08/11/2026: Brother Gregor

Moving past the pole where the watcher-eye hung, the group finds a rotted plank leaning against a moss-covered rock. Something tattered and black hangs from it. As they draw closer, the shape resolves — the dead body of a large raven, nailed to the wood, wings pinned wide.

Soulfire casts Detect Magic and feels strong transmutation magic radiating from the bird, and something darker still — a heavy pulse of subjugation magic from the nail itself, which she realizes now is glowing faintly beneath its rust. She follows it with Dispel Magic. The nail dulls as arcane energy bleeds out of it, and as it does, the ragged body of the bird shudders, stretches, and expands into the limp body of a man.

Biblo crouches to examine him: dead for many days, by the look and smell of him. Soulfire finds a silver ring shaped like a raven, its worked feathery wings wrapped tight around the corpse’s grey fingers. A small pouch at his belt holds a few coppers, a lone silver piece, and a worn dagger. His pack contains moldy rations, a change of clothes, and a cloak — which Soulfire claims for herself, draping it around her shoulders against the cold and damp.

They move on away from the corpse. In an unusual use of the spell, Crystal sends a Cone of Cold out into the fog ahead of their group. It freezes the thick fog on contact, falling to the ground in a soft rattle of ice pellets, and for a moment the mist thins enough to reveal the edge of a cemetery behind a fence gone orange with rust.

“Do you hear that?” Soulfire goes still. Somewhere ahead, a weak voice is calling for help. She and Crystal decide to investigate despite the risk, JarJar trailing after them.

They creep between the headstones and come upon a single large monument, moss-choked and mournful. Carved into the stone in letters gone soft with age: Marina Ulrich, 19 years. Cherished Daughter, Beloved Fiancé. Gone Too Soon. The dates beneath her name are centuries past.

They move on, toward what was once a chapel. A ragged body hangs there, stretched into an X by four chains running from wrists and ankles to the wall. The rust on the chains speaks of years beyond counting. His robes are tattered, bleached and blackened by turns from decades of wind and weather.

The head lifts. The group startles back as one.

It is skeletal — some manner of undead, hollow eyes burning with pale fire. Its voice comes hoarse, unused.

“Are you here to punish me?”

A beat of silence until Nike observes, “It looks like you’re already being punished.”

 “Who are you, and why are you chained here?” Soulfire asks, stepping closer despite trepidation.

“I am here, chained to this wall, as penance for my sins.” The creature pauses, head tilting. “In life, I went by the name Brother Gregor Malchik.”

“What punishment? Who chained you to your own chapel wall?” Soulfire presses.

“Punishment for betraying Marina Ulrich and her fiancé, long ago.” The skeleton turns its face away, as if it might still feel shame. Soulfire coaxes the rest of the story out of him, gentle and patient, and Brother Gregor’s voice grows steadier as he speaks, strengthening with the telling like a muscle remembering its use.

“I was a paladin — a warrior for my god, Lathander — before I retired to tend the spiritual needs of Berez. Marina Ulrich was the adopted daughter of my dearest friend, Burgomaster Lazlo Ulrich. Her beauty caught the eye of Count Strahd von Zarovich. He wrote to the Burgomaster to say he would come to Berez and claim her hand.

“Together, the Burgomaster and I made a plan to save her — to keep her from becoming a vampire, though it meant sacrificing her instead. I regret it now. I was the one who convinced Lazlo it was the only way, to his everlasting despair. We told no one — not Marina, not her beloved, the Oberknight Maartin Ulwrath, the one she planned to marry.

“Before Strahd arrived to claim her, I poisoned a bottle of wine and left it in her chambers, in the hopes Marina herself would drink it. Maartin visited her that evening, to give her comfort and courage before the confrontation to come, and unknowingly poured her a cup from that very bottle. He himself did not drink — he meant to keep his wits sharp for Strahd, who was to arrive that night. He left to challenge the Count on the road.

“Strahd met him there and told him Marina was already dead, and by Maartin’s own hand. Somehow the Count already knew of the wine. He said he would not kill a killer — that he preferred Maartin suffer in the knowing. That was to be his punishment.

