Dumbgeons and Dragons will begin in a moment.
In the town of Vintersmouth, bureaucratic crimes are considered especially tedious.
The municipal government employs two types of clerics, those who heal the wounded and those
who file the paperwork. When Kavlaran Goldweave, a half-elf cleric and auditor from Kingstown,
discovered discrepancies in the mayor's ledgers, he did what any lawful good citizen
would do. He reported it. Now he stands accused of forgery and tampering with evidence.
The problem? Kavlaran once got locked in a supply closet for six hours. He regularly
files documents in alphabetical order by the wrong letter. And last week, accidentally,
he laminated his own hand. These are his stories.
Dumbgeons and Dragons is a D&D actual play podcast, and I'm your dungeon master Russ More,
he, him. Also with me today is Amy More as Alydin, she, her.
I wonder how these people fix their problems. Carla Maxted as Bonwyn Everbane, she, her.
We're making it Canadian and everyone has to wear a robe. Sorry.
Tom Laird as Kavlaran Goldweave, he, him. Oh, okay. Great. That's not upsetting in any
way, shape, or form. And Kyle Claset as Bizard the Wizard, he, him.
Oh, dope. Now I know what we're going to do. With special guest this week from Greetings
Adventurers, Tim Lanning, he, him. If the clock is broken, just do it.
A quick shout out to our Patreon family who make this show possible and get 130 or more
exclusive episodes for their trouble. That's like a lot of D&D that you can get right
now. Patreon.com slash dumb dragon cast. We hope to see you over there and now fuck it. Let's play.
Kavlaran, Thurston, Lawfulgood, Benson Benson, and your entire team are led into the court.
The courtroom, very much like a lot of things at City Hall, is very well put together.
Very ornate and intricate carvings of judges come and gone. There are tapestries up on the wall.
The jury bench is empty as you enter. There are a few people in the audience.
It's an audience for a gallery. A gallery. That's what it is. Yes.
That sounds more accurate than the crowd. The spectators. The fans. The pit of fans.
The running man. There's signs. Let Kav go. He didn't do it. Down with the auditor.
That sort of thing. I'm just a fan of law and procedure. I'm just here.
Doddy McBottlebow, the local town gossip or newspaper reporter, is also there. As you enter,
Kav and your lawyer are led into the defense side of the courtroom. As you get settled in,
a couple moments later, you hear the doors open again and in comes the prosecution.
Crocker Shaw. Thurston, you recognize this guy as he enters. He is unnaturally tall. He's a
tiefling and has horns that curve sharply backwards. His skin is smooth and pale gray,
like the underside of a storm cloud, and seems to absorb torchlight rather than reflect it.
He's got no visible scars, no blemishes, no tattoos. Nothing is out of place.
Fuck. Smash.
He's wearing an impeccably tailored high collared black robe. Not the city's legal
robes, but a sleeker version stitched with subtle infernal motifs along the sleeves and hem.
He has a silver cravat and is always perfect. His gloves always spotless.
He enters with four legal aides behind him who are carrying his tails on his outfit,
and he sees you, Thurston, as you kind of look back over your shoulder and he gives a
sly smile and nod as he goes and sits at the prosecution.
Fuck you.
It's a pleasure to see you, Thurston.
Yeah, whatever.
Uh, so that's the Croker guy?
Yeah, Shaw. We don't like Shaw. He's, uh, unnaturally good at this stuff.
Oh, okay. Great. That's not upsetting in any way, shape, or form.
Oh, yeah. The judge we got, great news. Shaw, probably four to nine times worse news.
Oh, okay.
He's really good, but he's bad. So he would not defend you because you're innocent,
if that makes sense.
Russ, are we, the rest of us outside, because we are to be waiting to be called as witnesses?
No, you're in the gallery.
All right. Things are loosey goosey here in Vindersmith. Who knows how the legal system works.
Yeah. When, when you're like, what am I wearing? I was like, oh crap,
am I going to have to do like robes and powder wig? I don't know what the lore is.
I panicked.
You did a great job.
