10/28/2026: Three Roads Across Barovia/ A Curse of Strahd Game Log

The room has two stained-glass windows. The enormous center frame of the northern one depicts the namesake of the Abbey, Saint Markovia, and the resemblance to Ireena is not subtle. The borders of the window tell Markovia's story: brought to the Abbey as an orphan child, raised in the healing arts by the holy Abbot, raising an army to march on a castle in the shadow of a great bat. The final frames show Markovia, betrayed and killed, taken dead by a caped figure into the castle. It is a full biography in colored glass.

The southern window shows a great angel, or most of one. Something, a stone or a bird, has punched a hole through it, and the wind takes full advantage, delivering snow directly onto the floor.

Brother Yoshi, the twelve-foot-tall bipedal polar bear warrior monk, has promised the companions a hearing with the Abbot in the morning about helping Ireena, comatose and far away in Castle Ravenloft. Until then, Krelldutt, Orbart and Torgan may camp in the chilly great hall of the Abbey of St. Markovia. He has provided the travelers firewood, but is unable to provide a meal.

"Is there drink?" Torgan demands of Yoshi.

Inscrutable, the polar bear warrior stares at the dwarf. If Brother Yoshi is offended, Torgan cannot detect it. But Yoshi's black eyes flick once to the side of the huge room, where a worn rug imperfectly covers a hatch in the stone floor.

"I have nothing to offer you," rumbles Yoshi, "but there is plenty of snow, and snow melts. I can provide you a bucket."

Torgan shakes his head in ill-disguised disgust.

Before Brother Yoshi wishes them a good night, he gives the comrades a single rule: "Do not leave this room after dark, no matter what you hear. Every hour, the bell rings. Every hour, the huts reply. Do not concern yourselves with this. Provided you remain in this room, you will be unharmed." Yoshi leaves through a door to an inner courtyard, locking it from the other side.

As far as that door is concerned, this rather settles the matter.

There is, however, the door to the outer courtyard they entered through, as well as two different staircases that rise into the darkness, where possibly more than a belfry exists.

There is also the trap door in the floor.

⚔

What Orbart suggests, after lifting the small carpet in the middle of the floor, is opening the hatch beneath it. Once open, a steep staircase descends into the dark. It might as well be a dare. Fumes of age, old wine and rodents rise from the hole in the floor: the smell of a wine cellar. It draws Torgan like a magnet.

At the bottom, indeed, waits a wine cellar of improbable age. Thick dust and draping cobwebs speak of abandonment. The air here has not moved in a very long time. Rows of barrels bear dates from a hundred to a thousand years ago, older than the calendar anyone in the party uses.

This raises questions that no one stays sober long enough to ask.

Torgan appoints himself sommelier. The oldest barrel still holding anything, a mere four centuries old, has long since surrendered to vinegar. The youngest, at two hundred years, holds something extraordinary: a vintage none of them have ever tasted, its barrel burned with the initials 'WOW' and a stamp of three grapes, a Wizard of Wines mark none have ever seen. Elsewhere sit small bottles of brandy and spirits that are plainly not from Barovia, and on a high shelf, a locked strongbox.

Orbart opens the strongbox with his fist. Inside are six silver goblets, four that are now dented. He agonizes briefly over the ethics of stealing from a church, then keeps the two that are still round.

From here, the evening proceeds downhill.

Orbart opens a flask of brandy of genuinely hostile strength and drinks the entire thing, while already not entirely sober. In not many minutes, the minotaur is reeling from one shelf to the next, unsteady on his hooves. Torgan uncovers a bottle of fire whiskey from a distillery that burned down more than three hundred years ago, worth thousands, and samples it. He feels it all the way down.

Then Torgan finds a bottle of a premier champagne, another vintage no longer bottled at the winery. It is worth hundreds of gold. He pops it open, knowing that champagne, once opened, has a clock on it. Orbart drinks half the bottle. Quite quickly, his eyes roll upward and he slumps heavily to the dusty flagstone floor.

Torgan, unwilling to waste eight hundred gold, finishes the rest.

This leaves one very irritated adventurer, Krelldutt, responsible for carrying the very heavy, cumbersome Orbart up the steep staircase. Torgan follows at a rolling gait up the stairs, and falls. A bottle of spirits shatters in his pack. He gets up, reeking of alcohol.

Up the stairs Torgan goes again, only to fall again, more decisively this time. The priceless fire whiskey, three centuries old, irreplaceable, worth more than most Barovian villages, meets the stone floor. It becomes a puddle, a smell, and a great many pieces of glass, most of which end up on Torgan.

Eventually, with Krelldutt's help, both inebriates reach the room above. They leave behind a trail of wet, boozy footprints that someone will need to clean up before a twelve-foot polar bear notices.

The bell rings. The huts howl. It has been a night.

