The Dragon's Beacon

Walkthrough

Getting the quest

Argynvostholt is on the travel map from the start: the knights' road runs north to it from Vallaki (5 hours) or up the ridge from Tser Pool (4½ hours). The quest can begin in any of three places, and you don't need to have done anything first:

• From Sir Godfrey. Sir Godfrey Gwilym waits on the broken front steps the first time you come up the drive, and speaks as you get near. Ask him "Why is the beacon dark?" and the quest starts at Seen. After that first meeting he lives in his room on the upper floor, and the same question works there.
• From the dragon himself. The echo of Argynvost answers from the frosted dragon window in the chapel on Argynvostholt, Ground Floor, at any hour, until the beacon is lit. Asking him "Why is the beacon dark?" starts it at Echo.
• At the bones. If you walk into the mausoleum before meeting the echo, an Arcana check at the dragon's bones lets you kindle the flame yourself (step 4), which starts it at Kindled.

Come by day. Once you've met Godfrey, crossing the courtyard between the drive and the front doors after dark sets off the men-at-arms of the last battle: 4 Phantom Warriors at level 8, 3 at level 7, 2 below that. This happens until you've beaten them once or settled the Order's fate.

Step by step

1. Talk to Godfrey on the steps (optional, but useful). Besides the beacon, he warns you off the courtyard at night and points you to the commander. If Madam Eva's cards named him as your ally, "Madam Eva's cards named you, Sir Godfrey." can bring him along (see The Destined Ally). A Godfrey who travels with you, or who has remembered the Order's oath, can vouch for you at the mausoleum.
2. Go to the chapel and talk to the echo. Go in through the front doors. The chapel is the west end of the ground floor, and the frost draws a dragon's head on the great window the first time you come. Ask everything you can now, because the echo is gone once the beacon burns:
   • "Why is the beacon dark?" (or "Why can't your knights rest?", then "Could they be released?") moves the quest to Echo. His skull hangs in Strahd's castle, but there's enough fire left in his bones for one night, and one night is enough to let his knights go home. "How do we take fire from bones?" and "What will Vladimir do?" tell you the rest.
   • "Why can't your knights rest?", then "What did you ask of him, at the end?", gets his last words to Vladimir ("Let them go home"). Get these. They let you talk Vladimir down at the beacon without a roll. The same answer is also behind "Vladimir carries something he can't put down", which appears after you read Vladimir's guilt (Insight DC 13 when you ask him why the beacon is dark).
   • "What oath did your knights swear?" teaches you the Order's oath. So does reading the oath stone by the chapel door. The oath gets you past the mausoleum's guard for free.
   • While you're in the chapel: Religion DC 15 at the altar reveals a reliquary behind it (Amulet of the Devout, +2, Investigation DC 15).
3. Get into the mausoleum. It's on the grounds east of the drive (the mausoleum yard), so you don't have to cross the courtyard. Inside, the Phantom Warden holds his spear across the inner doorway and challenges you as you come close:
   • "(Speak the Order's oath.)" gets you through with no roll.
   • "Sir Godfrey Gwilym of the Order vouches for us." gets you through if Godfrey has remembered the oath or is travelling with you.
   • History DC 15 (answer the challenge the old way) or Religion DC 14 ("We've come to tend his rest") also work. You get one try between the two: fail either and he won't hear either again, but the oath, Godfrey and force still work.
   • "Stand aside, or we go through you." starts Bone Watch (Godrick -2, Liriel -1): the Warden and 3 Phantom Warriors at level 8 (2,800 XP), the Warden and 2 at level 7, the Warden and 1 below that. Phantom warriors halve all weapon damage and most elements and ignore necrotic and poison, so radiant and force spells are what kill them.

   The offering niches by the bier hold 30 gp and 4 candles.

4. Kindle the dragon's fire. Use the dragon's bones on the bier. If you've met the echo, choose "Kindle a light from the frost on his bones, as he asked." If you haven't, Arcana DC 15 ("There's something still burning in these bones") lets you do it anyway; a miss just means nothing happens, so meet the echo or try again. The torch turns silver (Ratatouille +1), the quest moves to Kindled, and somewhere in the house a chair scrapes back from the long table: Vladimir knows. The flame doesn't go out, so take your time, rest if you need to, and climb when you're ready.

5. Climb the tower. Take the great stair in the entry hall up to Argynvostholt, Upper Floor, walk to the hall of heroes at the east end, and go through the tower door into The Beacon Tower. Climb to the top of the stair and step up into the lantern room. The first time you enter, flame or no flame, the dark nesting in the dead lamp attacks (Lamp Dark): 2 Wraiths and 2 Specters at level 8 (4,000 XP), a wraith and 3 specters at level 7, a wraith at 50 HP and 2 specters below that. They pass through walls, shrug off half of all weapon damage, and their Life Drain lowers your maximum hit points until you rest. Bring radiant and force spells, and kill the wraiths first. Once they're gone:
   • The lamp-keeper's locker beside the cradle holds torches, oil, a tinderbox and 15 gp, plus a Tarokka treasure if Madam Eva's reading put one at the top of this tower.
   • The lamp-keeper's niche next to it hides a Lantern of Revealing (search DC 14).