We're making it up right now.
We're making it Canadian and everyone has to wear a robe. Sorry.
I'm not from Canada.
Welcome to the party.
They keep rubbing it in.
You really hit that R nicely right there.
Smash some Dunkin' Donuts and you guys can have that other stuff.
That maple syrup.
Yeah.
Jimothy Hortons.
You see Shaw neatly stacking, and all of his legal aides, neatly stacking papers
and reviewing everything as the jurors door opens.
And in walk 12 individuals who you recognize from around town,
but none of you have a very personal relationship with them.
After they all come in and are seated there, a couple of them are looking
skeptically towards Kavlaran.
Juror number eight has a look about them that says that they're,
they're trying to get a read of you.
And juror number three is, there's something Kavlaran,
you catch something off about the way that they're looking at you.
But then they quickly look away once you kind of lock eyes.
After a moment, the, the guard comes in and says,
Judge Sterling Delacour now presides.
Judge Delacour enters from their chambers.
And they are statuesque in both presence and poise,
a half elf of indeterminate age.
She carries herself with the composure of someone who spent decades
watching powerful people unravel in front of her and not blinking once.
Her olive skin tones, her features, sharply defined,
high cheekbones, angular jaw, eyes the color of polished amber.
Always watching and measuring.
Smash.
Silver streaked black hair is coiled tightly into a crown braid
held in place by a modest iron circlet.
The only ornament she appears to be wearing.
She's wearing a deep Navy judicial coat, crisp and minimal,
adorned with only the insignia of the Court of Public Integrity on one shoulder.
A silver scale broken on one side mended with gold
and beneath hints of well-maintained chain beneath her robe
suggests she's no stranger to the idea of proceedings turning violent.
Oh, dope.
Now I know what we're going to do.
I'm sorry.
There's there.
It's scales.
One side is broken, but mended with gold.
It's like I wonder how these people fix their problems, right?
The way they describe it, it's not that big.
It makes sense the way they say it.
She speaks with a very low and resonant tone,
cutting through noise without needing to rise.
And when she speaks, it feels like the room has agreed to listen.
And she looks over to the defense and then to the prosecution
and sits down behind her bench looking out at the gallery.
Look at us using law terms.
It looks to you, Thurston, and to Kroker Shaw
and calls you up to her bench.
Go up?
Are the two of you prepared?
Oh, absolutely.
And have your list of witnesses?
Kroker pauses for a moment and, as didn't want to interrupt,
we are prepared for today and things will go as expected, I think.
Mm.
Whatever.
He turns to you and puts out his hand for a handshake, Thurston.
I'll shake it quickly and not very spiritedly.
Best of luck.
Thanks, Shaw.
I appreciate it.
And I look over to the judge and I do one of those, this guy, this guy.
She looks up as she's writing some notes down on a page and
politely says, Mm-hmm.
After a brief moment, everybody settles in their place.
And now for opening statements.
We'll start with the prosecution.
And Kroker Shaw stands up and lightly clears his throat and walks over to the jury.
He says, Members of the jury, good morning.
In a moment, the defense will tell you this is a misunderstanding,
a clerical mix-up, a matter of numbers, just decimal points and ink.
He paces slowly in front of the jury's box, hands behind his back.
But Vintersmouth knows better.
We've seen what happens when discontent is fed falsehood,
when civil servants reach too far cloaking ambition in the costume of integrity.
He walks slowly during this across to the defense and stands by you, Kavlaran,
gives a courteous nod.
There's no kindness in his eyes.
The accused did not merely file a report.
He fabricated entire documents.
He conjured a conspiracy from shadows and scribbles and then, as if by design,
vanished for three weeks while panic spread.
Turning back to the jury.
The ledgers he submitted to Kingstown altered.
The recipients listed widely misrepresented.
The totals inflated.
We will show you copies, we will show you the originals,
and we will present expert testimony confirming the tampering.
He now moves towards the judge's bench, eyes on Delacour.
This case isn't about politics.
It's about accountability.
It's about the stability of our institutions.
