"Next". A strict voice, sharp and commanding, stings you in your brain.
You open your eyes, your vision clouded with a grey fog, which is slowly fading away. There is a door before you, wooden, decorated with pictures of dragons, but there is no time to take a closer look. Within a heart-beat the door starts to open and you find yourself to be drawn closer to it. It takes only a while before you realise, that your legs are moving without you controlling them. It feels almost as if you are sleepwalking...
It takes only a moment before you step through the opened door into the room behind it. The walls are from fine-worked stone of dark grey color and they are lined with square-based pillars made from some red, expensively looking wood. The pillars have white capitals and are depicted with strange yellow symbols you do not understand. The floor is made entirely of light wood. On the other end of the room you have just entered there are leveling small stairs leading to a platform some five feet high above the floor of the room. On the platform, there is an old man sitting – he sits directly on the ground, he has no chair – and he writes something on the low desk before him.
As you approach, he raises his head. Still feeling like in a dream, you see the contrast between his baldness and his long white beard. His eyes are small, blinking while focusing on you.
"My name is judge Sung. I have been given the honor and privilege by the Jade Emperor’s mandate to act in his name when judging his followers".
He bows lightly and then looks back into his papers.
"Your group is charged with multiple accusations".
"You defiled heaven, by the failure to pay proper respect to the Celestial Bureaucracy."
"You defiled earth, by disobedience to the law and customs of the land."
"You defiled your ancestors, by ashaming them with your actions."
"You defiled your teachers, by twisting, what have they teached you."
"All these crimes were commited while you were obliged to obey your patron, the Jade Emperor. Most disgustful, aside from your life of sin, is the fact you all died while raiding the temple of your patron and killing innocent. All your life, the heavenly Emperor has been watching you. It was proper to respect him, revere him, obey his laws and be thankful. Instead of that, you spitted on his name and laughed. Now, the Celestial Bureaucracy claims your soul for judging your mortal life. "
"So, with these evidence given, this court decides you will be send to the Lower Courts, so appropriate punishment may be bestowed upon you."
The judge silents for a moment, examining your faces.
"Any last words for the court?"
Strange, but you do not remember the moment of your death. Your memories are a bit clouded, of course, but you know the others standing next to you. You are aware of their names, of their deeds, how they joined your little group. Your last adventure brought you to the Golden Way, leading from the lands around Waterdeep to Kara-Tur, on a prime material world of Toril. You remember travelling through Rashamen, the land of spirits. But again, the memories of the purpose and all the details about it start to hide in some fog clouding your mind, when you start to concentrate on them. You are not sure absolutely, what happened in the end, but there is something deep inside you shouting, that this is wrong.
OOC: All players, talk about yourself. Write, how you joined the party, and what the others remember about your character from your previous adventures. Describe yourself. You still wear the armor and weapons you possesed in life.
"I am Goldblood, and i have no recollection of the deeds you describe..."
The creature before you seems to be an orc, but not a normal one, he has a heavy walking cane on which he rests his slightly withered bulk..
He wears a heavy duty desert-cloak tucked around his frame by several ropes, you see some form of chain underneath what he wears, and he has
a few pouches on the biggest rope around his waste which seem to hold little in the way of traveling gear....
What at first glance looks like an simple stooped orc, seems on closer inspection a lot more, his skin... yes, his Skin seems a golden green grey amalgamation, his face holds more then that though... he has whiskers that droop like an moustage from his face, 2 from each side of his upper lip, and a half a dozen from his chin, they almost look like a octopus's tentacles, yet they are not that prehensile...
His normal hair seems to be dreadlocks, most of it black, with some grey in what seems his goaty.
The cane looks to heavy for it to be a simple normal walking helper, yet he uses it with ease to point at the judge whilst he speaks articulately about his thoughts.
You all (the party members) remember him as collected and cool, yet sagely and social, a stark contrast to what orcs are normally believed to be..
You remember him being pious (a priest, in other words) to an obscure god who is not well known, even to scholars of such knowledge.