In-World Document on Vaults of the ODD

Otto's Arcane Manipulations of the Entourage

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Jokingly described by Otto Taratarat as “Ah, the book I wrote on how to make friends and influence people.” The joke, like most of Otto’s jokes, is doing more work than it appears to.

Otto wrote this book in 577 as payment to the Society of Magi, without ever saying why. It is also actually called Otto’s Hexad, and was a one-off until the Society duplicated and sold it with the name it is known by today. Why the Society chose to rename it is unclear. Why Otto permitted it is equally so, though one suspects that a man who pays debts he will not explain is unlikely to quarrel over a title.

Reading the Count: Notes Toward an Interpretation of the Journals of Strahd Von Zarovich

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:08:25 +0000

The Peculiar History of the Kingdom of Barovia

What follows is not history in the sense that the preceding account is history. That account rested wherever possible on stone, on independent witnesses, on the logic of physical evidence that cannot be easily altered after the fact. This one rests almost entirely on Strahd von Zarovich's own writing, and on a method of reading that runs against the grain of what he intended to be found.

The Kingdom of Barovia, and Its Peculiar History

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:00:22 +0000

The Peculiar History of the Kingdom of Barovia

The historian of Barovia works in conditions that would be recognised, and pitied, by any scholar of occluded records. The lord of this land has ruled it for more than four centuries. He controls what is preserved and what is not, what is released and in what form, and he is not a disinterested curator. Any document that survives in Barovia does so because Strahd von Zarovich allowed it to survive, and any document he has allowed to survive should be read with that permission in mind.