going to lie, I felt a little bad about that at first (since it’s a core attribute of being a monk in the first place), but I’m really excited to see where this goes for the character since it happened so early on.

Ismark and Ireena

Getting on to this week’s session, the party found an abandoned house to crawl into and tend their wounds (oh, did I mention we’re rolling with the DMG’s Lingering Injuries table?), spent the night, and set out in the morning again. I think I might need to readjust my dreams and nightmare d100 list, if only because I’m no longer trying to keep the small army that was last year’s campaign at full strength all the time. They made it to the Blood of the Vine Inn, learned they were in Barovia (whatever that means), and met Ismark and the Vistani bar owners.

I won’t detail everything with meeting Ismark and Ireena (I should be posting session by session if I want to dive into moment to moment recaps), but I want to move on to the church, so suffice to say, the party met them, who A. needed help transporting and burying their dead father, and B. need someone to travel with them on the road if they are to go to Vallaki. Now the party doesn’t know where Vallaki is, but they are headed east to fine Madam Eva, so they agreed.

What They Did In the Shadows…

Which leads us to the church basement and the party’s first encounter with a vampire (spawn) in Ravenloft. The party had just hit level three upon surviving (well, technically) Death House. Hit points! Class Archetypes! Second level spells! And now they were thrown against a single, very hungry vampire spawn in the basement, the son of the village priest.

This was the instance that cemented for me that this trip through Barovia is going to be a very different experience than the last time I ran it. I find I’m entering scenarios with the confidence of having dealt with it once before, but I need to keep that in check as well— this is still brand new for everyone else at the table, and what was a fairly straightforward (if long) fight for one party ended up being a different story this time around.

One major mistake on my part that ended up working in the party’s favor was that I completely forgot to consider weapon resistance for the Vampire Spawn. Their weapon attacks should have been dealing half as much damage, which would have been killer when you account for the vampire’s regeneration, as the monk and fighter were the only ones dealing any significant damage. What was already a bit of a drawn-out slugfest could have easily turned south if the Vampire had twice as many chances to draw blood.

There’s always a dangerous game of what-if I play post-session when looking at how everything played out.  I’m curious if I’d kept the resistance, would they have given up and fled faster (seeing how futile their attacks were), would they have come up with other tactics? If we hadn’t jumped into combat at the end of the night, would they have made different choices with more time to the combat (I was fairly pushy about making choices and keeping combat moving since I knew we had pushed passed time). And finally, most importantly— should I have ended combat the way I did?

And Another One Down…

We were a half hour past our usual cut off time.  DC Metro does not run all night, and people needed to get going. The cleric had gone down and was rolling death saves, but the vampire was on his last legs. I finally said “Ok, you’re able to finally kill the Vampire, Charrick [the cleric], go ahead and roll three death saves to see how this plays out.” Already at one success and one failure, it was a close one— and when the dice landed, Charrick had expired. I don’t think the player himself was upset, but the rest of the party was beating themselves up knowing the could or should have tried to stabilize him before this all happened. We called it a night, and I followed up by email the next day.

I sent Charrick’s player another offer from the dark powers (once again inspired by the vignettes link above), but he ultimately decided against it. This cleric wouldn’t take the offer, and we spent the rest of the week discussing where we’ll go from here. I’m looking forward to his next character (I’ll have to write up this party at some point soon), and he’ll play Ismark and Ireena until I find the time and place to introduce our latest victim of the mists. I’m also looking forward to when the PC’s see their companion spirit rise from the graveyard in the March of the Dead, the nightly procession of Adventurers who fell victim to Ravenloft, as they spend the night at the church.

