Each victory in Barovia costs a soul. Sometimes, it’s your own.

The party’s story in these twin sessions begins in ash and ends in resurrection. After the execution of Traxidor, his companions refused to leave his body on display in Vallaki’s square. Lady Wachter had expected their sentimentality. When they came for him, she unleashed hell.

Literally.

A Barbed Devil pursued them through Vallaki’s backstreets, flanked by smaller spined fiends that shrieked from above. Radley carried Traxidor’s corpse, stumbling under the weight; Daermon darted ahead through fog; Urihorn fired arrows from his panther’s saddle. Every street burned with infernal fire. The city was a cage of smoke.

Then came salvation in human form. Van Richten—scientist, monster hunter, cynic—appeared from the mist. His walking cane flashed; the devil struck. For a heartbeat, it seemed the hunter would be torn apart. Then came a burst of blue radiance, and the creature vanished into nothing. “There are seldom any guarantees,” Van Richten murmured, brushing ash from his coat.

The escape wasn’t over. At the southern gate, guards demanded they halt. Van Richten didn’t. The horse thundered forward, smashing through the barrier as the vardo lost a wheel. Guards advanced; a warden fired necrotic bolts. Radley and Daermon lifted the wagon by brute force while Van Richten cast Mending, sealing the break. The group fled Vallaki forever.

At the Abbey of Saint Markovia, the Abbot received them with holy calm. The crumpled wedding dress—muddy but intact—delighted him. When they asked him to restore Traxidor, he warned of divine balance. But something in him shifted. Perhaps gratitude, perhaps madness. He agreed. “For the redemption of Strahd,” he said. By dawn, the cleric lived again, pale and trembling.

When Burgomaster Kreskov saw this miracle, he broke. His grief erupted into rage: “Why not my son? Why not Ilya?” His wife soothed him and armed the party for departure.

The road east led to Argynvostholt, the ruined keep of a fallen order. Snow whispered through cracks in the roof. A great dragon statue watched them enter. Shadows coiled like breath. Inside, the heroes found a chapel of kneeling knights. Daermon, ever curious, touched one with Mage Hand. The knights rose, rusted armor creaking, hollow eyes burning.

The revenants struck without hesitation. Radley’s shield rang, Urihorn’s arrows hissed, Traxidor’s radiant magic flared. But nothing stopped them. The heroes retreated through the darkened halls, out into the cold daylight beneath the dragon’s gaze.

Barovia gives no peace. Devils fall, angels sin, and the dead still kneel to forgotten gods. The adventurers lived another day—but for how long, no one could say.

In Barovia, every escape leads to another trial. Salvation, when it comes, is never free.

The night after the gallows of Vallaki, the survivors of the party—Radley, Daermon, and Urihorn—refused to abandon the body of their fallen cleric, Traxidor. His corpse hung publicly as a warning, a final cruelty from Lady Fiona Wachter. When the adventurers slipped through alleys to steal it back, they walked straight into her trap. The air split with screams and sulfur as a Barbed Devil burst from the mist, followed by smaller winged Spined Devils, summoned by the Burgomistress’s infernal pact.

Radley heaved Traxidor’s wrapped body over his shoulder, Daermon darted through backstreets, and Urihorn charged atop his panther, loosing arrows that hissed through the fog. Hellfire arced after them, burning cobblestones and shattering shutters. They considered turning to fight—Barovian pride dies slowly—but Radley’s strength faltered under the weight of the corpse. The devil closed in.

Then, through the smoke, came a tapping cane. A tall figure in a wide-brimmed hat stepped into the street. Rudolf van Richten, monster hunter and scientist of the supernatural, faced the infernal beast without hesitation. He raised his cane, whispered a prayer, and unleashed a shimmering wave of light—Dispel Evil and Good. The devil recoiled mid-charge, roaring, then vanished into nothing. Van Richten, unfazed, sheathed his blade and remarked dryly, “I wasn’t sure that would work.”

With Van Richten’s aid, the adventurers fled Vallaki in his disguised carnival wagon, Rictavio’s Carnival of Wonders. Urihorn’s panther growled at the sound of another large cat caged inside—one of Van Richten’s experiments, no doubt. Guards tried to halt them at the southern gate, but the old hunter cracked his reins. The beam splintered, gates flew open, and the vardo smashed through, losing a wheel. Under crossbow fire, Daermon and Radley lifted the axle while Van Richten calmly cast Mending, fusing the broken iron. The wagon lurched forward, clattering into the night toward Krezk.

