Pidlwick II Miniature

After her husband died in battle, Duchess Dorfniya Dilisnya set her sights on becoming Count Strahd von Zarovich’s bride, but she failed to win his love. Her visits to the castle were nonetheless frequent, and she never traveled without her fool, the delightful Pidlwick. The little man was like a ray of sunshine in Castle Ravenloft, and though he failed to amuse Strahd, he delighted Tatyana and Sergei with his jokes and gambols. As a result, Strahd didn’t object whenever Pidlwick and the duchess came to visit.

Eager to please and desiring to return the courtesy, the duchess commissioned the legendary toymaker Fritz von Weerg to build a clockwork effigy of Pidlwick as a gift for Strahd’s family. Although the duchess’s heart was in the right place, the effigy didn’t have Pidlwick’s abilities, and it failed to entertain anyone. Even though Pidlwick himself had spent months training it, the effigy couldn’t speak, and its movements were more awkward than amusing.

A harsh winter trapped the duchess, her fool, and her fool’s effigy in Castle Ravenloft for several months. The duchess subsequently succumbed to illness, after which Tatyana asked Pidlwick to remain at Castle Ravenloft.

One Pidlwick Too Many. Von Weerg was no ordinary toymaker, and he put a little of himself into all his creations, which is to say his works had a touch of their creator’s madness. Pidlwick II knew that it had no purpose as long as Pidlwick remained in Castle Ravenloft, so it pushed Pidlwick down a long flight of stairs, killing him. Everyone else thought it was an accident. In the days that followed, Pidlwick II tried its best to fill its namesake’s shoes, but the effigy’s mere presence was upsetting to Tatyana, and it was never called on to perform. Eventually, it was shut away like a discarded toy.

Evil Toy. Pidlwick II was kept in a small closet adjacent to one of the guest bedrooms. On rare occasions when someone stayed there, Pidlwick would sneak out of the closet in the middle of the night, smother the guest with a pillow, and then retreat back to the closet. The castle staff never considered that the effigy might be responsible, instead assuming that the guests had died in their sleep.

But Strahd was not fooled. He came to realize fairly quickly that the clockwork effigy had begun to display a murderous nature. Rather than have Pidlwick II destroyed, Strahd kept the fool around to dispose of irksome guests from time to time.

After the deaths of Sergei and Tatyana, the castle became virtually abandoned, and there were no more guests for Pidlwick II to “entertain.” The clockwork effigy emerged from its closet and found new places to hide. It fears Strahd and eagerly follows anyone who gives it the attention it craves.

Pidlwick II is basically an oversized toy—a 4-foot-tall mechanism stuffed with gears, springs, and other components expertly fitted together to impart a semblance of life to it. Its skin is made of stitched leather pulled taut over an articulated wooden frame. Pidlwick II has rubbed soot around its eyes and mouth, giving it the triangular eyes and jagged grin of a jack-o’-lantern.