On the surface, Vallaki seems like a pleasant enough place. Whatever hardships befell Barovia Village seem to more or less have spared this gated community. People smile and greet each other pleasantly in the streets as they pass one another, stores are open and frequented by customers, and the town motto that "all is well" appears to be true.

Seems to, appears to be, on the surface: those are the descriptors that best describe this city, as far as I can tell.

Once our small group of outsiders left St Andral's, our two young wards in the care of Father Petrovich, we escorted Ireena to Baron Vallakovich's manor in order for her to discuss Ismark's proposal. We were granted entrance by a servant of the house, and at the far end of the hall as we filed in, there was an odd man. He stared at our group with such intensity, as if he wanted to say something, but ultimately, he scurried away as we were given audience to the burgomaster.

Our first impression of the baron was that he is something of an odd man. He seems to be of the belief that most, if not all, of the country's problems can be laid squarely on the doorstep of Castle Ravenloft, rather than any measure of woeful mismanagement by the local peerage. He believes this to the point that he has made it illegal within the city walls to speak "the Devil's name". Vallakovich also exhausts incredible amounts of resources weekly holding festivals meant to force the populace into good cheer. Those not happy will be punished until they are.

We spoke briefly with the baroness as well. She seemed to greatly like the idea of opening the borders of Vallaki for trade routes, especially since we passed through a small village filled with fresh flowers. The possibility of having fresh flowers for her daily tea parties made the baroness beside herself with delight. While she was a very... nice lady, the baroness is certainly not the brains behind the operations in town.

Unsure how long Ireena and the baron would be in discussions, the rest of us headed out to find Blinsky's toy store. In a word, it was amazing. "Is No Fun, Is No Blinsky!" I was especially taken with the tiny mobile of bats with flapping wings and the musical merry-go-round with figures of wolves instead of ponies. The ventriloquist's dummy that looks like Count Strahd was a bit bigger than would reasonably fit in travel bags, but Blinsky said that he could make small, plush dolls in only a matter of a few days. I may have commissioned one. His work is too cute.

We showed him some of the dolls we had found and been collecting along our travels. He recognized the doll given to us by Mary in the village, and Blinsky said he remembered giving it to Mary when she was a little girl. He was very pleased to hear that he might be able to do business with other cities again, only wanting to bring joy to the children of Barovia. Except, one of the toys on his shelves was not made for children. There was a red-headed doll that bore a disturbing resemblance to me.

Blinsky said that the doll wasn't for sale; it was specially made for Izek Strazni, the disturbing and disturbed ward of Baron Vallakovich. The man made some sort of evil pact, which granted him an arm gifted both with amazing strength and with the ability to magically start fires. He has been threatening Blinsky, and likely others, for at least the last year, forcing the toy maker to craft more and more creepy dolls for him, all of them with my face. Izek threatened to burn the toymaker's store down if he didn't comply with his endless demands for more and more dolls.

After saying farewell to Blinsky and his pet monkey, Piccolo, we split the group to cover more ground. Mire and I went to the town hall to get maps of the local area and investigate the city archives, while Ragnar, Finrar, and Doru doubled back around to the burgomaster's manor to check on Ireena.

In the archives, we spent some time looking through the historical registry. We were able to learn that, as bad as things seem with Vallakovich now, things seem to have settled down since the time his father was in power. The senior Vallakovich would hang citizens from the gallows for perceived slights, while the current burgomaster only humiliates them in the stocks, wearing hoods of papier-mache animal heads. The only person who seems to have publically spoken out against the burgomaster is Lady Fiona Wachter. Lady Wachter's family has historical ties to the von Zaroviches, so the baron fears to move against her. She was even quoted as saying that she would rather serve the devil than a madman, so she clearly thinks less than nothing of Vallakovich.

We were also able to find reference to the home of a dragon, long-since dead to the south of Vallaki. There was also mention of a town to the south, as well, that was destroyed by Strahd. It was unclear what happened, except that the burgomaster of the town did something awful.

While we were getting information on prominent figures, the others returned to the manor. I'm told that since Ireena wasn't quite done with her tete-a-tete with the baron, Doru provided a convenient distraction as he accused Izek of being long-time friend Wallace Flangerman, who owed him money. This allowed Ragnar and Finrar the opportunity to look about uninterrupted for... a bathroom. Needless to say, they were unable to find the facilities, but apparently, I'm told they did manage to find Izek's bedroom, which was filled with nearly a hundred creepy dolls all of me, and a mostly naked man shackled to a wall in a closet. Udo Lukovich, the town cobbler, had participated in a peaceful protest at the last festival, for which he had been punished by being locked away in the baron's home, personally beaten by the baron for his protest.

