Welcome to Lunch Break Heroes, where we talk about how you can turbo charge and tweak your published D&D modules. Today, we're going to be talking about the Abbey of St. Markovia and the mysterious Abbot in Curse of Strahd.
400 feet above the village of Krezk stands the stone facade of the Abbey of St. Markovia, with the looming mists of the Barovian border standing close behind. It is within that the darkened halls of the Abbey that the Abbot and the Mongrelfolk make their home.
This has got to be one of my favorite set pieces of the entire module. The Abbey is a symbol of the decaying and corrupting effect of Barovia, the dark powers and of Strahd himself. And the Abbot is just such a fun character to play.
He's really creepy he's very weird and he's just so. . .
Not human. This guy is so deep in the uncanny valley that not even the Blue Fairy could turn him into a real boy. He operates on a completely alien morality spectrum that we call "blue and orange" morality, that's in contrast to our "black and white" morality that you and I know as human beings.
This makes his decisions and his thought processes completely unknowable to us. They are absolutely foreign; they have no basis in any of our judgment systems, and so he's. .
. The players can't really understand him and he comes off as just obliviously evil in his actions and his intent. So when you're playing The Abbot go ahead and use that alien nature to your advantage and make him seem as strange as possible.
Before we talk about any changes to The Abbot, let's discuss his home sweet home: The Abbey, itself. Now, the Abbey was built and run by St. Markovia herself until she failed to kill Strahd and was killed herself.
After she died, the Abbey fell into disarray and the priests and nuns that lived there turned on each other and the whole place went to crap and was abandoned. Years later, The Abbot came into Barovia, set up residence, and began trying to redeem the land. And that's kind of where we find ourselves in the module.
The first change that we're gonna make to the abbey is the six shadows in area S21, the hospital. Now, this is a combat encounter for the players that I just—I don't think makes sense. There are a whole bunch of people living and running around the abbey at any given time.
You've got The Abbot himself, you've got the mongrelfolk, you've got Ezmerelda more recently. . .
I don't think it makes sense to have this encounter just sitting there waiting for the players. So, instead let's go ahead and nix the combat altogether. Its only purpose, really is to establish that people died here a long time ago and the Abbey is kind of a creepy place.
I think we can do that better without breaking up the flow of your game with meaningless combat. Instead, let's have these be benign ghosts of sorts. When your players enter into the hospital describe a feeling of cold and let them hear the whispers of voices long dead.
All along the wall they see shadows of nuns and priests gliding to and fro, tending to the sick and the dying. The Abbey is a place of melancholy, not malice. Go ahead and let its eternal residence reflect that.
The next change is to area S22 the, the operating room. As written, when a player enters the operating room and touches the operating table, they hear screams. This is meant to—just like the shadows— illustrate that people died here and apparently some of them met very gruesome ends on the operating table.
See, in my opinion I think the Abbey of St. Marovia would have been a very reputable hospital under the guidance of St. Markovia, and not a butcher shop, okay?
So, the whole scream thing doesn't really make sense in the context of the Abbey's history. Instead, when players enter into the operating room, go ahead and have the players see the vivisected body of one of the players on the table. Do this in place of the illusion that's written for area S17, the belfry.
Now, this is another illusion from Strahd, much like the hanging body at the gallows at the crossroads and the severed head in Argynvostholt. It's completely illusory and if somebody comes up and touches it, the body fades away into ashes or nothing or—or whatever. So, same creepy vibe but.
. . more keeping along with the history of the Abbey itself, at least as I see it.
The next change to the Abbey is the addition of a library. Now, I would recommend putting the library in area S20, the office, but you can find a more suitable location if you want. If you're drawing your own map, give it its own area.
Give it an outbuilding—whatever. Now. .
. Why add a library at all? Well, there's a couple of reasons.
First is that the Abbey was home to a bunch of learned men and women, and they were a hospital. It makes sense that they'd have some reference material on hand. The second reason is that.
. . We kind of want a better reason for Esmerelda to be at the Abbey than just having a conversation with The Abbot and the mongrelfolk.
So, instead she's here because the Abbey is rumored to have a library that is second only to the library that's inside of Castle Ravenloft. And to an extent that rumor is actually true. After the Abbey fell, Strahd—of course—raided the library and took any magical books for his own library.
