Review Characters

Characters

Secrets

Scenes

Strong Start — The Crowd Turns

📍 #Church Cemetery, Vallaki

Klildar's speech failed (Persuasion 10 vs DC 15). His words land wrong — too blunt, too soon. The crowd doesn't surge at him; it fractures.

• Yeska — the orphan altar boy: bandaged and trembling, survived the attack. "Father Lucian was a holy man. He gave his life for us. He would never become one of those things." - will protest but won't interfere
• Harkus Lazarescu - older man, very upset. "We should burn the burgomaster's house! He kept defying Strahd — this is his fault. All of this is his fault!" -- he starts crying mid-sentence
• The idea spreads fast. The crowd doesn't attack the party; they turn on each other and on the idea — some horrified, some nodding
• Rictavio addresses the remaining crowd, agreeing with the idea, based on the rumours he heard in his travels, vampires can transform other people.
• Lavinia Groza - Member of the Keeper of the Feather that will accompany them to Krezk

Aftermath in Vallaki

📍 #Town of Vallaki

• 🎭 Ireena — quietly tells the party she wants to leave. She's done what she could here. Fr. Lucian told her to go to Krezk, and she's ready
• The angry mob lights torches and starts marching towards the burgomaster mansion
• The second gem is still unrecovered — the Martikovs believe it's in the swamp ruins of Berez, southeast of the winery. Urwin mentioned it if it comes up, but won't press

Burgomaster Mansion

• The mansion is set ablaze
• The baron, his wife and son are dragged out, taken to the town square, thrown in the stocks and stoned to death
• Izek manages to flee

The Road to Krezk

📍 #Road West
⚔️ #Encounters

• Northwest bound
• Approaching the wall of fog in the West
• Colder weather
• Gallows Speaker encounter
  • They happen upon a mass grave, from the time Strahd conquered the valley, or maybe when he defeated several Knights of the Silver Dragon
• Road junction

The road branches north and climbs a rocky escarpment, ending at a gatehouse built into a twenty-foot-high wall of stone reinforced with buttresses every fifty feet or so. The wall encloses a settlement on the side of a snow-dusted mountain spur. Beyond the wall you see the tops of snow-covered pines and thin, white wisps of smoke. The somber toll of a bell comes from a stone abbey that clings to the mountainside high above the settlement. The steady chime is inviting—a welcome change from the deathly silence and oppressive fog to which you have grown accustomed. It’s hard to tell at this distance, but there seems to be a switchback road clinging to the cliffs that lead up from the walled settlement to the abbey.

Most of a day's travel northwest — fog-choked mountain road, cold, quiet.

• 🎭 Ireena — walks beside the party. If prompted, she speaks of Fr. Lucian: he wasn't a brave man by nature, she says. He was just too tired to be afraid. She wonders whether the Abbot will take her in
• As they crest the final ridge, Krezk comes into view below — walled, quiet — and above it, higher still, the pale towers of the Abbey of St. Markovia

Gates of Krezk

📍 #Krezk Village

Heavy oak gates, iron-reinforced. Guards on the wall with crossbows. Krezk admits no strangers without reason.

• The guards demand the party's purpose; they are wary, not hostile
• Getting inside:
  • Burgomaster Dmitri Krezkov will open the gates for something of value
    • Wine from the Wizard of Wines (Lavinia Groza can help with that)
    • Deed in Krezk's name
    • Invoking Fr. Lucian's recommendation for Ireena may work on its own (Persuasion DC 14)
• 🎭 Dmitri Krezkov — hollow-eyed, going through the motions of leadership. His young son Ilya died recently. He will let them in, but he is not well

The Pool — Ireena and Sergei

📍 #Blessed Pool of Krezk

• Ireena hears someone calling her from the pool, she feels compelled to go
• Sergey appears in the pool, stretches his hand, made of water, to Ireena
• She reaches, looks to the PCs with tears of joy
• She plunges into pool, they couple is reunited and happy
• Strahd feels it:
  • Crackling thunder, dark clouds with his visage
  • Lightning attack - 15 ft, DC 17 DEX or prone. In water, DC 17 CON - 44 (8d10) / half
  • The blessing is drestroyed

Fantastic Locations

Church Cemetery, Vallaki

• Freshly dug graves, shrouded bodies laid in rows on the cold earth
• A small crowd of mourners; torchlight casting unsteady shadows across the headstones
• Milivoj and the other gravediggers have stopped working — they're watching the crowd

Town of Vallaki

• Streets quieter than they should be; the festival banners gone or torn down
• Shuttered windows, absent church bell
• Tension with nowhere to go — the crowd from the cemetery will carry it somewhere

Road West

• A narrow mountain road, fog-choked, treeline pressing close
• Distant wolf howls carried on cold wind
• Occasional roadside shrines to the Morninglord — dried offerings, long dead

Krezk Village

• Palisade wall of sharpened timber encircling the whole village
• Inside: stone cottages, a blessed pool of still blue water, small vegetable gardens
• Unnervingly quiet — people move with the careful stillness of those who've learned not to draw attention

Blessed Pool of Krezk

• A natural pool fed by a cold mountain spring at the center of the village
• The water is mirror-clear, faintly luminescent at dusk
• Willows overhang the edge; offerings of river stones and dried flowers line the bank

Monsters

• Dire Wolf — stat block
• Berserker — stat block
• Vampire Spawn — stat block (nighttime, if the pyre wasn't lit)

Encounters

• Daytime:
  • 8 needle blights
  • 1 wereraven in raven form
• Nighttime:
  • Gallows Speaker: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/6491355-gallows-speaker
  • Corpse - Looks like Klildar