The Aftermath

In the moments immediately following the true death of Prince Strahd von Zarovich, the group looked at one another in stunned silence with incredulous expressions. Is he really dead? Is it over?

Have we won?

Turk pulled the remains of her spear out of the piles of ashes within the coffin and cast it aside. Finding some remnant of Strahd’s form, she threaded it on to her necklace of ears. Walking out the portcullis, she removed the leather strap from her neck and tucked it into a pocket. Cereus caught her by the arm. “Where are you going?” Turk shrugged him off and, looking over her shoulder at the others, said simply, “Go home.”

The others looked to Accalia, expecting her to speak up, to stop Turk from leaving, but ‘Cali stared blankly and said nothing.

“Someone’s got to clean up this mess,” said Turk, and strode from the castle.

The group headed upstairs to look outside. Arriving on the parapets, they found a crowd of Barovians gathered below in the courtyard, pitchforks and torches in hand, but gazing west in wonderment at the sight of the sun setting on the horizon. For the first time in 400 years, golden rays shone out across Barovia. They came to help kill the Vampyr, but clearly the Vampyr was already dead.

In the distance, the group could see Turk making her way down off the road and into the tree-line, headed south-west toward the lands of the barbarian hill people. Piece by piece she doffed her armour as she walked, stripping down to cloth wraps and fur boots, her trail a wake of metal bits every hundred feet. Before she disappeared around a bend and out of sight, she stopped by a freshly open grave and reached into the black muck to where a recently animated but now still corpse lay. With two fingers she smeared the dark mud onto her face – two lines below each eye, and a long thick black line from her hairline down her nose, mouth, chin and neck, and disappearing into the darkness of her cleavage.

“She’s right. The mist is gone. We can leave now,” said Glimmerald, instinctively tightening the muscles of her face to squint in the sun’s light, only to unnecessarily grip tighter the tiny, amber gemstones that had taken the place of her eyes.

“Oh, can we now?” mumbled Cali, her somber tone uncharacteristically low and calm.

Strahd was dead. The sun was setting in the west but would rise tomorrow in the east on a whole new day and a far brighter future than the people of Barovia had ever known.

“Go or stay, as you need,” declared Ireena. “Tomorrow, The Crusade of the New Dawn begins.”

The Scouring of the Castle

The crypts proved a treasure trove after a few minor skirmishes. Patrina, Kasimir’s sister rose as a Banshee, but after a brief fight was quickly dispatched. Kasimir fulfilled his lifelong quest, restoring her to life. He returned her to the Dusk Elf tribe, but because the colour of his skin did not return to normal after having expended The Gift of Zhudun, he disappeared into the woods to live out his days in solitude, away from the looks of fear and the judgment of others. He considered his self-exile a part of his penance for having killed his sister and triggering the genocide of his people. Some said he had returned to The Amber Temple to learn more of its dark secrets.

During the time in the catacombs, Glimmerald’s muttering to herself became increasingly worse. “So many questions! I’ll get to you! I’ll get to you!” she was heard to hiss repeatedly into the air. In the tomb of the famous wizard Kazan, she laid claim to his Staff of Power, though the experience nearly killed her when clutching it unleashed a tremendous thunderclap. The group expressed concern about such an item of power and kept a careful eye on her, given their experience with her in The Amber Temple when she’d laid claim to the Frost Staff of Jakarion. She did not obsess over this one as she had the other and her mood seemed unchanged. When asked if she planned to return home or remain in Barovia, her responses were cryptic. “Forty-six,” she would say, a reference to the small bag of gold she’d long ago left behind. “…and two?” she would add, wandering away and trailing off.

Upstairs, the group came upon a horrific scene in the chapel. On first entering, they saw a dead priest slumped over an altar of The Morninglord, reaching toward a holy relic. Turk called out “Rictavio”, and strode forward, but slipped in puddle of viscera. Looking up, everyone quickly realized the body at the altar was not Rictavio but some unknown priest, as Rictavio was dangling from the balcony overlooking above, disemboweled. He’d been gutted by Strahd’s sword, and his intestines pulled out and used to hang him. The remainder of his entrails were stretched from gut to wrists, giving him the twisted appearance of a fallen angel. The question of having him raised from the dead was put forward – if it were even possible – but Glimmerald quickly spoke up: “NO! Strahd is dead, and this is where Rictavio’s story ends.” She gazed upward and nodded. Cereus snipped the intestine-noose with an arrow, that Rictavio could be afforded a proper burial at dawn in the tradition of The Morninglord, to be presided over by Ireena.