But there's still a lot there. What is still there is in a state of disrepair and poor maintenance, but there's a few gems here and there. Now, this is a great way for you to give some exposition about the lore in the history Barovia that your players wouldn't otherwise be able to get through normal dialogue.
You might even be able to point them to places like the Amber Temple if they've missed out on some other NPCs or clues that would have pointed them there. It's also a great place to introduce Ezmerelda, besides the barracks. When they enter into the library they see Ezmerelda huddled over a very large tome, reading by candlelight.
You see, she's trying to track down Van Richten and figure out a way to kill Strahd, and this library is her best resource yet. Now that we've made some updates to the Abbey itself, let's take a look at its star resident: the enigmatic Abbot. Now, he's a great character and he's a lot of fun to play but there's a few plot points that I think could be more tightly integrated to the overall narrative.
In the module, the Abbot wants a wedding gown for his flesh golem, Vasilka. If the players decide to help him they end up backtracking all the way to Vallaki, just to raid the Baroness's closet. There's a couple of things I don't like about this.
First is: I don't like backtracking. It wastes a lot of in-game time, especially if you have expanded the map of Barovia like I have. Secondly: it's just such a.
. . boring MacGuffin.
Not that there's anything inherently wrong with fetch quests and MacGuffins, I just think we can do a little better here. When your players first enter the Great Hall of the Abbey, describe Vasilka as standing away from them, maybe looking out the window. She's already wearing a moth-eaten wedding gown and her face is covered by a veil.
The Abbot gently leads her over to the players, eager to introduce them to Barovia's impending redemption. He tells them all about the stitching that is keeping all of her disparate parts together—very proud of his handiwork—but he stresses that she's not quite complete yet; he hasn't put on the finishing touches. Finally, he lifts up her veil and the players are met with these piercing blue eyes surrounded by a mass of red muscle, bone, and sinew.
You see, Vasilka doesn't have a face. Yet. And that's what The Abbot wants your players help with.
He would love for them to help him find the perfect face. In all his time building Vasilka, he hasn't been able to manage that one thing. All of the other parts he's taken from people who no longer needed them—some of them living—but the face has eluded him.
The obvious candidate for a face is Ireena. If she's with the party the Abbott will go so far as to try to talk her into giving him her face. "It is not necessary for your survival.
You can eat and sleep and breathe. . .
all without a face. Ergo, you do not need it. " He absolutely cannot understand why anybody would want to hold on to their face or any other appendage if they're not using it and somebody else needs it more, or it's required for a greater purpose.
Which, of course, redeeming Barovia is the ultimate purpose in his opinion. He even considers it an immoral act not to give up an appendage. Now, of course, no sane person is gonna just willingly give The Abbot an appendage or their face and this is going to cause a.
. . bit of friction, you know.
Either The Abbot really wants it and the players are going to prevent him from taking Ireena's face by fighting, or they're gonna hold Ireena down and let The Abbot do his thing. I don't know what your players are going to do but when they do it, let me know what they do in the comments below. In any case, whatever they choose to do it's got to make this situation a whole lot more interesting than just being an episode of Say Yes to the Drss Barovia edition.
The next thing that we're going to change with The Abbot is his relation to the residents of the Abbey. Now, in the module all of the residents are of the Belview family. This was a family of inbred lepers who originally came to The Abbot requesting to be cured.
Well, The Abbot couldn't quite cure them so he got some help from the Amber Temple to make some. . .
you know, "modifications" to the family. And the family wanted more; they wanted to be more than human, and so they ended up becoming the cursed mongrelfolk that they are today. Now, in terms of narrative this isn't bad; this is actually pretty good, but it reeks of victim blaming, and I think we can just—we can tone that down a little bit.
And it also kind of obscures the darkness of the land of Barovia and the Dark Powers themselves. So, let's go ahead and absolve the Belviews a bit, rope in some additional innocent victims, and pin it all on the Dark Powers. As you know from the introduction of the module, magic can work a little bit differently here in the Demiplane of Drad.
