Ral Vlacul

Early Years

Traditional wisdom states the Ral Vlacul was born in the forbidding Sighişoara Citadel, the easternmost fortress in the ancient chain of ruins that would one-day become the Citadel of the Raven in the Year of the Mistmaidens, 764 DR. His father was Ralnai Vlacul, a warlord and powerful clan chieftain of the Balok people. His mother was Ingris Barov, whose family claimed her direct decendence from the Northmen wizard-princes of long fallen Northkeep. Although native to the Balinok region to the south, his father's tribes and peoples had dwelt in the Dragonspine Mountains, driven from the land around Lake Vlacul (then Lake Barovia) to the south generations ago by the coming of the sorcerous Terg and kept out by the Nentas' control of pro-Terg Boiers who ruled the country in their name. Generations of raiding the comfortable southern lands of their former home, and of interbreeding with the massive Weirmen of the northern Ride had transformed the Vlacul and their vassal clans, the Bruilik, Padraig, and Drakovs into a keen and brutal fighting force bent on the reconquest of their ancestral home from the eastern Terg.

Within the bleak and alien walls of Sighişoara Citadel, Ral Vlacul would learn to be as hard as the unyielding mountain rocks of his birthplace, and as cold and unforgiving as the northern winds. The young prince-in-exile learned the art of war from the canny Wiermen barbarians that served as his bodyguards, a type of warfare that involved speed, misdirection, and trickery to win the day. He learned of history and the natural sciences from tutors his father imported from Zhentil Keep and points further south. From his father Ralnai, he learned to govern with pure, cold justice, uncontaminated by signs of weakness or waver.

In 779 DR, a group of raiders personally led by the warlord Ralnai Vlacul waylayed a heavily laden Balinok caravan traveling through the Tepurich Forest south of Sighişoara. The raiders were surprised to discover that the caravan was mostly made up of peasants traveling from the city of Phlan to the largely Balok border city of Krezk, which sat astride the merchant crossroads near Tharsaud Gap. The peasants explained that they were fleeing a civil war in Phlan and seeking a better life in the north. After brief discussion among his lieutenants, Ralnai decided that they would escort the refugees to the edge of the city of Krezk, an uncharacteristic show of mercy that would prove fateful. The details of what happened next have passed down into local legend. According to the reports of the warlord's surviving lieutenants, the people of the caravan betrayed the raiders once they were within sight of the walls of Krezk, realizing that they were being protected by the legendary Ralnai the Dragon himself. They captured the warlord and turned him over to the Terg Atabeg of Krezk in order to curry favor with the rulers of their new home. The Atabeg had Ralnai impaled upon a dull spike of oak and, once dead, his body dismembered and fed to the feral dogs of the city.

The already well-respected young Ral Vlacul had little difficulty suceeding his father as Voivod of the clans in exile and, at fifteen years old, determined to avenge the brutal and dishonorable death of his father by exterminating all trace of the Terg people from the very blood of the northlands.

The Liberation of Barovia

Having determined to lead his people out of their exile and return to the land of their forebears, Ral Vlacul began an undeclared war of misdirection and savagery against all the forces of that the Terg Nentas could array against him. His first target was the city of Krezk, which lay directly in the path of any route into Barovia and within whose walls his father met an ignominious death. The city of Krezk, nestled as it was in the high mountain passes between the Balinok and Dragonspine Mountains, was a virtually impregnable fortress to assault from without. The truth about what happened to Krezk is difficult to grasp, however, what accounts survive detail Ral Vlacul's capture of two creatures among the Weirmen, runaway peasants who perished upon an unknown consumption but later "rose up from their beirs, to suckle from the stomach and leg of the living by night, and sleep fulle rosy safe from day's light". It is believed that he imprisoned them in the depths of Sighişoara and, for a full year, consigned the criminals and malcontents among the clans and the Weirmen to the dungeons during the day, there to await "conversion" when night fell. When a full year was over, he had his men smuggle these creatures, sleeping during the day, in stout wine casks, fully 7 dozen in all into the city of Krezk. So doing, his men descended from the mountain slopes to block the passes. When night fell, the city soon became a feeding ground for these unnatural creatures. For seven days and seven nights the city was consumed by the living dead, and any that tried to escape were killed or driven back into the city by tribes massed under House Vlacul occuping the passes in every direction. On the morning of the eighth day, the troops of Ral Vlacul entered the now corpse bloated and sleeping city and set fire to every building before leaving the annihilated city of Krezk behind them as they passed the gates into Barovia proper. To the current day, no man will enter the ruins of Krezk, for it has never been rebuilt.