At dawn, the Abbey of Saint Markovia loomed above the frozen cliffs. The party ascended, body in tow, through drifting snow. The Abbot, a serene and unsettling celestial, welcomed them with open arms—then smiled when Daermon presented the tattered wedding dress for his golem-bride Vasilka. When asked to resurrect Traxidor, he first raged at their audacity, warning that life and death have purpose. Then, abruptly, he agreed. “For your service,” he said, “and for the redemption of Strahd, I shall restore your companion.”

By morning, Traxidor lived again. His breath trembled, his eyes dimmed by whatever he had seen beyond. The Abbot clothed him in a monk’s robe, an amulet of the Morninglord hanging over his chest.

But miracles invite jealousy. When Burgomaster Dmitri Kreskov saw Traxidor alive, he fell to his knees, screaming why the Abbot had not returned his own dead son. His wife Anna silenced him, providing armor and weapons for Traxidor so they could leave before Kresk tore itself apart.

The group then followed the Svalich Road east toward Argynvostholt, an ancient manor marked by a towering silver dragon statue. The structure breathed cold air as they entered, shadows shifting like wings. Within, they discovered a chapel of kneeling knights in rusted mail. When Daermon disturbed them with Mage Hand, they rose—revenants, still bound to vengeance long after death.

Radley’s Shield spell deflected a strike; Traxidor’s Turn Undead forced one back; Urihorn fired from a balcony, his panther pacing below. But the fight was hopeless. They retreated, blades clashing, until they reached the cold air outside. There, Urihorn realized what they faced: “Revenants,” he said. “They can’t be killed. They rise again, wherever vengeance calls.”

From devils to angels to undead knights—Barovia offered them every face of damnation, all wearing its familiar smile.

Fascism, Normies, and the Generational Divide

“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.” Or as I like to say, your ability to put up with a problem is your distance from it.

If you’re over 40, you probably think fascism means Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany — a corporatist system where state and business fused into a one-party authoritarian project. That’s the old poli-sci definition I learned back at GWU in 1988.

But ask someone under 40 and you’ll get a different answer. For them, “fascism” covers almost anything patriotic or traditional: flags, borders, religion, even just opposing socialism. That shift comes from Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism, which broadened the word into a set of cultural vibes — nationalism, anti-communism, loyalty to the flag. In practice, it became a smear.

By that measure, mainstream Cold War America was “fascist.” McCarthy’s 1950s, Reagan’s 1980s — even Obama, with his deportations and patriotic rhetoric, fits the new label. Which makes no sense to normies who grew up believing their grandparents defeated fascism in WWII.

And there’s a third wrinkle. Today’s activist left uses “anti-fascist” in a totally different way — less Normandy, more Mao. It echoes anti-colonial rage, China’s “century of humiliation,” and revolutionary energy grafted onto Western identity politics. In that frame, antifascism isn’t about fighting Nazis. It’s about dismantling borders, patriotism, capitalism itself.

So we’ve got three definitions colliding. The textbook version: corporatism and dictatorship. The normie version: America killed fascism in 1945. And the activist version: fascism is anything resembling national pride. No wonder generations are talking past each other.

Over-40 Americans hear “fascist” and think Hitler. Under-40 activists hear “fascist” and think Dad with a flag in the yard. And that’s the trap: if everyone is fascist, then the word means nothing.

This is Chris Abraham, and this has been The Chris Abraham Show.

“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.” Or as I like to say, your ability to put up with a problem is your distance from it.

If you’re over 40, you probably think fascism means Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany — a corporatist system where state and business fused into a one-party authoritarian project. That’s the old poli-sci definition I learned back at GWU in 1988.

But ask someone under 40 and you’ll get a different answer. For them, “fascism” covers almost anything patriotic or traditional: flags, borders, religion, even just opposing socialism. That shift comes from Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism, which broadened the word into a set of cultural vibes — nationalism, anti-communism, loyalty to the flag. In practice, it became a smear.

By that measure, mainstream Cold War America was “fascist.” McCarthy’s 1950s, Reagan’s 1980s — even Obama, with his deportations and patriotic rhetoric, fits the new label. Which makes no sense to normies who grew up believing their grandparents defeated fascism in WWII.

