10/25/2026: Mud, Snow, and Holy Orders/A Curse of Strahd Game Log

Curse of Strahd game log

Five of the werewolves do not get up. Somewhere back in the pines, eight of them passed around a bottle of very old wine taken from Torgan. More than half the pack is now still, and the three who remain will remember the dwarf who gifted them with misfortune.

The party, knowing none of this, trudges back to the Martikov vineyard.

Davian Martikov takes the news of Dinan badly. That evening there is wine, though no one drinks much, and the family tells stories about the boy Dinan used to be. Friedrich spends the meal asleep across Krelldutt's feet, in case anyone gets ideas about leaving.

Before the night is out, Davian draws Krelldutt aside and pulls a heavy silver ring from his own finger. It is a raven, head turned inward, wings sweeping around the band, two ruby chips for eyes. Once a day it will carry a message to its twin, which Davian keeps.

Krelldutt mentions that he already has one, paired with one belonging to Danika, Davian's daughter-in-law.

"Well," grunts Davian. "Now you have two."

Strahd expects Krelldutt at Ravenloft in two days to wake Ireena, and Krelldutt is not that kind of healer. Fiznik, lately of Krezk, knows of one who is. The Abbot is famous across Barovia for his miracles. He leaves his abbey for no one. The sick must climb to him, and those he heals give him their lives in return.

It is not an encouraging résumé, but it is the only one available.

Wearily, Fiznik agrees to drive a wagonload of wine to Urwin's family in Vallaki, with Komzin riding along.

Vincent Yeager wants one thing: the crystal that makes him a warlock, still lying in Baba Lysaga's hut in Berez.

⚔

Fiznik, sharing the space with Komzin, prepares to rest by sealing the barn with locks and alarms. It makes no difference.

The afternoon of rest and an evening meal puts most everyone in the party right. Only Fiznik and Komzin arrive for the meal looking weary. Indeed, each man has been troubled by dreams of the hags. Listlessly they pick at their meal and listen to the others make plans.

Krelldutt will leave later in the evening with Vincent, Orbart and Torgan for the standing stones atop Yester Hill. From there, he will send Vincent, for better or worse, back to Berez to retrieve his crystal.

That night, the companions are atop Yester Hill. In the shadow of a towering statue of Strahd, four standing stones bear four carvings: a church, a castle, mountain peaks, a pair of wavy lines. Krelldutt presses his palm to the waves. A keyhole blooms in the granite. He inserts the key he carries and turns it. A blue glowing portal opens upon the surface of the stone.

"I can send you," he tells Vincent. "I can't bring you back. Are you sure you want to do this?"

The warlock nods. "I need my crystal. It was a gift from my patron, and without it, I'm useless."

Krelldutt shrugs and watches Vincent step through the stone.

⚔

Vincent comes out the other side vomiting, rolling through mud into ice-cold water. Black biting flies find him before he finds his feet.

The swamp is worse. It swallows him to the knees, and he crawls out minus a boot. Farther on it takes him again: to the hips, the chest, the chin. Mud fills his ears and mouth. He thrashes blind, screaming every curse his tiefling ancestors ever coined, until his hand closes on a stump and he hauls himself onto solid ground. The second boot stays behind.

It begins to rain.

The hut stands inert on its roots. Vincent climbs its ladder barefoot and steps squarely onto the glass of the lantern Krelldutt shot down. He does his best not to scream, and somehow he does not. Instead, he sits down heavily and bleeds.

Everything inside is built for someone fifteen feet tall. His pack is here, and his crystal, and most of Komzin's gear. Every instinct says take them and go.

Instead he scales the giant chest, forces up the lid, and drops inside. Gold. Weapons. A stench. A mummified elf still wearing a fine cloak, boots, supple leather armor, a dagger, and a longbow with black-fletched arrows.

The lid slams shut above him.

In the dark, he helps himself to the items the dead elf no longer needs, easing on boots that fit as if made for him. This is a small relief for his bloody feet.

⚔

Krelldutt presses his hand to the stone carved with a church. He waves Torgan, Orbart and Friedrich the dog into the stone circle and plunges the key into the stone hole to turn it. All four arrive on their knees in the snow, retching. Even the dog.

Above them rises the rough stockade of Krezk, and eight hundred feet higher, an abbey clinging to the cliff.

