Tome of Strahd (contents)
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Tome of Strahd (contents)
I, Strand, Lord of Barovia, well aware certain events of my reign have been desperately misunderstood by those who are better at garbling history than recording it, hereby set down an exact record of those events, that the truth may at last be known.
I am The Ancient, I am The Land. My beginnings are lost in the darkness of the past. I was the warrior, the prince. I was good and just.
My earliest memory is of reaching desperately for my mother, squirming against my nursemaid as her thick arms held me back. I’ll never forget Queen Ravenovia von Roeyen’s face, the white skin framed in dark hair, eyes blue as sapphires. She leaned down and gave me a kiss on the cheek and moved away, the only one I would ever remember receiving from her.
If my mother’s kiss is my first memory of her, then my father’s rage must be my first of him. Was it hurling a crystal goblet of wine against the wall where it shattered and ran down the stone? Or screaming at my mother’s lady-in-waiting, spittle flying onto the silvered jewels at her throat? Faithful old Wilhelm, the chamberlain, once told him that his bouts of anger were unbecoming. My father threw him from the parapet. On his orders, the broken body lay in the courtyard for seven days. I watched the crows and the rats take it apart, piece by piece. It was my first lesson of what truly lies within a man.
---
I knew from a very young age that my nursemaid, Lysaga, was an evil woman, with a pox-scarred face and brown hair stiff as dirty straw. The ladies at court were always interested in her, and there were many whispers.
She acted as a sort of medicine woman, mixing potions and poultices and administering treatments to keep the king and queen and their sycophants healthy and beautiful. In the boldness of my youth, I once asked her why she never used these reagents to her own benefit. “Oh, keen little Strahd,” she whispered in my ear, and her breath became suddenly as sweet as mint, “But I do.”
She would creep into my room at night when she thought sleep had taken me, hunch over my bed, stroke my hair, and whisper strange incantations. This terrified me, and I would do my best to breathe evenly and lie still, sometimes for hours. I wanted to tell my mother and father about it, but during the day Lysaga scarcely let me out of her sight. She was my governess, cook, teacher, companion, and jailer, and I hated her.
---
Lysaga began to try and teach me magic when I was very small. “I planted the seed in you,” she would often say, “and I would see it grow.” Her lessons were grueling affairs, equal parts memorization of reagents and their properties, and physical trials where I was forced to contort my fingers into cramped, unnatural shapes for prolonged periods. Nothing ever came of it apart from my sore hands and growing resentment.
It was in an attempt to escape Lysaga’s cloying presence that I began trying to find ways to speak to my father. He was obsessed with war, and so I prevailed upon him to begin martial pursuits from a markedly young age. He was overjoyed, and I was the youngest prince ever to be made a page. Lysaga forgot herself in her grief, and insisted I would remain in her care until she saw fit to release me. My father publicly exiled her for daring to question him, sparing her life only after my mother begged his mercy. It was some time before I saw her again.
---
I was an adequate squire, but I did not excel. The physical work was too hard, and while I often knew the right stroke of the sword to apply, my aching muscles and burning lungs slowed my hand in applying it. I was more than a match for the lazy, weak, or stupid as I could predict their movements and overpower them, but the truly quick and strong always outperformed me.
I was knighted in my twenty-first year by King Barov himself, the same year I found out I was to have a little brother. Age had mellowed my father, and his endless campaigns had stalled. Sergei was born on the first day of winter, and I had never seen my parents so happy. There was no nursemaid this time, and my mother was scarcely seen in the castle without clutching the little infant, cooing and fawning over him. My father, too, spent much of his time with the two of them, and I was left to the training yard and the war room and my cold, lonely thoughts.
---
The magic came to me suddenly, as though a ray of light had broken through a thatched roof. I was in a black mood, my doting parents too busy with Sergei to pay me any further mind or attention. I was reading a tome on warfare and thinking of the battlefield described therein, when suddenly it appeared before me in the reflection of the water in the courtyard fountain! The guards could not see it! In the coming years, I would use my powers again and again, and the seed that was planted long ago would finally grow.