With Krezk fallen, the path lay open for the Balok people-in-exile to pour into the Barovian valley unchecked. Over the next ten years, Ral Vlacul would conduct a guerilla war against the usurpers of his father's land, harrying and murdering the Boier collaberators and their families. He adopted the tactic of raiding the food stores of the Boier lords and returning the food to the serfs and slaves in the fields. He forbade his troops, on pain of death and dismemberment, to plunder the shops and homes of the common people, only the houses of the rich, the comfortable. During his "War of Liberation" he came to rely heavily upon a group of his trusted lieutenants, to lead raids during his absence, to govern the troops and the territories that he seized from the forces of the Nentas. These men, Otto Padraig, Basil Bruilik, and Roland Drakov, along with Ral Vlacul himself, came to be known as the Brotherhood of the Dragon, and their war against tyrant Boier, the Atabeg Governors, and the Nentas himself passed down into beloved the legends of the Balok people.

The rising tides of war had, over the course of nearly a decade, transformed the armies of Ral Vlacul from a wind-blown band of tribes in exile, fighting under cover of darkness and fleeing into the forest at the sign of the arrival of the overwhelming forces of the Terg, into a core of veteran warriors willing to lay down their lives for the General. The ranks of the armies had swelled also, the largesse of Ral Vlacul's policies towards the serfs, slaves, and trade classes caused a swell in their rallying to his cause. By the year 790 DR, Ral Vlacul was 26 years old and had been fighting the Terg for nearly half of his life. The armies of Ral had driven out, killed, or broken most of the forces of the scattered Atabegs and Boiers and stood poised to crush the final bastion of the Nentas' power, invested at the capitol at Valkabulus, modern Vallaki. The Battle of Valkabulus would go down in the history of the war as the most brutal and costly of them all. Until this battle, Ral and his armies had been able to avoid or mitigate the impact of any encounter with the infamous Demon Priests, the eunuch warlocks of the great Nentas of the Terg. Here, at Valkabulus, was the seat of their power, and in the ensuing battle, no amount of misdirection or deflection would contain their wrath and fear. Ultimately, their magic failed them, for by this time the guerilla war of Ral Vlacul had transformed into a full scale revolution against generations of tyranny, taxation, racial experimentation, and genocide. The people of Valkabulus rose up with Vlacul's armies outside the city, and the streets ran red with blood. The warlocks were overwhelmed and the gates were thrown down. Ral Vlacul himself led the vanguard that broke through the doors of the Nentas' palace and, though by this time the Nentas himself had long fled (most sages suggest that he fled north, into the bleak lands of the Ride, or east, to die in the Thar), the victorious conquerer was able to vent his rage upon the eunuch priests and their debased servants. He had as many of them captured as possible and, employing the every soldier and craftsman in the city, created a forest of oaken stakes on the shores of Lake Barov. On Midsummer night in 790 DR, he had four-hundred and forty-four of the priests impaled.

Legend says that Ral Vlacul had his dinner set upon the balcony of the palace, that he might watch the slow death of the monsters that had murdered his people for nearly six generations, and that on that night, Kurkabrus, the High Priest of Orcus, dying upon a spike of oak, met the eye of the young Voivode and pronounced a dying prophecy, or a curse:

''"As the blood of the faithful flows into the lake at the heart of this land, so will your hunger for the life of your chosen people. Though you live a thousand years, your love will ever be poison and death, until even morning's light shuns your face."''

The decisive victory over the last of the Nentas' forces in Valkabulus brought with it a true vacuum in authority that had not existed in nearly 200 years; a vacuum that Ral Vlacul swiftly filled. Ral Vlacul was acclaimed Voivode by the people in 790 DR, beginning a rule that would last only 19 years. For his crown, he chose the simple iron band of authority worn by his father. For his seat of power, he chose not the opulent palace of the Nentas in Valkabulus as some had expected, but the massive and ancient Castle Barovia in the eastern cliffs overlooking the lake, the ancestral seat of his family. He commissioned his trusted lieutenants to govern the lands far from his view, giving Otto Padraig rulership over the northern lands against the wall of the Balinoks; Basil Bruilik was given command over the western heartlands, to rule from the old capital at Vallaki; and Roland Drakov was commissioned to carve a civilized land from the heart of the primitive Melvas "ghost people" of the southern wetlands, a task he took to with relish.

Rulership and Death

Having ascended the steps of rulership and vanquishing the hated Terg, the Voivode Ral Vlacul wasted no time in demonstrating his dominion over the lands of Barovia. As workman endeavored to restore the dilapidated Castle Barovia, he and his cadre of Weirmen bodyguards personally toured the countryside. In every hamlet, village, or town, he was greeted with the joy and praise befitting the liberator of the Balok people. But all the spring flowers and folk songs fell upon a man grown old and cold before his time. At every town he was presented with his choice of blushing maidens and the daughters of ambitious hetmen and village elders. Though 27, he seemed a man of 40, and his face, though exceedingly handsome, was perpetually clouded with a countenance devoid of joy. He rebuffed every offer of marriage or liason, for his purpose in this journey was to evaluate the loyalty of his people. In every settlement, his guards posted the laws of the land, and Lord Vlacul's requirements for taxes as of the next year.