Guards shout from the ramparts: they have seen the flash from within the standing stone circle. A man in a chain of office is eventually summoned. He leans over the palisade to introduce himself as Dmitri Krezkov, Burgomaster of Krezk. No one in living memory, he says, has come through those stones. He will not open Krezk's gates for strangers who wield such magic.

He demands to know their business in Krezk. Krelldutt explains his mission to the Abbey.

"The Abbot comes out for no one," Dmitri says, "and strangers do not come in. The abbey road lies east, around our city wall." As an afterthought, he calls after them, "When you see my boy, tell him his mother and his father love him very much."

⚔

The abbey road is a terrifying climb at night: steep, icy, and taken in full darkness, frightening going up and positively deadly coming down. For the entire hour it takes to climb the switchbacks to 800 feet above the village, a bitterly cold wind howls around them.

During this climb, the abbey bell begins to toll, and the dark fills with howls and screams from dozens of stone huts no bigger than chicken coops. When the bell stops, so do they.

At the top, locked behind a rusted iron gate, is an abbey said to house a powerful healer. Exactly, thinks Krelldutt, what we need for Ireena. He desperately hopes this healer can be persuaded to go with them to Ravenloft to wake her.

Hulking above them in the mists, the stone walls of the Abbey of Saint Markovia come into view. Through the rusted iron gates, it crouches in visible disrepair. A small graveyard and a scattering of squat stone huts that look like outhouses fill the frozen courtyard. A single light burns, dim through a window on the first floor of the abbey.

Krelldutt rings a rusted iron bell that hangs from the bars. A moment passes, then two. The rusty squeak of a door opening speaks of great age, and a cloaked figure approaches, shuffling in oversized boots. It may be a dwarf, or gnome, judging from the size, but its face is covered.

From the depths of its hood, it rumbles in a voice rusty with disuse, "Present the afflicted."

"She is not with us. We need your healer to go to her. We can guide them," explains Krelldutt, trying not to shiver in the icy gusts of wind.

"Impossible. The Abbot does not leave Saint Markovia's. The afflicted must be brought here." There is a finality to this that Krelldutt does not at all like.

"We cannot bring our friend here," Krelldutt explains, trying to keep both cold and fear from his voice.

"She is at Ravenloft Castle and cannot travel here. She is with Count Strahd. Your Abbot must help her!"

This is met with a long silence, twin puffs of frozen breath jetting from out of the low hood.

"Wait here," grunts the compact gatekeeper, who turns and shuffles back to the doorway. Something drags behind him in the snow.

It is a long, dog-like tail.

Ten minutes tick by slowly, during which the companions stand close to the stone wall of the Abbey, trying and failing to get out of the wind.

The crunch of large feet in the snow summons them to peer through the bars. A warrior, easily a dozen feet tall, growls a greeting through the gate. "I am Brother Yoshi." His voice is a gravelly basso. He listens to Krelldutt's explanation of what the group needs from his Abbot. "Are you agents of the Lord of the Land?"

Krelldutt is not, and says so, at length.

Brother Yoshi is quiet a long moment. "She is called Ireena, now, is she?"

He frowns, but he smells a blizzard coming. The Abbot may be asked in the morning.

Then, Yoshi's enormous mitten waves the small gatekeeper at his knee to unlock the gate. A much smaller clawed hand pulls a large brass key from deep within the folds of the gatekeeper's cloak, and soon the companions stand, steaming, in a large dining hall.

The hearth is tall enough for Krelldutt to stand in, empty of all but andirons. The warrior gestures to a pile of wood.

"You are welcome to make yourselves a fire. You must be cold. You shall stay here for the night. We can address your request in the morning, when I will speak with the Abbot." He lets his cloak fall from his shoulders.

Before them stands Brother Yoshi without his cloak. He has the face and fur of a polar bear. His large, black eyes take them in. Behind them, the gatekeeper mutters, "Most irregular!" before climbing the steep wooden stairs to the belfry.

As the hour of eleven rings high above this domed room, the voices of all the creatures from beyond the stone walls begin in unison. The night is suddenly filled with animal sounds: barking, howling, baying, crowing, screeching, shrieking, cawing. It is not one creature but many upon many, in a chorus that fades only when the last tolling of the bell dies.

"Now, may I get you anything else before I retire?" asks Brother Yoshi, his enormous paws, tipped with lethal-looking scimitar claws, crossed before him.

Krelldutt has questions, chief among them what exactly is kept in the huts in the yard. He decides they can wait until morning.