Ever Forward

I’m not sure I have any particular conclusion for final point to follow up on the last 1700 words or so, other than every game for us is another chance to learn from past mistakes, as well as make new ones. This is D&D, PCs Die. Ravenloft is an especially deadly place, but also a really exciting setting where Death truly doesn’t need to be the end, and as this latest group will eventually learn, might not even be the worst outcome…

Suddenly the Tavern Doors Swings Open…

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again…
Battlestar Galactica (but apparently also Peter Pan)

This week I returned to Curse of Strahd (yes the only thing I’ve been writing about, but at this point, I’m at “write what you know”). It was towards the end of my last run of the campaign last spring that I started following (and very occasionally contributing to) the Curse of Strahd DM’s subreddit and Facebook group. Now I’m excited to revisit Barovia with all of the lessons I learned running the first time, as well as the amazing ideas I’ve come across to steal from the Internet DM hivemind.

I introduced the party with the same hook I’d used before: individual dreams and a variation on the “Cry For Help” hook. I like the Daggerford/Mysterious Visitors hook as it doesn’t immediately vilify the Vistani and gets the party to Madam Eva immediately, but I think it only works if you’re starting the party at third level, which I didn’t want to do here as one players was relatively new to D&D, and another brand new to 5E.

“…these aren’t the same trees that surrounded you the night before.”
Photo by Thomas Claeys on Unsplash.

We’re starting with only three PCs this time (which I’m equally excited and terrified about!). The initial meeting went well enough, but none were sold on following a strange man’s invitation through strange woods, and instead decided the continue on to the nearest city. The following night, the mists hugged their campsite close, and when they awoke, nothing looked the same.

We made it it Death House by way of my favorite image in the book, the gates of Barovia. For the second time I pulled off a D&D “jump scare”— Rolling initiative against the wolves in the den/parlor in Death House, then revealing the characters were frightened by a bunch of stuffed wolves.

Jumping at Shadows

When the PC opens the door to the den on the first floor, describe the light of their lantern or torch catching the reflection of glowing red eyes, glistening teeth dripping with saliva. I didn’t mention any sound, but perhaps they might imagine a low, menacing growl. Ask to roll initiative, roll your die for the wolves— no matter what’s on the die, the wolves roll a 1, ending up at the the bottom of the initiative order. If you really want to sell it, start flipping through your Monster Manual. This will probably be the first initiative of the campaign, so everyone will be amped up. The PCs will be up first, and describe the first blow— an axe coming down, a gout of flame, a arrow finding it’s target in the wolf— and how there is a burst of sawdust and fur, and they all realize that <PC Who Attacked First> panicked and attacked a piece of particularly high-quality taxidermy. The tension is broken, initiative is broken, and they can explore the rest of the den at their leisure.

I think I stole this from somebody’s blog or reddit post, and attribution means a lot to me, so please, if anybody recognizes the source of this little tidbit, please drop me a message and I would love to give credit where it is due!

Onwards and Upwards

We made it through the first and second floors without much incident (although the delightfully creepy reliefs and wallpapers kept everyone on edge). None of the PCs were interested in the library, which ended up being a relief for me, as I realized I forgot to print out the letter! This is fantastic, though, as I was later reminded of another DM’s writeup on Reddit on streamlining Death House, cutting or changing many of the fights, and rewriting the narrative a bit to make Lady Durst the true villain. I don’t think anything that happened in this first session will affect any of those changes (and I probably won’t be running off that guide line-by-line either), so I’m looking forward to reviewing all of those changes again and putting it all into action next week.

I wrapped up the session with the Animated Armor beaten down (although not before it got a few good blows in too), and the weirdness of this house will begin to ramp up next week…

Curse of Strahd: Chapter-by-Chapter Guides

The best part of running a campaign a year or two after its release is the wealth of information out there from other DM’s who have already been in your shoes. Across the weeks and months of running Curse of Strahd, I find myself returning again and again to guides and reference tools others have put out for our consumption and reference, learning from the lessons and mistakes or others, learning from what worked and didn’t work at others tables. Every group is obviously different with wildly different dynamics, and what works for one dungeon master will not work for all, but these resources have been an enormous help.

When preparing a particular chapter or section, I’ll often double back and read all three of the guides noted here again, weaving together the advice given alongside my own notes from the source book.

