![rictavio curse of strahd rictavio curse of strahd](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/brightsidedm/images/5/51/Rictavio.jpg)
He taught her many of his monster-hunting techniques, but she doesn’t know all of his tricks and disguises. Van Richten doesn’t know that his former protege, a good-aligned Vistana named Ezmerelda d’Avenir, has come to Barovia looking for him. Van Richten also wants to take out as many of Strahd’s spies as he can, starting with evil Vistani. He thinks the wereravens might prove helpful when the time comes. He is trying to learn more about the Keepers of the Feather-a society of wereravens that oppose Strahd-while trying not to expose the secret society to their mutual enemy.
![rictavio curse of strahd rictavio curse of strahd](https://db4sgowjqfwig.cloudfront.net/images/5852922/rictavio.png)
While he bides his time, van Richten hides in plain sight with the aid of a hat of disguise, his thoughts protected by a ring of mind shielding. He has good evidence to suggest that Strahd periodically hibernates in his coffin, sometimes for years, when all is quiet in the realm. Van Richten has studied Strahd for years and knows he can’t hope to best the vampire in a straight-up confrontation: he must wait for the right moment to strike. He has come to Barovia to kill Strahd von Zarovich, the greatest vampire of them all. He knows his road is coming to an end, but his work isn’t done. After destroying Baron Metus in turn, van Richten sought revenge against the Vistani and took up a life of hunting evil monsters. Baron Metus avenged that deed by killing van Richten’s wife, and van Richten has lived with the horror of his family’s destruction ever since. Erasmus begged his father to end his suffering, which van Richten did by pounding a wooden stake through his son’s chest. By the time van Richten found his son, it was too late: the baron had already transformed Erasmus into a vampire spawn. When he was fourteen, Erasmus was stolen away by Vistani and sold to a vampire named Baron Metus to be used as a companion. A scholar and doctor from a land called Darkon, he married his childhood sweetheart, Ingrid, and together they had a son, Erasmus. The half-elf ringmaster is, in fact, a legendary human vampire hunter named Rudolph van Richten. Claiming to be a carnival ringmaster in search of new actors, he began regaling locals with tales of distant lands. He took over an abandoned tower on Lake Baratok before rolling into the town of Vallaki several months later. Several months ago, a colorfully dressed half-elf bard came to Barovia in a carnival wagon, with a pet monkey on his shoulder.