Who: Groundskeeper and gravedigger of St. Andral’s Church and the orphanage, where he was raised and still lives. Mid-twenties, built like a barn, tells the children stories. Officially cool.
Where: Confined to the orphanage — on his own sworn word, under Headmistress Claudia’s eye.
Status: Confessed. Sentence deferred until the bones come home. Unrepentant, in the way that complicates everything.
First seen: Session 8 — grey, unrousable, three days into a coma we were told was an illness.
The victim we went to arrest
We came for a bone thief and found a man a month under a necromantic curse — the demon in the attic staking its claim on the strong body it wanted (“Milivoj will soon be mine”). When the demon went into the locket, the curse broke — and Milivoj walked into a hallway of armed strangers and delivered one rehearsed line: “I didn’t touch any bones.”
It sat on him like a bad coat. It didn’t survive the morning.
The confession (Session 9)
He took the bones of St. Andral. Not for darkness — for the boys. The hunters wanted 300 gold to search for Lazlo, Hans, and Franz; as Milivoj left the Blue Water in despair, a stranger stepped from the shadows — deep cloak, face never shown, a short black beard “like forty percent of Barovia,” and shoes far too clean for any honest street — and offered the whole sum for one small thing: carry the bones to the Vallakovich crypt in the graveyard, come back the next day. He did. The gold was there. Every coin went to the hunters, firewood, and food. He never learned who paid, or why.
He refused — flatly, repeatedly — to apologize. “To save those kids.” There followed a spirited theological negotiation about how many hands a man strictly needs (Sirius quoting liturgy; the rest of us quoting common sense), and the compromise held: confined to the orphanage on his word, sentencing deferred until the bones are recovered. Father Lucian has been told everything. His whole verdict, delivered like a tired parent: “He never did listen at the sermons. Oh, Milivoj.”
What his crime bought
- Two hunters are out in the western woods right now, searching for the boys — paid for with a church’s protection. (The bowyer corroborated it, S10: Vallaki’s only two full-time hunters, standard pre-hunt arrow order, gone west about a week.)
- A stranger with very nice shoes owns the heart of St. Andral’s — and the trail is now walked to its end: crypt → Henrik → Ernst → the House of Wachter. The nice shoes themselves remain unaccounted for. See Quests & Threads.
Appears in: S8 · S9. See also: St. Andral’s Orphanage.