We're going to use that to our advantage in the downfall of The Abbot and the creation of the abbeys original residents. Instead of a family of inbred lepers, the residents of the Abbey were originally just people who came seeking healing. When The Abbot first arrived in Barovia, he began offering his healing services and that brought people to him from far and wide, and it was all great for a little while.
But then the Dark Powers decided to get involved for their own entertainment. They twisted his healing powers. When a person came to get their blindness fixed by The Abbot, well they came away with the eyes of a lemur.
When they had a leg that was broken, well instead of a leg of a human, they walked away with the leg of a lion or a horse. At first, The Abbot was a little bit dismayed, but he eventually came to accept this as the will of his god. These people were healed, after all.
. . and they were in respects better.
They could see better run faster jump higher. It was all good. Never mind the fact that they all went insane and had to be locked away for their own good.
Eventually people stopped coming to the Abbey for healing. Those that went in tended not to come back out again. But there were enough victims in the darkened halls of the abbey to create a society.
They bred and passed their genes on from one generation to the next, deepening their madness every time. Their screams and howls echoed into the night, fueling the rumors and fears of the villagers of Krezk. The monstrous inhabitants of the Abbey aren't there because of their vanity.
They are victims, trapped in a prison not of their own making by choices that are not their own. They are wholly unfit for the world outside the walls, and the world outside the walls is not ready for them. So, knowing this what do your players do?
Do they kill the abbot and Do they. . .
Kill the Abbot and leave them without their caretakers? Do they free the residents and unleash them on a world that doesn't know how to handle them? Or do they go room-to-room ending the lives of the residents in what they believe to be a mercy?
let me Let me know what your players do down in the comments below. Along the subject of the residents of the Abbey we're gonna make one more change and that's to Clovin Belview. Clovin is the right-hand man of The Abbot, or the "right-claw" man, as it were.
He's the two-headed mongrelfolk that runs around the Abbey passing out food to the other residents and he plays music in the belfry when he's got some spare time. If your players end up in combat with The Abbot, Clovin's gonna join the fight. Instead of using the same mongrelfolk stat block as the other mongrelfolk, we're gonna go ahead and give him some levels of bard.
This is gonna make combat a lot more interesting and it's going to let Clovin help The Abbot to a much, much greater degree. You can go ahead and find the updated stat block for Clovin in the description down below. Next, we're going to take a look at a possible encounter with Strahd.
Now, I say "possible" because this really hinges on the players sticking around long enough to meet him. Strahd is due at the Abbey within the week to take a look at Vasilka. Now, as written, Strahd has absolutely no interest in any flesh golem that The Abbot creates.
He simply wants to string The Abbot along and get him to do more and more acts of depravity. If Strahd shows up and Vasilka doesn't have a face, The Aabbot is apologetic. He promises to find a face in due time but wants to present what he has in the meantime.
Strahd then promptly destroys Vasilka, tearing her limb from limb, and tells The Abbot to "Try again. This time with fresher parts. " However, if Strahd shows up and Vasilka has Ireena's face.
. . Oh boy.
. . He flies into a fit of rage that is unparalleled.
He immediately murders The Abbot and then turns on any living creature that he can see. Very soon the entire Abbey is covered in the blood and the entrails of its residence, and maybe even a player or two. This isn't enough to quell the Vampire Lord's rage, however.
At that point he summons a rain storm like none other, and it begins to soak the Abbey and the hillside that it stands on. After 1d4 hours, the soil gives way on the hillside and down falls the Abbey. The hillside—the landslide actually—covers a good portion of the village of Krezk, wiping out families and farms and a significant chunk of the livestock.
The destruction of the Abbey and the massive landslide leads the village of Krezk and the remaining players to figure out how to gather enough food to survive the coming winter months. Will the players rise to the challenge, or will they flee the town? If your players do decide to stick around there's a rumor that the nearby Fidatov Manor has enough provisions to get Krezk through the winter.
There's a catch, as always. Can your players find the Manor, convince its owner Marilena Fidatov to take pity, and can they break the curse that holds the manor in its grip? There's one way to find out.
Check out the links down below for MandyMod's guide on running Fidatov Manor, an adventure adapted from the adventure league module: The Tempter. May the Lord of Light have mercy on your players' souls. The manor house and its curse.
. . will not.
