Curse of Strahd

Fortunes of Ravenloft

If your card reading reveals that a treasure is hidden in Berez, Ulrich's ghost points the characters to the treasure's true location, saying these words as it fades away:

Characters who follow Ulrich's directions end up at x.

Cellar

Buried under rubble inside the mansion is a stone staircase that leads down to an intact cellar. A single character can clear the rubble in 4 hours, and multiple characters working together can reduce the time proportionately. The cellar is a 30-foot-square room with mortared stone walls, a 10-foot-high ceiling supported by wooden beams, and a floor submerged under 3 inches of stagnant water. The cellar contains two dozen empty, rotted casks from the Wizard of Wines winery. Each cask is labeled Champagne du le Stomp.

Garden

The garden behind the ruined mansion has run wild. Hidden behind tall weeds and thorny vines are nude sculptures of handsome men and beautiful women, as well as carved stone benches.

Four giant poisonous snakes attack characters who venture more than 10 feet inside the garden.

Goat Pen

Baba Lysaga captures goats and uses their blood in her rituals of longevity. Nine goats are trapped behind this fence. Fifty human skulls are mounted on the tops of the fence posts, spaced 10 feet apart.

There is no gate in the fence, and Baba Lysaga uses her flying skull (see x) to enter and leave the pen. If the characters try to set the goats free by dismantling or damaging part of the fence, the skulls atop the fence posts begin howling and continue to howl for 1 minute. The racket attracts Baba Lysaga, who arrives in her flying skull on initiative count 20 in 2 rounds. The howling skulls also attract the seven scarecrows in the marsh (see "x" above). Roll initiative once for all the scarecrows.

Giant Skull

The upside-down skull that floats next to the hut is a hill giant's skull that Baba Lysaga has hollowed out and transformed into a vehicle. It hovers in place until Baba Lysaga commands it to fly, which she can do only while inside it. It has a flying speed of 40 feet. No one else can control the skull. A creature inside the skull has three-quarters cover against attacks made from outside the skull. The skull is big enough to hold one Medium creature. It has AC 15, 50 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage.

Hut Interior

The child and the crib are illusions created by Baba Lysaga using a programmed illusion spell. Baba Lysaga refers to the child as "Strahd" and created the illusion out of madness, because she considers herself a protective mother.

Beneath the hut's rotting floorboards is a 3-foot-deep cavity containing the magic, green-glowing gem that Baba Lysaga took from the Wizard of the Wines winery. This gem animates the hut (see "x" in the "Special Events" section below). The floorboards can be ripped up or smashed with a successful DC 14 Strength check. Characters can also break through the floor by dealing 10 damage to it. The hut doesn't give up the gemstone easily, however (see "x" in appendix D). If the gem is destroyed or removed from the cavity, the hut becomes incapacitated.

Baba Lysaga keeps soiled robes in the wardrobe and assorted spell components in the wicker cabinet. The tub is where she ritually bathes in blood to prevent aging (see "x" in the "Baba Lysaga" section in x). If the characters approach the hut at an appropriate time without being noticed, they can see Baba Lysaga bathing.

Treasure

The wooden chest in the hut is protected by a glyph of warding that requires a successful DC 17 Intelligence (Investigation) check to find. The glyph deals 5d8 thunder damage when triggered. Opening the lid releases four crawling claws that fight until destroyed. Also contained in the chest are various items that Baba Lysaga has taken from dead adventurers over the years:

• 1,300 gp
• Five 500 gp gemstones
• A vial containing oil of sharpness
• Two spell scrolls (mass cure wounds and revivify)
• A pouch containing ten +1 sling bullets
• A set of pipes of haunting
• A stone of good luck (luckstone)

Fortunes of Ravenloft

If your card reading reveals that a treasure is here, it's in the chest with the other items.

Fortunes of Ravenloft

If your card reading reveals that a treasure is here, it is hidden in a cavity underneath the monument, which can be tipped over or moved aside by someone who makes a successful DC 15 Strength check.

If the characters disturb the monument, read:

Seven distended human corpses have risen from the mire west of the monument. These walking corpses are 60 feet away when first seen. Use the commoner statistics for the corpses, but reduce their walking speed to 20 feet and give them immunity to the charmed and frightened conditions. When a corpse is reduced to 0 hit points, it splits open, disgorging a swarm of poisonous snakes. The snakes are hungry and fight until slain.

Characters can take the treasure and flee, easily outpacing the snake-swollen corpses.

Circle of Standing Stones

This ring of menhirs is one of the oldest structures in the Balinok Mountains—older than the Amber Temple, and much older than Castle Ravenloft and the various Barovian settlements scattered throughout the valley. The menhirs were raised by the same ancient folk who carved the megaliths near Old Bonegrinder (see chapter 6). Characters who have seen those megaliths can, with a successful DC 10 Intelligence check, discern rudimentary similarities between those stones and the menhirs arranged here.

The circle is 100 feet across, and the menhirs are spaced apart at regular intervals. The stones located to the north, west, south, and east are taller than the other eight stones, which have weatherworn glyphs carved into them that represent different animals. Characters who inspect the smaller menhirs can discern the following animal shapes carved into them: bear, elk, hawk, goat, owl, panther, raven, and wolf.

The standing stones are nonmagical. However, druid characters who enter the circle can sense that powerful gods once blessed this site, and that it still holds some measure of power. They can also sense one of its properties, namely that creatures within the circle can't be targeted by any divination magic or perceived through magical scrying sensors.

The circle has another property that druid characters can't sense but might discover when they use the Wild Shape feature within the circle's confines. Any druid that uses the Wild Shape feature within the circle gains the maximum number of hit points available to the new form. For example, a druid character using the Wild Shape feature to assume the form of a giant eagle would have 44 (4d10 + 4) hit points while in that form.

At your discretion, the circle might have other strange properties that have been forgotten over time. Although she knows something of the circle's history, Muriel is unaware of its properties.