   On the way up, the upper floor is worth a look: the Order's chronicle in the dragon's study (its last page tells where the skull went), a hidden drawer in the dragon's desk there (Wand of Enemy Detection, Investigation DC 16), a hollow in the empty plinth in the hall of heroes (Ring of Resistance (Cold), Investigation DC 16), and the commander's strongbox in Vladimir's room (lock DC 18: 120 gp and a level 1 spell scroll).

6. Raise the flame to the cradle. Use the beacon's cradle while you carry the flame. Vladimir Horngaard comes up the stair behind you with his knights and tells you to put it down. Your answers:
   • "He told you to let them go home. You've known it for four hundred years." (only if the echo told you his last words). No roll. He stands beside you while it catches. Godrick +2, Wren +2, Liriel +1.
   • Persuasion DC 17, "Hating him isn't fighting him. It's keeping him company." Success has the same result. Failure goes straight into the fight, and you can't try the roll again.
   • "Stand aside, Vladimir. The beacon burns tonight." starts the fight.
   • "(Lower the flame.) We'll leave it dark." He goes back down without a word (Godrick -2, Liriel -1). You can come back and try again.

   The fight is Beacon Stand: Vladimir (Vladimir Horngaard, 195 HP) with 2 Dead Knights (Revenant, 110 HP each) and a phantom man-at-arms at level 8 (7,200 XP); Vladimir at 170 HP with one Dead Knight at level 7; Vladimir at 150 HP alone below that. Vladimir and the revenants regenerate 10 HP at the start of every turn unless they've taken fire or radiant damage since their last turn, so keep fire or radiant on whoever you're trying to kill. When he falls he lies by the stair, already knitting back together, and speaks as you come near (or when you use the cradle again). Choose "Light the beacon." to finish it, or "Not yet." to leave.

7. The beacon burns. The quest ends at Lit, and The Order of the Silver Dragon ends at Rest. The knights at the long table bow their heads and are still, and Vladimir goes with them. Godrick +4, Liriel +3, Kip, Thistle, Wren and Ratatouille +1. What happens to Sir Godfrey:
   • First, if Godrick is with you, has already shown Godfrey Sir Aldric's sword and isn't a knight yet, Godfrey knights him before the light takes him. If he isn't travelling with you, he comes up the tower stair behind you; either way he takes Sir Aldric's sword from Godrick's hands and dubs him with it. This works whether or not Godfrey has remembered the oath, and Godrick kneels whatever his approval. If Godrick's approval is Close or better, he names the party as his fellowship: Aldric's sword becomes a Weapon, +2 and the whole party gains Heroic Inspiration. Otherwise he keeps it as a Weapon, +1. Either way A Knight, More or Less ends at Knighted, and Godrick +8. Then the rest of this list plays out as usual.
   • If he travels with you, he feels the light pulling but stays for one more ride.
   • If the cards named him and he hasn't joined, he climbs the tower and asks (if he has just knighted Godrick, he's already up there). "Ride with us, Sir Godfrey. One more." takes him along as your ally (Godrick +2). "Rest, Sir Godfrey. You've earned it." lets him go, and the destined ally is lost (Liriel +2, Godrick +1).
   • Otherwise he sits down on his cot under his wall of names and is still.

   Then you get Argynvostholt's milestone (a level), if you haven't already earned it with the pact or the muster. If Madam Eva placed a treasure in the keeping of the dead knight who commands the house, it's handed over now. Go back to the mausoleum afterwards: a sealed niche that opens only once the beacon burns holds the dragon's gift, a Shield, +2.

8. Bring his skull home (optional). The skull hangs on the wall of the trophy room in Castle Ravenloft, the Court of the Count, among the stags. Once you know whose it is (the echo's "What happened here?" or "Why is the beacon dark?", Vladimir's "And the dragon?", the Order's chronicle in the dragon's study, or Argynvost's farewell at the beacon), examining it offers "(Lift it down, and take it home to Argynvostholt.)". Once you've lifted it down it's gone from the trophy wall. Carry it back to the mausoleum, use the dragon's bones and choose "Lay his skull at the end of the long neck." The frost along the bier turns silver and stays that way (Godrick +2, Liriel +2), and from then on the bones lie whole, with the skull back in the hollow at the head of the bier. If the beacon is already lit, it flares white and won't go out again. You can lay the skull before or after you light the beacon, but it only changes the ending with both done: if you destroy Strahd, the epilogue's slide for the Order shows the beacon burning every night above a dragon whose bones lie whole again, instead of the light keeping watch alone.

