She brought with her my younger brother, Sergei. Upon its completion I summoned her to see what I had wrought, how I had exceeded my father in every way. As my father had claimed the land in his name, I dedicated the castle to my mother. I ordered my wizards to build a mighty castle, one that would dwarf my father’s meager mountain holdfast. Returning to the affairs of the living, I determined to surpass my father in the annals of history as I had on the field of battle. I left with empty hands and a head filled with a most terrible secret: that I too could cheat death, if I were willing to pay the price. The magic-users left the temple with tomes and scrolls. The walls echoed with voices trapped in amber. While my wizard and his thrall pored over masonic manuscripts, mere trifles, the caretaker brought me to a vault beneath a great library. ![]() We slew many fearsome horrors in those amber halls, but the corpse-thing that maintained the temple welcomed me with open arms, the better to share its accursed knowledge. Of the men who started the journey with me, loyal servants all, only three crossed its threshold: Rahadin, who is more like a brother to me than my own flesh and blood, and the wizard Khazan and his apprentice, who had come to steal the secrets that would raise my masterpiece, my castle in the clouds. That task done, I set out for the Amber Temple. I happily accepted this burden on their behalf. My pet priest, Romulich, had only to share the salacious rumors of what their leaders did when alone high in their mountain hold, and the common folk would have risen up and destroyed them. Turning the people against them was laughably easy. ![]() First I had to remove the wardens of the temple, the Order of the Silver Dragon. I summoned her once again, and she taught me the secret of the Amber Temple. Rahadin had driven her from the court on my father’s orders, but father was no longer around to register his objections. Such an arrangement was of course completely unsuitable, but she had not come empty-handed: her dowry was the prospect of immortality. Was I not a prince in waiting, general of my father’s armies, heir to his throne? One of these supplicants was Patrina Velikovna, a daughter of the dusk elves. I had not been without proposals of marriage in my youth. He had found a way to cheat the death that still awaited me. I won the war he started, but they revered his memory and immortalized his name in the land I had freed. All joy slipped from my life I had liberated the valley of Barovia and brought peace and security to its people, but they never loved me as they had loved my father. When the war went away I found it had taken my youth with it and all I had left was death’s eternal embrace. My youth was devoted to fighting my father’s war. But the years of killing wore down my soul as the wind wears stone into sand. I thundered across the valley like the wrath of a vengeful god, driving my enemies before me and purging them from this land. When I was young, when I was a warrior, then I was good and just. I have dwelt here so long that I have no other origin my beginnings are lost in the darkness of the past. ![]() So just as I did with van Richten's journal, I converted the Tome of Strahd into a document that will reconcile the different aspects of Strahd's story and collect them in one place. I had lots of other questions as well, from the timing of Patrina's courtship to the downfall of the Order of the Silver Dragon. But how does that line up with Vampyr and the Amber Temple? The model of Ravenloft suggests that Strahd's wizards visited the Amber Temple before the castle was built, and therefore before Sergei ever came to Barovia. But while I usually love the reverence that this campaign shows to the original material, the classic text doesn't always mesh well with some of the wonderful contributions that Curse of Strahd has added to the lore.įor example, the Tome strongly implies that Strahd made his pact with the Dark Powers after Tatyana rejected him for Sergei. The Tome of Strahd is a classic, with text that hasn't changed a word since the I6 Ravenloft module. For more campaign resources, see the full table of contents. This supplement is part of The Doom of Ravenloft.
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