Milivoj

The children at St. Andral's told us first: Lazlo, Hans and Franz had run away just over a week earlier. Claudia thinks they ran because they were afraid of Felix. Milivoj stole the bones of St. Andral for them. Two hunters at the Blue Water said they could probably find the boys, but wanted 300 gold to give up their own hunt and go into the woods, and a cloaked stranger with very nice shoes offered Milivoj exactly that for moving the bones. "I had to do it to save those kids." The hunters took the money and went.

Nobody has seen the boys or the hunters since, as far as we know. Lady Wachter told us the werewolves to the west "capture children". Nobody asked us to look, and we have been busy, but three boys are out in Barovia on their own. Next: ask at the Blue Water after the hunters, and keep our eyes open on the road west.

Who: Groundskeeper of St. Andral's Church and the orphanage, where he grew up and still lives. Mid-twenties, built like a barn, and the only person besides Father Lucian with keys to the church.
Where: Confined to the orphanage on his own promise to Headmistress Claudia.
Status: Alive, confessed and unrepentant.
First met: Session 8, grey and unrousable in his bed.

The suspect

Father Lucian gave us his name the night we arrived, as the only person he could suspect: "He doesn't seem like an evil man, but I cannot think otherwise." Little Yeska had told Milivoj the church's secret because Milivoj asked him out of nowhere, and because he is "big, and he's strong, and he's cool." We went to the orphanage the next morning expecting a thief.

The victim

We found a huge young man in bed, pale and ill, who had been sinking for a month and could not be woken that morning. The eldest girl told us what the children think of him: "He's kind. He talks to us. Most adults, they don't give the children the time of day. He tells us stories. He includes us." Sirius's healing did nothing. Fëanor's magic found necromancy on him, a curse that was not quite a curse.

It was the thing in the attic. "Milivoj will still soon be mine," it told us, through Felix. "This boy is tiny. I want the more muscly specimen downstairs." When we sealed it in the locket, Milivoj woke, charged into a corridor full of armed strangers, and said the only thing he had ready: "I didn't touch any bones, no. What are you talking about?"

The confession

He had. An insight check caught the lie, and Sirius explained, gravely, that stealing bones from a church of the Morninglord was a capital matter. It all came out. Three boys (Lazlo, Hans and Franz) had run from Felix and would not survive the woods. Two hunters at the Blue Water said they could find them for three hundred gold. As Milivoj left in despair, a stranger stepped out of the shadows: a man in a deep cloak with his face hidden, a short black beard ("I'd say 40% of the male population in Barovia have a short beard"), and "very nice shoes." He had overheard, and he would pay the lot for one small thing: carry the bones to the Vallakovich crypt in the graveyard and come back the next day. Milivoj did. The gold was there. Every coin went to the hunters.

He would not apologise. "It was necessary. I'm not gonna apologize." The stranger had told him the bones were "just a trinket", and anyway, "I had to do it to save those kids."

Sirius wanted the Morninglord's justice: "It's only 2 hands. He'll still be able to walk." The rest of us argued motive, the town, the law, and the simple fact that we needed the bones back more than we needed his hands. Sirius allowed that we had made "a very compelling case for something that has no liturgical basis," and we agreed to decide once the bones were home. Milivoj told Claudia everything himself ("Claudia, I stole the bones from the church") and promised to stay put. "Yes, ma'am."

Father Lucian, told, sighed like a tired parent: "I suspected as much. He's a good lad at heart. He never did listen at the sermons. Oh, Milivoj."

What his crime bought

The hunters are real. The bowyer next to the Coffin Works told us Vallaki has two full-time hunters, and they put in their usual pre-hunt order for arrows about a week before. They have not come back, and neither have the boys.

The bones went from the crypt to Henrik to Ernst to a secret room in Wachterhaus. We brought them home to St. Andral's in Session 13, and the ground answered.

Where things stand

We saw him in the festival crowd, as everyone in Vallaki was ordered to be. The bones are back, which was the condition we set for deciding what happens to him. Nobody has raised it since.

What we still don't know

Who was the man with the very nice shoes? Henrik's work boots ruled him out, and the bard's curled, gold-plated boots ruled him out too. Our reasoning at the time: a handover in the Vallakovich family crypt means the buyer is tied to that family, or wants us to think so.
Where are the hunters, and where are the three boys?
What sentence, if any, does he face now, and who gives it?