Moments later they found Ezmerelda wandering the halls in shock. She looked gaunt, as though she’d not eaten in days. She’d found Rictavio first. In a few days, away from the castle, she would recover her faculties though it was clear she would never “go back to normal” after the harrowing experience. She congratulated and thanked the group for their service, to the people of Barovia and to herself and Rictavio. Before long she would take her wagon and depart to continue her monster-hunting elsewhere, in search of a place called “Kartakass”.

“If you ever find yourself there, perhaps our paths will cross again.”

The group bestowed on her a small parting gift, something found in the crypts beneath the castle: a weapon much like the small thunder-crossbow she used. This strange scepter of wood and metal shot metal balls, like her smaller version, but was more the size of a heavy crossbow.“Hmmm…” said Cereus, “Someday I must get one of those to try myself.”

For those that remained, it took a few days to scour the remaining castle completely. Gertrude, the daughter of Mad Mary was found. She had become completely enamored with Strahd and thought he might someday marry her. After he’d spoken to her on just a few occasions, she’d run away from home at only 16, and had been staying in the castle since. He’d lavished her with gifts and given her a very comfortable stay, but – thankfully – had neither turned nor deflowered her yet, though his intentions to were clear. A simple girl, she was disappointed to hear of his demise, and unsure what to do with herself. After a few stern lectures from Ireena about growing up and out of her youthful naivety, Luccaria suggested she would escort Gertrude back to her mother on her way out of Barovia to return to the Dessarin people. “Mad Mary” was ever so grateful, as were the people of the Village of Barovia, though Gertrude, doe eyes shining, failed to understand what all the fuss was about.

A strange mix of both living servants and dead were encountered when searching the remainder of the castle, along with a horde of countless riches accumulated over the centuries. The undead were dispatched with haste. The living put up no real fight and those who didn’t flee immediately were spared when they surrendered, cowering, and told to leave the castle and never return. The exception was accountant, Lief Lipseige, who looked up from his desk calmly and offered up the keys to several treasure chests before turning to walk away.

“There’s been a change of the administration,” said Lucy.

“But your services will still be required,” finished Ireena. “You have a job in the new order. There is much work to be done, stamping out evil and bringing The Light of the Morninglord to the lands of Barovia once again. And I have a small country to run.”

Perhaps the most peculiar thing found in the castle was “Pidlwick II”, a cheerful (if diabolical looking) gnomish clockwork contraption of a life-sized gnome jester, named after a court jester of days gone by belonging to a Duchess Dorfiniya Dilisnya, both of whose crypts you found in the catacombs below. While animate, it couldn’t speak or make facial expressions, but relied instead on hand gestures to communicate, and was quite intelligent. Cereus found the thing too creepy to be around, but the group minimized contact by turning it over to Gadof Blinsky as quickly as possible. Between the monkey gifted by Rictavio and the newfound clockwork Pidlwick II, Gadof was ecstatic.

He began making a new line of toys in your honour: effigies of The Six Heroes of Barovia, this time with buttons for eyes instead of crossed stitches.

“I did not know that meant zey were dead! Ze leedle hexes. Oh, doze poor boyz and girlz playing wid widdle dead tings. Oh dear! Why no one tell me? How sad. I no wand to mayek de widdle boyz and girlz sad, only hay-appy!”

Three days after Strahd’s death, a stately man in shining armor and flapping cape came and stood in the courtyard of the castle, as Ireena and some workers were standing on the parapets above discussing future endeavours in governance. His countenance showed great strength of will, but the forcefulness of his presence was tempered by calm, sad eyes. His chiseled features resembled those of Strahd von Zarovich, but younger and subtly different.

“Tatyana,” he called upward, “It is I, Sergei von Zarovich, returned by the Mists of Ravenloft. Our time is at hand. Our need to be together can finally be met. Come, my love, and be my wife at last.”

Tatyana looked about, as if expecting Turk to spring from the shadows with a tirade about the agency of women, but Turk was nowhere to be found.

“Sergei,” Ireena called down. “In your name, I have killed your brother and put an end to this curse. But I am not the naïve young Tatyana you fell in love with. Nor am I Ireena Kolyana, tortured and oppressed by the evil of Strahd’s obsession. I am Tatyana of the New Dawn, made whole in the Light of the Morninglord, and I am the new Queen of this realm. While my heart still stirs with vague memories of our former life, let me be clear: I don’t need you. What I need is all the help I can get with the tasks ahead. So, if you would win my hand once more, join me in rebuilding this land in His Light. What I ask of you is a special task. Abandon your family name and association with The Dark Days… brick by brick : raze this castle to the ground.”

