Day off in Vallaki

The day was spent in Vallaki, making plans and gathering supplies. In the (very) early morning, Xuza was cooking breakfast when Rictavio, the town half-elf bard who the party had briefly met during the day before, showed up in the kitchen. He prepared an apple and a steak, and claimed he would go eat the, with Gadof Blinsky, the town toymaker. Even if this was a bit odd, Xuza decided to not investigate and let Rictavio go on his way. Later parts of the morning saw more customers arriving at the Inn, including the Watcher brothers Nikolai and Karl who–against everyone’s wishes—had once again decided to patronize the tavern and deplete its wine supplies.

Heading out from the inn, the lost travelers spent the day exploring Vallaki. They learned about an upcoming festival of the blazing sun organized by the town Burgonmaster in order to keep the vampires at bay and ensure that “all would be well” in Vallaki. The festival would be held in three days time and include a tournament with a 1000 gold prize pot. The party decided to enter the tournament. THey even managed to secure a few sponsorships from the local stables and smithy. To finnish of their day of errands Darren left his swords to be silvered, and agreed with Lucian that Geoff would stay for a few days at the church and offer his labour in exchange for shelter. He also learned that the orphan Freek they had rescued was also going to help Lucian at the church.

During the last part of their outing. the party visited the Stockyard, the closest thing Vallaki has to a general store. During their time there, they noticed that Rictavios, very colorful carnival wagon seemed to house a Tiger. With some speculations on whether a tiger would be one of the challenges of the tournament, the party spent one more night at the Blue Water Inn. THe plan was to the next day head off to the Wizard of Wines to finally figure out what is going on there and help Bart get his business up and running. On the way back, the party would stop by in “the house of the dragon” in order to investigate leads on more information on Strahd. Both Urvin and Madam Eva had suggested that there might be something interesting to find. and Urvin had promised the loyalty of the keepers of the feather in exchange for information.