And there’s a third wrinkle. Today’s activist left uses “anti-fascist” in a totally different way — less Normandy, more Mao. It echoes anti-colonial rage, China’s “century of humiliation,” and revolutionary energy grafted onto Western identity politics. In that frame, antifascism isn’t about fighting Nazis. It’s about dismantling borders, patriotism, capitalism itself.

So we’ve got three definitions colliding. The textbook version: corporatism and dictatorship. The normie version: America killed fascism in 1945. And the activist version: fascism is anything resembling national pride. No wonder generations are talking past each other.

Over-40 Americans hear “fascist” and think Hitler. Under-40 activists hear “fascist” and think Dad with a flag in the yard. And that’s the trap: if everyone is fascist, then the word means nothing.

This is Chris Abraham, and this has been The Chris Abraham Show.

The killing of Charlie Kirk in Utah this September didn’t just extinguish the life of a polarizing activist. It set off a cascade — an implosion in the civic square whose blast radius is still expanding. To make sense of it, we should borrow metaphors not from politics but from physics and history: Sarajevo, Versailles, Oppenheimer.

A nuclear bomb is not powered by TNT. It’s powered by the precision of small charges — explosive lenses — that compress a fragile core until it becomes supercritical. A spark, carefully timed, unleashes apocalypse. Politics often works the same way. In 1914, a 19-year-old assassin fired a pistol in Sarajevo, compressing a fragile Europe into the First World War. Versailles, intended as peace, functioned as a pause that guaranteed an even larger conflict. Small detonations in brittle systems yield catastrophe.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination was one such detonation. The details are familiar: a public event turned deadly, footage ricocheting across feeds, and the immediate conversion of murder into symbol. President Trump ordered flags at half-staff, awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom, and vowed vengeance. JD Vance promised to dismantle left-leaning institutions. Cardinals compared Kirk to St. Paul; entertainers dedicated songs; world leaders offered tributes or warnings. At the same time, critics mocked, skeptics questioned, and conspiracy theories metastasized.

What mattered was not the biography of Kirk but the implosion his death triggered. Employers fired staffers for tasteless jokes. Activists launched doxxing campaigns. Governments warned immigrants not to mock. Online mobs demanded ever harsher retribution. In days, one act of violence became a referendum on loyalty, identity, legitimacy.

This is the ladder of escalation I’ve written about before: speech treated as violence, violence treated as mandate, mandate hardened into purge. Every rung climbed makes descent harder. Kirk, adored by some and despised by others, became less a man than a trigger. Like Princip in Sarajevo, he ignited forces far larger than himself.

The analogy to nuclear weapons is not hyperbole. A conventional blasting cap — a tweet, a joke, a jeer — may seem trivial. But when the system is brittle, those charges compress the civic core until it reaches criticality. The implosion is not the joke itself; it is the convergence of fury, fear, and fragile legitimacy. The fission that follows is outrage weaponized into governance: firings, bans, purges, crackdowns.

Theology sharpens the picture. The Gospels say: “Go, and sin no more.” Mercy paired with responsibility. What we see instead is vengeance paired with purification. Kirk is canonized as martyr; his critics are cast as heretics. But civilization depends on protecting the square — the messy forum where ugly words are countered with argument rather than annihilation.

The lesson from Sarajevo and from Los Alamos is identical: once the charges fire, you cannot un-detonate them. A bullet, a tweet, a public assassination: each can become the blasting cap that compresses a democracy into criticality. If we keep mistaking outrage for justice, we will not be mourning just one man in Utah. We will be mourning the republic itself.

Charlie Kirk’s murder on a Utah stage in September 2025 was not just another grim entry in the catalog of American political violence. It was a detonation — the moment when a single blasting cap set off a chain reaction that no one could fully control. To understand it, we need less the vocabulary of day-to-day politics and more the physics of escalation.

In a nuclear weapon, you don’t need much fissile material to create an unimaginable blast. What you need are precisely shaped conventional charges — “explosive lenses” — timed to compress the core into criticality. Small charges, aimed correctly, unlock apocalyptic force. Political violence, as history shows, operates on the same principle. One bullet in Sarajevo, fired by a young nationalist named Gavrilo Princip, compressed the fragile alliances of Europe into total war. The Treaty of Versailles, meant to end that war, functioned instead as a pause that guaranteed another. Small detonations, brittle systems, spirals without ceilings.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination functioned as just such a lens. The man himself was controversial, adored on the right, despised on the left, mocked by late-night comedians, venerated by his followers as a cultural warrior and, in some quarters, even as a modern Saint Paul. But the meaning of his death lies less in the biographical details than in the cascade it triggered: presidential proclamations, half-staff flags, memorials filling stadiums, new laws drafted in grief and vengeance. Within hours, the online square divided into camps: those mourning, those jeering, those hunted for failing to mourn properly. Employers fired staffers who made jokes; activists doxxed students who cheered; even foreign governments issued statements of condolence or disdain. The assassination became implosion.