---
I found my calling as a general, atop a stallion on a high hill overlooking the battlefield. Here, at last, I could give the orders to the men who would swing the swords, and my foresight and strategy would be rewarded. I took up my father’s discarded mantle and became a conqueror.
These were the long years, the war years, and they were filled with dust and blood. I learned one lesson only in all that time, and I applied it again and again: Mercy is the same as weakness.
Each time I returned home, I found Sergei bigger and stronger as my parents grew older and weaker. I tried to hate him, but he had a way of making me feel like I was the most important person in the world. He grew into a fine young knight, as charming and thoughtful as he was skilled. He won the tournaments I had struggled to compete in. I knew that mother resented his following in my footsteps, but I saw so much potential that I insisted upon teaching him all that I knew of battle. Still, she never let him go to war.
---
When father died and I ascended the throne, Sergei was the only one who was there for me. For many years, we ruled the land together. I would go off to campaign against our enemies, and he would handle matters of state back home.
It all changed at the Battle of Balinok. I had grown accustomed to leading the cavalry charge that would mop up the field, and my old enemy Kavan finally outmaneuvered me. He sacrificed a small regiment to draw me out, the bulk of his wolf-riders hidden in the forest. As our glorious charge swept over the field, his hidden forces sprang and boxed us in. I ordered a counter-charge directly into the enemy lines, hoping to break through. The last thing I remember is the red tip of his spear driving home in my side, falling from my horse, and darkness.
---
The Vistani saved me. They were there to investigate the battle, to inspect the dead on that great battlefield, a wasted expanse of trampled earth, dead horses, dead wolves, and dead men scattered like a child's broken toys. One tried to strip my armor from my body, and discovered that I yet drew breath.
Rather than cut my throat, they brought me back to their leader, an old woman that they said was gifted with the power of foresight. They nursed me back to health, and I lived among them as an honored guest for months. I never revealed who I truly was to them during all that time, yet I found I was treated with a kindness and respect I had never before known from strangers. I came to understand the Vistani as a persecuted people ever on the move, never really knowing home and yet carrying that home with them wherever they went.
When at last I found my strength, I declared my true identity as the ruler of a distant land. The caravan agreed to deliver me home, and in exchange I declared that all Vistani would forever be free to roam my lands as they pleased, and that no harm would ever come to them by my hand.
---
I began to feel my age. I had seen it before in the silver at my temples and the lines on my face, but now I truly began to feel it: in the ache of my bones after a day of travel, in the scattering of my thoughts at the slightest distraction, in the sharp pain of the long scar on my left side from Kavan's spear.
Sergei ruled the land as king when I rode through the castle gates, the first time I returned from the dead. There was a great celebration and much talk of the rightful king having come home, though I could detect a hesitation in the hearts and minds of my subjects. They did not love me, in spite of the battles I had won, the territory I had conquered, the fear I had struck in the hearts of our enemies. No, they wanted my brother, who was younger and stronger and more beautiful than I, to lead them.
To his credit, Sergei played his part well. He insisted that he had nothing to do with the court's plans to keep him on my throne. He said he didn't know about the ancient laws they invoked to ensure he remained king. He embraced me as a brother and reassured me that he would see me recrowned in time. Did he think me a fool? Did he not realize how keen my mind was? I could see everything, all his plans laid bare, and it was only the fact that he was my brother that kept my hand from my dagger in the dead of night.
---
I devoted myself once more to war and revenge. I led the greatest military force the kingdom had ever seen westward, back into the land of the elves, of the forest folk, and this time I soaked it in blood. The enemy thought me dead and defeated. Imagine their surprise as my cavalry once more descended into their muddy villages and mountain hovels. This time I had learned my lesson, and none would be spared. They called me "devil" now, and whispered that I could not be killed. I didn't stop until they were at last broken, and my old enemy Kavan lay dying in the stinking marshland of Berez, his famous red spear disappearing into the murk beneath the crumbled statue of their pagan god.
I was victorious.
