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I did a write up description of the punishing man in Lepidstadt and the punishing of V&G (although it would be easy enough to replace them with someone else).
The streets are so packed that you have to turn south, and finally leave your wagon in the riverside square, where the Crooked Kin's circus is in full swing. The clowns are juggling and Trollblood the giant man is breathing fire above the heads of the wowing the crowd as the bearded lady sits upon a high throne and is dressed as a mock judge. Below her Lettie and Poppy are dressed as Vorkstag and Grine and Kaleb is taking turns, putting on different outfits to act as the prosecution, defense, and various witnesses. The crowd is eating it up and laughing and barking out suggestions of their own, some not for polite ears. Finally the bearded lady gives out her judgement, and effigies of Vorkstag and Grine are brought out and stuffed in the small punishing man, which is then pulled up by the clowns on a rope, and set alight by a huge breath of fire from Trollblood. The crowd goes wild!
Bells then ring out as the courthouse clock chimes the late hour. The crowds starts to thin though as people make their way towards the great courthouse square.
The square itself is packed tightly and the streets leading away from it as well. Hawkers are working the crowds with cooked bits of meat on sticks, wineskins, and charnel cakes. It seems whenever there is a punishing man burning, the bakers of Lepidstadt bake Charnel cakes, small steamed buns, blackened with charcoal ash, that are filled with sweet marzipan paste men, one for each criminal to be punished.
The punishing man itself rises above the crowd. This giant rough man shaped figure's head stands even with the clock tower of the courthouse. At its foot, there has been pilled a huge pyre of wood, all bone dry and now being soaked in oil. Twelve guards in heavy padded armor, stand in a circle with clubs in hand facing outwards towards the crowd, their backs protected from the soon to burn effigy by massive tower shields.
The crowd is loud and almost beginning to become raucous as the doors to the courthouse balcony open and the three judges step out into the night air. The crowd silences to a hush. At the same moment, the main doors to the courthouse also open and a line of guards forms a gauntlet through which Vorkstag and then Grine are led, kicking and screaming, towards the wooden executioner. Slowly, then rising to a great crescendo, the crowd begins to chant.
"Burn them, punish them, burn them, punish them!" again and again.
Ladders are pushed up against the shoulders of the punishing man and the two are hoisted upon, bound hand and foot, struggling, by a pair of huge city guards. Small sections of the shoulder are removed and Vorkstag to the right and Grine to the left, are shoved into the Punishing man, manacled to the main support beams ungagged, and after replacing the sections, the guards climb down. Vorkstag it seems has stopped struggling and is, in a very unsettling manner, laughing. Grine on the other hand is beggins and pleading, crying, his face full of snot and sweat even in the cold, struggling against the chains.
The three judges now approach the railing and you can barely hear Judge Embreth Daramid call out "Silence", as the Holy sister of Justice forces the pair to be silent.
Judge Daramid continues. "This court has been tasked with bringing justice to the people of Lepidstadt, to seeing that crimes do not go unpunished. For 885 years this court has seen to this justice, ever since the fall of the Tyrant and the return of peace to our troubled lands. So it is that this court has been asked to pass judgement over one Vorkstag and one Grine for unspeakably terrible crimes of fraud and murder." Judge Daramid takes a half step backwards as Judge Kasp Aldaar steps forward.
"The evidence was clear and confessions to the crimes were made. The accused were given fair counsel and the verdict against them was unanimous. Vorkstag was found guilty of murdering 10 people of Morast, guilty of committing arson and thus murdering 14 patients of Karb Isle Sanctuary and Doctor Brada, of blinding the good man karl, and of murdering 9 citizens of Lepidstadt and of impersonating them for fraudulent ends. Grine was found guilty of murdering 10 people of Morast, guilty of assisting in the arson and murder of 14 patients of Karb Isle Sanctuary and Doctor Brada, of blinding the good man Karl, and of assisting in the murder of 9 citizens of Lepidstadt and of gaining fruit from the fraudulent impersonation of them in the months and in some cases years following their deaths at the hands of his associate, Vorkstag." Judge Aldaar then takes a half step backward and Chief Justice Ambrose Khard steps forward.
"For these unspeakable crimes you are to be given the gravest of punishments. In sight of all the people of Lepidstadt you shall be executed. As the fires rise up upon the punishing man so to shall the light of civilization hold back the dark around and within us. The pure fire of justice shall cleanse our lands, shall defend our borders from the chaos that waits in the dark. The licking flames shall cauterize the wound that you have left upon the body of our people. We will listen to your last words with ears of stone. May you be judged and found dammed by Phasrma Misters Vorkstag and Grine."
With the that chief justice steps back from the railing and motions for the pair to be allowed to speak. The crowd holds its silence, even as a pair of torches are lit upon the courthouse stairs and passed along the two lines of guards towards the pyre.
Grine, blubbering and sobbing begins to pray loudly to Norgrober to punish the heathens of Lepidstadt and slay their children in their slip with knives and poisons. Vorkstag continues to laugh unsettlingly. The torches are thrown into the pyre which erupts in flames. The crowd chants "Burn them, punish them!" one last time. And then silence, only the sound of the fire and the punished breaking the warming night air.
Within a minute Grine's prayers turn to screams as the flames lick his body. Vorkstag continues to laugh until with one great scream he is silenced by the building inferno. Soon the pyre is burning so hot that the crowd pushes back and many hide their faces from the heat, some ducking down to escape the pulsing power of the pyre.
The first part to collapse is the left arm, crashing down into the pyre and sending sparks flying into the night air. The crowds begin thinning, each leaving for their homes or to drink in quiet somber groups, the festivities past with the anger and ashes. A few stay to watch, sitting on the courthouse stairs, as the wooden man collapses in on himself and burns deep, embering into the night and morn.