The Days that Followed

Luccaria – or Sellucia as she would reveal herself, removing her blindfold and casting aside her mask – departed Barovia once the castle was searched and control over Barovia established. She saw Gertrude home safely as promised, and then paid Madam Eva one last visit before leaving Barovia.

“Thank you for all your help, Eva, without it, I’m not sure we’d have ever succeeded.”

“Please, Sellucia, you can call me Katarina,” said the old woman, perking up. “I feared even with my advice you would not succeed, or at least not in the fashion you did. I thought perhaps the Dark Powers had other designs for you, just as did my half-brother.”

“A ‘Dark Queen?’ He tried me, along with my friend, Turk. But when I am a queen, it will be on terms of my choosing. Tell me, someday, when I am as old as you are, will I be able to read the Tarroka with the skill you do? To see possible futures?”

“You are as old as me, sweet thing, of a sort. I looked much as you do now on the night that I prayed to the Night Mother, young and supple, but the next morning I awoke shriveled like this and haven’t aged a day since. Be careful what you wish for.” Eva reached across the table and rested her wrinkled hand so one pinky lay on Sellucia’s sixth finger.

Sellucia paused and cocked her head, as though listening to something far away. “I suppose I’ve had as much change as I’m prepared to endure for now. I return to my people as… more… than when I last left them. Behold, I have truly become a thing of beauty, not that I wasn’t already gorgeous when I arrived.”

“I suppose it was too much to hope for.”

“What’s that?”

“That a grand-niece might somehow survive unchanged.”

“Too much? Too little! I’ve changed. Of course, I’ve changed. We were all… changed. How great am I now?”

“About 20-odd greats, by my guess,” chuckled Eva at her own wordplay.

Sellucia smirked, rose, and left.

Under Ireena’s orders, both Baron Vargas Vallakovich and Lady Fiona Wachter had their assets seized and were exiled from Vallaki along with their children, save Fiona’s daughter, Stella. Father Lucian Petrovich reluctantly accepted his appointment as “Regent of Vallaki”, with assurances from Queen Tatyana that should word of the slightest inkling of an uprising reach her, she would return promptly and deliver justice swiftly. Going forward, regency of Vallaki would pass from one pastor of St. Andral’s Church to the next. In the west, the Abbey of Saint Markovia was re-opened as an orphanage. Despite her age, Stella was sent here to recover, given her mental state, that she might find comfort among the children if nothing else, as she continued living thinking she was a cat, until someone might be able to someday cure her affliction.

Urwin and Danika offered to sell the Blue Water Inn to Accalia for a pittance so that they could move back west to the winery and re-unite the Martikov family. Accalia paid them nearly twice what they asked, calmly remarking, “Whatever. It’s just money. But I expect the wine to flow. Plenty and on time. PLENTY. AND ON TIME.”

With her grand re-opening of the Blue Water Inn, Accalia ushered in a new era of merriment for the people of Vallaki, though she showed little sign of merry herself. She hired staff to cover the daytime hours, allowing her to rise at sunset to entertain the bar patrons with a ventriloquism act late into the night, using the dummy gifted to her by her long-time friend Turk. Despite pleas from the crowds for ballads of their heroic triumph or recited tales of the events deep below the Castle Ravenloft, she refused, instead obsessively working to refine her ventriloquist act more and more over time. She weaved a story of Strahd’s eventual return into the performance and mimed the dummy in more and more life-like fashion each time. The more realistic her act became, the more people found it dark and disturbing, and the crowds thinned. Cali’s drinking also increased.

With Kasimir departing the tribe of Dusk Elves, Cereus felt no kinship with them, and his irrational fear of furnishings continued to wear away at him in the town and villages until he could only relax alone in the forest. As a first order of business, he devoted his time to hunting down the free-willed vampire spawn loosed from servitude by Strahd’s demise. Corpses would periodically turn up at the gates of Vallaki at dawn, riddled with arrows, as a warning to any spawn that might think to hide among the people: your time is coming.

But with the death of Strahd von Zarovich, Cereus felt his life open to choices; the hunt for freedom from this awful land and the hunt for revenge against the Undead had shifted — somewhat.