Powerscore RPG’s Guide by Sean McGovern

Sean has a number of guides, both on his blog as well as published on DMs Guild, for each (or at least most) of the D&D hardcover campaigns. His Strahd guide offers great advice on “connecting the dots” between the somewhat disjointed chapters (because chapters are divided by location and somewhat out-of-order, it’s up to the DM and the players to find the through-line), and general advice on everything from what pages of the DMG you’ll find what you need for a trap or a treasure, to specific suggestions on how and when to introduce the party to Strahd von Zarovich. This was one of the first guides I found and read, and it was the best overview on how

/r/DMAcadEMY, /r/DnDBehindTheScreen, /R/CurseOfStrahd, and other D&D Subreddits, With Special Attention to “What I Have Learned from Running Curse of Strahd Twice”

There are a number of D&D subreddits on Reddit. I want to draw particular attention to an excellent series of twenty posts by the user /u/paintraina, starting with a guide to Death House, and covering nearly every chapter, sometimes across multiple posts. On top of the posts’ excellent suggestions, you’ll also find more gems in the dialogue and disagreements that stem from any conversational forum. Most of the posts are crosslinked to each other, so you can jump between sections. At the time of writing, the final(?) post on running the final encounter doesn’t seem to be linked on the other posts.

/r/CurseOfStrahd hadn’t really pick up (or at least, I hadn’t discovered it yet) until after I was close to the end of the campaign, but there are a ton of great resources, write-ups, and alternatives from DMs that really dive into fleshing out Barovia and its inhabitants. One of my favorites was a post on adding more depth to the Tome of Strahd, and turning it into a more helpful magic item than the one-off lore dump that the hardcover gives us. I thought this dovetailed nicely with my own Tome of Strahd reading additions, and would definitely incorporate into another run of the campaign.

Elven Tower’s Guide by Derek Ruiz

Like Powerscore RPG, Elven Tower’s guide is available both on the website, divided by chapter, as well as a PDF on DMs Guild. I actually hadn’t encountered Derek’s guide until I was already running the campaign, and I wish I’d discovered/read through some of his material before then— For example, Yester Hill. Yester Hill is enormous, and get the scale and elevation changes of the the map across to the players can be difficult. Elven Tower’s post breaking down Yester Hill includes an elevation to accompany your map, which does wonders to clarify the hill’s terrain almost immediately. Yester Hill’s session was not a disaster, per say (Yester Hill’s session could be a post in and of itself), but I do not think I ran the encounter particularly well, and ultimately required considerably better preparation on my part than what my party ultimately got.

One of my favorite additions from Elven Tower is a collection of short speeches from each of the Amber Temple’s vestiges to try and seduce the party members. I used the vestiges’ quotes almost verbatem when it was time for the party to visit the Amber Temple, and I was quite happy with how everything came together (or fell apart) for them when they got there.

Sly Flourish’s Guide to Curse of Strahd

Mike Shea’s guide to Curse of Strahd does not dive into chapter-specific detail the way these other three guides do, but offers a lot of good general advice for a successful Barovian campaign. He does have an article exclusively dedicated to running Death House, Curse of Strahd‘s optional introduction for fast-tracking the players up from level one to three in a couple sessions. Among the resources is included a great pdf of all the letter handouts the players will encounter across Barovia for easy printing which I loved, but got caught offgaurd— the Tome of Strahd document differs slightly from the text in the source material, which I did not notice when I skimmed the letters (this seems to be a bit of a trend for me), and only discovered when it was read out loud at the table for the first time.

Sly Flourish’s guide is an excellent resource for figuring out how to play the character of Curse of Strahd, and especially von Zarovich himself.

Campaign Read-Aloud: I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire

When I finished P.N. Elrond’s I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire during campaign prep for Curse of Strahd, I knew I wanted to find a way to share some of the magic of the story with my party when we got to finally playing the campaign. I can’t say the book is quality literature, but I had a hell of a good time with it, and it did a lot to inform my own telling of Curse of Strahd and who Strahd von Zarovich is. While reading, I found myself flagging particularly notable scenes, especially pieces that tied directly into people and places I recognized from the adventure: Strahd taking formal control of the castle (one of my favorite bits). Strahd meeting Tatyana for the first time. The first time Tatyana is reincarnated in Berez. When I was finished, I collected these flagged sections, doubled back and specifically marked out paragraphs that might make for good “box text” for the party. With that, the idea of expanding on the Tome of Strahd came to life, and I found a fun way to share more exposition with the party in a more natural way.

