The Map

The clear ground is the road we have walked: from the mists where Death House stood, through the gates and the village of Barovia, past Tser Pool and the windmill, four days west to Vallaki. Everything in the fog is somewhere we have only heard about.

Ismark's map

"This is my best effort," Ismark said as he handed it over. "The scale's way off." It is also the map we used for the whole walk, so mind the word by the castle. See Ismark's Map.

The great map

Since then we have come by a much better one: the great framed map of Barovia from the Burgomaster's mansion in Vallaki, which Ireena had the guards take down and lend to us on the day of the festival. We haven't had a quiet hour to study it. A map very like it hangs at the top of the stairs in Wachterhaus, and Drew committed as much of that one to memory as she could while we were burgling the place. We noticed wolves, a moon, and a hill where the goats are. See The Great Map.

What kind of place this is

There is no leaving. The mists stand like a wall round the whole land. Walk into them and you wander for hours and come out where you started, or you never come out. "The mists are the bars of our cell, and our jailer is Strahd," says Ismark. The Vistani come and go by an old agreement with the devil, and they can't take anyone with them.
There is no sun. Just a grey lid of cloud, with one patch a little brighter than the rest, where the sun probably is. Ireena has never seen the sun or the moon; she knows them from books. The seasons still turn: "It gets warmer, but it doesn't get sunny." It is autumn, and getting colder, and in Vallaki it has been raining since the night the bones went home.
Nothing that grows here is anything we know. Carry food. See the Traveller's Almanac.
There is one road, and everything we have seen is strung along it.
Defiance is punished. Ismark told us of a village that once stood up to the devil and is not there any more. The last Mistwalkers' failure cost the village of Barovia a street, and then cost it and Krezk hundreds of lives. People remember.
There are no volcanoes. We asked, for reasons of our own. Ireena says the mountains, Mount Baratok and Mount Ghakis, show plenty of mist but no smoke.
Ravens are good luck. The one cheerful thing everyone agrees on, and it turned out to be true.

Where we have been

Death House, where the mists delivered us. Gone now.
The Road West, from the Gates of Barovia to Vallaki: lights that cry for help, a stone that knows Fëanor's family, wolves, and a dire wolf carrying roses.
Village of Barovia, under the castle.
Tser Pool Encampment, the Vistani fires, where our fates were read.
The Windmill, where three hags beat us and we promised to come back.
Vallaki, where we are now.

Where we have only heard of

Everything here is secondhand. Treat it as rumour until we walk it.

Castle Ravenloft, the devil's house, on its pillar of cliff above the village. We have seen it from below. The map says AVOID!
Krezk, far to the west, walled, with an abbey above it and a glowing pool behind its walls.
The Winery, the Wizards of Wine, somewhere south of Krezk, gone silent.
The Haunted Lake, three hours north of Vallaki. Lake's haunted.
Berez, ruins to the south, with a rumour of witches.
The den of beasts, "far to the west." Vasha's pack lives out west, and its leader is Kiril: "She controls the pack." Madam Eva told Lily that someone howling in a den of beasts far to the west will need her tooth.
The mountains, where Drew's amber answer is said to lie, "sealed in amber deep in the mountains."
The places in our reading that we can't yet put on any map: the house of a dragon, the shrine of murdered gods, an amber palace of darkness, and the tomb of the only man the devil ever envied. See The Reading.
Beyond the mists: home. Waterdeep, Daggerford, Goldenfields, Julkem. The Vistani say there are other lands like this one, which they call the Domains of Dread.

Open questions