Judgement of the Jurors (Erastus [VII] 2nd, 4707 AR)

Courtroom

The flocks of undead ravens were carrionstorms, created when living birds feast on the flesh of the undead. These creatures are drawn to areas haunted by restless spirits and feed both on undead denizens and the flesh of the living. The carrionstorms fought to the death.

Great Hall

Malgrim's zombie also fought until destroyed.

But the hunched figure disappeared after sending Tablark off running away from it. The heroes decided to go after Tablark.

The second time Zemurin moved through this area, the crystal chandelier came crashing down on him.

Baillif's Lodgings

This dark, dank room contained only a trio of couches and two large wooden cabinets.

One of the bailiffs never left. He had become a coffer corpse, a hideous emaciated undead with dirty, scraggly hair and no eyes. He still wore his worm-eaten bailiff’s uniform and was locked in the second cabinet on the wall.

When Jule unlocked the doors burst open, casting wooden shards about the room. A wretched corpse of a man gave a hideous cry as it emerged from the cabinet. The faded blue uniform of a bailiff clung to its bony shoulders in rags and a hand axe protruded from its chest. The corpse’s veins and arteries had been pulled out through jagged gashes in its wrists and shoulders and now dangled like leathery marionette’s strings. A childlike giggle issued forth in the darkness above and the veins floated upward. The bailiff corpse begun to jerk about like a puppet at the whim of some malevolent force. The thing’s gaunt face was eyeless, its two gaping sockets fixed on nothingness as it snarled and lurched forward.

The coffer corpse didn’t move at all until the cabinet was unlocked. It then tried to grab Jule. The coffer corpse fought until destroyed.

A masterwork throwing axe was still stuck in the bailiff’s chest. The first cabinet in this room contained supplies and emergency provisions. Two heavy crossbows rested on a rack with a case of 50 bolts underneath them, and four longswords and four daggers were sheathed inside. Four sets of chainmail and light steel shields hung within as well. Eight potions of cure light wounds rested in a vial rack. Five sets of manacles hung on hooks within as well as two tanglefoot bags and two smokesticks.

Lounge

Fine leather couches and a mahogany table now covered in a thick layer of dust stood undisturbed around this chamber. Portraits lined the walls here with plaques bearing names below, both now obscured with thick cobwebs. A simple iron icebox sat in one corner of the room, a few empty bottles perched precariously atop it.

Clue: A jar of formaldehyde with severed toes floating in it were placed in the icebox.

Vision: This room contained portraits of magistrate-judges. Silman Trabe was up on the wall as well, his name inscribed below him. As soon as Gryxxa entered this chamber, her eyes were drawn to the portrait and she experienced another vision, in greater detail:

“Jarbin Mord. For the brutal and savage slaying of your own wife and six-year-old boy, it is the verdict of this jury, with which I concur wholeheartedly, that you shall hang by your neck until dead. May the gods take mercy on your blackened soul.”

Silence fell over the courtroom in the wake of this pronouncement of doom. The faces of the assembled crowd grew solemn as everyone felt the finality of the sentence, with a few exceptions. Several members of the assembled jury were smirking at each other. The hobgoblin, halfling, gnome, and young woman all seemed both pleased and highly amused by this turn of events.

While the heroes were exploring this room, Halgrak suddenly went missing.

Barrister's Offices

This large area was partitioned into smaller cubicles by thin wooden walls with cracked panes of frosted glass set in them. Old desks littered the area, some overturned and emptied of their contents, others still standing where barristers once toiled under mountains of paperwork. A large window set in the north wall was shattered. Beyond, the sprawling desolation of Beldrin’s Bluff greeted the eye, its tangled weeds and leaning storefronts strewn with bones and rubble. Suddenly, shadows flitted across the frosted glass panes of the partitions as hollow voices whispered blasphemies on the wind.

The heroes realized that the shadows were cast by the swaying branches of a sickly tree growing in the yard outside the courthouse. They also discerned that the whispering voices were nothing more than the wind hissing through the cracks in the frosted panes of glass. A giant leech clung to the ceiling, however. The leech dropped onto the heroes as soon as they detected it.

The leech hid in the shadows on the ceiling. It then dropped onto the heroes and attempted to bite them. The leech fought to the death.

Clues: Alastir Wade’s old desk still held a couple of clues pointing to the masterminding of Jarbin Mord’s mistrial. Several red scarves of Varisian silk were stuffed into one of the drawers of Alastir’s desk. Also, Alastir’s hobby of moneylending was how he got Halgrak Five-Toes to do his bidding, and several debtor’s vouchers with Halgrak’s crude signature on them were in another drawer, along with a buyer’s receipt for a string of 12 fire opals. The heroes found these clues when they searched the desks. After finding the buyer’s receipt, the heroes noticed that the described necklace matched the one that Patrissa wore.

The heroes ran across Halgrak in this area. The half-orc, now sapped of his sanity, sat on the floor idly stitching his pickled toes back on to his right foot with needle and thread. The putrefied digits took root and infected the poor smith with horrid flesh-eating bacteria that killed the half-orc in minutes.

Belfry

A salt wind blew through this cold, openair tower. An old rust-covered bell hung from rotting wood beams above, obstinate against the wind’s caress. The tower offered a rare vantage of Beldrin’s Bluff’s desolate environs. To the south, the cliff ended abruptly mid-block, a few sagging inns and shops still desperately clutching the edge of the rock. The old Absalom arboretum stood to the west, now an overgrown tangle of wild twisted trees, slithering vines, rank blankets of pulsating mold, and dark recesses from where alien eyes peeked and then vanished only to appear elsewhere. The area of the ward beyond the arboretum was flooded with the sea’s backwash and old sewer water, and many of the buildings there had surrendered to water-rot. The sea churned in the distance and one lonesome gull cried against the night.