In the end, I came up with a list of eleven sections to read. The party would not receive the Tome of Strahd until mid to late game (level six, Argynvostholt), so some of the stories shared through the excerpts would be already known to them, others were revelations. I would definitely avoid doing this until later if they had received the tome at, say, the crossroads or Vallaki. The party also received the the Tome of Strahd text from the adventure, which more or less covers the same information. I wanted them to get to know the Strahd I had gotten to know, someone so much more than a black-caped villain with a Romanian accent, a monstrous overlord lurking in a castle. Not that he isn’t necessarily those things, but he’s other things too.

When we started with the “further study” of the tome, on a long or short rest, someone could sit down to try and read the tome if they wished. I would ask a player for an intelligence check to attempt to “decipher” the faded text and coded script, but I quickly did away with that check as I wanted them to succeed on that anyway. The was no reason or consequence to failing the save, so  what was the point? Our first time, I asked if they wanted to attempted to decipher the text front-to-back, or skip around. They decided to skip around, meaning a d12 roll on their part chose which excerpt would be read next. If the number rolled had already been read, I simply proceeded to the next one on the list.

NumberPage NumberDateSubject
13512 Moon, 347Ravenloft Castle
23712 Moon, 347Strahd Takes Possession
3896 Moon, 350Strahd on Mortality
41016 Moon, 350Strahd Meets Tatyana
51356 Moon, 351This Was Dark Magic...
61416 Moon, 351Drinking Alek's Blood
71656 Moon, 351Tatyana's Suicide
82176 Moon, 352I Walk The Land
92416 Moon, 398The Mists
1027210 Moon, 400Marina
1130412 Moon, 720Strahd Reflecting on Tatyana

We didn’t end up reading every single excerpt (although there were only eleven, we would often forget to have a reading at a given rest, so we never made it through the full list). Characters who had dreamed of some of these excerpts had fun moments when a familiar story was given context, and I tried to provide a reaction from Ireena (or provoke a reaction, when I’d fully handed off control to a player) when the story directly involved Tatyana.

Two Tales of Dr. Van Richten

I had a horrifying moment halfway through the campaign when the party finally got their hands on Rudolph van Richten’s diary. Like many of my “Oh shit, what’s going on?” DM moments, this one came out of not reading the book closely enough and covering the details that were given in separate sections of the book. One of the biggest challenges I had DMing Curse of Strahd (and, probably a problem many DMs have with the hardcovers), is the disjointed way information is related. Other DMs’ guides have been invaluable in avoiding this, but it’s nearly unavoidable even for the best of us, and I am most definitely not that.

Thanks for Bearing with the Page Flipping

One of the worst offenders besides Dr. van Richten, whom I’ll return to in a moment, is the story of the Abbot in Krezk and the Mongrelfolk. The story of the abbey is related in the chapter introduction (page 143), and sprinkled throughout the abbey’s sections’ descriptions (pp. 147—155). There is more vital information provided in Appendix D, Monsters and NPCs, but again split between the Abbot’s entry (p. 225), and the Mongrelfolk (p. 234). When we got to the Abbey, one of the party’s first questions was, “Where did the mongrlfolk come from? Why are they like this?” I was already a bit unprepared this session, as I had expected the party to go to the winery before getting into Krezk, and had planned accordingly. Of course our adventurers consistently preferred to ignore the Reece’s Pieces I’d laid in front of them, talked their way into Krezk, and bolted for the abbey, leaving me frantically flipping through the abbey’s pages instead. I had read the entire book (many sections more than once) while prepping, so I vaguely recalled the answer (lepers the abbot healed, they asked to be made even more special, more than human, &c. &c.), but for the life of me, could not find the text that related this information (for the record, of course it’s in the abbot’s section of Appendix D). I don’t remember what vague story the party got as I scrambled for the answer, but I ended up following up and retconning by email when I found the right page later that night.