The reaction illustrates what I called, in an earlier essay, the ladder of escalation. Words treated as violence. Violence treated as legitimacy. Cancel culture feeding into martyrdom. Martyrdom feeding into repression. Each rung climbs higher until there is no way down. History is littered with moments where a single flashpoint cascaded into an epochal rupture: Sarajevo in 1914, Kristallnacht in 1938, Dallas in 1963. What begins as an act of brutality quickly becomes a referendum on legitimacy itself.

Why is Kirk’s case so combustible? Because he was not a marginal figure. He was beloved by a sitting president, courted by world leaders, followed by millions. He represented, to his supporters, the silent majority finally speaking. To his enemies, he embodied the weaponization of grievance. That polarity meant his assassination could not be absorbed as a tragic crime; it had to be read as symbol, as trigger, as proof.

And once symbols replace arguments, escalation is automatic. Trump promised a crackdown on enemies. JD Vance vowed institutional purges. Cardinals and pop stars consecrated Kirk as martyr. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories bloomed: Was the shooter Antifa? A Groyper? A false-flag pawn of Ukraine, Israel, Russia? Like radiation after a blast, the speculation itself became toxic fuel.

The lesson is the same one Sarajevo teaches: small charges, aimed at brittle systems, create explosions whose shockwaves last generations. If every offensive post is treated as treason, if every death is weaponized into mandate, then the republic ceases to be a forum and becomes instead a minefield.

The answer, paradoxically, is mercy. Protect the square. Let ugly words be answered with argument, not annihilation. Let crimes be punished through law, not mobs. Otherwise, Kirk’s death will not be remembered as a tragedy but as a trigger — the moment America’s fissile material reached critical mass.

Why protecting even offensive words is the only way to prevent violence

By Chris Abraham for Substack

Every generation rediscovers an old lesson the hard way: words are not bullets, but if you confuse them long enough, bullets eventually appear.

Lately I’ve been struck by how quickly our civic conversations move from irritation to punishment. A clumsy remark or ugly slogan goes viral; the mob mobilizes; firings and cancellations follow. It’s tempting to say “well, that’s accountability,” but the speed and severity of these reactions tell a different story. What we are really doing is rehearsing a very old drama: escalation without a ceiling.

Think about Sarajevo, 1914. A teenager named Gavrilo Princip fires a pistol at Archduke Franz Ferdinand. One act of political violence sets off treaties, obligations, and mobilizations. Within weeks, a continent is on fire. The war that followed didn’t solve the problem — the punitive Treaty of Versailles created conditions for something even worse. What began as one shot became decades of blood.

In our own time, the weapons are reputations, jobs, and platforms. The principle is the same. A careless post spirals into professional ruin. A mob decision substitutes for law. The difference between a town that argues and a town that shoots isn’t etiquette — it’s survival. Civilized societies invest in procedures: courts, ballots, deliberation. Mobs invest in immediacy. And immediacy always tempts violence.

I am not blind to the harm of speech. Racist, vile, or threatening words sting. But the constitutional line exists for a reason. U.S. law is clear: speech only loses protection if it incites imminent lawless action. Everything else, however ugly, is permitted. That boundary protects not just bigots but everyone who dissents from the reigning consensus. Without it, majorities punish minorities on impulse.

Cancel culture, whatever name you prefer, is efficient at punishment but poor at persuasion. It does not change minds; it exiles people. It does not reduce resentment; it deepens it. Every mob firing creates martyrs. Every public shaming fertilizes resentment. And resentment, history shows, is a renewable fuel for conflict.

Even in theology, escalation is a central theme. The Gospel’s “go, and sin no more” joins mercy with responsibility. Mercy without limits collapses into indulgence. Punishment without procedure collapses into vengeance. Both errors invite cycles that consume communities.

