Old Bonegrinder

The onion-domed edifice leaned forward and to one side, as though trying to turn away from the stormy gray sky. The mill had gray brick walls and dirt-covered windows on the upper floors. A decrepit wooden platform encircled the windmill above a flimsy doorway leading to the building's interior.
The ground floor had been converted into a makeshift kitchen, but the room was always filthy. Baskets and old dishware were piled everywhere. Adding to the clutter was a peddler's cart, a chicken coop, a heavy wooden trunk, and a pretty wooden cabinet with flowers painted on its doors. In addition to the clucking of the chickens, the sound of toads croaking could be heard.
The sweet smell of pastries blends horridly with a stench that burns your nostrils. The awful odor comes out of an open, upright barrel in the center of the room.
Warmth issues from a brick oven against one wall, and a crumbling staircase ascends the wall across from it. Shrieks and cackles from somewhere higher up cause the old mill to shudder.
Once a grain mill that served Vallaki, this slouching windmill was home to three night hags: Morgantha and her wretched daughters, Bella Sunbane and Offalia Wormwiggle. The hags were trapped in Old Barovia, but they liked it there. Using their shapeshifting to look like Barovian women—a frumpy mother and her two homely daughters—the hags snatched children, devoured them, and used the windmill's grindstone to crush their little bones into powder. This powder was a key ingredient in the hags' dream pastries, which they offered to Barovian adults who were desperate to escape Strahd's domain.
Made with the bones of the innocent, the hags' dream pastries allowed Barovians to enter a trance, wherein they could escape to heavenly places full of joy. When adults could no longer afford the hag's dream pastries, the hags offered to trade their pastries for the Barovians' children, thus preying on the adults' selfishness while acquiring the ingredients they needed to make more pastries. This was how the hags sowed corruption in Strahd's domain and why they didn't take the children by force. The hags were interested only in children who had souls. They pricked each child with a needle; if the child cried, that was a sign that the infant has a soul.

Maps

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  Old Bonegrinder

RUINED STRUCTURE
8008

Type

Mill

Parent Location

Old Barovia