Tome of Strahd

**The Tome of Strahd** is the journal and spellbook of Strahd von Zarovich. It is written in a personal cipher that incorporates elements of Common, Elvish, and Abyssal, as well as several other languages. In addition to the wizard spells that Strahd knows, the book also contains Strahd's own accounts of several important events in his life.

## Theft and Destruction

In 1543 by the Barovian calendar (500 AC), the Tome was stolen from Castle Ravenloft by Ezmerelda d'Avenir. Although Ezmerelda was harried and badly wounded by Strahd's castellan, Rahadin, she was able to flee the castle with the Tome and bring it to Van Richten's Tower. There, she was met by Lilluth, Fate, Stellaluna, Solaris, and Ireena, who agreed to help her safeguard the Tome.

Recognizing the Tome to be Strahd's spellbook, Fate copied several spells from it. She also broke the cipher used to write Strahd's journal entries, and was able to create a translation of those entries.

While Fate was still in the process of translating the Tome, Vanargand and his werewolves tracked Ezmerelda and led Strahd to the party. Lilluth and Ireena were able to persuade Strahd that they did not have the Tome. Upon learning that he had been deceived, however, Strahd burned down the Wizard of Wines Winery.

After she finished her translation of the Tome, Fate destroyed it in order to prevent Strahd from reacquiring it.

## Entries in the Tome

### Fifty-First Day of Autumn, 1498

I am the Ancient, I am the Land.  My beginnings are lost in the darkness of the
past.  I was the warrior, I was good and
just.  I thundered across the land like
the wrath of a just god, but the war years and the killing years have worn down
my soul as the wind wears stone into sand.

### Seventh Day of Autumn, 767

Most men walk through life and do not
realize that they are already dead.  They
slouch along with blank faces and empty eyes, trudging forward towards their
deaths and each step they take leads them only closer to their graves.  I look at them and see only corpses.  It is only perhaps one in a hundred who have
the spark of life within them, who have the will to shape the world to their
will.

And if these other men, these slouching
automatons, move only towards death, making no mark on the world other than the
marker above their grave, what does it matter when and where they meet their
end?  Is it not the right of those with
the true spark of life, the true will to change the world, to make use of these
other men’s lives, of their deaths?  They
will die either way, but a man with a true will can give those deaths meaning,
and can create a better world for those who are yet to come.  Is this not virtuous?  If they exist at all, is this not the will of
the gods?

### First Day of Spring, 768

For years this world has shown me nothing
but ugliness—hate and suffering and death and the persistent dark cloud of war
hanging over my lands.  I feel that I
lived for years shrouded by dark mists, never seeing the sun, and it was not
until today that its light first shone upon my face.

Tatyana is her name; a simple girl, of the
New Blood, without lands or titles or names worthy of mention.  But all of that falls away in the light of
her beauty.  It is not only that she is
fair of face and body—although it cannot be denied that she is surpassingly
fair, a rose among weeds in this desolate land.
No, Tatyana is not only lovely, she shines with a pure light, a beauty
of spirit that I have never witnessed before.
Her kindness, her nature—gentle, but at times surprisingly fierce, her
quick mind and quicker wit, and her pure joy—she is everything that one could
want of a woman, everything that one could want of a wife.  I feel that I have been searching all of my
life, without realizing that I searched, for Tatyana alone, that she alone can
fill a void within me that I never recognized but always felt.  And I knew as soon as I met her that I would
give anything, even if it be my entire kingdom, to have her.

### Forty-Fifth Day of Summer, 768

I ride again for war, and pray that this
will be the last one that will bind these lands together under my father’s name
and under my protection.  But I ride now
with a new purpose as well.
Tatyana.  I see her face when I
close my eyes, and I know that I ride to war to protect her, to keep her safe,
to forge a new world for her.  Her favor
rests always beside my heart.

Never have I put much stock in prayers.  Men make this world for themselves, and
receive only what they fight to earn and fight to keep.  But when I remember now that Tatyana is
praying for me, I feel that I am invincible.
I know that a love as strong as mine will not easily be snuffed out, and
that I will return to her when the war is won.

### Seventy-Third Day of Winter, 768

Of all those in the valley of Barovia, one
shines bright above the others.  Only one
woman is truly worthy to sit by the side of a king.  I would call her a queen, a goddess, a shining
beacon in a dark world.  And yet, she
calls me elder, or brother.  When I look
into her eyes, they reflect another name: death.  She sees in me the end of life, the death of
the aged.  She relishes in her youth,
like Sergei, like all children foolish and lucky enough to be ignorant of the
darkness of the world.  She loves her
youth, but I have squandered mine.