No longer was Cereus a scout, a wood elf skulking alone in the woods whacking isolated ghouls and skeletons. Instead, he saw these now as victims of larger and more powerful and intelligent undead. He knew now to follow all these minor undead “upstream to their sources.” While his experience and power might have tempted him to take these on these undead lords alone, he had been in Strahd’s clutches alone on that dark stairwell and knew all too well just how lucky he was. Companionship through adversity and strife had changed him, for all the impulsive, ham-fisted, noisy actions of his mates (that more than once made him want to run away or drive an arrow through them), their hearts were Good and their arms strong. They had helped Cereus lurk and position for the perfect shot on more than one occasion! It was most effective to hunt as a pack, so whenever he discovered such undead masters, he would gather as many of the pack as he could. Tatyana of the New Dawn also felt a strong kinship with the others, and she and Cereus would come together, gathering ‘Cali and Glimmerald, to once again stamp out evil at its roots wherever it reared its ugly head. The four worked well together, but it was never quite the same.

Tatyana also sought The Amber Temple destroyed or sealed off, but after several failed expeditions up the mountain met with horrible fates, she instead destroyed the road and bridges, forced to content herself with removing as much access as possible.

When time came that Cereus heard of Cali’s disturbing performances at the Inn, he came to town once more, this time to confront her outside alone the Blue Water Inn one evening.

“What’s going on, ‘Cali? Is it because Turk left? Is that why you seem forever sad? Does she never come in from the wild to visit like I do?”

“There is no Turk. Not anymore. And besides, she knew. You’re the one who hasn’t figured it out.”

“Knew what?”

“That I died.”

“Yes, you died. And we brought you back!”

“Did you?”

In the End

Lucy returned to the Dessarin River Valley as Sellucia, and ‘suggested’ her mother and sister might do well to hear her story and ‘gain a deeper appreciation for the intense beauty she had become’ beside being ‘the world’s greatest sword dancer of all time’. She challenged her sister in personal combat, besting her handily and leaving her with a few small but highly visible scars by which to remember. Feeling nonetheless unfulfilled, she left the valley again, continued farther and reached Waterdeep, where she spent most of her share of the acquired wealth opening one of the city’s most successful gladiatorial arenas and training schools. She frequently participated – usually winning – and while this led some to quietly mutter inferences that perhaps the matches were somehow fixed, it was not something anyone would ever be caught voicing aloud. For her own part, the losses, though infrequent, were often enough to keep her from achieving any lasting peace.

She was forever dissatisfied in spite of her fame, finding comfort only in the easy seduction of young men (usually her students) who flattered and adored her, and quieting the unrest between by having one hand almost always clutching a glass of the finest wine money could buy – not at her own expense, of course, but at the mere suggestion to strangers in bars that they might ‘buy a girl a drink?’

One year to the day after the defeat of Strahd von Zarovich, Ireena and Cereus met and went to the Blue Water Inn in the hopes of raising a glass in celebration with ‘Cali, but when she did not respond to their calls, they entered her room to discover Accalia’s pale, bloodless body on the floor. The sharpened fangs of her wooden Strahd-dummy were deep in her neck.

As Cereus slumped to his knees, Ireena rushed to the window and threw open the sash to gasp for fresh air. Nearby, in the woods, she saw the familiar silhouette of a tall, naked, muscular woman approaching, brandishing a spear. Their eyes met, and when the creature surveyed the horrified look on Ireena’s face, it let out a primal, mournful wail and disappeared back into the trees.

Cereus set out to find Glimmerald in the wilderness, to deliver the sad news of ‘Cali’s demise, unsure if the tiny gnome was even still in Barovia. He located her living at the Tower of Kazan. As he approached, he found her at a small firepit just before the entrance.

Glimmerald stared at a roasted wolf carcass, muttering responses to the voices only she could hear. Images and scenes flashed before her eyes, each with their own feel: cozy caverns filled with florescent fungi, crinkled happy Svirfneblin faces, steaming mushroom soup served in beetle carapace, gogondy in intricately carved crystal goblets, blood, gnawed bone, torn limbs, hunger. The amber stones in her burnt out eye sockets glowed softly in the firelight as she contemplated returning to her ancestral home, as she did most evenings. Did any of her people survive? Can she face them again after what she did, after what she had become? Her lycanthropy had been cured, but the dreadful scenes still played out in her mind’s eye whenever she relaxed before her evening fire.

In ways, Barovia reminded her of home: the ever-present danger, the grim possibilities lurking around the next corner. Together with her companions, they had healed this land, brought it back from eternal wretched twilight, and restored the possibility for a better future. Did she deserve the same?

