She notices none of this. Daytime is even more unpleasant for a vampire than it usually is in these conditions, and mostly what she sees if she looks out is burning yellow and lots of sand. So she doesn't really do that. Instead, she's amusing herself inside, figuring out if she can synthesize hyena treats from her current stockpiles, and intermittently checking on her garden to make sure everything inside is still alive. (It is. The mourning lilies are in fact complaining, but the fireblossoms have apparently had a fantastic time, and might need to sometimes get put outside in the desert to soak up ambient heat for their enrichment.)

The next night she'll go hunting, though. Not the humans, obviously, she has yet to taste human blood and sees no reason to stop now. Also not the hyenas, she now feels affection for them, some other desert creature. Are there any edible animals that contain a reasonable amount of blood available? She could theoretically live off of eating a bunch of tiny rodents or something, but she'd really rather her meals minimize the amount of casual killing she commits.

Most animals around here are small. The lack of water and constant heat pushes in that direction. Most, however, is not all. Iovetra will first sense a caravan, which presumably contains some animals as well as humans. Does she wish to stop there or would she rather keep looking?

She'll keep looking, she's not going after caravan animals. That's the sort of thing that will earn her torches and pitchforks, she's pretty sure. Though, at this point, the time investment for searching for her meal is adding up to 'not worth it.' She's not one of the animal eating vampires that has ever felt much urge to track down and drain a large and mighty beast, laden with the power and knowledge of age and experience to make their blood more delicious. She's more of an opportunist, and a bit lazy about her meals, besides. As such, she'll instead give this up as a bad job, in favor of ripping rodents and the like out of their burrows. Lone ones, preferably, she feels weird about killing off entire families of desert creature.

Draining creatures of their blood also imparts the vampire with some knowledge from the victim - what sorts of things do the creatures of this desert know?

She will spot some ostriches nearby as she goes about her rodent consumption. If she wants something larger, they do exist.

The rodents here know a surprising amount! Their thoughts are certainly clearer than she would expect from a rodent. Each one has an impressively organized map of the area (especially water sources, food, predator ranges, and other helpful rodents), and an extensive list of other rodents by name, a few distinguishing traits, and time since they were last heard from. (These eventually drift off to probably dead.) Each has a sense of time until the sun rises, and a finely tuned feel for not just whether it is thirsty — they are all thirsty, always — but exactly how thirsty it is. She also may acquire various memories of important moments: a near-death brush with an owl, a hyena nipping off a tail, a desperate escape from a running ostrich. Is there anything in particular she wants to know?

... Interesting. She doesn't remember animals being this - rich. It's strange. Admittedly, it's been a while since she's had animals that aren't driven mad by ambient cursed magic, but. Still. She doesn't think the animals were this... this where she came from.

Iovetra's not sure how she feels about it. Having feelings is hard. Mostly what she's thinking is what it's like to be on the other side of this - it's survivable, if the vampire is careful, and dealing with something with a lot more body mass. Pulling this off with rodents is difficult, and would take a bloodletting setup more complicated than teeth.

She doesn't want to know anything in particular, though. Or, to be more specific, doesn't want to learn anything more by this method of knowledge acquisition. ... She'll maybe try to keep track of the rodents in the area that were/are considered non-helpful and or assholes, though, as stated by the rodents she's already eaten. But. No further (stolen) knowledge, thank you. Maybe next time she'll go for some ostriches. For now, she returns with the bodies of her kills to her lair, to neatly channel leftover life essence to feed her castle, and prepare the rodents to become hyena treats. Then, she's free to do whatever else she likes.

There was a caravan, wasn't there? Where is this caravan going? Can she slip ahead of them and find instances of human civilization before sunrise?

There are some rodents remembered as vaguely annoying, as thieves, or as prone to provoking predators and getting anyone nearby eaten. Sometimes the lists even overlap! She will not encounter any rodents remembered as liars or untrustworthy; whether she finds this unusual or only to be expected among rodents is up to her.

There was indeed a caravan! If she tries to guess where it was going... about how far can she travel before turning around to get back to her castle? The caravan does not seem to expect to reach civilization today, but she can move much faster.

As long as she's not carrying anything important, she can just wander freely until sunrise. Her clothes and her crossbow are bound to follow her when she returns to her coffin, so she will be cheating to get home, just as she cheated to follow where her castle got banished.