⚔

Komzin and Fiznik, exhausted from a broken afternoon's sleep at the vineyard, are on the road to Vallaki in a tinker's wagon full of wine.

Somewhere off in the trees, wolves begin to howl. Komzin cannot tell how many or where, only that they exist. The mule hears them too and reaches its own conclusion. Fiznik tries to calm it, but the mule bolts. Fiznik throws himself from the wagon, landing roadside in a rattling heap.

The cart lurches toward the ditch and certain ruin until Komzin slides over, seizes the reins and hauls the animal to a stop. The wine barrels miraculously stay upright and do not drag the wagon over.

Then the arrows start.

They come from the trees, and they come badly, because the archers are werewolves in poor shape from drinking poisoned wine. These are the survivors of the pack that robbed the party this morning in a highway theft. Torgan's "gift" has done its job: five of their kin are dead. These other three are weakened, grieving, and terrible shots, which does nothing to make them less angry.

Two of them seize Fiznik. One presses a knife to him and discovers that there are no joints in his armor to slip a blade through. This creates an increasing amount of frustration. Fiznik can hear him scraping the blade across his plackart and hip fauld.

Looking small between them despite his body armor, Fiznik insists to the werewolves he knows nothing about any poisoned wine. They do not believe him, in fairness, because he has been driving a cart full of wine.

Komzin answers with a blow that very nearly slashes one werewolf in half. The other yanks the artificer down, straining to drag Fiznik face-first into the mud, hoping to drown him. Instead, the wolf slips in the selfsame mud, biting clean through his own tongue. Blood sheets down his front, and the dismembered member lands with a plop near Fiznik's pointed steel boot.

"You should go now," calls Komzin, trying not to show he is winded from his exhaustion. "This will not be a fair fight. You will lose."

There is a pause. The tongue lies in the road. Its former owner bleeds steadily, and his companions regard him with the particular horror of people reconsidering their entire evening. The three werewolves retreat into the trees with promises of vengeance, which, under the circumstances, seems a remote option, at least in the moment.

Fiznik picks up the tongue and drops it in a leather pouch. He is an alchemist as well as an artificer. Waste not.

The rest of the trip passes without incident, and the cart rolls into Vallaki, and to the Blue Water Inn, with its wine intact.

As they unload the barrels, Komzin lets Urwin Martikov know of the fate of Dinan, the man they were sent by Davian Martikov to find. It is news Komzin has carried from the vineyard, where the companions returning from Berez delivered it.

Urwin's face clouds. "Say nothing to my wife that her brother is dead. I will tell Danika in my own time."

⚔

Back in Berez, Vincent is crouching in an outsized chest in Baba Lysaga's hut.

After he found his gear, and Komzin's, the call of loot was too tempting. Vincent climbed in to discover several choice items, a few of which he is currently wearing. The rest clink softly in the leather purse at his belt.

He becomes aware that there is a rhythmic pounding, growing stronger, coming up through the floor of the trunk. He scrambles as quietly as he can to peer out through the keyhole.

A grey-green arm, then two, thick as tree trunks, haul Baba Lysaga into the hut. She scuttles like an enormous spider, eyes flashing, and begins to tear through the wreckage of her hut in search of something missing. The place is a mess. She tosses aside the lantern Krelldutt shattered with an expertly sent arrow. It housed the crystal that allowed the hut to walk, but no one, save Baba Lysaga, knows this.

Through the keyhole, he can see Baba Lysaga hunting for something. She is muttering as she searches: about her boy, and about revenge, and snarling one name, over and over: Komzin. Komzin. Komzin.

This is the man Vincent escaped with.

Suddenly, she snatches up something Vincent cannot see.

Then she sits down heavily. On the chest he hides in. Her tattered, filthy skirts land directly over the keyhole. Above him, the great hag is crooning softly in her basso voice.

Vincent, sweating in the darkness, pictures a stretch of road several hundred feet to the northwest, near the edge of Berez. This is where he entered this forsaken place when he was dragged in by the hags, and he prays they are not there now.

He reaches for it, casting the spell in as quiet a whisper as he can manage.

The great hag, Baba Lysaga, distracted by business of her own, notices too late. The arcane words are being spoken just beneath her copious backside. She wheels to throw the lid upward in time to see the portal Vincent has summoned vanish. But enough of her shrieks follow Vincent to where he stands on a muddy road before the portal behind him snaps closed.

He shivers beneath his new cloak on a muddy road. In the mud are footprints, fresh ones, and among them are his own. The rest belong to his friends, who escaped Berez the morning before. Vincent starts running.

⚔

Three parties, three roads, one very long night. Somewhere in Berez, a hag is still saying Komzin's name. Somewhere in Vallaki, Komzin is unloading wine at the Blue Water Inn, unaware of the reason why his ears are burning.

Curse of Strahd game log