The party assembled the following morning and took up their places in the the great hall of Hannsport. The hall was filled to capacity with villagers, who wished to see the coming spectacle.
Judge Magda Vyrlich entered and took her seat. She promptly read her verdict- Gregor was guilty of trespass and theft, but because of the uncertain circumstances surrounding his actions, his sentence was for time already served in the village jail. The crowd rumbled its displeasure with the verdict, and Magda gaveled the chamber back to silence.
She then read her verdict as to murder-- not guilty!
As she tried to explain that the defense had proved conclusively that Gregor was not a murderer, the feverish crowd began to erupt. They howled for blood, the verdict be damned!
As Constable Dreng summoned his bailiffs to hold back the crowd, Sir Donaghast and Professor Malort noticed that the prosecuting counsel's eyes began to glow ever so slightly with an ominous red light.
She pointed at the accused and announced in a great voice- "Behold! Even now the guilty wretch turns his hatred upon you!"
Professor Malort, who had been sitting almost directly behind the prosecutor's table, immediately recognized that the speaker had just released a spell trigger. With that, Gregor's form shifted to that of an enormous werewolf! Gregor-Wolf began attacking the crowd, singling out Calgrot, who looked like a delectable little morsel! The panicked villagers pressed toward the doors, trampling each other in terrored frenzy as they tried to escape. At that moment, and unbeknownst to the rest of the party, Calgrot sent out a mental summons to one who had been expecting trouble-- in response he heard the mental reply-- I am coming!
In the ensuing mayhem, the party failed to notice the visiting barrister slip away.
As the party tried to defeat the lycanthrope, they heard the prosecutor's disembodied voice speaking in the lovari tongue only Sir Donaghast could understand.
"You are a great disappointment, my son!" she cursed at him.
She then reappeared, but not in the guise she had been wearing for the last several days--
A Dream Hag!!
The party quickly engaged the fiendish creature, although they found themselves unarmored, and their weapons checked with the bailiffs at the front doors, with a wild, crushing horde between them and those very same weapons.
The party managed to slay the raging wolf-beast before turning their full attention to the hag. As he fell, the fiendish witch howled in delight, screeching at them -
"It is done! The blood of the innocent is spilt and the die is cast!"
The battle raged on and on, and was the longest contest the party had fought during their entire time together. Professor Malort used his crafty magic to slowly whittle away the hag's defenses, while Brother Yorick struck at her with divine wrath. The others did the best they could with the few small arms they had with them. In the course of events, the hall was set on fire by a fireball spell unleashed by the fiend, causing further panic amongst the fleeing villagers!
In the nick of time, the great, ornate stained glass window that hung high over the judge's bench burst open, revealing figure in a battered and rusted out suit of full plate armor. The newcomer quickly flew at the hovering hag and wrapped her in a mighty bearhug, slowly drawing her back towards the blasted out window.
The Rusted Knight
As it withdrew, the party could hear (as much in their minds as with their ears) the armored one say "Flee this place! Get as many villagers out as you can! There is not much time!"
The party helped clear out the last of the villagers. They noticed the hag slowly fading from sight as she tried to escape into the aether, only now being held in the material plane by the shear force of will of the rusted knight.
At the last, the armored figure burst in a great explosion of psychic energy. So great was the unleashed force, the entire rear of the village hall was blown outward. Sir Donaghast and Brother Yorick (the only two remaining in the hall) were thrown backward across the hall by the kinetic blast.
Only Calgrot seemed to have received a boon from the wave of psionic energy-- after many years, it was as if a filmy veil had been lifted, and the world was once again in sharp focus. The blast had knocked some sense into him!
As the rest of the party recovered their feet, they rushed up to the smoking crater that had formed where the judge's dais had once stood. Inside the gaping hole, two broken forms lay nearly motionless-- the mortally wounded hag, and the ruined scraps of armor of the rusted knight.
As the hag slowly melted away into vile, smoking tar, she uttered one parting promise to the party in the lovari tongue- "This is only the beginning!"
The other figure reached out to them also, although it's rapidly fading voice was directed at Calgrot--
We are now even, my friend. I hope that I have made right the unfortunate accident from so long ago. Even though my time in this world is spent, I do not die alone, and so I have a favor to ask of you-- take my place and raise my only offspring as if it was your own...
Bellwether
Not knowing exactly what Bellwether the Mimic meant, the gnome noticed the bag of holding Bellwether had given him looking up at him. When Calgrot looked down at it to study it more closely, the bag winked back at him.
Hi. My name is Fairwether. Are you my momma?
Fairwether
Some time thereafter, as the party traveled to its next adventure, the diminutive rogue explained that Bellwether the Mimic had been the 'magically warded chest' that had zapped him when he was a much younger, foolishly curious gnome. He learned this when the carnival came to Hannsport- as Calgrot passed the wagons of the travelling performers, he felt a presence cross his mind. Being drawn to the source, he met the Mimic properly for the first time, and Bellwether explained all that had happened to it in the many years since the gnome had accidentally woken him from a slumber and been inadvertantly zapped by the Mimic's reflexive psionic power.
Bellwether was unique among his kind, being himself very curious and possessed of odd and powerful psychic abilities. The 'wizard' who ran the side show, Silas (who was now the carnival master) had been his partner, and the two of them had traveled about performing parlor tricks using the Mimic's psychic abilities. Over time, they slowly accumulated the true outcast and misfits of Viborg, and Bellwether's Travelling Exposition and Faire had been born.
When Gregor was accused of serious crimes, and the village turned against them, Bellwether met again with the gnome and asked him if he could keep Bellwether in the loop, as the Mimic desperately wished to protect the all members of his adopted family. He gave the rogue a ' specially enchanted bag of holding' to allow him to communicate with the Mimic over long distances (not knowing at the time that it was actually Fairwether doing the communicating).
When summoned by the gnome, the Mimic crawled into the old rusty suit of plate armor that was one of the many decorations in its travelling wagon, and used its psionic powers to animate the suit and literally fly to the village hall.
Bellwether's true form
Speaking of the next adventure, as they milled about the rubble and ruin, a large, red-breasted falcon alighted near Magda Vyrlich. Recognizing the bird, the now retired judge moved up as if to speak to it. Some means of empathic communication had taken place, as Magda nodded, and the raptor took flight back in the direction from which it had come.
"It would seem there is no rest for the weary, my friends," she said to the party, a grim look crossing over her features. "Valinost has been over-run, and an orc horde may even now as we speak be marching upon Gorum's Vale..."