That will certainly help. It takes her somewhere between five days and a week of normal human travel speed to reach a more static village. This seems to be built along a narrow but fast-flowing river. The sand fades to more fertile ground nearby, and then shades into stone outcroppings and heights. She might find a true mountain range if she continued far enough.

There's nothing stopping a vampire from running at full speed for literal hours, so. She does that, and makes it to the village just before sunrise. ... Hm. Is there a good place to camp out from the sun and people watch? Where she's unlikely to be spotted. It'll mean braving the sunlight, and her vision's going to be a bit shit, but, well. She's very curious, and wants to make sure the humans are okay, and hopefully not horribly enslaved.

The hills have nooks and crannies ranging from just large enough for a toe to caves large enough for a human to live and sleep in. She can find somewhere without trouble, as long as looking out over the village from above works for her. If she wants somewhere closer by... she could try crouching in the crops the village is growing? Those provide some cover.

She'll take the spot above; hiding in crops sounds like a recipe for catching herself, and more importantly their food supply, on fire. Humans starve if they have nothing to eat, after all. Being on fire is a solvable problem for her, she's got a coffin to retreat to.

Her hearing will probably be better than her sight, during the day, at least in the desert. But she can watch a bit, before the sun gets too bright. She'll just kind of hang out, and listen to how the humans are doing. Are they doing okay?

The sun eventually rises, and the humans with it. She watches as they go about their day...

It's hard work. Farming is not an easy endeavor, and if the fertile soil and available water of the river mitigate that, the pounding sun and endless thirst of the nearby desert push back the other way. The fields must be tended, the animals kept in check, the children cared for, the flax spun into thread and woven to cloth, the food prepared, and of course water must constantly be fetched from the river. Iovetra sees nobody stationary with nothing to do. Some people rest between tasks, some set down their work to stop and talk, but everyone she sees is clearly doing something. (Of course, if they weren't, perhaps they would not be outside in the draining desert heat.)

For all that, there are no obvious signs of terror. There might be some fighting, some quarrels and disagreements, some grudges kept alive beyond any hint of use, but the people don't seem cowed or unwillingly forced into their work. She can't actually... understand anything they say... but the collective tone and mood seems that of peasants making their way without too much difficulty. If she listens closely and has some way to get general emotional tones, she might even detect that this year seems better than last, and perhaps that they expect the next year to be better still.

Awww. That's good. She's glad. Maybe she can figure out ways to help them out in their lives - she's pretty sure she can make some kind of fertilizer, something to help their plants grow. She has some magic going spare, and a lot of practice with plants in particular.

She is content to watch and listen, while they go about their day. Her castle will inform her if she has a visitor trying to get in, or something. For now, it's just. Kind of nice to see humans doing normal human things. Or, well, mostly listen, the bright and burning sun is still handicapping her ability to see properly by quite a lot.

Nothing prompts her castle to notify her. Eventually the sun falls low and the villagers begin to return to their warm houses, eat, and get to sleep. The moon is perhaps half-full, and Iovetra might be able to detect a few boys still outside by the light of the moon, but it gets dark enough that human vision should be unable to spot her from a distance.

She'll leave the little humans be, in favor of sneakily investigating their fields. What crops are they growing, how well are they doing, any strange diseases or nutrient deficiencies they're having?

Grain seems to be the main food crop, alongside flax for both fiber and consumption, but there are a variety of other crops for field rotation and other purposes. They keep many chickens, along with a few lambs (for wool or meat, presumably?) and goats mainly for milk. There are almost certainly some nutrient deficiencies in their rather constrained diet, if Iovetra has ways to determine what exactly they are lacking. The crops seem mostly healthy. One of the goats smells slightly off — perhaps it is sick.

Interesting trivia! Iovetra's primary 'job,' when she had one of those from her once master, was care for his humans. Admittedly, those were mostly the blood cattle he kept in his dungeon, but regardless, the skillset does carry over. Diet mainly of grains, with some dairy and protein via eggs. Most likely nutrient deficiency is iron, she thinks, but she'd have to creep into their bedrooms at night to sniff at their life essence to say for sure. Which: pass. Little bit too risky, for her tastes. She notes how the crops are doing, and comes up with a short list of tonics to sneakily sprinkle their crops with to help improve their health and output. And maybe help with their iron intake a bit.

The goat...

Hmmmmm. Hmmmm. On one hand: she bets she can help a sick goat. On the other hand: the goat will probably freak out at having a vampire show up to investigate it, hyenas liking her for some reason or not. She can instead peek at it from afar. Does it look like it's pregnant, which would explain why it smells off, or is it still unclear what's going on with it?

