Chapter 14: Yester Hill - Curse of Strahd

Chapter 14: Yester Hill. The druids who worship Strahd as lord of the land and master of the weather convene here, atop Yester Hill, on the very edge of Strahd's domain. This hill is also where the evil blights that walk the Svalich Woods are born, and where Strahd comes on occasion to glimpse his ancestral home. By day or night, stretching up to the limits of vision, the edges of my realm are marked by a great wall of mist. I was there at its birth. Areas of the Hill The following locations correspond to labels on the map of Yester Hill below. Y1. Trail The trail through the thick woods leads to a hill covered with dead grass and cairns of black rock. Dark, ominous clouds gather high above, and a single bolt of lightning strikes the hilltop. West of the hill, the land, the woods, and the sky vanish behind a towering wall of fog. The trail splits as it climbs the hillside, forming two concentric rings (area Y2). The trail also leads to the hilltop (areas Y3 and Y4). The wall of fog (area Y5) marks the edge of Strahd's domain. Y2. Berserker Cairns Dirt trails run along two concentric rings of cairns that encircle the hillside. Each cairn is a ten-foot-high mound of slimy black rocks. These burial mounds predate the arrival of Strahd and the druids. They have remained undisturbed for centuries. Buried under the rocks are the moldy bones of an ancient tribe of berserkers that once lived in the mountains. (See "Blood Spear of Kavan" in the "Special Events" section below.) Y3. Druids' Circle Atop the hill is a wide ring of black boulders and smaller rocks that collectively form a makeshift wall enclosing a field of dead grass. Lightning strikes the edge of the ring from time to time, illuminating a ghastly, fifty-foot-tall statue made of tightly woven twigs and packed with black earth. The statue resembles a towering, cloaked man with fangs. The ring of boulders that surrounds the field is 250 feet in diameter and ranges from 5 to 10 feet high. Any creature that climb...