The next season, he repeated the journey throughout Barovia, and again, in every village was greeted with the best food, the prettiest maidens, the most pleasant folk songs. His purpose, however, was the collection of taxes, which he viewed as a sign of the loyalty he could expect from each community. Every hetman who was short on his taxes was decapitated on the spot, the balance taken from his personal wealth, and the rest redistributed to the rest of the village, themselves told to elevate a new, honest hetman in his place. Over a dozen village elders lost their lives in 791 DR. The people of Barovia had learned the harsh lesson; their lord was not a prince to be loved, but to be feared.

By the end of 791 DR, the swamplands of the Melvas people to the south had been conquered and tamed, and a new city founded on the high ground in the Svalich estuary. The fortress of Roland Drakov would, in later years, grow into the city of Melvaunt. Though the casualties among the collaborationist Boiers was heavy during the war, several of the lesser noble families rose to prominence during the restructuring of the kingdom under Ral. The most powerful among them, House Marsk, House Dilisnya, and House Katsky, flourished under the harsh but fair rule of their new ruler, though among them, not all had forgotten their humbling by the strange-eyed boy from beyond the northern walls. In time, Castle Barovia was restored and became the heart of the new kingdom, a kingdom that Vlacul ran with the precision of a clockwork machine.

After the pillage of the palace of the Nentas in Vallaki, Ral ordered that all of the magic of the warlocks be sealed into heavy trunks and brought with him to his new home at Castle Barovia. As time wore on, it is believed that Ral Vlacul developed an interest in the old magic of the Terg, that he began to study the ways of wizards and the warlocks who had come before him. Some say that it this growing interest in magic that would cause the Voivode to become more distant from the day-to-day running of his kingdom, and to create an environment for the treachery of the Dilisnyas and the Katsky to flourish.

In 796 DR, Ral received word from his old family home Sighişoara Citadel that his mother had died. The word was carried to him by his younger brother, Sergei, a brother he had last seen as a newborn 17 years ago. Ral settled his young brother into life at court at Barovia, and many saw in him the future of the Vlacul dynasty. Sergei, like his brother Ral, was handsome, clever, and strong, but, unlike his brother, he was warm, charismatic, and kind. In Sergei, Ral seemed to see a path denied him by a life of war and death, and his love for his brother was ever tainted by a shred of resentment.

Over the next ten years, Barovia grew and prospered, opening trade ties with Zhentil Keep to the west, and the warmer, southern lands across the Sea of Dragons. In 802 DR, the Barovians repulsed a brief and poorly thought out incursion by the Duchy of Phlan, and again in 804, beginning a feud with the Tepur people to the west that festers to the current day. Each encounter presented an opportunity for Sergei Vlacul to demonstrate his loyalty and skill at arms to his brother's kingdom, and as his prestige grew, the more the eye of the nobility seemed to settle on Sergei as the heir to his now middle-aged and still unmarried and childless brother, a notion that Sergei publicly dismissed out of hand.

In 808 DR, events would be set in motion that would result in the fall of House Vlacul and the beginning of ten years of internal bloodshed that would permanently rearrange the centers of power for the young princedom. In this year, Sergei Vlacul brought the young Tatyana Drakov to court, to beg permission from his brother for the two to be wed. According to all contemporary accounts, Tatyana was a beauty of the age, tall and pale, with porcelein features and hair like the dark of night. All agreed that the young Vlacul and the young Drakov made a handsome, and politically wise couple, and the approval of the Voivode caused celebration throughout the court. Roland Drakov was pleased at the union between his house and the house of his oldest friend, and, according to observers of the day, even the dour Ral Vlacul was brighter in the young girl's presence, sheltering her personally from the intrigues that surrounded his court; even building a garden on the broad balcony overlooking the Moonshroud Cataracts beneath Castle Barovia explicitly for his brother fiancee. It was perhaps the distraction of the upcoming wedding that blinded the notoriously canny Ral Vlacul to the treachery growing among House Dilisnya and House Katsky, to his eventual demise. On Midwinter Night, 809 DR, on the eve of the wedding of Tatyana Drakov and Sergei Vlacul, Castle Barovia was attacked by assassins, the Ba’al Verzi, under the employ of the treacherous Leo Dilisnya. The attack claimed the lives of dozens of party guests, but also of Tatyana Drakov, Sergei Vlacul, and the Voivode Ral himself. Roland Drakov, who was himself in attendance and was one of thirty three nobles who survived the night of blood, immediately rallied the loyal houses around him and the Noble's War began, with Houses Bruilik, Drakov, Marsk, and Padraig battling the Houses of Dilisnya and Katsky for the control of the country.