You might think it’s not terribly smart of the Cultist leader here to try turning Byron into a berserker at this moment. We will see later that some of the Cultists managed to flee, but it’s not like a berserker’s axes are easier to escape than a heroic adventurer’s.

I prefer to view it as a terrifying example of Cultist priorities: causing chaos and death now and later is more important than keeping yourself safe. Plus, it might “count” as sacrificing the kids if the maddened Byron hacked them to death. There is no indication the leader recognizes that Byron’s already got the curse, not that it’d matter much.

“The leader.” Maybe we should’ve gone ahead and given that leader and his two hapless underlings names and tags instead of just tagging them all “Cultists” and calling it a day. It would at least have created a little ambiguity about whether he’d survive this encounter or not. As it is, we will see them again, but I’m not sure we’d decided that at this point in time.