And I asked my roommate what a vial of vampire blood would do if you drank it because I came up with the players finding one on the spot and hadn't actually decided what it does.
I decided with his feedback that if you drink it all at once and drop to 0 HP you become a ghoul, but if you drink it over time you become a vampire spawn.
The way I see it is if a vampire has enthralled you they might gift this to you and tell you you're their favorite or something (I can't view vampire human relationships as anything but abusive) and so they tell you that you can use this in an emergency but actually it just brings you back as an undead.
I also considered having the blood vial be connected to the overall scheme the bad guy has but I think it's more just a personal thing.
And the reason he's placed the body the way he has is he wants this God who doesn't quite exist to inhabit her body which he sees as bringing her back.
It won't actually be her because her soul is trapped in Alcio Metus' sword, but he either doesn't know or doesn't care about that.
One thing I've been playing with is the idea that in Ravenloft the nature of reality is a bit malleable so if enough people believe in this God it will start to exist.
Same thing with Alanik Ray's arch enemy Adam Worth, who is actually a fictional character but since enough people believe he exists he has started appearing in places.
And the players have expressed an interest in going to the scene of the final battle Ray supposedly had with this guy so I like the idea that he'll be a phantom who occasionally shifts into who was actually there. Mainly Alcio Metus.
In universe Adam Worth is somebody Arthur Sedgewick came up with to have an overarching villain for the stories he wrote and to take the place of people he didn't want to identify in case they retaliated.
Also a bit of a meta joke as Adam Worth was the real life criminal that James Moriarty was supposedly based on. So if you're keeping track that means my Adam worth is a fictional character based on a fictional character who was based on the real Adam Worth.
The players got to meet the drunk "Paladin" today and it was kind of played for a laugh that he's bragging about how he can suss out any undead within 500 ft of him while an actual undead is standing 25 ft away from him and he has no clue and I think they're all assuming that's just cuz he's an idiot and drunk but it's actually supposed to be a huge hint that he's not actually a paladin.
He was but the combo of getting cut off from Lathander by the mists and the Amber Temple means he no longer isn't and isn't even an Oathbreaker. And he can't even admit that he's actually a warlock now.
I also managed to have some of the Constables talk about Alanik Ray a bit and mention that they all 100% believe Osgul was complicit in his "death", since a player gave them a bottle of wine and they were willing to give a bit of the scuttlebutt.
It turns out said wine was also a hallucinogen so the officers are gonna have an interesting time when they crack it open after their shift.
I just had Irik (aka Azalin, sorta) refer to Strahd von Zarovich as a "brooding egomaniac" after previously making fun of the depiction of him on a coin for having a glower and calling him "miserable bastard."
It's well known by my players that I love clowning on Strahd but I'm trying to hint that his dislike is a little more personal. And indeed the fact that Strahd and Azalin hate each other is one of the better established parts of both of their characters.
Someone was complaining about Strahd being "retconned" as not being straight and I was like "Are you sure about that? Because the book this is from this came out in 1991."
(Vampire Of The Mists, an otherwise pretty terrible #Ravenloft book)
Also I had memory holed this but apparently this book was written by a woman.
Which is, uh, disturbing, considering I can only describe parts of it as extremely and uncomfortably rape-y is part of why I was pissed off enough to do my own version of Ana.
My version is basically the result of Azalin tearing himself apart on a subatomic level so TDP would no longer recognize him as "him" and he could finally get out of Darkon. But he also merged with the ghost of his son Irik (who he killed BTW), so he is basically both of them. And is now in the somewhat awkward position of remembering being both the murderer and the victim.
He basically considers himself a completely separate person from both Azalin and the original Irik, and the mists also recognize him as a different person from those two.