The goat does not seem visibly pregnant.

HMMMMMM.

Yeah, okay, she can't resist.

She'll wait until the goat and its neighbors are asleep, and then sneak in to creepily sniff it. What's up with its health, inquiring vampires with a magical sense for the particulars of living, blooded things (that they could then eat) want to know.

This goat's pen is locked, but she will not have much trouble working around it. This goat is ill. Its neighbors were not obviously so from afar, but from closer up they do appear to have the beginnings of a fever. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have spread past this pen.

Ah! Okay! This is a solvable problem. She does admittedly need her castle's resources to solve it, and this will mean running all the way back here with the - probably it'll need to be a tonic, to slip into the goat's water or food. Direct administration would be better, but she's slightly handicapped by being a vampire, and thus anathema to animals. (Animals that are not hyenas, or rats that have been systematically bred for friendliness to the undead.)

She finishes her circuit of the area, to make sure she's not missing anything that might be threatening the health and happiness of the human denizens. Mostly just the nutritional deficiency and the goat? Does she have that right?

Some of the humans continue to toss rocks outside, and she overhears an argument. There might be a pregnant human in the village? There are many people here, she can't be entirely certain.

She absolutely wants to investigate the pregnant human to make sure she is okay, pregnancy is a very dangerous time, for both mother and child. She's worried for them both. ... Now that it's presented in front of her to jog her latent and suppressed memories, she thinks she might've done something related to this when she was alive? She vaguely remembers assisting with several births, and in particular is wondering how far along the pregnancy is, and if they're dealing with a likely breach birth or not. ... One of the ones she helped with was one of those, she thinks, and it seems like it went badly, because she does not want it to happen again, with an intensity that is somewhat surprising to her.

But, she is a vampire, and probably vampires would not be accepted as midwives. It's - fine. She can do other things. It's nice to have remembered literally anything about her life before - before. This is good. Hurting a little from the loss of something is better than feeling nothing at all.

On that cheerful note, she returns home. She has a tonic for a sick goat to make, and fertilizer, and maybe nutritional supplements if she can think of a clever way to get them into the humans without their realizing. Her day will be very busy, as she prepares for the next night. And with the heat of the sun and the day of being left alone, the jerky for the hyenas might be ready.

The first few days set the tone for the next several weeks. The hyenas come back to the oasis, and collect their due of scritches and treats. Nomadic desert inhabitants and caravans are the only things to come anywhere near Iovetra's castle. She most often encounters them at the oasis, but about a month after her arrival she spots a caravan traveling towards the oasis and running low on water. They... might have enough water for someone to reach the oasis and fetch more for the rest, but it wouldn't be guaranteed.

The villagers are relieved by the sickness clearing up, and the nighttime wanderers might have been guarding as much as they were playing? They mostly stop stalking out the village overnight once that's finished. This is more relevant two weeks in, when the moon is full might provide enough light for even human eyes to see her from a distance. That night, the pregnant woman goes into labor. If Iovetra has any way to detect this, she will find that the new mother is giving birth in what appears to be a maze of twisting passages within the mountains. It's impressively echoey and the airflow is confusing — her senses will have a hard time finding a way through the place.

It's nice here, even with the lack of foliage or shelter from the burning sun in the day, and the blinding desert sand everywhere. She wishes her castle were put somewhere a bit greener, but it's admittedly nice not having to deal with a constantly hostile environment all the time. The roses growing on the side of her castle wilt a bit, before she figures out feeding them a complicated sun-resistant alchemical mixture that lets them avoid withering away entirely. She really, really cannot disguise her castle in its current location, and at this point, she'd rather preserve the things she likes about it while maybe figuring out how to move it somewhere that is a bit more suited towards greenery.

She gets a feel for how the caravans function over time, and how much water they need for their travels (carefully observed so that she doesn't take too much from the nearby oasis, and thereby screw over anyone and everyone else that might need the water contained therein) and - yeah, that one is traveling kind of light. When she sneaks close, she can smell their worry and fear, and doesn't like it. So, clearly, the thing to do is assist. This caravan gets a large (tinted) glass container filled with water, placed directly in front of their camp, with only enough stealth to conceal that she's the one who put it there in the middle of the night. This will be inexplicable for them, but she suspects that her castle has already been spotted, what with how there is literally zero cover for miles around, so. She might as well be inexplicably nice, and hope that this maybe avoids trouble in the future. ... Also, mostly, she doesn't want them to die.