[The journal looks to be an old leatherbound book filled with loose pages. Spots of dried ink litter the heading and the margins, and the words are scribed in a handwritten font with a slight curvature to it, which would reveal to experts that the author was right handed. The delicately penned passages are written in Luktar and look to have been written with a fine pointed quill.]
Preface:
"This is a collection of musings, philosophies, truths, and anecdotes that I have encountered during my travels in the land once called Gundarak which is now Barovia, and in the surrounding lands which always were. I scribe this so that the literate generations after my time may read my words, and know that my ideals live on long after the author is nothing more than ash scattered upon the wind. I would like to preface these annals with a short story to give you some insight on my upbringing, which may not have been as misfortunate as some, and still not as placid as others.
I was born in the fall to a middle class family in Teufeldor as the second child and first born son of Vágner Elfric and Serafin, shortly before the Great Upheaval. Serafin was taken from Elfric upon my entrance to this world. Perhaps the God of Old felt that her lot in this world was done with my birth, or that he wished to spare her from the calamity that would become of all she and her husband had worked so hard to accomplish. Perhaps He simply wished for her to join with her daughter Dominika in the ever after, who was taken from her by an ailment of the lungs in the prior winter. It is not my lot to say, for who am I to question the methods and machinations of that which is beyond my control, and one of the few truths and promises of which we are guaranteed in this world?
I was too young to ever know the goat farm, or the loom, or the small shop my mother and father kept in the city before it was ripped from us by Barovian soldiers, or to remember any of the sights and sounds of Teufeldor while it was still a proud and propserous settlement under Gundarakite rule. For nearly a year, Elfric endured the hardships of the Barovian opression in Teufeldor, until I was old enough that I could travel. Using the coin that was not taken during the raid on the city, my father paid for passage to the North, hearing of work to be had in the settlement of Kroffburg on the slope of Mount Ghakis in the Balinok mountains. It was there that he found employment with the Bellegarde mining company, and it was in this small village that he raised his only son.
Being a somewhat learned man, Elfric passed on to me basic arithmetic, and he taught me to be literate, forever saying that it was so that one day, in a better time, that I could own my own shop, and I could keep inventory and balance the amount of money going into the business and coming out in order to keep track of taxes without having to pay someone to account for me who would likely cheat me anyway.
While many Gundarakites made their homes in Kroffburg, it was blatantly apparent through the whole time I was growing up, that while we were accepted, we were not openly welcome. Our kind and theirs stayed segregated, and any time that the mother tongue of Luktar was spoken within earshot of a Barovian, they would berate us, saying for us to forget that tongue, and speak the one that was forced onto us by their people for that was the wish of the Count. Outside of the mines, our people were not allowed to carry any blade longer than half a span, or any tool sharper than a square headed shovel. Inside the mines, however, the Bellegarde company cared little for the law of the land, and allowed their Gundarakite workers tools appropriate to their trade. I would later find this out as I grew, and took a job alongside my father with the company in my twelfth spring.
Working for the company was harsh, and seldom rewarding. It was only after I was old enough to work with my father that between the two of us we could save enough to purchase a goat and a hen so that we might eat by our own means instead of buying bread, cornmeal, cheese and eggs from the local tradesmen. I recall the two years after we first bought the goat and the hen that our meals improved vastly, and we enjoyed cheese omelets twice a day.
In my fifteenth winter, a pack of wolves came during the night, and took our livestock. It was a heartbreaking experience watching my father bury that goat, for he loved it. He had christened her "Ismene", saying that he had always liked the name. He would often allow her inside at night to share the fire, and anyone could see that she livened his spirits for the animal reminded him of the farm that he and his wife shared and had hoped to raise a family on. The aging man would often tell me of stories of the old farm, and how Ismene would've fit right in with our other goats between labored breaths from his dust filled lungs.
Five summers later, my father would fall ill and become unable to work. This was devastating, since years before the taxes on our wages had been raised, and so had the taxes of all the working men of Kroffburg. The landlord and taxman had come very close to bleeding us dry, and as such we could not afford another goat, nor another hen, and our expenses on food had nearly doubled because of this. Elfric suffered constantly, and could be heard at any corner of the small one bedroom lodgeroom that we shared because of his perpetual wheezing. He had begun to keep a spittoon, which was continually splattered with tarry black phlegm from the ailment that he had earned breaking his back to make the Belegarde company rich men who would never have to bear the weight of anything heavier than a quill or a sack of gold.
Since it was only I who was working, the demands of the landlord came constantly, and every day he would question me about how much I had made, and berate me for my single meal of two eggs and a piece of bread a day, saying that I should only have one egg so that I would have enough for his rent at the end of the week. The spittoon in the corner of our room began to show hues of crimson alongside the pitch colored phlegm. My father had stopped coming to meals, saying that his throat pained him too much to even swallow a glass of water. I knew that he was not long for this world, and the God of Old would soon take him too, to rest with his wife and the daughter who was taken from them far too soon.
After an excruciating week of trying to comfort him, and praying for a sweet, painless release for him as I laid on the hay mattress he and I had shared for so many years, the God of Old finally took him. I laid him to rest beside Ismene, so that he might have company in the ever after. Every day I think back on the hours digging that hole, I wished I could have placed him beneath that ash tree with Dominika, and Serafin, and even as I was saying my final farewells to my father, I cursed myself for not being able to afford to take him to the place he once called home to be with his wife and child. Of all the decisions and all the mistakes in all my life that I have made, and of all the things I wished I could've done that I could not do, this is the one and only thing that I have felt regret for.
With the only thing left for me in Kroffburg being a life of backbreaking labor that would earn me what the other workers had dubbed "The Black Death", with pay that would barely feed and clothe myself, let alone keep a roof over my head, or give me hope that one day I might be able to provide for a wife and child, I spent my last bit of fang on the debts that I owed, and left the village, hoping for a better life in Vallaki.
And so, dear reader. This is how I came to be in the Municipality of Vallaki, where I have penned these pages, and where I will speak to the common working man who will listen. This manifesto is not intended to incite rebellion, nor insurrection against our Barovian oppressors, for they themselves are an oppressed people as much as ours. This literature is intended only to educate, and share the truths that I have rolled over in my head from years of mindless hacking, picking, carrying and lifting, with little else to entertain my thoughts. I hope that the following script will enlighten you, or that you may find thought provoking argument that will keep you entertained through the hard nights after coming home from an honest day's work."
