Café de Nuit

Except she's not a head in Avernus, afaik. The bracer was said to be a magic item that combined a Magic Jar effect with traits belonging to a lich's phylactery, which allowed for her soul to be 'downloaded' into clones of her made by Azalin and kept in stasis until they became necessary.
Let's face it, a lich with Azalin's power and access to an Imp familiar could have collected sufficient cells from S's home or on other occasions to clone her a thousand times over. He didn't need to lop off any body parts.

Rock is right, and he didn't need to lop off any PC body parts in From the Shadows....but did it more for effect. People get so caught up in Azalin's genius they forget that he is also a creep.

In fact, Azalin's role in the horror genre is probably that of ultra-genius with the power to manipulate lesser creatures. His undead status adds to his detachment, but he already felt like he was above people when he was still in Knurl. Strahd has always been the face of the setting, but Azalin is really the authors' darling, a sort of anti-Elminster who is at the center of every plot. His human nature is downplayed a bit too much, IMO, and Irik is a great way to bring that all rushing back, even if you want to do it before 775 BC.

I felt this was the best place for me to ask this question. Based off of the multiple endings of Bleak House, does one seem to be more "certain" with the way we saw things in VRGttM? I always assumed (since I wasn't able to play through it) that the "canon" ending would have been The Satchel, with Van Richten getting younger, and guided towards his destiny of aiding in the ToUD. Are there indicators elsewhere that point to which one was decided as the true ending of Bleak House?