09/23/2026: Soup, Scarecrows, and Eight Hundred Years of Penance in Berez

Vincent arrives in the swamps of Berez the way most guests of hags do: dragged face-first through brambles and mud, lighter by one spellcasting focus and a good deal of skin. He is fairly sure the focus was a crystal orb. He is less sure of almost everything else, including how he came to be in Barovia at all. His last clear memory, before a night of too much wine with some travelers' camp, is a tavern in Waterdeep. Again, too much drink, and a strange man offering him passage through a portal. In hindsight, he should have asked where it went. And learned to temper his cups.

The woman he is thrown before stands fifteen feet tall, sharpening an enormous axe on a grinding wheel. Vincent has believed his death was imminent several times on the road. With some sadness, he decides that this time he is probably right.

She does not look up right away. When the enormous woman does, it is to scold his traveling companions for handling him so roughly. Then she bends and holds out an enormous, violet, clawed hand. Vincent blinks. She seems to expect a handshake. With trepidation, he reaches for it.

She pulls him up and in, hugging him against her skirts like a child. She smells of rank sweat and mold. Vincent holds his breath.

When she finally lets go, she murmurs in a very deep voice, "My poor lamb! All is well now. You are with your Baba!"

Vincent looks up. Her long face is leathery and lined, obsidian and eggplant, and she smiles down at him as if he were her own son. Rows of very sharp fangs crowd between blackened stumps. The smile is indulgent, almost kindly.

Then her massive head snaps sideways. "Morgantha! I raised you better than this! How can you treat my guest this way? Apologize!"

Rough hands scrape the mud from Vincent's back and arms. Even the smaller hag, glaring at him malevolently, towers over the warlock.

There is a bowl of soup the size of a washbasin, thick with mushrooms, onions, potatoes, and chunks of meat Vincent cannot identify. He doesn't ask about the meat. He hasn't eaten in some time, and he finishes as much as he can hold.

He declines a bed in the hut and bunks instead with the other guest in the goat shed: a knight in full plate, snoring so heavily that Vincent cannot wake him. It is Komzin, though Vincent has no way of knowing that. Vincent eyes the knight's empty soup bowl and decides not to wonder about it.

Later, Baba knocks on the shed door to apologize for her daughters' manners. She is far too tall to come in, so Vincent comes out.

"Where have you come from?" she asks politely.

Despite himself, Vincent tells her how he came to Barovia. Baba Lysaga nods down at him and says sympathetically, "I might restore your missing memories through a healing ritual."

Vincent says he's interested, but he's too tired to think it through tonight. He is curious, though, about why she would offer him such a gift.

"My son, a very important man, wishes me to welcome visitors to his realm."

Vincent blinks up at her. "Who is your son, Lady?"

"My boy is Strahd. Strahd von Zarovich. Maybe you have heard of him."

Vincent has.

⚔

Across the valley, Fiznik sleeps badly, and as always, he sleeps in his armor. It is less a suit than a shell, sealed to him from crown to boot, and it opens only when he wills it.

He sleeps right through the imp working earnestly at his visor. The imp has chosen the wrong can, so it helps itself to Fiznik's tinderbox instead.

As the imp strikes steel to flint, the nightmares return to the gnome. A knight in danger. A man dragged between a pair of hags. An enormous witch dismembering the body of a third man, headless, and tumbling the pieces into a pot with the vegetables. She sets the pot above the fire. Fiznik can feel its heat, close enough to be uncomfortable, then painful.

The braying of his mules and the screaming of horses rip him out of sleep. The barn is on fire with the artificer and the creatures inside it. Fiznik throws the doors open, frees the animals, and tumbles out into the rain. With the Martikovs' help, the flames are beaten down before the barn is lost.

In the morning, Davian brings Fiznik a request. Krelldutt's group is heading to Berez to look for one of the Order, young Dinan, and bring him home if they can. Would Fiznik go along?

Torgan looks up, startled. He had no wish to go to Berez. He also assumed Krelldutt would leave today for his appointment at Ravenloft, now two days away. But the old man seems to take it for granted that they're all going. Torgan sighs and supposes he is.

Davian Martikov arranges provisions for a day or two, along with firm instructions: find Dinan if you can, watch the druids, count them, note where they are, and do not get involved. Everyone nods, without enthusiasm.

⚔

Fiznik rides out on muleback while the others take horses, and Torgan rides behind Krelldutt, sharing his saddle. The road to Berez takes six hours and offers the usual Barovian amenities: a steady cold drizzle and wolves howling somewhere just off the path. Where the overgrown track turns south toward Berez, Krelldutt and Fiznik both spot a single set of boot prints.

