Hi everyone! I recently started a Curse of Strahad campaign with some friends IRL.

A little bit of background so far in the campaign, we just started our "second" session. I say second in quotes because we did do a session 0 that sort of blended into a session 1 because some of the players had gotten their concepts done rather quickly. I decided to start the party of in Kresk instead of the Death House, mostly because I didn't want to scare my rather new friends away with a long dungeon crawl.

A bit more background is that my party is fairly small, only 3 players so far (the 4th might join next session). The players consist of a Druid, a Ranger and a Rouge. The party is just reaching level 3. Hopefully that should be enough background.

Anyways I have a few questions about how to RP Strahad, and mainly how to use him.

1. When should I introduce Strahad into the campaign?
2. What should I RP and have Strahad's actions be? I don't want him to show up and knock out or kill the party outright but I find the module's way of him "testing" the party kinda strange.
3. How often should I have him show up? I don't wanna risk over using him but again I still want him to be present at some points.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to your answers!