He Is The Land A Curse of Strahd actual play

Cast

The Abbot

Unknown

The priest in the abbey above Krezk. He heals bodies and minds, may raise the dead, and helps nobody outside his walls. Everyone who mentions him picks their words carefully.

Never met. Everything we know is reputation.

Belongs to
Krezk

What we owe, and what we are doing about it

  • A Cure for Stella and Lydia

    Victor broke Stella's mind, and the Baroness only smiles. We told Stella's brothers we would look after her.

    Stella Wachter has lain barely awake for three years. Victor's own book says why: he wiped her memory once by accident, was horrified, noticed nothing bad came of it, and kept going, "round and round and round until it eventually broke her". When their mother died in the square, Karl and Nikolai asked us what would happen to their sister. We said Ireena is her friend and we would look after her, while somebody muttered "When are we good at taking care of people?"

    The Baroness, Lydia, failed Sirius's Zone of Truth without seeming to notice it, sang a hymn to the crowd in a voice like clockwork, and smiled at nothing with her husband's blood on her. Father Lucian has taken her into the burned church. He gave us the only lead we have for either of them: "there's an abbey near Krezk, which has someone of great priestly might who can do great healings of both the body and minds." Headmistress Claudia told us the same about the abbot, and added that he helps nobody. A lead, not a promise, on the road we were taking anyway.

    Krezk since Session 14

  • Carry the Locket to the Abbot

    A demon in a rusted locket, bound for the one priest Claudia thinks could deal with it. Nobody opens the lid.

    The shadow demon that rode Felix, and then Drew, is shut inside Felix's old locket: rusted, oval, an X scratched into the lid, and an inscription inside in Celestial that none of us can read. Sirius worked out the rules. The locket holds the demon to this world. Breaking it would only set the demon free somewhere else. It cannot get out on its own; someone has to open it and look. Claudia has opened it, Drew opened it "for the lols", and Sirius opened it on purpose to pull the demon back in. It has lived in Drew's bag of holding ever since she made the bag.

    Claudia named the only person she thinks could handle it: "If there's someone in this Morning Lord forsaken place who can do something about a demon, a proper demon, it'll be the abbot, which it pains me to say." Father Lucian offered to keep it for us; we decided it was safer where it was. The abbey is above Krezk, and Krezk is on the road west. Until then, nobody opens the lid.

    Krezk since Session 9

Who
The abbot of the abbey above Krezk, far to the west. We have never met him.
Where
Behind his walls. By every account he doesn't come out.
Status
Unknown. Everything on this page is reputation.

Nobody in Barovia has a bad word to say about what the abbot can do. They just don't much like him. He has more of the Morninglord's power than anyone we have heard of, and he spends it inside his abbey. We need him more than we would like: for the locket, for Stella, and for the Baroness.

What we've heard

Ismark told us, on our first night in the valley, that Krezk had an abbey. Danika was the first to say what was in it (Session 8): a really powerful priest who doesn't get out much. "He could be helping us, but he's not." Krezk itself is insular, she warned, and might make us prove ourselves, or do them a service, before it let us in. Roger had heard of "some big old powerful priest" at Krezk too, forty-five years ago, though his band never got inside the walls.

Headmistress Claudia told us the most (Session 9), when we asked what could be done about a demon in a locket. There is not quite a schism in the Morninglord's church in Barovia, she said, but there is something. In Vallaki there is Father Lucian, "the best of men, a righteous soul doing good works every day." And high above Krezk there is the abbot, whom the Morninglord has seen fit to give far mightier powers:

"He can heal people, body and mind. There's stories he can raise the dead."

He is also, in her opinion, "a much less nice guy. He just sits behind his walls. He doesn't help people." She did not think he knew there was any schism at all, or cared much about anything outside his walls. And then, reluctantly:

"If there's someone in this Morning Lord forsaken place who can do something about a demon, a proper demon, it'll be the abbot, which it pains me to say."

Lady Wachter's sons told us (Session 9) that when their father died ten years ago, their mother wrote to everyone she could think of, the abbey among them, about raising him from the dead. Then she vanished for a couple of weeks, and came home with a raven and at peace with herself. We know now what the raven was.

And at the end of the festival (Session 14), when Father Lucian took the Baroness into his care, he offered the only hope he had: "I've heard tell that there's an abbey near Krezk, which has someone of great priestly might who can do great healings of both the body and minds." One of us observed that nothing about that sounded at all worrying, given what we understand about Barovia.

Why we are going to see him

What we still don't know

  • What is he, to have so much of the Morninglord's power and use so little of it?
  • What will he want for the locket, and for the cures?
  • Did Lady Wachter's letter ever reach him, and did he answer it?
  • Is the "big old powerful priest" Roger heard of by the pool the same man? We assume so.
  • Why does everyone who describes him choose their words so carefully?

Appears in

See also