Beginning to See the Truth

So turns out Strahd von Zarovich himself had attended this old man's funeral. He was controlling the beasts outside the village. Go figure. "The Devil" himself decided to show up to the Burgermeister's wake, because "he was a good man" and "his death was unfortunate". Oddly.. comforting words from someone supposedly "The Devil". Shit went down from near the get-go, once people began to realize who he was. Of course, -we'd- never seen 'im, so we didn't quite realize what was going on at first. It became apparent to me fairly quickly when the girl we had planned to guard and escort to Vallaki, specially to make sure this man gets ahold of her, started walking towards him with a blank look. Something wasn't right. It was about this time when stepped around and put himself in between us, breaking the contact that was somehow compulsing the girl. stepped in for some reason and tried to pry the girl away from me, but she has the strength of a newborn infant. Next thing I knew, the man -turns into bloody MIST- right in front of us and just fucks off, after declaring we were going to bring the girl to the village gates tomorrow. Bold of him to assume we were going to do that, but then again, everyone keeps saying he's the devil. During his spiel, he brought to light that Oswald was a half-orc, and made a group of the villagers that were in attendance grab their pitchforks (WHO THE FUCK BRINGS PITCHFORKS TO A FUNERAL?!) and decide that Oswald needed to die in particular. We weren't trying to kill the folk, deluded as they were, and it didn't take much to take this out of combat, thanks to an effort of disarming, some levitation, and a sleep spell. Bryndan Carudas Chandler did decide to kill a man by grabbing his face and pumping necrotic energy into him until he turned into a nasty soup, but shit happens. We can't all be saints.
 
About this time things started going to shit inside the church. Apparently the boy locked under the church who's dad just claimed he was sick (I did mention that before, yeah?) had been starved (feed a cold, starve a fever, I guess?) and turned into a Vargeist - some sort of vampire spawn. Having dealt with the citizens, we all dashed inside the church as fast as we could. With some support from Ireena Kolyana and Ismark Kolyanovich, and a good bit of skill with a whip if I do say so myself, we kept the creature pinned down until it was killed. At which point, the Priest fainted. Lovely. We composed ourselves as best we could, while Oswald went and buried the vampire spawn out in the graveyard. I placed the Priest in his chambers in hopes that maybe he would come to grips with everything in the morning. We followed Ismark and Ireena back to their home to sort out the situation we were left in and get a few hours sleep in before we left the next morning, needing all the daylight we could get. The Church tolled once that night for the passing of the Son. After breakfast, we headed back into the village to negotiate passage for all of us to Vallaki with the Vistani. With proper encouragement and coin, they agreed.
 
The trip on the road was fairly peaceful, or at least as peaceful as things could get in this godsforsaken place. That is, until this jackass wearing furs that Marushka Dragomir-Belmont was just -gushing- over steps out of the woods and is like "Oh hey, there's some Wights ahead, and if you pay me money, I'll clear them for you". What a bunch of rubbish. "Greatest hunter in the land" my left arsecheek. The dwarf (see last journal entry for opinion on THAT piece of work), tries to run off into the mist after the codger, but Oswald stepped in and caught him, letting the fucker get away. Kiril Stoyanovich I believe was his name, but honestly I didn't care to remember. Good riddance. Should've let the dwarf go run off into the mists as well, I'd say. After that, we continued on until the Vistani decided to pull in to the local moot and have a time for us to see their Seer. Come to think of it, I think she possessed one of them back in town and told us to come see her now that I'm writin' shit down.
 
We get to the campgrounds (I'm calling it) and we immediately set off to go see this "Madam Eva", 'cuz fuck me if we shouldn't go see what's going on, maybe try and get some supplies from the gypsies or whatever else have you. Noooo, let's go runnin' off straight to the old bat. We all pile into her wagon (somehow. And thankfully -that- wasn't a euphemism for something else.), and she basically calls me out to sit down and do me a readin'. This is, of course, AFTER she points out something from our past, near as I can tell, likely in some attempt to prove she's legit. Alright, I get it. You can see things. Why else would they call you a Seer?
 
[Insert Reading of Cards here]
 
As we finished up the reading and began to work out what it could all mean, we suddenly heard the sounds of commotion and fire coming from outside the wagon....