Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury (Erastus [VII] 2nd, 4707 AR)

The skeleton attacked the heroes. The skeletal wolf hound fought to the bitter end (again).

The judge kept a potion of lesser restoration and a potion of bear’s endurance in two flasks in his desk. He also kept a potion of cure moderate wounds in a dusty glass flask. The old judge’s gilded masterwork dagger rested in an ornate emerald-and-silver sheath in his desk (the sheath was worth 50 gp).

Clue: The heroes noticed the spiked chain belt Malgrim was wearing was remarkably similar to the rusted one around the Judge’s neck. The judge had also begun drafting a letter to Absalom’s higher court concerning Mord’s trial, but he didn’t get far. His final written testament contained only the following:

Most Honorable High Magistrate Archamais Mazer,

It is with great remorse that I script this. The chaos of our time has eaten many innocent souls, but this one was lost not to catastrophe, but to an evil deed of injustice. Lies have killed a man this morning and I for my part did nothing to stop it. My esteemed colleague Silman Trabe knowingly sent an innocent man to the gallows, as I stood by silently. I only hope that Jarbin Mord’s soul may find some rest if the truth comes out

When confronted with evidence of Mord’s innocence, Patrissa fell to her knees in a display of anguished penitence, uttering, “That poor man. We killed that poor, poor man!” She then insisted she made a genuine error in convicting him. She also did her best to aid the heroes in ferreting out the true conspirators behind “this evil frame-up!”

The heroes continued their exploration of the courthouse.

Public Stocks

This open-air chamber resembled a large cage. On the other side of the bars lay a dug-up potter’s field where the bodies of criminals rested in unmarked graves. Beyond, the wind-blasted desolation of Beldrin’s Bluff beckoned. Cracked buildings slumped against each other in the distance, many already collapsed into piles of rubble. Shadows moved between the old stores and danced in the broken maws of their cracked front windows. For a second, a few pairs of red eyes peeked out from the inky black, only to be swallowed up again. The cage was empty save a stocks, where painfully hobbled criminals wallowed to the joy of onlookers, who spent their own frustrations by hurling rotting fruit at the accused. Suddenly, a moaning issued forth from the dug-up graves and bloated rotting fingers reached up and clawed toward freedom. Six corpses, nooses draped about their necks, pushed to their feet and lumbered toward the bars, picking up stones as they came.

The heroes closed and jammed the door before the zombies had a chance to attack.

The Gallows

Gloom reigned here, and the room scorned light. An unnatural cold pervaded this place, cutting right through cloth and flesh. A raised gallows with a noose hanging from its crossbeam stood sentinel in this room where hundreds of souls died either with a quick snap of the neck or jerking freakishly. The air in this dark chamber was absolutely still and unusually cold. The silence suddenly broke when a single creak echoed from the rickety stairs of the gallows. Another followed, and dust shook from the steps as a figure came into view. His hands were bound before him and he lurched with a palsied gait as he came. His head was shrouded in a black bag, hanging impossibly at a right angle off his mangled neck. A sound like an old door hinge or leather dragged over wood curdled from his shredded throat and he reached for you with arched fingers curled into white claws.

The figure employed his maddening touch on the heroes and then animated the hangman’s noose on the gallows trying unsuccessfully to strangle Aranthor. He disengaged with the party after a while, chasing Patrissa. Patrissa and Killian fled in terror at the sight of the ghost.

Vision: As soon as the heroes entered this chamber, Zemurin experienced his vision again, with even more detail, as he beheld the gallows just before Mord made his appearance.

Again Zemurin found himself swinging on the end of a rope as a crowd of onlookers cheered and jeered. Their heartless laughter washed over him and left him drowning in a sea of hate, as he desperately tried to draw breath with lungs that no longer worked. As darkness washed over him, he noticed one man in particular smiling at him with a satisfied expression. He was a handsome young man with blond locks and piercing blue eyes, and he fingered a long thin scar, freshly healed, on his lower left cheek.

Jury Tampering

The ghost meanwhile turned his fury on the spellcasting Patrissa. Again, she was separated from the heroes (even though they had become vigilant, the ghost made an appearance and chased her off into one area, the door slamming shut and locking behind them). When her mind cracked under the ghost's power she gutted herself with her dagger and pulled out her intestines. The heroes found her playing in a puddle of her own innards, laughing madly before she died horribly.

Sveth was Mord’s only friend in life. He hid among the jurors, impersonating one.

Killian Paltreth was actually a man named Sveth, Jarbin Mord’s only friend when his death-hour came. Sveth attended the grim reunion, in disguise as Killian Paltreth, one of the jurors. When the heroes picked up lots of clues, they figured out “Killian” was not who he pretended to be, and they learned Sveth’s true identity, his connection to the ghost, and the role he played.

Sveth’s disguise was well honed. He even managed to pull off Paltreth’s paunch well enough with a padded girdle and squinted through a crystal monocle. Out of character, Sveth was a thin spidery man who stooped. His gray-black eyes were dull and grim, although he affected a jocular inebriated sparkle as Killian.

Sveth tried to get some distance between himself and the heroes. When cornered, he drew his concealed dagger. Sveth unsuccessfully tried to flee.

While the heroes were interrogating Sveth, Patrissa’s corpse (and her slippery pile of insides) went missing, but showed up again in the Jury Deliberation Room when Gryxxa went looking for it, although now the spellcaster was transformed into a disgusting undead. All the jurors killed so far were arranged as grim corpse-puppets whose strings were Patrissa’s wriggling entrails.

There was movement in the dark. Wet squishing noises heralded the sight of Patrissa’s bloated corpse, her face now a mask of death. The entrails she pulled from her own body writhed and snaked with a life of their own. Patrissa’s guts flopped about the chamber. Sticky tendrils worked their way along the tabletop, while others slithered up the backs of chairs. The rest of the dead jurors were here as well, seated around the table. Strips of Patrissa’s innards had wormed their way into the back of the dead juror’s necks or into the base of their spines, the bodies now jerking about wildly in their chairs. Patrissa’s face remained impassively dead, but one serpentine rope of intestine reared up to regard Gryxxa ominously, and then the bodies rose from their chairs and stumbled toward her, as the mass of writhing innards coiled to spring their way as well.