Role: Strahd’s murdered older brother
Status: Deceased — appears as a ghost, bound to his tomb
Origins
Sergei was Strahd’s older brother, left to watch over Strahd’s wife Tatiana while Strahd campaigned abroad. According to Strahd’s own diary, an affection grew between Sergei and Tatiana that Strahd, returning early and consumed by jealousy, could not forgive — he challenged Sergei to a duel and killed him, then killed Tatiana. Their deaths sealed the vampiric curse onto Strahd and his domain. A large portrait in the castle’s audience hall shows the two brothers side by side as young men — Strahd dark-haired, Sergei blond but clearly related — with Sergei’s painted face raked through with claw marks.
Session 2
The party found Sergei’s ghost haunting the Weeping Tomb deep in the castle’s crypts: a mausoleum with iron-latticed windows overlooking the courtyard, built around his black, raven-motif coffin. Grieving and only intermittently lucid, he recounted his own death in detail — a duel fought in the rain, lost only because Strahd concealed a second dagger and used it to pierce his heart mid-clash. He does not know what became of Tatiana and hopes, wrongly, that she lived a long full life; he asked the party to bring her to him so they might finally rest together, since they never had the chance to live together. He did not react when later offered a faceless doll on behalf of a different, unrelated spirit — whatever ties him to the castle is separate from that story thread.
Session 3
Ivek returned to Sergei’s tomb at the start of the session, asking after the Sword of Vengeance — the last of the three artifacts the party still lacked — and hoping it had been buried with him. Sergei became aware of him only slowly (who are you? Go away. Leave me to my misery), but softened when Ivek said he meant to win him the vengeance he was owed and did not want to desecrate the tomb to do it.
The sword is not buried with him. In Sergei’s words: The Count is taking great pains to make sure no one else gets this sword, for it is at the top of his castle. He could not say how to reach the top; his memories of the mortal world are thin after losing the duel to his brother. Asked what he wanted, he answered without hesitation: to be reunited with Tatiana, his one true love. He does not know whether she is still in the castle.
Ivek left him undisturbed and carried the news back — which gave the party the working theory that the three trinkets need to be taken somewhere high, “where stone meets sky.” They never got the chance to test it.