Unfortunately, Ragnar didn't have the ability to free the imprisoned man from his shackles, and was only able to offer him the promise that we would return for him. With Ireena in tow, the party met back up at the Blue Water Inn to discuss what we should do next. From everything we can tell, from my limited time in this country, from Roderick's understanding of the laws, and what we could find in the town hall archives, Baron Vallakovich has definitely been overstepping his power and authority as lord of the province. To gather more information, we spoke to many citizens around Vallaki.

Within the inn itself, Mire spoke with the elven circus ringmaster who has been in Vallaki for some weeks now. Rictavio, he's called, and he says he's taking some "time off" here. Which strikes me as odd, because Barovia isn't exactly a vacation get-away. Szoldar Szoldarovich and Yevgeni Krushkin are a pair of hunters who had a good time chatting with Ragnar about their respective adventures. Doru chatted with the brothers, Nikolai and Karl Wachter, who were more than happy to discuss how much they disliked Vallaki when bought a drink or two. Roderick and I took a moment to speak privately with Urwin, who was somewhat more ambivalent than the brothers. Around the city, people from all sectors of life disapprove of Vallakovich, but the citizens are too afraid to be the first to act to do anything about the problem.

From there, we went to Lady Fiona to talk to her about the troubling things we've found since entering Barovia. She was able to confirm that the baron has been abusing his power for some time, frequently picking out certain citizens for similar "special punishment". Everyone is too afraid of the baron to speak out about his injustices, however. According to Lady Fiona, virtually no one in Vallaki approves of the baron or his methods, which includes the "ward", Izek, whom he uses to terrorize the locals. Lady Fiona doesn't believe that there are any others in the Vallakovich line who would be able to take over after him, as his son is still a child, and perhaps himself not entirely sane.

In order to learn more, she recommended that we speak with another minor lord in town, Vasili von Holtz. Lord Vasili is an envoy to Castle Ravenloft, working out minor disputes and serving as a "buffer" or sorts between the locals and the castle. A request to have an audience was sent to his home, and we returned to Blinsky's shop to confront Izek for his threats and wrongdoing.

As expected, the baron's brutish ward arrived to threaten the toymaker into receiving his creepy doll. When I moved to face him, Izek grabbed me, blathering on about some special connection he believes us to share, some dreams of me he's had, some delusion that we are, in some way beyond his psychoses, related to each other. Which would actually make it worse if true, because he grabbed me and tried to drag me away with him. Izek was warned to unhand me, or I would unhand him.

Perhaps he hadn't anticipated my rather literal meaning?

Either way, he refused to unhand me, so I removed his arm for him. Oddly, he didn't appreciate the assistance in this matter. I blame Mother for this. Father wanted me to learn ballroom dancing. Mother said it was more important to know how to keep a scoundrel's wandering hands off of me -- unless I wanted to indulge him. While I can turn about the floor without stepping on a man's feet (too badly), I'm certainly much more talented with a sword.

I might have let my sword hold a longer conversation with the man, but Mire was soon there, reminding me of our duty and stating that we should take the man into custody. (Izek owes Mire quite the favor, should he ever find himself released from prison.)

After leaving him with the local authorities, we snuck back to the burgomaster's mansion. It was agreed that Udo needed to be set free as quickly as possible in case the burgomaster tired of torture and turned to murder instead. While there, we also met another odd character: the baronet. It seems that some number of years ago, the young lad stumbled across a spell book, and he has been practicing magic ever since with the intent to free himself from this land somehow. He said that Lady Fiona's daughter, Stella, had been injured in one such attempt at using the spellbook's power. Something about the young girl and a cat being caught at the same time in a circle of power, which led to Stella no longer having possession of her full faculties. Disturbingly, the only "cats" we could see in the place were three undead skeletal-zombie creatures that had once been felines.

The next morning, we heard back from Lord Vasili, who kindly invited us to his home to discuss our concerns. My first assumption was that Vasili was one of the many vampire spawns populating the nation, but Doru says that the man didn't give the impression of being "one of us". Whatever his background, Lord Vasili was a most affable man who helpfully confirmed our suspicions that Vallakovich had extended his reach beyond the authority granted to him as burgomaster. It would have been more humorous that Lord Vasili was most taken aback by Izek's doll collection except for the fact that they all have my face. It's still far too soon for that to be funny. Regardless, he approved our request to hold Vallakovich until he could return with official word from Ravenloft on what should be done. We still need to regroup and discuss how best to handle this, quickly. The Festival of the Blazing Sun is scheduled for tomorrow, and anything could happen between now and then.