Order of the Silver Dragon
When Strahd drove his enemies into the valley long ago, determined to annihilate them, the last thing he expected to encounter was a silver dragon.
The dragon, who called himself Argynvost, had come to the valley years earlier in the guise of a nobleman named Lord Argynvost. The dragon didn’t lair in the valley solely because of its idyllic beauty. He knew of a place called the Amber Temple — a repository of evil power guarded by the forces of good. Argynvost wanted to make sure that whatever was trapped inside the Amber Temple wouldn’t be allowed to escape, so he built his fortified mansion, Argynvostholt, close by.
Like many silver dragons, Argynvost was extraordinarily wealthy, and he was comfortable living among humans while disguised as one of them. He used his resources to attract other champions of good, and valorous knights flocked to the valley to join Lord Argynvost’s prestigious Order of the Silver Dragon. Only those who were initiated into the order were told of Lord Argynvost’s true nature.
During the war between Strahd and his foes, the Order of the Silver Dragon drove away malefactors searching for the Amber Temple. It also sheltered Strahd’s forces and proved a stalward ally of Strahd’s battle-weary soldiers. But the warlords that terrorized the land still drew power from darkness and resisted the order's early victories. Even with Argynvost on their side, the knights were ultimately overwhelmed until Strahd’s reinforcements swept into the valley.
When Strahd died and became a vampire, the Order of the Silver Dragon was on of the Dreadlord's first victims. Strahd's new forces were relentless, and vicious. Those forces slew the last of the knights and battled the dragon inside Argynvostholt. After the dragon was slain, Strahd had its corpse hacked to pieces, stripped to the bone, and gifted to the Dreadwolf, alpha of a local werewolf pack, as a trophy.
Vladimir’s knights should have gone to their everlasting rest, but their spirits couldn’t leave Strahd’s domain. The death of Argynvost enraged the spirit of Vladimir Horngaard, the greatest of the dragon’s knights. Horngaard returned as a revenant and swore to avenge the destruction of the order. His zeal was so great that it also brought back the spirits of his knights, who rose as revenants under Vladimir’s command, though they were trapped within their keep in an endless battle and separated from their liege lord by a powerful curse.