I. The Name in the Book
Wine covered the winery floor to the ankles.
Two great vats had broken in the fighting. Their contents ran through the open doors and over the stone. Above it all, Szoldar hung where the druid’s vines had left him, pierced and twisted like something set out to dry.
Validus cut him down with his sword. Szoldar fell into the wine with a splash.
Haleria reminded the others that the wine on the floor was poisoned.
Validus drew the hunter clear and laid him out. His book rested between his knees.
Haleria asked if he was all right.
He was weighing options.
Szoldar had died helping them reclaim the winery. Validus had been offered a way to return him and, for the moment, had declined. Now the body was in front of him.
The choice required another name.
He told the others the cost was more than they could willingly pay. Someone asked why he had brought Da’amir back before. At that point, Validus said, he had scarcely known anyone in the land.
Now he knew people.
Szoldar’s death did not remain beyond his reach. Validus selected a name privately and crossed it out of the book.
“No fanciness. No ritual. No rites of the dead. For now, you’ll taste cold logic, and we’ll see if attachments are important.”
There was no flash of light. Szoldar’s wounds drew closed. His heart began beating again.
He was alive, though badly hurt.
Validus turned to treating him and suggested they prepare the cart. PaK was still missing, and the party had already spent enough blood in the winery.
II. The Bird on Validus’s Shoulder
The raven on Validus’s shoulder had other ideas.
It bounced, flapped, and flew toward the doorway, drawing their attention back into the building. Validus trusted it. The bird folded its wings around itself and became an elderly man in a robe.
He apologized for the intrusion.
He was Davian Martikov, the Wizard of Wines. He had been watching through Validus’s raven and had concluded they might need help reclaiming his winery.
Davian had escaped when the intruders drove him and his people out. The ravens pinned to the rafters had not been so fortunate. They were his apprentices.
He told the party about the Keepers of the Feather: wereravens who watched the roads and the towns for travelers caught in Strahd’s designs. When such travelers appeared, the Keepers tried to help them survive. Davian’s father and the generations before him had seen earlier attempts fail. Once, he said, a powerful wizard had fought the Devil and been thrown into the river.
There had been chances to win. None had been enough.
The winery had become more than an overdue shipment.
Davian called its wine a potion. Its production required growing, crushing, infusing, enchanting, and aging the grapes. The barrels waiting outside could supply Vallaki for a while, but they could not replace the process if the occupation continued.
Davian also offered an account of the Mists. Some called what lay within them the Dark Powers; his people had another name, the old ways. They believed it fed on suffering and despair, prolonging life to draw more of both. The wine, he said, offered some relief.
The party had already felt what a drink from the winery could do.
They agreed to finish clearing the building.
III. The Rooms That Made the Wine
Davian shared his knowledge of wine with Da’amir, Validus, and Haleria so they could help distinguish sound barrels from spoiled ones. He guided them through the ground floor while the others kept watch.
One room held glassworking tools, a hearth, sand, and racks of newly made bottles. Another contained spare barrels. Da’amir tapped them with his ten-foot pole and found one that appeared full, aged, and ready to send to town. He marked it so they could return for it.
In the barrel workshop, strips of iron and wood lay in neat piles. The walls held tools. Validus took an alchemist’s toolkit from among them.
The party considered the doors ahead and the stairs leading to the cellar. Davian thought a spare set of keys might be upstairs. Validus wanted to secure the floor before descending into another part of the winery.
They climbed.
Davian pointed out his rooms and the offices, though searching for the keys would require opening doors. One led to beds and footlockers. Another led to a cabinet being ransacked by a dirt-covered druid whose hair was tangled with twigs and whose face lay behind a veil of moss.
Two creatures of dead vine stood between her and the doorway.
Da’amir was still wounded when the fight began. The others had not all understood who had received treatment after Szoldar’s return. One of the wooden creatures struck him before they could settle the matter.
Davian joined the fight. Szoldar kept to his bow. Validus, Haleria, and Da’amir tried to make the cramped upper rooms and balcony work for them as the druid grew wings of vine and took to the air.
Da’amir used the balcony to reach her. Szoldar found his line of fire.
His arrows pierced both wings. The druid spun down into a vat of poisoned wine, struggled, and drowned.
The vine creatures were still fighting.
Haleria tried to use the flame of Da’amir’s torch to light an arrow. Davian’s magic flashed through the room. Da’amir went down under the continuing assault, and the others fought until the last wooden attacker came apart. Davian brought him round with an elixir.
No one was eager to discover what lay behind another door before tending the wounded.
IV. A Key and a Staff
In the room the druid had been searching, a key hung from a loop of twine inside the open cabinet.
Haleria lifted it and shook it at Validus. Davian recognized where he had left it.
The party continued through the upper floor. When another druid appeared over an opening in the floor, a blast of water from his staff missed Validus. Szoldar’s volley ended the fight before the man could do much more. Three arrows struck, and the staff clattered beside him.
Validus examined it while the others searched nearby rooms.
They found food in the kitchen and an open safe in the master bedroom. Inside lay fifty gold pieces, five gemstones, and a gold locket. The locket held a picture of Urwin as a child opposite the image of a woman who looked to be his mother.
