I, Strahd: Memoirs of a Vampire: Ravenloft The Covenant

by P.N. Elrod

Strahd the Ancient, Strahd who was the Land, Strahd the infamous and awful Lord of Barovia—genius, necromancer, ruthless killer—was now at his most vulnerable.

Strahd von Zarovich, the vampire, was in hibernation.

He yanked his hands away as he realized the source of the unusual leather. Damn the creature. Damn the thing that was capable of such an obscenity.

I, Strahd, Lord of Barovia, well aware certain events of my reign have been desperately misunderstood by those who are better at garbling history than recording it, hereby set down an exact record of those events, that the truth may at last be known.…

this was the seat of power for a great king … or an emperor. And it was mine.

“I am Strahd. I am the Land,” I said loudly, intoning the ancient epigram. It was part and parcel of the ceremony of possession. The blood welled out, dribbled down my palm, and dripped onto the muddy earth at my feet. “Draw near and witness,” I added. “I, Strahd, am the Land.”

A rich man thinks all other people are rich, and an intelligent man thinks all other people are similarly gifted. Both are always terribly shocked when they discover the truth of the world. You, my dear brother, are a pious man.”

Along with the sharp joy of love, I was being cut in two by the razor edge of utter hopelessness, and I was unable to keep the pain from showing.

surrender had been, so was black despair once an alien concept to me. Now I was as familiar with both as with my own features, for there they were in my mirror, gazing back at me every

It was a long-suppressed hatred toward Sergei, toward the life I was trapped in, toward life itself.

Death was in the room with me.

She was springtime and summer rain, autumn color and winter stillness.

looked down at her. If I’d had to kill a dozen brothers, drink a river of their blood to have her, I would have done so.

THIEVES BEWARE. I, STRAHD, WALK THE LAND.”

(I’d learned from books of necrological lore that running water was no friend to me, but could only really be harmful if I were foolish enough to let my heart be immersed.) I

“That he is a brave fighter for those in need.”