City
Haunted
Modest prices
Gavel & Gallows
the inn where the judge still gives sentence
The building keeps the courthouse’s proportions: high ceilings, a raised dais that now holds a long scarred table, and tall, narrow windows that throw pale shafts of streetlight over worn floorboards. The air smells of old parchment, boiled cabbage and wax—the records once kept here apparently never left. Conversation hushes when the brass bell on the dais rings; a translucent figure in a black robe sits motionless where the judge used to preside. Patrons eat at communal benches under faded law scrolls pinned to the walls. Lantern light trembles along water-streaked plaster, and the creak of the gallery above sounds eerily like a gavel striking.
A battered iron gavel crossed with a tiny noose, painted on a wooden board beaten by rain; the paint is flaking so the noose looks almost real in some light.
Merrin Locke
Human
Manner
Quirk
Stats
Gavel's Respite
5 spA warming hot porter spiced with clove and a splash of brandy; after drinking you feel unnervingly clear-headed—gain advantage on one Insight check within the next hour as if you 'see the facts'—but the ghost will be more likely to notice you.
Modest (5e lifestyle: about 1 gp a day)
Drovan · barmaid
A stern half-elf who serves ale with a side of side-eye and can read a room’s mood like a docket.
Old Harken · cook
A broad-shouldered ex-mercenary who mashes root vegetables with surprising tenderness and tells short, suspiciously detailed stories of courthouse brawls.
Sima the Clerk
A nervous human scribe from City Hall who comes nightly to copy cases and listens for anything that might implicate her boss, the alderman Varis Koth.
'Judge' Brien
A retired city sergeant who insists the hanging was murder and comes to argue procedure with the ghost until the other patrons get tired and pay his tab.
Nettle
A wiry fence who uses the inn’s anonymity to auction off small stolen items and is seeking a 'clean' magistrate to launder a ledger of deals.
1
Alderman Varis Koth paid a bribe to the late Judge Rennel; Sima the Clerk keeps copies of the transfer in a locked bureau at City Hall.
2
A secret ledger known as the 'Red Charter' was smuggled into the inn years ago and is currently hidden behind a loose stone beneath the dais; Nettle claims he can point to its location—for a price.
3
There is a solicitor named Brend Fourc who once defended the judge and vanished after the hanging; witnesses say he left town with a satchel of papers and a peculiar wax seal shaped like a key.
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