### Eighty-First Day of Winter, 768

Women have always loved Sergei better than
me.  Mother, the simpering powder-faced
courtiers, even the servants.  Women love
Sergei because he is kind like a woman, and that is because, like a woman, he
has never witnessed the sweet, horrifying, tantalizing darkness of war.  He has never sent men to their deaths, has
never faced his own death as it rode him down on the back of a dark destrier,
has never seen the light go out of a man’s eyes as its corpse slides from the
blade of his sword.  Men go to war and
they become stronger, or they die.  And
Tatyana does not know that when the darkness falls and all is lost, when the
wolves are at the door, she needs a man by her side who has seen the bleakness
of war, a man who is willing not only to die for her but also to kill for
her.  But instead, she has Sergei.  And he will die, and then she will die, and I
will survive to mourn them alone.

### Seventy-Third Day of Spring, 769

I have done what needed to be done.  She will be safe.  She will be mine.  I sorrow to cause her pain, but I have known
in my heart what must be done, and I have done it, no matter the cost.  Just as I always have.

### Fourteenth Day of Summer, 769

My Tatyana has fallen ill.  She has always been of a fragile
constitution, and it seems the shock she has experienced has put a heavy strain
upon her.  I regret that it could not
have been avoided, but I know that this was the only way.

I called in my best doctors but they said
that they could do nothing for her, that she had given up the will to
live.  I brought them below and pressed
them further, encouraged them to think creatively.  Perhaps I pressed them too hard, and now they
can do nothing for her.  I must seek
another solution.  Time, as always, races
against me.

### Thirty-Sixth Day of Summer, 769

I found the answer.
A way to save my Tatyana, to keep her with me.  I traveled to the edges of my lands and found
there something lost, something hidden away, preserved in Amber, magicks
thought too dark for any man to know.
These magicks held the secret, the secret I needed to save her.  And, perhaps, in saving her, to save
myself.  My youth has been squandered, my
life given for my people, for my land.  I
have paid every coin that I had, and found myself to have purchased a fool’s
prize.

I have never feared death, but time, time has been
always my greatest enemy.  The years slip
away from me, and as a moment passes, I look in the mirror and realize that I
have become old.  After all that I have
given, am I not worthy of a measure of time, time to rest, time to love?

There are costs, I know.  Those have been made clear to me.  Never again shall I walk in sunlight, never
shall I know true sleep, food will be but dust in my mouth.  Holy ground will be forbidden me as well, but
the gods have never done me much good.
And what are these costs, any of them, beside Tatyana’s life, her love,
for eternity?

Already, my soul is forfeit.  There is too dark a stain upon it to ever be
undone.  But, perhaps, with more blood on
hands already too red to notice any difference, I will be able to keep her with
me, forever.

### Forty-Second Day of Summer, 769

I knew my memory would hold forever, but I did not
know what horrors it would hold.
Forever, I will clearly see the sight of her body, lying broken and
lifeless on those rocks far below.  I
went to her, and as I reached her, the sky split open and I heard a dark
voice.  “The promise has been kept.”  This is not how it was intended!  In the halls of Ravenloft, below, a woman was
giving birth.  Twins are lucky, the elves
say, and what could be more pure of soul than children just brought into this
world without any chance to sully themselves.
Two of them, one for her and one for me.

I did not even have the chance to bury her body.  The mists swirled down and took her away, and
as they did they closed in around me.  I
could feel them tightening on my throat.
But I also felt something new, a power coursing through my veins.  Strength.
Vitality.  “No!”  I roared, and I reached out and I tore at the
mists and as her soul tried to float away from me I tied it down, I tied it to
this land.  If I am trapped here, then so
is she.  It may take me one year or a
thousand, but I will find her and I will bind her to me.  I am here for eternity, but so is she.  We have all of the time in the world.

### Seventh Day of Winter, 1028

I have come to know my new life, as the years have
passed by, wearing down the land, reshaping the world, but never touching
me.  Vampyr is my new name.  Still I lust for life and youth, and I curse
the living that took them from me.  Even
the sun is against me.  It is the sun and
its light that I fear the most, but little else can harm me now.  Even a stake through the heart would not kill
me, despite what some might tell you.
But the sword, that cursed sword that Sergei brought to this land!  I must dispose of that vile weapon.  I loathe it as I loathe the sunlight.

I have hunted many years for Tatyana.  I have found and lost her countless
times.  Yet, time and time again, she
eludes my grasp.  The memory of her face
haunts me, taunting me, tantalizing me.
What would it take to finally bind her to me?

Long ago, my father rebuilt the walls of Castle
Ravenloft.  Now, I have made a new home
for myself, far beneath its walls.  I
live among the dead and sleep beneath the very stones of this hollow
castle.  I shall seal shut the walls of
the stairs that none may disturb me.  If
ever I fall, I must return to that dread box, that constant reminder that life
is not to be mine.  Each time I fall, I
am reborn, and each time my mind grows darker.
I must find Tatyana.  I must have
her, or all has been for naught.

*Strahd von Zarovich*