When we allow fiction to masquerade as fact, we weaken the foundation of law itself.
This trial is not vengeance.
It is correction.
And when the facts lie bare before you, I trust
you will do what is necessary to protect the city from those who would torch it
in the name of truth.
He offers the faintest practiced bow.
The crown rests for now.
He looks to you, Thurston, as he goes and sits back down.
I will take a quick shaky drink of water, check a note or three,
and then stand up and kind of stand in front of the jurors and jury.
Fine people of Venturesmouth, judge, everyone out in the gallery here,
thank you for being part of the process.
It means a lot to all of us.
You're going to hear a lot of fancy words thrown out.
You're going to hear a lot of misdirection, but I want to kind of focus our attention today
on the simple fact that this is a setup on my client.
We, as the defense, do not need to solve the ledgers.
We do not need to prove why they were cooked.
We do not need to prove who did it.
I am here to simply say my client didn't do it, and I will provide expert witnesses
of our own that will show that my client wouldn't do it, wasn't capable of doing it,
and tried to do the right thing as they found the, I guess we will say,
inconvenient information that was passed to their office.
We have experts that will testify that, and I look kind of pointedly at the judge
and then at Shaw, the only piece of evidence we were allowed to see, not the originals,
but this exhibit, I'm just going to call it A because that's all we have,
because that's all the crown deigned to let us have, was doctored, magically.
The crown alleges that my client, through some conspiracy theory, did this to stir up unrest.
There was a political agenda here.
Again, simply put, we will show that there is no agenda because that was not something
that happened. It's going to be hard for us to prove a few negatives, but honestly,
the crown's story here is a little too cut and dry for my taste, and if anyone in
Venter's mouth has been through any proceedings such as this before, we know this wouldn't be
the first time. So thank you for your time, and just remember, truth is usually simpler
than fiction. As you go to sit back down, you hear just under his breath, Croker says,
playing the incompetence trick again. If the clock is broken, just do it.
Now's the time.
Exactly. Now's the time for the middle.
The middle, where we talk about how Peggy is a nickname for Margaret and how that makes no sense.
Our usual middle topic, yeah?
Yeah, of course.
And not Pegafred.
Which you would know if you joined us over on Patreon as a supporting producer in the
live shows. Not the live shows, the backstage shows.
Cut it in, it's funny, but that's right, still flows.
You know, it works.
They're live.
All through September, did you hear? Might not have, because we've missed a couple,
but did you hear that we're having a big sale over on Patreon throughout September,
where you can get 50% off your first month?
Okay, that's pretty good.
Pretty good deal. You can check out a lot of bonus content in a month.
So not only do you get one week free, then you get 50% off your first month,
that's like three weeks free.
Three weeks free.
If you do them, it's a lot of free.
That's math.
So basically, half off your first month, but really it's the full month.
We'll round it up.
I mean, just like nonstop, that's 720, on average, a 30-day month, 720 hours of content.
If you just stay up that entire month, that is called bang for your buck.
I don't know if y'all do this.
Patreon.com slash dumb dragon cast.
More bang for your buck.
That's what we're trying to bring you.
But as you listen to this episode, we are back in release,
and the release schedule will be more normal moving forward because summer's over, baby.
That's right.
Not to the schedule becoming normal, but to summer being over.
Summer being over.
We wish for more summer.
Happy to get back to regularly seeing my best friends.
Absolutely.
Speaking of best friends, also when you become a patron,
you wind up getting a show dedicated to you or an episode dedicated to you.
That's true.
That does happen every time.
It happens every time, and we are always prepared for it.
So if you think we aren't, I'm going to take a moment.
Can I take a moment right here right now to let our patrons know that you think we may
not be prepared for it, but I believe we absolutely are on every single occasion.
There's not a doubt in my mind.
We have always figured out who that person is.
And Russ, you're going to tell us right now who that person is just to show everybody.
Just to show everybody that we were exactly on time when we started to talk about this.
It was Hannah Gilliwick.
Kyle, for reminding me of something important that is when an episode is
dedicated to you, you are actually our best friend for the day.