Choices and endings

• Lit (success). The beacon burns silver over the valley for the rest of the game. The courtyard's frost scar is gone, the knights sit at rest, and the echo, Vladimir and (unless he rides with you) Godfrey are gone. If you'd already begun The Squire, Cosmin stays on the squires' graves with nobody left to swear him in; that page says how his quest still ends. At night on the knights' road you may see the light from a rise, Strahd mentions at dinner that he watched someone light the old dragon's lamp, and, if Madam Eva's cards named Rictavio as your ally and you ask him again at his tower, the lit beacon is one of the deeds that brings him along without a roll. The ending remembers that the dragon's light keeps watch alone, or, if you've also brought his skull home (step 8), that it burns every night above his whole bones.
• How Vladimir ends is recorded for the epilogue: made peace (talked down), or released (beaten at the beacon, then lit).
• Waiting (stays open). If you settle the Order another way first, by the muster (the Order rides with you) or by swearing Vladimir's pact, this quest moves to Waiting, and Argynvostholt's milestone comes from that ending. You can still light the beacon later with the bone-fire:
  • After the muster, raising the flame warns you that the knights will lie down tonight and won't march. "Light it anyway. Let them rest." lights it with no fight. "Not yet. Let them march first." waits.
  • After the pact, "Light it. That oath was a mistake." breaks your oath: Vladimir calls you oathbreakers and you fight Beacon Stand, then light it over his fallen body. "(Lower the flame.) An oath is an oath." keeps faith with him.
• Left dark. If you lower the flame or never climb, nothing is lost but the reward. The flame waits.

If you're stuck

• Ask the echo everything before you light the beacon. He vanishes from the chapel window once it burns, and his last words to Vladimir are what make the climax a conversation instead of a fight.
• The bones won't light. You need either to have met the echo, or to pass Arcana DC 15 at the bones.
• The Warden won't let you pass. History and Religion share one try. The free answers are the oath (from the echo or the stone by the chapel door) and Godfrey's word once he remembers it. Reading him his own wall of names in his room upstairs is one way to help him remember.
• Vladimir only comes up the stair when you use the cradle while carrying the flame. Without the flame the cradle only tells you where the fire waits.
• The quest is at Waiting. Its objectives send you back to the mausoleum: kindle the dragon's fire at his bones (if you haven't already) and carry it up to the beacon.
• The skull's "Lift it down" option is missing. You need to know whose skull it is first: ask the echo what happened here or why the beacon is dark, ask Vladimir about the dragon, read the Order's chronicle in the dragon's study, or hear Argynvost's farewell at the beacon, then examine the skull again. If the skull is gone from the wall, you've already lifted it down: take it to the mausoleum and lay it at the bones. The skull doesn't light the beacon on its own; it's the bone-fire that does, and the skull only keeps a lit beacon burning for good.

Rewards

• Holy Water ×2
• 150 gp
• A level (milestone)

What your companions think

• Godrick Pendlebrook: +2 you made peace with Vladimir instead of fighting him; +4 you lit Argynvost's beacon and let the Order go home; -2 you forced your way past the dragon's warden; +2 you brought Argynvost's skull home to his bones; -4 you swore the dead Order's oath of hate with Vladimir; +3 you told the Order what their dragon really asked of them
• Wren Featherfoot: +2 you made peace with Vladimir instead of fighting him; +1 you lit Argynvost's beacon and let the Order go home; -2 you swore the dead Order's oath of hate with Vladimir; +2 you told the Order what their dragon really asked of them
• Liriel Dawnsong: +1 you made peace with Vladimir instead of fighting him; +3 you lit Argynvost's beacon and let the Order go home; -1 you forced your way past the dragon's warden; +2 you brought Argynvost's skull home to his bones; -3 you swore the dead Order's oath of hate with Vladimir; +2 you told the Order what their dragon really asked of them
• Kip Smudgewick: +1 you lit Argynvost's beacon and let the Order go home; -2 you swore the dead Order's oath of hate with Vladimir
• Thistle: +1 you lit Argynvost's beacon and let the Order go home
• Ratatouille: +1 you lit Argynvost's beacon and let the Order go home; +1 you kindled cold fire from a dragon's bones

Fights

• The warden's spear comes down, and the walls of the vault answer: grey men-at-arms step out of the stone on…, in The Dragon's Mausoleum: Phantom Warrior. Scales with your level.

Journal

Related

• People: Argynvost, Vladimir Horngaard, Sir Godfrey Gwilym, Phantom Warden
• Places: Argynvostholt, Ground Floor, The Beacon Tower, Argynvostholt, Argynvostholt, Upper Floor, The Dragon's Mausoleum
• More in Argynvostholt: The Order of the Silver Dragon, The Silver Hoard, The Squire