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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6862069" data-attributes="member: 7006">I'm reincorporating the three defiled fanes from Expedition to Castle Ravenloft and making their re-hallowing an important part of what's necessary to finally destroy Strahd (due to weakening many of his defenses.)In EtCR, the three ancient fanes were shrines dedicated to three blessed saints in the valley, and when Strahd took control of the land he had the three of them defiled and then had a trio of hags maintain vigil over those defiled spaces.  Doing this granted him three additional defenses that made him much more difficult to defeat as a vampire.  These three specific fanes do not exist in Curse of Strahd (their locations were Lysaga Hill, Ivlis Marsh, and the Tser Pool Encampment)... however there *are* two locations in CoS that are practically near enough-- there's the Megaliths outside of Old Bonegrinder (the area of which is guarded by the hag Morgantha) and there's the Menhirs on the outskirts of Berez (guarded by the hag Baba Lysaga).  On top of that, the adventure makes note of two of the famous Saints of the valley... Saint Markovia (and her abbey in Kresk) and Saint Andral (and his church in Vallaki).  So what I've decided is that the Menhirs were a sacred place blessed by Saint Markovia, and the Megaliths were the same blessed by Saint Andral.  All that remained for me was to decide where to incorporate a third location of standing stones that matched the other two, place another hag there as a defender, and decide on the third saint.  I decided to go back to EtCR and in it they talk about Saint Ecatarina (whose burial shroud is found over the body of Strahd's mother).  Now since the other two saints have religious buildings dedicated to them in two of the Barovian towns (the Abbey of Saint Markovia and the Church of Saint Andral), I figure it'd make sense to have the small church in the village of Barovia dedicated to Saint Ecatarina (calling it Saint's Ecatarina's Chapel.)  And as far as her fane... I really liked the ruins found on Lysaga Hill in EtCR and decided to bring those back, plus the plotline for them found in the book-- some witches are working with a hag there to summon a demon to gain additional power.  So to give my players an additional adventure location right outside the village, I'm going to insert another circle of standing stones there that match the megaliths and menhirs, and which had been a blessed place of Saint Ecatarina (before Strahd defiled it like he did the others.)  Now it is occupied by some Barovian Witches and a green hag named Baba Zelenna, and they are trying to summon some creature (demon, archfey, haven't decided yet).  At some point the PCs will learn that in order to cleanse the lands, they will need to defeat the hags at the three fanes then perform the cleansing rituals (pretty much following the instructions in EtCR).By reincorporating this story from Expedition, I'm thinking it will give the PCs something to strive for that is necessary to be done (prior to storming the castle and taking on Strahd), rather than just wander around doing odd jobs for people at all the various locations.  I mean obviously they will do all of those things too... but once they learn about the fanes (via the Tome of Strahd) and how he gained much of his power through their defilement, it'll give them an obvious course to follow to begin their journey towards destroying him.  I think it will be a nice readdition to the CoS story.</blockquote>

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