The Problem with Rudolph van Richten’s Journal

When the party acquired the burnt journal pages, I handed a player a print out of the pages, not thinking much of it, they had been curious about who this van Richten person was, and I’m sure were excited to get another piece of the puzzle. When our party’s sorcerer got to reading the pages aloud, however, I had a definite internal “Wait, what?” moment as he read the passage about van Richten unleashing a horde of undead on the Vistani camp. Where did that come from? There is a huge split between the story the journal tells and what is related only a few pages earlier in Ezmerelda’s story. This time, not only was I hit with information split across multiple sections, but the stories were in direct conflict with each other! According to Ezmerelda, the doctor spared her family once he’d gotten all the information he could out of them, continuing on to pursue the vampire who held his son. That mercy inspired her to seek him out, to become a vampire hunter herself and the good doctor’s eventual protégé. I have no idea how a mistake like this made it to print, I  know I have myself to blame for missed it during my own preparation, but that seems absurdly negligent on the part of editing.

In the end, the party didn’t spend much time with Rictavio/van Richten, and they never point-blank asked about the discrepancy between his and Ezmerela’s stories about that fateful night. One DM on Reddit posted an alternative journal entry which I would use if I run the campaign again.

Another option might be to reveal the document has been tampered with: when Ezmerelda read it, it showed the “real” story, but Strahd or Rahadin got his hands on it at some point (perhaps while Ezmerelda was in the castle?), and edited it with a minor spell of some sort that tells a different story, intending to sow distrust between the party and a potential ally. With that, a dispel magic or similar spell would reveal the illusion and you can pass along the alternative version linked above.

Another DM suggested replacing the journal with a draft of Guide to Vampire‘s introduction which I like quite a bit, as I agree it seems a bit careless for the very careful doctor to have left pages of his journal behind like that.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…
Hamlet

Dreams ended up being one of my favorite storytelling tools throughout the campaign. Sometimes it was major undertakings— I wrote longer dream narratives for every character on two occasions: once for their first session, as part of bringing them together and introducing them to the Demiplane of Dread, and again to get them interested in the Amber Temple. The vestiges imprisoned there reached out to each of them, promising great power and pushing them to return to Kasimir and venture south into the mountains. Some nights, I would have short hand-written bits and pieces, used to nudge the narrative in one direction or the other, or reveal bits and pieces to those who had given me backstory to play with— Sumu’s history in Barovia, Chand’s past run-ins with lycanthropes, laying the groundwork for things to come.

When we started Curse of Strahd, we had a small army of six PCs marauding across Barovia. I knew they would quickly be making friends and influencing people, and they shortly already had Ismark and Ireena in tow. When I realized how easily a well-balanced party of six made it through Death House more-or-less unscathed (which I’ve often heard referred to as TPK House), I started looking into ways to make Barovia as a whole that much more dangerous. If the party was rolling into every fight fresh-faced and at full strength, hair combed and muscles oiled like Leonidas at Thermopylae, nothing I threw at them “by the book” was going to be much of a threat.

Increasing encounter CR helps, but I wasn’t very good at it, and even a few more zombies in the horde didn’t do much, so instead looked for ways ways to tax their most precious assets— health and magic.

Every long rest in Barovia required a “nightmare roll” at the end of the night, to see who slept through the night unscathed. The roll was a d100 + their Charisma save, with an optional 1d10 if they felt “safe” that night. I left the d10 to the players discretion— How had the previous day’s events affected them? Were they in warm beds in the Blue Water Inn, or curled up under a damp fur ten feet away from a party member’s charred corpse?

I would also offer a (very high DC) save for the various effects of the nightmares that might halve the effect, running the campaign again, I would not offer that again.

