> [!info] Map > No floor plan image yet. The abbey's three maps (ground floor, upper floor, and cellar) live in the CLI reference chapter linked in GM Notes below — add a `leaflet` map block here once you have floor plans to drop in. # General High on a mountain ledge above Krezk, reached by a switchback road climbing 400 feet up the cliff face, stands the Abbey of Saint Markovia — once a hospital and convent, now a madhouse. It is named for the priest of the Morninglord who led a doomed uprising against Strahd: Markovia and her followers stormed Castle Ravenloft and were destroyed for it. In the years after, the isolated clergy left behind turned on one another over dwindling food and wine until the abbey was empty but for the dead and the mad. For a century since, a nameless, ageless pilgrim has presided over the place. The villagers call him only the Abbot, and many suspect he is Strahd in another guise — the truth is stranger (see GM Notes). The abbey is built around a foggy central courtyard, its two wings joined by a fifteen-foot curtain wall: - **North Gate and Graveyard** — The switchback road ends at a low outer wall and iron gates watched (poorly) by two mongrelfolk guards, Otto Belview and Zygfrek Belview. Beside the wall is the clergy's old **graveyard**, which hides a secret treasure vault under one particular headstone. - **Gardens** — A walled kitchen garden and its gatehouse sit tucked between the cliffs, seemingly tended only by rabbits and scarecrows. See **Gardens**. - **Abbey Entrance and Courtyard** — Scarecrows dressed as guards line the curtain wall around a well, chicken sheds, and tethering posts — several of which hold imprisoned mongrelfolk. Full detail at **Courtyard**. - **North Wing (Main Hall, Wine Cellar, Loft and Belfry)** — The abbey's active heart, where the Abbot keeps court, brews his experiments, and where his manservant Clovin rings the bell for feeding time. See **Main Hall**, **Wine Cellar**, and **Loft and Belfry**. - **East Wing (Madhouse and Haunted Hospital)** — A foyer and barracks lead into the Madhouse, a corridor of cells holding dozens of imprisoned mongrelfolk, and upward to the abandoned hospital wards. See **Madhouse** and **Haunted Hospital**. The Belview family — all mongrelfolk, all touched by some form of madness — make up nearly everyone the party meets here, from the Abbot's free-roaming servants down to the dozens locked away in the Madhouse. # Travel hrs per day Travel Calculator / Exhaustion Level: | Destination | Travel Days | |---|---| | Krezk | 🕓: A single switchback road, climbing 400 feet from the village gate — roughly 15-20 minutes on foot. | # Scene Summary The road out of Krezk climbs above the mist line along a narrow, gravel-strewn switchback, the air growing colder with every turn, until it opens onto a wind-scoured ledge where the abbey waits behind a low stone wall and unlocked, rust-hinged iron gates. Beyond them, two stone wings joined by a curtain wall stand quiet under a dusting of snow, smoke rising from the north wing's chimney and a belfry silhouetted against the grey sky. ### The Courtyard Thick fog pools inside the curtain wall, curling around what look like sentries atop the battlements until a closer look reveals them for straw-stuffed scarecrows. A stone well sits at the center, flanked by padlocked sheds that shudder with muffled howls and a chained, bat-winged shape straining at its post — the first hint of what the abbey really keeps. ### The Main Hall Inside the north wing, a fire crackles under a golden sun disk, and a long table is neatly laid with dishware and candelabras. A gentle, unseen music drifts down from above. A pale young woman in a tattered red gown stands lost in thought at the table's head — and if the Abbot is present, a handsome young man in a monk's robe takes her gently by the hand, every inch the picture of serene holiness. ### The Madhouse East of the entrance foyer, a lightless corridor runs between cell doors, filled with mad cackling, whispered curses, and an overpowering stench — patrolled endlessly by a lumbering, seven-foot assemblage of stitched human parts that lets no one pass without the Abbot or his manservant at their side. ### The Loft and Belfry Above the Main Hall, beautiful viol music fills a cold room hung with unlit lanterns, where a squat, two-headed creature plays beside a cot of furs — and a black-shrouded shape lies motionless on a nearby table, waiting to be uncovered.