Yes, absolutely.
If you read the fine print when you sign up for Patreon, it says that.
Absolutely.
You just got five new best friends.
And you know what?
I'm throwing Jess in there, too.
You just got six new best friends.
When I woke up this name and I saw
when I woke up this morning and I saw Hannah's name, I was like,
this is going to be a good day because that's how long ago we knew.
Oh, yeah.
Hours ago.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Thank you, best friend Hannah Gilliwick and all of these best friends.
Come join us today at patreon.com slash dumb dragon cast 50 percent off,
which means you get, I don't know, 18 weeks free.
We'll round it up.
It just keeps getting bigger every time I talk about it.
But we'll get you back to the episode where Tim Tim Lanning's with us.
Oh, yeah.
Love that guy.
Oh, Tim.
He's great.
You should go listen to his stuff, too.
Greetings, adventures and all the other things that are down in the description.
Bye for now.
Love you.
Bye.
Judge Delacour, who's taken a few notes as both opening statements have proceeded,
says, call your first witness.
Croker Shaw stands up and says, we would like to call one Oak to the stand.
Oh, God.
Coming in from the back of the room, we see Oak.
Oak is a human.
He's got very disheveled hair.
He's got pocket protector.
Light brown khaki slacks, belt done up a little too high
so that his pants are a little bit flood pants at this point.
And he skips in and pushes the door, pushes the swinging gate to get in
and looks over to Cav and says and just kind of like finger guns.
I got you, buddy.
Is that good?
I mean, if Croker's calling him and he's finger gunning you, I'm mixed messages here.
I mean, I don't know.
That's usually just how he says hi.
So you see him walk by the jury and he finger guns all of the jury members, too.
He's starting off bad.
That doesn't look good, but he's not our witness.
How many of them finger gunned back?
Three, three.
A quarter.
And goes up and takes a seat.
Amy, what in this world do we put our hand on to
say that we're telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
The Christian Bible.
It's just the Christian Bible again.
If it works here, it works there.
I think it is the written laws of Vinter Smith.
So they compiled a book of laws and bylaws that all citizens agree to abide by.
Good answer, Amy.
It's like, do we have a Bible?
I'm sure there's some form of religious text, but not so widespread that it would be
acceptable as the Christian Bible in particular.
Much of the gods thing going on right now.
What do they put in the damn hotels?
The rules and regulations of how to participate in wing night.
Yeah, that is true.
Yeah, they put dried lentils in all of the hotels.
But Oak goes up and puts his hand on the laws and the guard says,
do you swear to tell the whole truth and some of the truth and probably most of the truth?
Oak looks back and says, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.
I mean, I'll tell everything I know.
Shaw gets up and he slowly walks over looking to the defense and says,
Mr. Oak, would you consider yourself a close friend of the defendant?
Oak looks back and says, well, yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean, he and I, we're best buddies.
We went out and did best friend things.
We got tattoos together.
We had beverages.
We had, well, we talked about the best foot scrub
that we could, Shaw stops and says, thank you, that's enough.
And yet, despite your closeness, you claim to have no knowledge
of these allegedly forged ledgers until after they were submitted.
Says, well, yeah, no, I didn't know that that's what Cav was doing.
He looks over at Cav, kind of nervous.
Kind of shoot him a little, like, I'm sorry face.
See, like, crestfallen.
Like, I thought we were good buds.
I thought he'd tell me.
Oh, yeah, a little bit.
That's the kind of vibe, yeah.
Do you know of anyone else other than the accused who had access
to those ledgers before they were reported to Kingstown?
Well, do I know anybody else?
I mean, Cav hangs out a lot with Bonwyn and Buzard and Allen.
I don't know if they had it in particular.
And Bench too, like, he's very close with them.
But again, no, I don't know.
You trust the defendant implicitly.
That's commendable.
Would you trust them with, say, falsified evidence
if you believed it served the greater good?
Well, I mean, I trust Cav with anything.
I trust Cav with anything.
But I don't believe that Cav would falsify anything.
