Kasimir's Story

Kasimir’s Story

The reason that I want to go to the Amber Temple is redemption for myself and my sister. In life, my sister Patrina was a powerful wizard who was seduced by Strahd with a promise of more power. My kin and I decided to end this abomination by killing her. Strahd, in his vengeance, killed all our women and mutilated me. Strahd took her body and put it in one of his many crypts.

For the past several years, my sister has communicated with me through my dreams. She regrets her quest for power that tore her kin asunder and wishes to heal the damage she caused. She has shown me glimpses of the Amber Temple interior where I may find the knowledge to bring her back to life. I can find it below the grand library. I’ll know the location when I see it.

Throughout the years I have compiled all that I know of the Amber Temple plus what my sister has communicated to me.

Kasimir’s Knowledge of the Amber Temple

A secret society of good-aligned wizards built the Amber Temple in the Balinok Mountains more than two thousand years ago. They needed a vault in which to contain the evil vestiges (remnants of dead, malevolent entities) they had captured and the hoard of forbidden knowledge they had amassed. They dedicated the temple to a god of secrets, whom they trusted to keep it hidden from the rest of the world until the end of time. Unfortunately for the wizards, even the will of a god couldn't prevent other evil creatures from learning the temple's location. The wizards were forced to guard the temple themselves, to keep its secrets from falling into villainous hands. The evil forces that were imprisoned within the temple eventually corrupted the wizards, turning them against one another.

The wizards were dead and gone by the time an evil archmage named Exethanter arrived at the temple. He breached the temple's wards, spoke to a vestige trapped in amber, and discovered the secret to becoming a lich. After his transformation, the lich Exethanter took over the temple and turned the skulls of it previous defenders into flameskulls under his command. Exethanter then took it upon himself to watch over the temple, not to hoard its evil secrets but to share them openly. Meanwhile, the evils within the temple fed on each other, growing in power.

When Strahd came to the temple seeking immortality, Exethanter sensed that he was a man of destiny. The evil powers in the temple felt something much stronger: a darkness that eclipsed their own. Strahd communed with these evil vestiges and forged a pact with them. When Strahd later murdered his brother Sergei, that pact was sealed with blood.

Strahd transformed into a vampire, and the Dark Powers turned his land into a prison.

Strahd has returned to the temple several times to learn new magic and to find a means of escaping his fate, but the Dark Powers have no intention of giving him up. These recent years have been difficult for Exethanter, whose body and mind have been falling apart. The lich has grown weak and forgetful. He no longer remembers his name. He knows only that the Dark Powers that created Strahd's domain were born in the temple, and that these entities feed on the evil that Strahd represents. Strahd is the darkness that sustains them.