The fog thickens, but the tracks stay easy to follow. A few miles on, the ground turns to marsh. From the branch of a dead tree, a sentinel eye hangs on a strip of leather. Its muddy, diamond-shaped iris slides across bloodshot, yellowed ivory, taking in the group without blinking.

Repelled, Fiznik smashes at it with his gauntleted fists. The only result is that the eye settles its full attention on the gnome, who feels very distinctly watched. Shuddering, he steps back as Torgan swings his axe. The eye shatters into several large chunks, oozing something orange. No one mourns it.

The tracks lead to a rotted board spattered with blood. Nearby lies a single black feather, which Krelldutt guesses came from a raven. Around it are more tracks, large ones. Torgan thinks they look like hag prints, though from a hag much bigger than any he has met. Beyond them is a great deal of blood, still fairly fresh.

A debate follows about whether to follow the tracks deeper into the swamp. Someone suggests sending a scout, and every eye turns to the stealthiest member of the party. Krelldutt accepts the job with the enthusiasm of a man volunteered by others for something deeply unpleasant.

⚔

Krelldutt pulls up the hood of his elvish cloak and slips into the swamp. The weave of his wrap lets him fade into what little light filters through the rain, and he is grateful for this. He follows the footprints silently until the heavier downpour scrubs them from the marsh. Then he hears it.

Somewhere ahead, a voice is singing a hymn to Lathander. In Barovia, that counts as good news.

The voice, cracked with age or exhaustion, breaks off. "Is someone there?"

Krelldutt freezes and peers into the mist. Then he moves forward.

Silently, he comes upon a rusted fence. Beyond it lie a fog-cloaked graveyard and a tumbledown church, and the hymn starts up again. Now Krelldutt can see the singer: a skeletal figure in a tattered, mold-green robe, chained to the stone wall. Krelldutt steps into the churchyard and calls, "Hello?"

The singing stops. Krelldutt approaches.

The emaciated figure hangs by its wrists from thick chains. Its rotting priest's robes are caked with mud and moss. Its lidless eyes take Krelldutt in. They talk with Krelldutt, who hopes he is ata safe distance.

"What are you doing here?" Krelldutt asks.

Again the raspy voice, "I am doing penance." Over the buzzing of flies, Krelldutt can hear the ligaments of its jaw snap. "I am grateful you are not the witch Lysaga. She comes to devil me every so often."

Krelldutt takes this in. "When did she last trouble you?"

Brother Gregor rolls his head skyward, thinking. "It has been a while. Ten years ago, maybe?" He sounds unsure.

Trying not to show his surprise, Krelldutt asks, "How long have you been chained here?"

This he answers at once. "I have hung on the wall of my ruined church for over eight hundred years."

Krelldutt takes a long moment to absorb this. The undead priest explains that Strahd cursed him and set him here as punishment for a crime. He does not say what crime, and Krelldutt does not ask. They regard each other in uneasy silence for several beats.

"Do you need anything?" Krelldutt finally asks.

The skeleton studies the tortle with unblinking blue eyes, its expression unreadable. At last its creaking voice answers, "I need to be set free."

Krelldutt tells Brother Gregor he would very much like to release him, but does not risk angering Count Strahd with their meeting only days away. Brother Gregor nods. "I understand. Might you do me a service? The next time you are in the company of Lord Strahd, please ask whether I might be released."

Krelldutt nods and turns to go. The skeleton calls after him. "Sir! One more thing. In the cemetery there is a monument. Would you make sure the name can be read, for all the gods to see, should they ever return to this land? She deserves at least that, given what I have done. The north side of the fence has collapsed. You may enter easily from there."

Inside the burial ground, Krelldutt finds the monument easily. It is cut from the same stone as the grave markers, but it is larger and grander, and furred with green moss. He scrapes the lichen and algae from its face and uncovers words nearly erased by time and rain:

Marina Ulrich ~ Daughter, Beloved, Child of God ~ Gone Too Soon

She died about eight hundred years ago, at eighteen. The stone calls her a child of God, and in this valley, as in most places, that almost certainly means she was born into the faith of Lathander.

⚔

Fiznik, Torgan, and Orbart wait at a distance from the congealing blood. They are damp and chilled to the bone, and they don't speak in the thick fog. All at once, Fiznik and Orbart whip their heads in different directions. The sound is coming from the left, and from behind, and from the right: dry grass shushing and twigs crackling, closing in around them.

Torgan turns to head back up the track they came in on and finds the way blocked by scarecrows. A great many of them.

They are blank-eyed, but they clearly seem to see the trio. They keep advancing, in no hurry at all.

Somewhere out in the fog, Krelldutt is still scraping moss from a dead girl's name.