Traveling to Vallaki
General Summary
Excerpt from Seir’s Little Black Book (Session 9/03/20): Penned in Borokin’s hand, via dictation
We woke up to the sound of the bells tolling. O seemed quite upset, though she wouldn’t explain why. It seems as if the city Vilaki (spelling?) is on the way to Cresk, where I would rather go. We agree to take Ireena, but I’m doubtful that this will actually keep Strahd away from her. Ismark says he wishes he could come along with us and pay us upon arrival, but now has switched to saying that he’ll pay us when we return, which we aren’t planning on doing. Khaylen and Ireena together convince him to give the money to her, which she will use to pay us when we arrive. Khaylen, O, and Zin decide to go to Blood on the Vine to buy a few days’ provisions while Letho and I go to get our masks. Borokin, Khalyen, Zin, and Letho get into a heated discussion over buying rations, as Letho wants “real food” while some others want food that keeps better. I’m not really sure what happened, but Khayen walked out with a bottle of wine (she seems to be quite fond of buying such things). O encountered the pie-cart lady, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. The woman claimed that the pie gives one dreams. O asked for another free pie, but the woman turned her down until she handed over a silver. Khaylen also spoke with the pie lady. The woman commented on her tabaxi heritage, but nothing much comes of it. Letho and I went to find the woman we bought the masks from. She was dusting off as we got there. Borokin says that they were pretty nicely embroidered with a coppery thread, there appeared to be suns on them. THe work was surprisingly nice considering the low price- Letho gave her a one silver tip, which I agreed with. I could see some small, rather skinny children down the hall as we left- the woman says that her husband died recently, and this has been her way to eke out a living. Letho and I came back to the square. Khaylen and I bum some money off of Zin and we get food. Mine was meat, but I held onto it for the road. Letho, Borokin, and Thoradin ate early. We all, after much eating and chatting, left the small town. The fog began to clear, and others told me that there was a river in the distance, spanned by a small bridge. There were scattered sections of farmland, with grain struggling to grow in the rocky, dusty soil. Zin saw four other people on the road ahead of us. At the bridge, we saw a small, run-down building, with a small crumbling farmhouse nearby. The water appeared to be clear, or at least people told me it was. The water tasted cool and delicious, which I suppose is as good as a man can ask for. Perhaps it’s better sometimes to not really see it- I’m sure I wouldn’t have been satisfied with it if I could see it. At this point I believe you started drawing a map in this journal, though of course I can’t read it. I hope my repeatedly asking everyone questions about what they could see and where we were kept them on their toes. Near a bend of the river, we saw a group of ravens gathering around near a tree on the river. They didn’t seem to really be doing anything besides chatting. Zin and Thoradin noticed a flash of something shiny up in their nests. Zin asked me to try to move it out with a mage hand, though it was very hard to see. Khaylen’s appeared to be somewhat skeletal, and mine was smokey and hazy. I couldn’t really see what I was doing (very frustrating), but Khaylen was able to actually see and deal with it. Apparently, I knocked a bird with blue-tipped wings that people had seen in town before out of its nest. Khaylen berated Zin for making a big deal out of seeing what appeared to just be a bird. Eventually, we came across a crossroad, with an old wooden gallows standing. A signpost opposite the gallows pointed three directions: barovia village behind us, Tser pool to the northwest, and ravenloft/vilaki to the southwest. The northwest trail disappeared to the trees, while the southern one climbed up a mount. There was yet another plot of graves by this gallows. Irina says that crossroads are strongly tied to life and death. Ireena said that Tser pool was a holy place for the Vistani, where Madam Eva keeps her tent. Apparently some Vistani live there and work there. Ireena said that the pool wasn’t very far from the fork, but we decided against showing her to the vistani, as we were trying to protect her from the eyes of Strahd. Unfortunately, at this point, a bunch of Vistani appeared, coming from the southern path. Zin took Ireena and hid in the graveyard as the rest of us pretended to act natural. There were three, and they were singing a little song, and Khaylen joined in, though she didn’t really know the words. One puffed on a pipe while the other two sipped from a wineskin. Khaylen dropped a few names (in other words, Madam Eva), and that seemed to impress them enough to disarm them. However, they seemed to be a bit offended that we weren’t going straight to Madam Eva’s pool, as we were going to Vilaki. Khaylen says that we were planning