Judges

Overview

The Judges are the masked judges of the Silent Court, the chamber where words have weight, a lie sits like a stone in the mouth, and a promise forges a chain. They never speak. They weigh what others say on their scales, and they judge, and in the Court their judgement is carried out by the weight of words itself.

Appearance

A Judge stands taller than any visitor, a head or more above a tall Human, in heavy robes of black or deep grey that fall to the polished floor and hide the shape beneath. Its face is a mask of polished obsidian, smooth and featureless but for two narrow slits, and it reflects the speaker as the floor does. In one hand it carries a pair of scales of dark metal, and their pans tilt with every word said in the room. It moves with slow, measured steps that make no sound, and the air near it smells of old parchment and iron.

Habitat and Range

They stand or sit on the dais and along the walls of the Court, and are always there, as many as the Court has. A Court holds a few; the monastery within one such Court lives alongside its Judges.

Behaviour and Temperament

Judges observe. They value precision, restraint, and the sanctity of the oath, and they are neutral and impartial to a degree no lord, elder, or priest ever is. They regard every outsider as a defendant awaiting judgement. They do not interrogate; they wait, and they weigh. When the weighing is done, they may sentence: to carry a burden until a lie is confessed, to fulfil a broken promise, and in the worst cases to servitude or to be merged with the Court's architecture.

Abilities

Their scales weigh every word for its truth and intent, and the Judges read the weighing at once. They draw sustenance from the weight of the words they judge, and they endure as long as the Court. Their sentences are binding in the Court's law.

Life Cycle

What the Judges were before the Court is unknown, and whether they were anything. Their masks have never been seen removed.

Uses and Dangers

People come to the Court for justice, to swear an oath that cannot be broken, or to confess, and the Judges are the reason those things hold. Their danger is to anyone who comes with lies to carry.

Lore and Belief

Many believe the Judges are a god's officers, and some faiths of justice name them so. Some hold that the Judges once spoke and fell silent when they heard a perfect lie. The monks of the Court say only that the Judges have never needed to speak.

Feuding houses have dragged their enemies to a Court in chains to be judged, and it is told of one warlord who brought a rival there to be crushed by his lies and was sentenced himself, to carry his own until he confessed them; he is said to be carrying them still.

Where It Appears

• The Silent Court
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Resonant Zones