RangeEffect
1-5Roll twice, halve the results (round <6 up to 6)
6-10Dream Spell "Nightmare" (PHB 236) - No benefits of rest, 3d6 psychic damage
11-15Gain 1 Level of exhaustion
16-202d6 Psychic damage
21-25Long-Term Madness (1d8 Hours)
26-30Fail to recover 2d4 spell slots, or 2d6 psychic damage if not a spellcaster
31-40Do not recover health
41-45Fail to recover 1d4 spell slots or 1d6 psychic damage if not a spellcaster
46-50Do not recover hit dice
51-99No Effect
100+Recover 1 additional hit die (lost if not spent before the next long rest)

* Roll 1d100
* Add 1d10 if you're feeling safe in your bed tonight
* Halve the total roll if sleeping inside Castle Ravenloft
* Races who do not sleep (elves) cannot roll below 21
* Native Barovians cannot roll below 31
* Roll optionally for NPCS

Ensuring Strahd Can Take a Punch

We’d reached the last act of the campaign. The party had left the amber temple, not entirely in one piece. Kasimir and Ezmerelda had provided good support in the temple, but I knew the party was already powerful, and wouldn’t need much more help in Ravenloft itself. So far, they’d not fought Strahd himself, though they had met the lord a few times. I thought an encounter on the bridge would make for a nice introduction and reminder of Strahd’s supremacy, and instead they nearly took him down in only a few rounds— Strahd’s plan to grapple Ezmerelda and throw her off the bridge cut short as Strahd found himself holding onto an angry polymorphed Giant Ape. The paladin engaged with some heavy-hitting blows from his Greatsword, and Strahd’s Heart of Sorrow was nowhere near enough to keep him from the pummeling my party was subjecting him to.

Strahd cut his losses and bailed, but I was shocked how quickly that session had turned against me, and I knew Strahd was going to need some adjustments for the finale. By the time they make it into and through Castle Ravenloft, the party is beefed up with some pretty powerful artifacts, and are definitely punching above their weight class. I didn’t end up using every one of the following suggestions, but I kicked around variations on all of them as I was preparing for the final battle.

In the end, Four level-nine PCs and two party-controlled NPCs still took Strahd down to zero HP in only a couple rounds— Luckily he went down outside the range of the sunsword, and could misty-escape back to his crypt. The chase was on!

  • The first thing Strahd can do is put on some fancy armor. Magical Plate, AC 18 or 19 will help. He’s seen what the party can do, and won’t be taking any chances. Adamantine Plate is another possible upgrade, but I thought robbing the party of the fun of a critical hit against the end-game boss might be a bit cheap— Through all of this remember the goal is a challenge for the party to enjoy.
  • A few more spell slots at each level won’t hurt— If Strahd wanted to try a spell (I was trying to counter the disadvantage brought on by the Sunsword + Icon of Ravenloft that covered the whole party), Kasimir was ready with his Counterspell. Give Strahd a couple extra to burn through at each level.
  • 1/round at-will counterspell
  • Bump his spell + charm save DC
  • Give Strahd a fourth legendary action each round
  • Cast a cantrip as a legendary action
  • Using Strahd’s Charm against a PC seems counter-fun in a climactic battle, but instead use it on a favorite NPC that’s with them! Give him or her some kind of specific order— “Bring me that holy symbol the cleric is holding.” or “don’t lose sight of the rogue [perception check every round to counter hiding].” Then suddenly they’re down an ally, and are distracted by trying to non-lethally keep this new challenge at bay.
  • Give him a familiar using the help action, countering disadvantage on attack rolls
  • Switch up his spellbook! Strahd won’t be using Scrying tonight. I added Maximillian’s Earthen Grasp, Dispel Magic, Banishment, and Wall of Force. Strahd is a wizard with hundreds of years to study and Exethanter’s library in the Amber Temple at his disposal. He could reasonable prepare any spell fifth level and below you think could serve him.
  • Give him friends. The book says he has minions anywhere except the location chosen by the Tarroka, but we can ignore that. Shadows are good against fighters and strength-based PCs. Swarms of rats and bats will force players to think twice about chasing after Strahd without disengaging.