Revision 7

Overview

Zdislav is the alderman of Laslea, Coen's home village in Vale Sangora. Official material introduces him as an exception to a hard fact about the valley: few Sangorans live long enough to see their grandchildren, let alone their great-grandchildren, and fewer still survive to pass on warnings about what waits in the woods, the swamps, and the mountains. Zdislav lived long enough, and he wrote it down.

Within the pages of his diary he records a solemn warning for future generations: fear the darkness, and beware the unknown. That single line is the closest thing the valley has to a summary of itself.

He bears two small round scars on his neck, sitting over a vein. Puncture wounds in that arrangement point to direct contact with vampires. Whether he gave blood willingly or had it taken from him is not stated.

Why the Stories Matter

Official material is explicit that the tales shepherds and miners share around a fireplace get dismissed as superstition or foolishness, and that they endure for a reason. They are warnings, passed down not to entertain but to prepare. An alderman's diary is the written form of that same habit, and it is why an old man's notebook matters as much in this valley as a soldier's report.

Zdislav also shared his stories with Albertus Taurinus, the chronicler who set down an account of the valley's history. Across several visits he described legends handed down through generations of Carpathian mountain people: warriors from ages past decked in gold and coloured plumes who fought pale wraiths among moonlit peaks, tiny forest folk with cat's eyes and forked tongues and teeth like needles, ancient ruins filled with bubbling blood, horned mountain beasts that kept to the high passes, and lizards the size of horses burrowing in peat bogs.

Folklore and the Bestiary

Several of the creatures in those stories line up with things confirmed to be in the game rather than with generic fantasy monsters. This is the framing the developers use throughout: a creature is introduced as local legend first and met as an enemy second. The Bestiary follows the same order.

The matches that are not certain are marked as such above. The developers have named the uriashi, likhos, kobolds, psoglavs, and tatzelwurms as folklore-derived creatures in the game, and have said more of the bestiary would be revealed over time.

Role in the Valley

As village elder, Zdislav's authority now exists at the pleasure of Brencis's regime. Laslea is a small hill settlement well away from the political centre at Svartrau, which likely means lighter direct oversight and also less protection. Before the vrakhiri took the valley it sat under the rule of the old knyaz Skender Dragosti, and it did not escape the spread of the plague.

The scars on his neck suggest that rural standing counts for little where the blood tax is concerned. Official material describes the village church as a place of community gathering where villagers seek comfort, share whispers, and hold on to faith, and an alderman sits at the centre of that kind of small, tightly connected settlement, where Coen grew up knowing everyone by name.

The Valley's Other Record-Keepers

Zdislav is not the only person in Vale Sangora keeping a written account. Father Florin maintains a diary tracking the people around him, their habits, their fears, and the subtle shifts in their behaviour as the valley heads toward a new dawn. A collector named Vicho records the strange objects that pass through his hands, including a bleeding ivory figurine a shepherd brought him. Written accounts are one of the main routes by which the valley's history reaches Coen at all.