Curse of Strahd Handouts
Curse of Strahd Handouts
Kolyan Indrirovich,
Burgomaster
Hail thee of might and valor;
I, the Burgomaster of Barovia send you honor–with
despair.
My adopted daughter, the fair Ireena, has been
these past nights bitten by a vampyr. For over 400
years, this creature has drained life blood of my
people. Now, my dear Ireena languishes and dies
from an unholy wound caused by this vile beast. He
has become too powerful to be fought any longer.
So I say to you, give us up for dead and encircle
this land with the symbols of good. Let holy men
call upon their power that the devil may be
contained within the walls of weeping Barovia.
Leave our sorrows to our graves, and save the
world from this evil fate of ours.
There is much wealth entrapped in this
community. Return for your reward after we are
all departed for a better life.
Kolyan Indirovich,
Burgomaster
My friends,
Know that it is I who have brought you to this land, my home,
and know that I alone can release you from it. I bid you dine
at my castle so that we can meet in civilized surroundings. Your
passage here will be a safe one. I await your arrival.
Your host,
Strahd von Zarovich
My most pathetic servant,
I am not a messiah sent to you by the Dark Powers of this
land. I have not come to lead you on a path to immortality.
However many souls you have bled on your hidden altar,
however many visitors you have tortured in your dungeon, know
that you are not the ones who brought me to this beautiful land.
You are but worms writhing in my earth.
You say that you are cursed, your fortunes spent. You
abandoned love for madness, took solace in the bosom of another
woman, and sired a stillborn son. Cursed by darkness? Of that
I have no doubt. Save you from your wretchedness? I think
not. I much prefer you as you are.
I expect that those who think me a hero will change their minds
when they know the whole truth about my life as a hunter of the
unnatural. Nevertheless, I must reveal, here and now, that I have
been the indirect yet certain cause of many deaths, and the loss of
many good friends. Mistake me not! I do not merely feel sorry for
myself. Rather, I come to grips with a devastating realization: I now
see that I am the object of a baleful Vistani curse. More tragically,
the nature of this hex is such that I have not borne the brunt of it;
instead, far worse, those who surround me have fallen victim to it!
I have related the tragic story of how my only child Erasmus was
taken by Vistani and sold to a vampire. I explained how Erasmus
was made a minion of the night stalker, and how it was my
miserable part to free him from that fate at the point of a stake.
What I have neglected to illuminate before is how I tracked
Erasmus’s kidnappers across the land, or how I “extracted”
Erasmus’s whereabouts from them.
Incensed beyond reason, I strapped the body of the dead young man
to my horse and doggedly followed the Vistani caravan through the
woods, naively allowing the sun to set before me without seeking
shelter from the night. Shortly after darkness fell, I was beset by
undead that would have slain me, had not their master—a lich—
intervened and spared my life, for reasons that I do not completely
understand. He somehow detected me and, with his powerful magic,
took control of a pack of zombies that wandered in the forest. He
spoke to me through the mouths of the dead things and placed a
magic ward against undead on me, then animated the dead Vistana
and bade it tell me where I could find its people. Unfortunately (I
say in hindsight), the plan worked. I found the child-stealers, and
my unwelcome entourage included a growing horde of voracious
undead that could not touch me, thanks to the lich’s ward.
Yet the story has not ended. Before she died, the leader cursed me,
saying, “Live you always among monsters, and see everyone you love
die beneath their claws!” Even now, so many years later, I can hear
her words with painful clarity. A short time later, I found my dear
Erasmus made into a vampire. He begged me to end his curse, which
I did with a heavy heart. The darkness had torn him from my
loving arms forever, and I foolishly believed that the curse had
exacted its deadly toll. I wept until an insatiate desire for vengeance
filled the bottomless rift in my heart.