---
I decided never again to return home. There was nothing for me there but betrayal and sorrow. It was time I build something of my own, and as I stood on the conquered land of my enemies, I saw for the first time how beautiful it was: the deep evergreen forests, the crystal clear rivers, the soaring mountains. I named the land Barovia, for my father, and I planned to erect the greatest castle the world had ever known, named for my mother Queen Ravenovia, the most beautiful woman the world had ever known: Castle Ravenloft.
---
My scouts found something in the southern mountains, an ancient vault sealed with powerful magic. I journeyed there, and my considerable arcane talents only barely proved potent enough to release the seal on the door. I hesitated to go inside. There was something within- something ancient and terrible- that called to me. I understood that to pass beyond those doors was to pay a great price. I turned back and ordered them sealed once more.
---
I fell in love with the architect's daughter, Tatyana. She was over twenty years my junior, yet she made me feel half my age. Her smile, her laughter, her striking red hair, that piercing look she gave when she disapproved. Everything about her was perfect. I moved out of my manor house and into the half-finished castle just to be closer to her. Her father was honored, though if she could tell I was trying to court her, she never made it evident. She treated me as a trusted friend, but more like a second father than a suitor. I knew it would only take time, however, to endear myself to her. I would win her heart.
---
I received a letter from my brother, the nobles had at last grown tired and ousted him. He and my mother were fleeing my father's kingdom, now, heading west for sanctuary in Barovia. I had been right all along, of course, and I couldn't wait to see my brother beg my forgiveness. I rushed completion of the castle, insisting it must be done by the time Queen Ravenovia arrived to gaze upon it. She had always disapproved of my warmongering and conquest, but now she would see everything I had built. She would realize I was a great king, just as father had been.
Some of the workers complained of the arduous labor and the long hours, and they began to organize. I had two score of them hanged from the bridge overlooking the town. Mercy would have been the same as weakness.
---
Mother was dead when Sergei and his ragged force arrived in the kingdom. He told me the journey was too much for her aging body. I searched his face for some sign of treachery, but found only a sorrow as deep as my own. He had brought father's remains, too, secreted out of the catacombs beneath our old homeland. Together, we lay them both to rest beneath the castle. This was their home, now.
---
I granted Sergei asylum in Castle Ravenloft. I made it a formal affair, and he begged at my feet in the throne room as the courtiers looked on. He seemed put off by the notion of it, at first, until I reminded him that if he had displayed his power more openly in his own kingdom, then he might not have been forced to flee to mine. That set him straight.
I introduced him to Tatyana, and we dined together. She was particularly animated, her eyes bright and smile flashing. She kept referring to me as "uncle" and “sir” to the extent that I became uncomfortable and had to excuse myself.
---
Once more, I was betrayed. Sergei and Tatyana were to be married. I had ignored the signs for so long, until at last they had the nerve to tell me to my face, enjoying the look in my eyes, no doubt, as they twisted the knife in my back! I thought of killing my brother, then, but I knew that Tatyana would never forgive me. Besides, I still loved him. He was the only family I had left.
I went to Tatyana that night, convinced that if I laid my affections for her bare then she would be swayed. If she only saw how deeply and how long I had cared for her, how I had taken her in after her father died, how I had dedicated so much of my time and attention to her!
She laughed at me. She stroked my hair and told me how dear I was to her. She said that I was like a brother, like an uncle. She said I was too old.
I wanted to break her in that moment, to use my magic to bend her utterly to my will forever, but I did not have the power to bring myself to do anything of the sort. I wanted to transform myself, to peel the years of age away from my body in layers and emerge a younger man. I did not have that power, either.
But I knew where I could find it.
---
Again and again, the guardians of the vault repelled me. Their desire to protect the deep secrets of that ancient place proved stronger than my own will and, for the first time in my life, I resigned myself to defeat. I was fitted for a fine suit for Sergei's wedding. I was to be the Best Man.
---
I awoke on the morning of the wedding full of sick fear and rage. I descended once more into the vault, my every muscle and synapse electric with the urgent realization that my time was up. It was either triumph and take for myself what I deserved or perish.
