For QAL ASHEN.
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The Arbiter serves double-purpose as priest and judge.
Often, they will be called on to resolve stupid disputes, like….
A man claims his neighbour is keeping a monster from outside the wall as a pet. The neighbour insists it’s a perfectly legal chimaera sewn together from dead bodies, but won’t let you have a look at the damn thing.
A citizen is using the Labouring Dead to build a five-story statue of himself in a very obvious location - atop a hill or in the middle of a thoroughfare. This is technically allowed, but literally everyone hates it.
A man claims he saw a bas-relief of a feathered leopard with red candles at its feet in his neighbour’s home shrine. Whatever that is, the claimant alleges, it’s not good wholesome worship of the god of death.
A spiteful neighbour has erected a wall on top of their home to ruin another family’s view. They demand you punish the spiteful neighbour or they will knock the wall down. And possibly also knock the neighbour down.
You have to solve a murder. Normally, this is very easy, but the murderer(s) did the smart thing and decapitated the corpse, meaning you can’t just ask him who killed him.
A burly ascetic wants to know about the end of the world, and won't leave you alone until she's satisfied with the rigour of your sources. She's read everything you've read and then some.
A retired warrior of significant skill is in a steadily escalating argument with someone who you are fairly certain could not run the length of themselves. The easily-murdered youth is not backing down.
Two citizens following the Redeemer Cult have been accused of a murder and seized by the citizens of the District. They insist that they would never do such a thing - the first tenet of the Redeemers being Never Kill, and all.
A magus has become increasingly violent and erratic over the last few months. The people of the district suspect he has somehow become infected with the Curse, and is slowly turning into a monster right in the middle of the district, but fear him too much to take action.
On the edge of your District, a citizen has put an arrow through her neighbour’s shoulder. Two complications: This is after months of trespassing disputes and the moving of boundary stones, and the shot citizen lives in the next district over, meaning you’re going to have to agree with another Arbiter on the subject.
A citizen comes to you complaining that one of her neighbours is pushy, dishonest and probably plotting against the City. The neighbour is a real dick, but he's also a Part-Cursed. Is the original claimant exaggerating his negatives out of simple racism?
A citizen is desperately trying to convince you that they foresaw your doom in the stars. They’re asking you to do strange things like wear a box on your head to catch falling turtles, or even to move District. They seem well intentioned…?
A citizen and her twin sister are both suspects in the case of a fellow Arbiter affected by an odd spell. The twins are impossible to distinguish.
A man and his wife call upon you to resolve a haunting in their walled-garden - watch out, the thorns are poisonous.
A citizen has come to you to admit that they killed another citizen during a quarrel. They ask for leniency, as it was an accident.
Someone has released around 40 pigs into a neighbours garden, where they have eaten all of their rare flowers and generally just shat on everything. The pig-perpetrator maintains a smirking innocence.
A wall-guard claims he is a descendant of Nergui the Spider, and seeks the privileges this would afford him. His claim is shaky, and the House of Nergui will reward you for sweeping the upstart under the rug.
A member of an old general-dynasty alleges that someone living on the other side of the city is using the design of her banner. This is a serious offence, but the offender isn’t in your District.
A man and his soon-to-be-husband ask you what is the most pious but unique kind of marriage ceremony they can have. They're very earnest.
A man is accused of murder for supplying the wrong sacred herbs to a neighbor who was attempting the ritual of inhumation, resulting in him burying himself alive.
A woman is at her wit’s end with the constant arguing of her wife and her husband about issues involving their shared home, and the tunnels under it. She wants you to find her a solution which doesn’t involve faking her own death. Nobody mentioned faking her death, she brought it up.
A man is absolutely certain that his father swallowed a precious family heirloom just before his death, to spite him. He asks that you help him track down his father’s embalmed corpse among the masses of Labouring Dead.
A woman with neighbours on all sides of her home has commanded the dead to start tanning hides in her garden. Apparently, she’s unbothered by the smell. She’s perfectly within her rights to do this, but the neighbours are seething.
A woman in your District has been accused of growing poisonous plants infected with the Curse. Her house was searched, and no plants found, but now the people who accused her have fallen violently ill.
