The return trip to Vallaki was remarkably uneventful compared to the rest of our travels. We again left our wagon at the stockyard once we arrived and noticed that the carnival master "Rictavio" still had left his wagon there as well. We made our way across town, and were greeted warmly as welcome repeat customers at the Blue Water Inn. While I went to secure lodgings for the night and engage the services of the innkeepers two boys to run messages to Lady Fiona and Lord Vasili for us, I'm told that Doru made quite the scene.

I will politely say that he "quarreled" with Rictavio. To hear Mire recount what happened, it sounds more like he mocked the man, making rather rude comments about his heritage, manhood, occupation... It actually turned out that his harassment got the so-called carnival master to tip his hand, letting it slip that he knew exactly "what Doru is". The word "abomination" may have been bandied about, causing Doru to make some rather rude hand gestures before Rictavio stomped upstairs and Doru and Ragnar left the inn together not-at-all suspiciously.

While the rest of us remained at the tavern, catching up with Ireena, Doru and Ragnar snuck back to the Stockyard to investigate Rictavio's wagon. Thankfully, Ragnar is a druid in addition to a talented lock-popper. Inside, he found a rather large, toothy cat: more specifically a saber-toothed tiger. One that was starving, because he had been literally starved. In addition, it was being trained to attack innocent bystanders: there was a mangled doll dressed as a Vistani.

Ragnar and Doru were able to get the tiger (newly named Dennis Snaggletooth) out of its filthy box and into a larger storage unit at the stockyard, with food and water and bedding. Doru says that Rictavio left a bit of cash in his wagon, which he liberated and used to pay for the Dennis's new lodgings. According to Mssr. Snaggletooth, he was being trained to kill people upon command, specifically the ones that looked like the doll in his cage. The tiger didn't seem to think much of his "master", either, and I'm inclined to agree with the big kitty.

After returning to the inn to regroup, we spent some time debating what to do. It was agreed upon that Rictavio had to be more than he seemed, and it was likely he was planning something that involved Lord Strahd, as among his possessions in the cart was a chest filled with specialized equipment for hunting and killing vampires. I agreed to attempt to have another conversation with the circus ringmaster in order to gather more information. It was not my most productive effort to date; I feel like the two of us talking in circles more than coming to an understanding.

I attempted to explain Doru's particular situation to him, but Doru's efforts to better himself don't seem to matter to Rictavio. On the other side of the conversation, Rictavio expressed his concern over "decent ladies" like us consorting with "such people", by which he meant Doru and Roderick. In order to explain his motivations, he told me about his history: his son was kidnapped by Vistani and turned by a vampire, which "forced" him to kill his son to "save" him, rather than taking any actually productive steps to help the boy.

As this riveting conversation was taking place, Roderick and Ragnar performed a bit of petty theft, breaking into Rictavio's room. In short, they "came upon" his journal, in which he wrote about his travels and the many, many strange things he had come upon since leaving his home. One significant difference between Rictavio 's story and what was written in the journal was that in his writing, he revealed himself to be the purportedly "famed" monster hunter Rudolph van Richten. He wrote about having murdered his own son rather than accept him as a member of the undead. He blamed the Vistani for the loss and has dedicated a large portion of his life killing the undead and stalking all Vistani indiscriminately.

Concerned for local law, order, and safety from a madman raising a tiger to murder innocents, we dashed off another quick letter to Lord Vasili, as official envoy to Ravenloft, to let him know about the potential threat to Lord Strahd from van Richten. We then arranged to have the naughty man arrested and placed in a cell alongside Izek, the baron, and baroness. (I do not think the captain of the guard is overly impressed with us.)

Across town the next morning, we were able to meet with Lady Fiona again. We were very direct with her, being honest about our interest: Madame Eva told us that there was some sort of object, likely in her home that would somehow help aid us in improving the country to make it a better, safer place.

Lady Fiona said that while she couldn't think of any such item in her possession, she graciously allowed us to look through her home. In her bedroom closet, tucked away with the bones of a long-dead enemy of the family, there was a book. The book appears to be a journal penned by Lord Strahd himself. We compared the writing to that written on the letter found in the Durst home and our dinner invitation, and it was a definite match. Unfortunately, in addition to badly faded ink and numerous stains and wear, it's written in an older style of Balok, which makes it quite difficult to read. Lady Fiona said that we were welcome to take the book as long as we returned it to Lord Strahd afterwards.