*whispers begin in the slums and bars of Vallaki - the people still remembering the scandal of Tatyana Markova, the noblewoman publically discovered to be a Vrolock, also a close freind of the Von Zeklos family. Rumors also start to spread that at one point, adventurers attempted to penetrate Von Zeklos keep in order to slay the vampires they claimed live there, and were tortured brutally by the Boyar Guard and the Von Zeklos family*
*Elsewhere, someone starts spreading rumors of the Undead haunting the Von Zeklos family crypts, indeed adventurers go there regularly as they do to the Dawn Cultist catacombs to get skeleton knuckles*