“Maartin raced back to Berez, but Marina had already been buried. He sought me out, and I told him what the Burgomaster had decided for his own daughter. Consumed with guilt, he hanged himself in the courtyard of the Burgomaster’s mansion that same night.

“But Strahd was not finished with Berez. Furious to find her beyond his reach, he flooded the river and drowned the town, killing nearly everyone who lived here — his punishment for all of us. He turned his fury on me last of all. Cursed me. Bound me here, to these chains, to this wall.” Gregor pauses, as though reliving it. “I do not know what became of my dear friend the Burgomaster.”

⚔️

Later, the group huddles away from the chained thing that calls itself Brother Gregor, voices low.

“I don’t like him,” Nike mutters. But when it comes to it, they choose to free him rather than kill him.

Once loosed, Brother Gregor asks for their help. He wishes to find Maartin’s remains and see him properly buried.

“Do you think that’s even possible?” Soulfire asks gently. “So much time has passed. And you said that Strahd flooded Berez as punishment for Marina’s death.”

Zilk cuts straight through the sentiment. “Should we kill you?”

Gregor’s head turns toward the bugbear, the sinews of his neck creaking and snapping with the motion. “Baba Lysaga has tried. She visits from time to time to make sport of me, but she has never quite managed it. I believe I may not be able to die at all. That would be the cruelest part of my punishment — but if you could send me on to whatever comes next, I would be eternally grateful.”

“Wouldn’t you rather join us instead?” Crystal offers. “You were a paladin, before your… transformation. You could still be useful.”

“If nothing else, as a shield,” Zilk mutters, “particularly against Baba Lysaga.”

“I will help as much as I am able,” Gregor says. “Let me lead you to the Burgomaster’s mansion. If it still stands, you may find shelter there, away from the insects.”

In truth, the insects have, if anything, become more numerous and bloodthirsty with the fading daylight.

The mansion still stands — decaying, dark, but standing. They enter through a courtyard that must once have been shaded and lovely, before darkness settled permanently over Berez. A single leafless tree dominates one corner, and from one of its branches a suit of rusted knight’s armor swings gently on a rope, turning in a breeze none of them can feel.

“He’s been dead a long time,” Nike declares, already moving to loot the mummified corpse.

Crystal steps into her path. Nike, irritated, ducks around her anyway and plucks a folded note from the dead man’s belt, grinning.

“Maybe this’ll tell us why he strung himself up.”

“You should respect the dead,” Crystal snaps, snatching the note from her. Her eyes narrow as she reads, green-blue and darkening.

Burgomaster —

Brother Gregor confessed all to me. I cannot believe you would do this to your own child. Why did you not tell me the devil Strahd was coming to Berez for my beloved Marina? We were betrothed. I might have made plans to defeat him, had I but known. Instead all is lost, and I cannot go on. I cannot bear to remain in your service after learning of this unnatural betrayal by a father. Could you not have even waited for my return before burying her ashes? Without Marina I am nothing. Lathander save our souls — for I fear that we, you, I, and Brother Gregor, are damned for our sins.

Maartin Ulwrath Oberknight of Berez

The group stands in silence after Crystal finishes reading. They talk it over — what’s owed to a man dead this long, and decide he does indeed deserve a proper burial beside Marina’s monument. Crystal cuts the rope herself, and with Soulfire’s help, lays the knight down gently on the driest patch of ground the courtyard offers. The burial will wait until morning. Night is falling fast, and with it have come thicker clouds of biting insects.

They turn toward the mansion itself, hunting for someplace dry, someplace free of stinging, winged creatures, to spend the night.

Inside, past a dust-choked entryway, they find a bedroom untouched in decades. JarJar pries open a rotted trunk and finds decaying clothes — and a severed hand that twitches, then crawls toward him. He swings his blade at it and misses; Crystal finishes it with a word and a flare of magic before it can reach him.

Finding a safe place to sleep in Berez, it seems, is going to take more than they bargained for.