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11 Background
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3-Albertus Taurinus is a chronicler native to Turin, Italia, who traveled to Vale Sangora at the age of 51. He was summoned by Skender Dragosti, the valley's Knyaz, to document his "valiant deeds." What Albertus actually wrote turned out to be far more interesting than a ruler's vanity project.
3+Albertus Taurinus is a chronicler native to Turin, in Italia, who travelled to Vale Sangora at the age of fifty-one. He was summoned by Skender Dragosti, the valley's knyaz, who wanted a man of letters to set down his valiant deeds. What Albertus actually wrote turned out to be far more interesting than a ruler's vanity project. He opens his account asking that his hand be steadied, because the things he is about to commit to the page are hard to comprehend and harder to describe.
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55 The Secret History of Vale Sangora
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7-Albertus authored a sixteen-part manuscript titled The Secret History of Vale Sangora. Released as a promotional lore series throughout 2025, the Secret History is written in-character from Albertus's perspective and covers the valley's culture, religious traditions, folklore, and the events leading up to the vampire takeover.
7+Albertus is the author of a sixteen-part manuscript, The Secret History of Vale Sangora, which the studio released as a lore series across 2025. Each part is written in his own first-person voice. He is a framing device: rather than publishing a factsheet about the valley, the developers published valley history as one outsider's chronicle, with his religious assumptions, his snobbery and his slowly curdling nerve all left in.
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9-The chronicle covers a wide range of subjects. Early parts describe Albertus's arrival and his impressions of the valley. Later installments deal with the religious sites (St. Tyna's Convent, the Svartrau Cathedral and Saint Mihai's tomb), the folklore told to him by village elder Zdislav, and eventually the plague's arrival and Skender's increasingly desperate response.
9+The early parts are about getting there. The valley is ringed by the Carpathians and reachable only through narrow gorges, and only in the summer months. The journey from Italia was supposed to take two months and took twice that, and most of his party did not survive it. Wolves followed the column and avalanches came down on it. His guide, a rugged man named Gheorghe, insisted on leaving an offering for what he called the mountain folk. Albertus laughed it off as pagan superstition, and wrote afterwards that knowing what he knew by then, he would have behaved differently.
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11-As a Source
11+Near the valley he found a huge stone block lying among the dwarf pines, expertly hewn and still holding flakes of paint, plainly part of some monumental structure. He offered to double his guide's pay for an explanation and got nothing. That single detail is the chronicle's introduction to the ruins of a civilisation the valley has stopped talking about.
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13-Albertus is the game's in-universe historian. His manuscripts provide background that players would not otherwise have access to. The valley's pre-vampire history, the local religious traditions, and the folklore that hints at the creatures inhabiting the Carpathian mountains. He interviewed figures like Zdislav and Mother Bernice (prioress of St. Tyna's Convent), traveled with a mountain guide named Gheorghe, and visited locations that likely appear in the game.
13+What the Chronicle Establishes
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15+SubjectWhat the chronicle recordsSvartrauThe capital of the valley, with its cathedral and the Greifberg castle looming on the crags above. People settled at the edge of the world for one reason: silver. The slopes are pockmarked with the entrances of silver mines and the knocking of pickaxes carries all day.The city's populationRomanian, German, Hungarian and Hebrew heard on the cobbled streets alongside more Slavonic dialects than he could tell apart. Jewish traders striking deals with Tatar shepherds, Serb mercenaries drinking with Czech miners.Skender DragostiTall, richly dressed and outwardly the epitome of nobility, but a cruel ruler who knew no mercy when displeased. Where another lord might have funded a cloister with the mine revenue, he spent it expanding the dungeons under Greifberg castle. Albertus saw the cells, and the blood on their walls.Svartrau CathedralGrand, but dark and foreboding, and to him more an expression of wrath than of love. Reputed to be haunted, with few willing to walk its naves after dark. He spent most of his time in its archives and never lost the feeling of being watched from below rather than above.The valley's saintsTwo: Saint Mihai, born a pagan, a knight who died fighting a horrible monster, and Saint Tyna, a shepherdess turned miracle worker whose convent still draws the sick to her sarcophagus. The prioress, mother Bernice, lifted the lid to show him the remains and the medallion resting on them.Local beliefShepherds warning him away from particular slopes, miners speaking of things in abandoned shafts, and a fear of the dark he calls almost primeval. At sunset the shutters clack and the padlocks clang, and then there is silence. One early morning in Svartrau he found a body mangled past recognition.FolkloreCollected in Laslea from Zdislav, the hamlet's elder: warriors decked in gold and coloured plumes fighting pale wraiths on moonlit peaks, small forest folk with cats' eyes and needle teeth, ancient ruins filled with bubbling blood, horned mountain beasts, lizards the size of horses in the peat bogs, and blood-craving likhos that come out at sunset to feed.The turnWhen Albertus asked whether any of it was true, Zdislav said nothing, then unbuttoned his kaftan and showed two small round scars over a vein in his neck.The plagueA trader from Constanta arrives in rags, describing a plague running through his city like a forest fire and bodies spilling out of mass graves. Skender orders a vigil in the cathedral, led by his personal confessor, father Florin, with every priest in the valley praying day and night. Albertus sets the book aside there, hoping it will only be for a few weeks.
16+How to Read It
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18+The Secret History is an in-world chronicle, not a gameplay document. It establishes the valley's pre-vampire history, its silver economy, its religious traditions and the folklore that hints at what lives in the mountains, all filtered through one foreigner's eyes. It says nothing about mechanics, quests, systems or builds, and nothing in it should be read as confirmation that a place or creature it mentions appears in the game in the form described.
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20+It is also deliberately unreliable in places. Albertus admits he wrote up Skender's supposed virtues as instructed and left out his many sins, and he expects future readers to dismiss the whole book as the product of a feverish mind. The valley he describes is still under human rule, before Brencis and the vrakhiri take it, so the chronicle sits earlier on the timeline than anything the player does. He also names people the game has since introduced in its own material, including Zdislav and a father Florin, without the studio confirming that they are the same individuals.