Shrouded Bench of the Final Judge

Shrouded Bench of the Final Judge sits on a scarred plank, its timber as dark as a moonless midnight. The wood, heavy with decades of polish, slopes into a tall back that fans outward like a courtroom’s arch. A hooded silhouette forms where the backrest meets the seat, giving the impression that the bench itself keeps a secret close to its ribs. The seat is cushioned with crushed burgundy velvet, threadbare along the edges, inviting one to pause and listen. Iron inlays run along the apron—small sigils of scales and a lone glyph that flickers faintly when candlelight plays across the surface. A fine lacquer covers the whole thing, catching glints of starlight and turning them into a whisper of authority. If you brush a finger over the crest, a shiver travels up your arm, as if the bench remembers every verdict it ever bore and every witness who stood in its shadow. In its lore, the Final Judge was said to drift between markets and cathedrals of shadow, granting audience to the weary and the wary alike. The Shrouded Bench carries that habit in its grain: you can see the bench absorb the room’s mood, its varnish darkening when sorrow sweeps through a hall and brightening at the crack of a joke. The piece has a way of appearing where it’s least expected, as though it were summoned by a nod rather than a purchase. For roleplayers and storytellers, it is a locus of conversation—a centerpiece for a private hall or a guild hall where decisions are weighed and chronicles begin. Operationally, the bench is a cosmetic furnishing with a quiet power. When you sit, you trigger a subtle emote: the shoulders relax, the head tilts, and a soft murmur seems to pass through the room, as if other characters are hearing the echoes of a long-ago verdict. It’s not a weapon, not a trophy—just a stage on which players can perform restraint, dignity, or mercy. That restraint, in turn, colors the way a party approaches a cliffside encounter or a reluctant ally’s plea. Marketwise, the bench travels with a small caravan of traders who understand the language of mood and memory. At Saddlebag Exchange, it appears as a premium piece, priced not only for its rarity but for the story it can tell when pulled into a room full of friends. The exchange, always listening for whispers of demand, tends to move the bench along whenever collectors duel in earnest over a new chapter of the world’s long court of shadows. And so the Shrouded Bench of the Final Judge continues to pass from hand to hand, a quiet witness to the judgments we render in our own days, in our own tables, under the same old lamp glow that first drew its silhouette into the dim. In quiet corners, a guild laughs softly as the bench seals itself to the memory of the night’s bargains, and in that moment, the Final Judge feels almost human again, truly.