on cleaning up there first. They told us that the Vistani weren’t too welcome in the city due to some frictions with the nearby camp. The walk to the city featured a frankly inappropriate amount of switchbacks and elevation gain. We didn’t’ have to climb a full mountain, but there did seem to be a fair bit of incline. There are apparently two local mountains, Mount Ghakis to the south and Mount Baratok to the north. We were encountering all sorts of rocks and crags, but thankfully Thoradin was able to help guide us through the area. He seems to have some familiarity with this type of terrain. Perched atop a small hill was a small, crumbling chapel, with two small altars outside. We approached the shrine- the leftward altar was made of wood, and was mostly decayed and neglected. Carved into the mantelpiece was the faint outlines of a sunburst. The one to the right was made of solid stone, and was marked with a crescent moon. It seemed to be pretty overgrown, however. I pondered whether or not mother night is unhappy at her lack of followers due to the fact that Strahd had plunged the land into eternal night, but as I spoke I had the oddest feeling. I heard a small tingling sensation on the back of my neck as I spoke to myself, and when I turned around I saw a leather bundle, and on the inside there was a set of rough clothes. Inside the clothes, I could feel some loose fur. The clothes were very frayed, and nobody else could make any sense of them. Thoradin and I, looking at the clothes, noticed strange impressions in the dust of the shrine- almost human footprints, with markings near the toes. I couldn’t think of any situations in which wolves would wear human clothes, but Thoradin believed that the creature behind the whole situation was some sort of half-human, half-wolf creature. Thoradin warned us that we needed to leave the valley, as such creatures are apparently quite dangerous but are weak to silver (like Zin’s sword). I deferred to his expertise- the man isn’t very jumpy (besides the odd doll situation), so I’ll take his fear seriously. He said that there were some undead in the area, but none seemed to be following us. Khaylen invited Zin to race. However, we tried our best to talk them out of it. Moving further, we come across another field of bones- these bleached to the point that it’s obvious that they had been there for a long, long time. It was a watchtower before Strahd attacked. Khaylen and Ireena got in a little tiff over racism towards Vistani, which didn’t end amicably. We came across a field covered by old, mossy gargoyles, with a waterfall falling down into a pool of water- likely the Tser pool. Khaylen made sure to get into the water and then shake it off of her fur, splattering water everywhere. We could see Strahd’s castle from where we were standing. As we approached midday, fog and tree branches began closing in on both sides of us. We approached a second gate, ostentatious as the one that led us into this damned place. Khaylen tried to climb the ridge to get to the top of the wall and bypass the gate in a less traditional fashion. I chose to wait and see what happened with her, as I didn’t want to pass through the gate and find that it led to another dimension (again!). Ireena said that the gate was the western gate to the valley, and that it is closed by default. She just started walking towards it, which very much frustrated Khaylen. The two argued a bit more about how gates work, and I had to practically hold the two apart. The two seem to very much enjoy fighting with one another. The gate opened magically as we approached it, creaking loudly. Afterwards, we found an old, decrepit windmill. It brings to mind the iconography that was in the Durst household. We decided not to linger near it, though, as Thoradin wisely pointed out that we should keep moving. There was a large lake at the base of the northern mountain- apparently the city is on the shores of lake Zarovich (spelling?). The lake was supposedly running down from the top of the northern mountain, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a few sips. We ate during our break, but we did so quickly as Thoradin was still pushing us forward. Dark clouds started rolling in. Apparently there was too much perishable food that we brought along (thanks Letho), so there was much feasting. Borokin tried to share his food to Khalen and Thoradin, as Letho refused to share with them as he was a little bit upset about some comments they’d made about his order (I think he hasn’t really heard some of mine). A bunch of fog rolled around us as we approached the gates- a half dozen pikes were set out, with wolf heads upon them. The town wall has scaffolding crawling with armored guards. The gate we approached had a man and a woman standing inside, carrying pikes. They asked us what we were doing, but we were able to talk our way in, though they claimed that they typically didn’t let people in this late. Apparently this gate is the “Morning Gate”.
Report Date
08 Nov 2022
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