Revolutions prove this. Marx promised liberation through rupture. Mao promised purification through violence. Che romanticized guerrilla struggle. What followed was not paradise but repression breeding new radicals, one cycle after another. The dueling codes of earlier centuries made the same point: treat words as violence, and violence answers back.

We flatter ourselves that the modern age is different because our weapons are digital. But doxxing, mass reporting, and professional exile are simply new swords. The old instinct is unchanged.

There is also a dangerous illusion that pauses equal peace. Versailles looked like peace; it was only a ceasefire. Contemporary ceasefires often work the same way: an interval to rearm. Punishment without reconciliation buys time, not resolution.

So what should we do? Protect the square. Keep the civic forum open even to speech you despise. Reserve punishments for true threats, not for dissent. Train institutions to resist the adrenaline of the mob. Encourage citizens to answer ugliness with argument, not annihilation.

This isn’t naivety. It’s strategy. If you want fewer bullets, you must tolerate more words. Ugly words, even dangerous-sounding words, are less corrosive than the torches we light to silence them.

History has already taught us what happens when we confuse offense with violence and treat every slight as existential. Once the crowd is chanting and the torches are lit, the path back down the ladder is hard to find.

How history, law, and theology warn us against turning words into weapons

By Chris Abraham for Substack

Some mornings I surprise myself. I wake with the smell of coffee in the apartment, the building still quiet, and realize I’ve become a proselytizer for an old story. Not long ago, I argued about anchor text or attribution models. Now, I listen to daily Gospel readings on Hallow, sit with Jeff Cavins’ reflections, and quote John and Luke in comment threads. Nobody in my circle would have bet on this turn. Yet here I am, defending something I once mocked: the right of even ugly speech to exist without being carted off by the mob.

The spark for this essay was a viral clip: a student casually saying, “we should bring back political assassinations.” The internet responded as it always does—doxxing, firings, denunciations, and calls for permanent punishment. A remark became a hunt; the hunt became a storm. What we’re rediscovering is that escalation has no natural ceiling.

History offers the bluntest illustration. A single pistol in Sarajevo set in motion alliances and mobilizations in 1914. Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand didn’t just trigger World War I—it created conditions that made World War II almost inevitable. Versailles punished, humiliated, and planted the seeds for something worse. The pattern is clear: brittle systems plus retributive logic equals long violence.

We are running a similar ladder in civic life. A tweet becomes a pile-on; a pile-on becomes a firing; firings become professional exile. The law distinguishes incitement from expression, but private power—employers, platforms, angry publics—enforces with brutal efficiency. Make someone unemployable and many will cheer.

I defend the toleration of ugly speech not because I like ugliness, but because civilization is the art of channeling impulses into procedures. The difference between courts and mobs, between ballots and torches, is not taste. It is survival. A messy forum beats clean annihilation.

That’s why I find myself defending a man—call him a public conservative—whose rhetoric makes even me squirm. Friends call him a paid agitator. But he did something useful: he forced people to decide what they believed about sin and responsibility. The gospels say: “Go, and sin no more.” In today’s civic grammar, calling sin “sin” lands like an unforgivable insult.

Listening to the liturgy daily doesn’t make me devout; it makes me exacting. Mercy without responsibility collapses into indulgence. And politics without procedure collapses into violence. Whether it’s migrants, surges, or social panics, escalation follows predictable dynamics: fear, backlash, and harder law.

Revolutions show the same pattern. Marx, Mao, and Che all preached rupture. History showed feedback loops: repression breeds resentment, resentment breeds new radicalism. Quick purges promise a better world but usually deliver cycles of blood. The duel and the frontier brawl remind us: humans answer offense with violence. Today’s equivalents are doxxing, canceling, and algorithmic ruin. Different weapons, same code.

The temptation is to believe pauses create peace. Versailles was a pause. Interwar years were a pause. Ceasefires often function as rearming intervals. Punishment without reconciliation is not resolution—it is staging ground for the next round.

That’s why my call is simple: protect the square. Let ugly arguments happen in public, and resolve them through law, not purges. Reserve punishment for credible threats, not unpopular speech. Teach platforms and employers to resist mob fury. Absorb offense without turning it into capital. History warns us: moral cleansing campaigns can harden into decades of conflict.

Maybe that’s why I can listen to the Gospel in the morning and still defend free speech at night. Ugly words are less dangerous than the torches we light to silence them. Once the torches are lit, the stairs back down are hard to find.