Looks uncertain.
Shaw takes a step back and says no further questions.
I'll stand up.
Are we allowed to believe that your feelings are hurt?
That he didn't tell you about highly incriminating, illegal, dangerous information?
Well, not so much the illegality of it.
But yeah, I thought we were getting to be pretty good friends
who might share some of those things with each other.
If we thought maybe we were in trouble or like there was something going on.
Because I really, I thought, I thought we were.
Let me stop you there.
Your friendship is not part of the-
Oh, yeah.
Question here.
It's a matter of safety.
And is it true that if you were to get interesting information at work,
you would go and tell your mother about it?
Objection?
Relevance?
It's necessary for why my client did not tell you.
Well, yeah, of course.
I would, of course, tell my mother everything.
Mom and I were talking last night about coming here today.
And how I was going to just tell all the truth that I know about Cav.
And I would absolutely-
Thank you.
The court appreciates that.
And this is Tim talking.
Whenever I see real lawyers, they don't say the next thing.
Which is like, obviously, he didn't tell you because your mom would get murdered.
They just look at the jury and sit down.
And I'm like, how am I supposed to know that?
Especially now that you know that juries are dumb.
So you have to really be explicit.
Because, yeah, you can't be like, well, dangerous things are dangerous, right?
And you like your mom alive, right?
Yeah.
But in your time of working with the accused,
have you noticed any other aberrations of misconduct?
Any other aberrations of misconduct?
No.
Well, no.
I mean, I come to work.
I do all of the paperwork.
I make sure that everything, Cav, you kind of catch a look from him.
Like he's about to say that he does all of your work,
but like he's probably holding it back.
He's like, yeah.
I just give him like a real like, go ahead.
No, it's fine.
Yeah.
I mean, I did all the work.
I did my work and some of Cav's work.
And like nothing, everything checks and bAlydinces all across the board.
So Cav was not a motivated worker?
No.
Well, no, let me take that back.
I don't mean no.
I mean, he was really good.
Team morale is what Cav excelled at.
Like he was-
A personality hire.
I think, yeah.
No, Cav was there to do a specific job and that was to audit the mayor's office.
But the mayor's office gave him another task, which was paperwork.
I see.
Well, thank you for your time.
No further questions.
Thank you.
Shaw stands back up.
Just one more question.
Was he Columbo?
Right.
Get out of here, Columbo.
You're not Columbo, Shaw.
You could not feel his, what do you call that jacket?
Not a duster, is it?
Have you personally reviewed the figures in the ledgers?
Well, no, I haven't.
I haven't actually seen them.
They were taken to Kingstown apparently and then
brought back here by that group that came from Kingstown to do the thorough investigation.
And then they were put into evidence.
He says, well, are you an expert in municipal budgeting or arcane forgery detection?
No, no, not at all.
I'm an expert in friendship and knowing when my friends are telling me the truth.
Friendship is magic.
I give him finger guns back, but like real subtly.
Yeah, no, he's like below the banister, but between the railings, like you can see,
like he's giving you finger guns.
All right.
He sits back down, looks over at you, Thurston, and his oak heads back out to the
gallery and oak kind of shrugs going back.
He's not as chipper as he when he went in, but shrugs back a cab.
Like, I hope I did a good job.
Thurston Shaw looks over at you and says, you're your witness next.
All right.
I call to the stand.
Bizarre.
Bizarre stands up, walks in, gets in the witness stand.
The guard brings over the book of laws and says, do you swear to tell the truth,
some of the truth, and probably most of the truth by the end of this?
I do.
Roger that.
Slams it shut on your hand by accident and says, oh, son of a bitch.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Not cool.
Mr. Bizarre, will you tell the court what you do for work?
Well, I previously was an advisor to Mayor Knops, but my primary position is the owner of
the store previously known as the Magic Closet.
Wonderful.
Then I would grab the evidence, the supposed copy of the municipal budget ledger excerpt
I'm bringing for the court and the judge and all you find people here.
The only piece of evidence we are provided to look at, not the originals, only this
makes me think anyways.
