St. Andrew and the Holy Symbol

St. Andrew was a paladin of the Morning Lord who served in the early days of the church's founding. Legend holds that an angel in the form of a raven delivered the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind to Andrew, which he used to fight vampires. His bones were kept in a reliquary — roughly bread-box sized — in a crypt beneath St. Andrew's Church in Vallaki for centuries.

The bones were believed to give the church its supernatural protection against Strahd's incursions. They were stolen several nights before Session 10.

Relevance

This legend connects three independent threads:

1. The Keepers of the Feather — an angel in raven form delivering a holy symbol of power; the Keepers' whole mythology involves ravens as agents of divine will and resistance to Strahd
2. The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind — the same artifact delivered by the raven angel to Andrew; the Taroka prophecy points to its burial at the Ivlis Crossroads graveyard
3. The Morning Lord — the faith of both St. Andrew's Church in Vallaki and the Church of the Morning Lord in the village of Barovia; consistent across both settlements

First Revealed

Session 10 — Brother Moro's Religion check (16) at St. Andrew's Church