Quoted By:
"Here we are," Strahd says.
Dark stains cover the floor of this room. Large oak tables, scarred and beaten, lay scattered like toys across the floor, their wood crushed and splintered. Replacing them are furnishings made entirely of...
"The Hall of Bones," Strahd says, confirming your grim suspicions.
The walls and the twenty-foot-high vaulted ceiling are a sickly yellow color, not because of faded or timeworn plaster but because they are adorned with bones and skulls arranged in a morbidly decorative fashion, giving the room a cathedral-like quality. Four enormous mounds of bones occupy the corners of the room, and garlands of skulls extend from these mounds to a chandelier of bones that hangs from the ceiling above a long table constructed of bones in the center. Ten chairs made of bones and festooned with decorative skulls surround the table, resting atop which is an ornate, bowl-shaped vessel made of yet more bones.
The doors to the north and south are sheathed in bone, but the steel-banded double doors in the center of the east wall are not. Above these eastern doors is mounted the massive skull of a dragon, which overshadows everything else in the room.
"Why?" you ask. "What is the purpose of this room? This is so... immoral."
"This room is the project of one of my servants," Strahd says. "It took him a long time to construct it, with my express permission. I don't normally show it to guests. However, I felt compelled to show it to you, in particular."
"For what purpose?" you repeat.
"To show you that those who break my laws rarely get the chance to repeat the offense. Faith will not save you, as it did not save them." He gestures to the skull of the dragon. "Do you happen to know who that is?"
Is Strahd threatening you? Warning you that if you cross him, he will kill you? Or is this a jab at your worship of the Lord of flames? You can't tell. "I'm not sure," you reply, staying close to the door in case you need to make a swift exit
"This is Argynovst, a silver dragon who threatened my rule centuries ago. He and his knights fought to protect the valley from my father's army, and his defeat marked the beginning of Barovia as we know it; this skull is a symbol that even the strongest foes cannot threaten me. I wasn't even immortal at this time, you see... though they guarded the secrets that eventually aided in my curse, it was the power of my family that defeated the Order of the Silver Dragon. And when I became immortal, there was no corner or the valley that was off limits to me anymore. I remember exactly how I felt defeating those who would uphold the sanctity of the valley against me, me of all people who deserved its powers, and how alive I finally felt when I unearthed them. I would dance with the stars, and tomorrow I would race along the forest carpet with my brothers, the wolves, or flow like smoke into secret places never touched by a man."
(cont.)