A tunnel from earlier days has opened up in someone’s dining-hall. Screaming can be heard from within. Obviously, this has to be explored, in case it is dangerous, but the person in question says it’s their tunnel and they’ll do what they want with it. The Order of Vigilants are pressuring you to kick the idiot out of their house until it can be established that the tunnel doesn’t contain something heinous, but, this is technically illegal.
A seer’s bag of casting lots has been stolen by someone, who has found they do nothing to read the future for him. He is now demanding you punish the seer for dishonesty.
A respected and powerful man with a very big family - and, also, it must be said, very big muscles - has paid no tithe to the ruler of the district in the last eight years. He finds this funny, and would like to know what the fuck you’re going to do about it?
A woman has wounded her wife's brother in a duel. Both participants insist it was a fairly stated duel, but the woman whose brother was wounded disagrees. Both participants are confused that she is effectively campaigning for them to be punished.
A man and his husband are undergoing a severely acrimonious divorce and call on you to divide their shared possessions fairly.
A man who has converted his garden on a hill into a “hobby mine”, in his words, has unearthed a set of adamant swords from under his garden. A powerful local is claiming that, since his ancestor had such a set, they are reasonably his by inheritance, while the miner claims salvage.
A horse stands accused of murder.
A man has recovered a haul of copper from an expedition beyond the wall. Or, so he says, but the people who have traded for it are yet to see a scrap. That, and he's being rude to their envoys.
A woman has holed herself up in her home and is firing arrows at anyone that approaches. Why?
A woman and her husband have disowned their only son for no obvious reason. He demands that this injustice be rectified.
A woman and her wife have dug up a speaking metal box from a hinterland sepulchre just covered in warnings written in Scapular. Technically, they couldn’t read the warnings, so are they at fault? For a further complication, they have befriended the box.
A woman is conducting rituals to contact a comet. This is both heretical and an awful idea, but surely she won’t succeed?
An insomniac is absolutely certain you hold the cure to his recurring sleeplessness.
Someone is burning down the houses of particularly cruel or selfish citizens. The people of your district are pointing fingers at a young Firebrand cultist who recently arrived. He denies the accusations and there is no good evidence. The people want someone punished, soon.
The garden of a notoriously turbulent local is intruding onto the property of their neighbour. Again.
You are called to arbitrate on a mundane property boundary dispute, except both sides of the dispute are well-known and well-respected Arbiters, one of your Cult and the other not.
A pair of wounded wall-guards who live in your district cannot agree if they proposed to duel ‘til first blood or first injury. One has lost three fingers on his dominant hand.
Two brothers are having a severe argument over how the land of their third, deceased brother should be used. A grazing field for cows or an orchard? It is clear to all onlookers that the state of the field is just the latest manifestation of a long series of arguments.
Some people in your district are sick of the constant public drunkenness of a magus living nearby. They have bravely asked you to deal with it.
Your people suspect a monster has somehow come to inhabit an abandoned house in the district. If there is one, it must be unusually subtle.
A returning explorer claims to be the long-lost scion of a wealthy family, who has survived the last 14 years in the wilderness. Their former physician confirms that he has all the same birthmarks as the missing scion, but the family wants him declared a fraud.
A man claims he is being haunted by Namtaru the Ghoul.
A Denizen of the Underworld has appeared in the district, demanding you render unto it ten innocent lives or face the wrath of a Judge of the Dead.
An Islander has returned from spending half of the year thanklessly ordering the dead around a saltern to find somebody living in his house. He is absolutely apoplectic. The person living in his house had theirs burned down by an angry neighbour in the district they came from, and the Arbiter there ruled in the arsonist’s favour.
One citizen has unearthed something that certainly seems to be an important religious relic from the days of the First Monarch… from her neighbour’s garden. The Argents in the city centre are demanding it, as is the neighbour.
One of your fellow Arbiters has made an absolutely dogshit call on one of the above issues. Just absolutely hilariously bad. Do you correct them, or do you maintain the idea that Arbiters are never wrong?
For maximal chaos, roll two and combine.
Thanks to Phlox, deus ex parabola and Archon for the ideas, which helped in assembling this’n.