I made it to the deepest level of that place, exhausted and soaked in the blood of its guardians, and at last I found that which I sought. I forged a pact with
[unintellgible]
I was assured that all of my dreams would come true. I watched in amazement as my body became young and strong again, and my mind once more sharpened to a razor's edge. Magical knowledge only guessed at before now coalesced into sharp relief in my mind, and hundreds of possibilities opened like unlocked doors before me. I cast a spell to summon a portal, and I stepped through.
---
I arrived just in time to take my place at the wedding, the lords and ladies in all their finery too distracted to notice the wonderful change that had come over me. Sergei caught my eye, and something like fear or wonder played over his face, but the great organ music swelled and his attention was diverted to his beautiful bride's approach, a long white train trailing from her dress. Everyone took their places, expectant eyes and expectant hearts. The priest took a deep breath, and readied to speak.
I only meant to shove the old priest back, but the bones in his chest snapped at the press of my hand. He gave a terrible gasp as he toppled over the dais and into the courtyard. I grabbed Sergei's throat, lifted him off of his feet, watched with fascination as his blue eyes bulged and his tongue popped out of his mouth. I only meant to make him understand the new extent of my power. Instead, I felt his windpipe crush like rotten fruit, and a terrible, yearning hunger took me. I bit savagely into his neck and drank his hot blood, pleasure singing in my veins. I stared into his slack face for what felt like a long time before I realized he was dead, and I became aware of the screaming panic that had erupted around me.
Tatyana was running, but she had not gotten far in her ridiculous dress. She tore the train from it and gave a full sprint towards the castle balcony, a helpless sound of grief and fear wailing out from her as she ran. I caught her easily around the waist and turned her around to look into her eyes. I needed to make her understand that everything was going to be ok.
"It's all for you," I whispered.
I experienced the next few moments as though standing underwater, a tragedy that I relive again and again each day in my dreams. The snap of the guards' bowstrings, the whistling of the arrow shafts, the look of hatred and terror on Tatyana's face as she spit at me, the hot stab of the arrowheads at my neck and back, the lancing pain, my loosening grip, Tatyana's sudden strength as she pulled away from me, another volley, agony so intense that my vision began to fail, the stuttering animation of Tatyana in her wedding dress backed against the railing, her red lips moving but no sound save the ringing in my ears, my knees giving out, and finally, Tatyana disappearing over the edge of the castle balcony- one thousand plunging feet of open air there to greet her, all the way down to the base of the pillarstone.
I knew the terms of the bargain I had struck, but it was never meant to be paid in full so soon. It should have gone differently. With the last of my strength, I shed one final tear for myself; then, I took a shuddering breath and died.
The guards watched in horror as I rose to my feet and, with a swipe of my arm, cast their broken arrows away from my pallid flesh. Not a single drop of blood left my body, and I found that their weapons could not harm me. I killed them all, and I did not stop. I killed every man, woman, and child in the castle that night- every courtier, every servant, every knight, every wedding guest. It took hours, hunting them through the halls, dragging them from their hiding places, but I found I could not tire. I drank their blood, but I found my thirst could not be slaked.
I stood on the balcony to watch the sun rise, but it never came. Instead, the mists rolled in slow and thick, and the clouds stacked deep and grey upon the horizon, and I have been trapped in darkness ever since. I flew down to the base of the pillarstone and looked for Tatyana, but her body had disappeared.
---
I have learned much since then. I now know that I am called Vampire. Some say that I am the first, and I suppose it doesn't matter if I am. I am the Ancient, I am the Land, and I am trapped here forever. I lust for life and youth, for the things unjustly stolen from me, yet I will never know them again. I still feel Tatyana out there, somewhere, like a memory I can only partially recall. I hear her calling for me in the mists as though lost. In time, I will find her. One day, she will learn to love me again, as she was always meant to. I will grant her my forgiveness when that day comes. And then, we will be free.
Until then, I will reside in Ravenloft, among the tombs. In the dark I can sometimes still feel at home. I interred Sergei here in his rightful place, though I could not find his sword. I wait for the day when he, too, may beg my forgiveness. Until then, I will keep watch over his bones, and over mother's and father's. I am still a von Zarovich, after all, and I will always have my pride.
Count Strahd von Zarovich
10th Lunar Cycle, the Common Year 355.
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