What do you see in front of you here?
I see a document that you've provided to me the other day in preparation for the trial
that we're in right now.
Using the magical abilities of identification, I was able to determine certain figures that
shimmer under intense scrutiny, hidden glyphs that create inconsistency and a glyph that also
causes misinformation to slowly bleed through as the document is being observed.
Interesting, interesting.
So you are alleging under oath that this document, the only document provided as the
proof that my client cooked the books has been magically altered.
Yes.
And if provided any further documentation, I'd be able to perform the same ritual to
determine any magical tampering.
No further questions.
Thank you.
Shaw stands up, comes over and has a copy of the ledger as well.
And it's a pleasure to meet you, Bazaar.
You testify that you examined the ledger.
Was this before or after your mother moved in with a pirate captain and changed your store's
layout without your consent?
Objection.
Relevance?
Honestly.
He looks to the judge and says, goes to showing the current
level of stability in our witness's life.
Judge, my witness is not here because of being stable.
It's his ability with magic.
And as we know, oftentimes magic doers can be eccentric.
Withdrawn, withdrawn.
Bazaar, did you cast identify in the presence of neutral observers or did you perform
your analysis alone in your closet full of whispering socks and self-holding trousers?
I did it in front of the court appointed attorney and their assistant.
So the defense?
Yes, yes, the defense.
And it wasn't the entire ledger.
It was the specific page of the document that was provided to Thurston.
Interesting.
Is it true you've accused your rival,
William Vanderhootz of plotting against you using enchanted pickles?
If they were enchanted pickles, then that was lost on me.
They just seemed like inferior magical products based off of my examination.
And I wouldn't say that him being able to, what was the verb?
What was the wording that you used?
My rival?
Yes.
Yes, your rival.
It seems well known in the city that one looks down at a note and says,
who you refer to as Billy Magics.
I wouldn't consider him my rival.
I'm very well established in this city.
Where's his store?
Get up.
Just have one more question.
You claim to serve truth and magical transparency,
and yet you work directly for the mayor's office.
Doesn't that put you in an awkward position?
Only if one is not able to separate from work itself.
You have to be able to remain objective in many aspects of life, even within magic.
See, if you do not have objectivity in the ways you approach your profession
or your trade, then you will never be able to see it from outside of the looking glass.
He kind of walks by the jury and his hand drags along.
I apologize.
Final question, Master Wizard.
Would you stake your entire shop, your business, your legacy,
on your certainty that Lee's ledgers were in fact tampered with?
Tampered with by whom?
That is part of the question, isn't it?
Who are you asking me that I would stake my claim on that they were tampered by?
Who do you think tampered with them?
I would say that I would put up my entire estate.
Objection. He does not have to answer who he thinks, as I said.
We are not here to prove who did it, just that it was done.
No further questions, Your Honor.
Dumbgeons and Dragons Season 4 Episode 34 Starring Amy More as Alydin,
Carla Maxted as Bonwyn Everbane, Tom Laird as Kavlaran Goldweave,
Kyle Claset as Bizard the Wizard with Russ More as your dungeon master,
and special guest Tim Lanning from Greetings Adventurers, Naruto Revuto, and Tribulation
Farce. Find more from Tim at geeklyinc.com and listen next episode.
He's not going anywhere for a little while.
Dialogue editing and sound design of today's episode is by Russ More.
Our community manager is Jessica Babiak. Music is from Epidemic Sound,
and sound effects are from Epidemic Sound and Boom Library.
Our amazing cover art is by Matt Garbutt. And a huge thank you to our supporting producers,
Gabriel Lynch, Jessica Babiak, Angaron Kierzen, Cat Waterflame, Perry Matey, Jacob Madden,
Old School Gamer D, Craig Zeiss, L.A. Branton, and Chibs1012.
We'd love if you joined us today at Patreon.com slash Dumb Dragon Cast for the amazing
community, all the bonus content, and so much more! Patreon.com slash Dumb Dragon
Cast will see you over there. But until then, have a great week, and we'll talk to you soon.