Her fingers clenched the Staff of Power as she looked up to meet Cereus’ gaze, and then past him. “So sorry, deary. Sometimes the curse of glimpsing the future is enduring the helplessness of inevitability. Those things I usually keep to myself.” She turned her twinkling bits of amber to focus on Cereus again. “But there was nothing you could do, if that makes you feel better.”

Glimmerald would dedicate herself to learning all she could about Lycanthropes here in Barovia and write a book to educate the people about them. She sought out survivors, hoping to find within them some semblance of peace for herself.

She would periodically return to civilization to re-unite with Ireena and Cereus. On one such occasion, as she gazed upon the smiling faces of her companions over a glass of the land’s finest champagne, eating sweet surface vegetables and the most tender cuts of wolf steak, Glimmerald giggled loudly. “I no longer mind rare meat! Wolves are most tender when you killed them swiftly.”

Patrina took over leadership of the Dusk Elf tribe south of Vallaki. She exiled the Vistani from the camp and severed ties, denouncing the name Velikov that her brother had taken. She took several husbands and denounced monogamy, insisting repopulation of the tribe would require ‘enough men to keep up’. Within a few years she’d given birth to two daughters, and she sought Kasimir out in the wilderness, eventually finding him and insisting he return to the fold, that he might help her raise his nieces. Then, when he finally stood before the whole tribe, she feigned ignorance of his pale condition, inciting them to rise up and kill him, saying he’d become undead.

The next night, as she stood atop the wagon-ringed hill, watching her people say funeral rights over her brother below, she smiled wryly with satisfaction for her revenge. But a spear tip burst forth from her chest and a dark shadow behind her rasped something in the muddled language of the hill tribes before disappearing into the night. It would later be translated as:

“There’s only enough room in these woods for one bad-ass bitch, and that’s not you.”

Searches for the attacker proved fruitless, save vague bits of information about a crazed barbarian warlord they called “She of the Devilsbane” after the name of the perpetually blood-soaked spear she carried, fashioned, they claimed, of the hardest, strongest oak in the Balinok mountains, a tree she’d uprooted from the ground with her own two hands.

Those traveling the woods would sometimes find tiny, carved, wooden effigies, like those the Old Hags of the Bonegrinder sometimes made back in The Dark Days, leading to speculation this creature was one of the children who they’d taken and tortured, but in a rare twist had escaped and turned into the vengeful spirit she’d become.

In time, the mythical figure’s name would be shortened to simply “Devilsbane”, or “Bagi Jenni” in the language of the hill folk, and she would become the focus of scary bedtime stories: follow the rules and be humble, or Bagi Jenni will get you!

For the Dusk Elves, with the death of Patrina control fell to an elected council of elders, and the repopulation slowly continued once her daughters were old enough to wed. They repeatedly extended offers to Cereus to come join their tribe, but his obsession with cleansing Barovia of undead was never sated, and given his paranoia, he socialized only with the few people still alive whom he could trust: those who had seen him through such adversity during the final month of The Dark Days – Ireena, Glimmerald, and when he could find her, Devilsbane.

Ireena did eventually marry Sergei. She completed her greatest endeavor: a 400’ tower monument to the Morninglord, topped with a giant gold-and-electrum sun made from the coins harvested from Strahd’s treasury, highly polished to reflect the sun, and enchanted with Continual Flame. She appointed her most loyal adherent of the Morninglord – Pastor Regent Lucian Petrovich – to succeed her as King of Barovia, and she and Sergei retired to run the Orphanage of Saint Markovia.

“All Barovia’s children are my children.”

As for the Barovian people, more and more dressed in richer colors over time, walking with a stride in their step, speaking with joy in their voices, and enjoying merriment and drink. Word reached Vallaki that Danika Martikov was pregnant with their third child over at the Wizard of Wines, a blessing at her age, and especially after the loss of their two sons to Strahd’s razing of the town. The wine did flow, plentiful and on time, and ravens did still come to perch on the edge of the rooftop of the Blue Water Inn oftentimes, though fewer, and most likely just ravens. The Keepers of the Feather remained a secretive bunch who kept to themselves, though they did approach Glimmerald privately to extend a peculiar offer that she – reportedly – chose to politely decline.

Gadof Blinsky, though, died a few years after Strahd under mysterious circumstances. Someone ambushed him in his shop at night and knocked him off a ladder. The fall cracked his skull and killed him. The attacker then made off with his most prized toy, Pidlwick II.

Neither the stolen clockwork nor the culprit were ever found, though many posited it was someone he knew: there were no signs of forced entry to the shop.