Davian put it around his neck.
The staff mattered more to the rest of the building. Validus determined that the druids had used it to summon the wooden creatures. It could perhaps be made to command them, but leaving it intact would also leave that power available to their enemies.
They chose to break it.
The staff shattered. Out among the vineyard rows, vines that had been moving of their own accord fell still.
Then the party went down to the cellar.
V. What Granny Lost
PaK had spent the intervening hours at Granny’s hut with Dingo. He had fetched wood and helped with the work. Granny was pleased to have another strong young man about the place.
PaK asked why she lived in the woods.
She said the people of the valley had once worshipped her. Then Strahd came, brought the Morninglord’s faith with him, and drove her and her sisters from their places as patrons of the forest, swamp, and mountain. Their shrines were taken; their connection to the land was severed. Strahd became the Ancient and the Land.
PaK had met Strahd. The Count had given them dinner and played cards with them. If he was a bad man, PaK asked, why had Granny not stopped him?
She said she had tried. According to Granny, Strahd had turned the Vistani against her sisters and taken away their connection to the spirits. She wanted to reclaim her shrine and become the forest’s guardian again.
PaK offered a possibility. He and his friends went after bad people. Perhaps they could help her with Strahd.
Granny would not accept the friends. She insisted that Validus would eventually turn his whip on PaK and make a monster of him. PaK answered that Validus had had plenty of time to do such a thing and never had.
Granny still intended to make PaK ready for the work she had in mind.
Claws emerged from her hand.
She told him it would not hurt.
VI. The Cellar
Below the winery, the party heard bottles breaking.
The cellar was divided by a thick brick wall. Wooden partitions doubled as racks for the wine. On the far side, another druid smashed bottles. Five wooden creatures lay inert on the floor nearby.
There might have been five more attackers if the summoning staff had survived.
The druid fought with bark and poison. His arm hardened against steel, and claws carried venom. Davian changed shape and moved around him. Da’amir slipped behind the man to press an opening. Haleria tested his defenses, then let an aura of anger and mist rise around her as she brought her power against him.
Validus endured the poison and kept fighting. The druid summoned one last attack against him and struck at Da’amir, but could not keep the room. Davian’s wing finished the fight.
The last enemy combatant in the winery fell.
The wine remained to be saved.
VII. Three Gems
Davian explained what made the winery possible.
Three magical gems had been planted in its soil. Their power passed into the grapes and allowed the family to make the wines the party had encountered. The druids, he feared, had come looking for those gems.
One was already gone. When Davian was young, his grandfather told him that Rahadin had taken the gem used to produce Champagne du le Stomp. Strahd had demanded it as the price of allowing the winery to continue.
Haleria remembered that wine. She and Validus had drunk it at the castle, where it allowed them to share the harm they suffered. Davian recognized her description of its taste. The drink had once been served at weddings, he said: two people joining in a promise to share pain as well as pleasure.
The castle still had some of that wine. Davian did not believe its limited stock meant Strahd had left the gem unused.
Validus considered what the gem itself might permit if the wine made from its grapes could divide harm between two people. He had reason to suspect Strahd could turn that property to his own defense.
If the gem were ever returned, Davian could resume making the lost vintage. For now, the party could bring the available wine to Vallaki.
They began looking for what remained to load.
VIII. The Door No One Opened
While checking the cellar, Da’amir noticed a door hidden in the stonework.
Davian knew of it. His family had inherited the winery, but neither he nor the generations before him had managed to open that room.
The winery, he said, had been founded by Hazlik, a powerful wizard who had served Strahd and held authority over western Barovia. Hazlik had built the tower by the lake as well. The closed room was part of what he had left behind.
Haleria brought magic against the door. With her companions watching, it dissolved into dust.
Behind it lay a private library overwhelmed by mold. Books had collapsed and rotted where they stood. One volume remained intact, its leather cover bearing Strahd’s emblem.
Validus recognized Hazlik’s name. PaK had once been used as the wizard’s pack mule in another domain.
Validus wanted the book.
He held his breath and entered. When he pulled the preserved volume free, a cloud of cold mold burst around him. He staggered out coughing, hurt, and still clutching it.
The book was the Tome of Strahd.
Validus opened it.
IX. The Ancient and the Land
Mist poured from the pages. Validus tried to close them, but they fluttered around the party as a voice rose through the room.
Strahd introduced his record as a correction to those who had misunderstood and garbled the history of his reign.
The mist gathered into a stark white space. Pages circled the travelers and formed the image of a cloaked man.
“I am the Ancient. I am the Land.”
The paper became a castle, low and humble, with red banners hanging above its courtyard. A younger Strahd appeared there, fencing with Rahadin beside a fountain. Rahadin looked much as he did today.
The entire party stood within the scene.
Even PaK.
At Granny’s hut, her claws had been drawing close. The mist wrapped around PaK and pulled him away before they touched him. She protested that it was too soon and demanded he be returned.
He vanished into the pages with the others.
Strahd’s account was only beginning.