Trial of Gregory
The Agitator
On 3 Rova 4710, the party came home to find Gregory in the town square of Hexpan, stirring up the crowd. The rulers, he said, had abandoned Hexpan to go off adventuring while the kingdom ran itself.
Djacques went first. He listed what the party had done—the roads, the cleared hexes, the threats stopped before they reached Hexpan’s walls—then told Gregory he understood the frustration and would love to build something together. Kairos invoked the River Freedoms: the party was keeping its oath to protect the kingdom, Gregory had every right to shout in their square, and speech didn’t build walls or kill the things lurking an hour’s ride from his bed.
Leonardo loomed over Gregory to scare him off. It backfired. To the crowd, it looked like the rulers were silencing a man for speaking his mind. Djacques’s attempt to recover came across as a lackey flattering his king.
Unmasking
Gregory kept at it, and gathered a small following. By 10 Rova, Kairos had placed his accent: Pitax. Linzi had fled from there, and Irovetti was known for tearing down rivals through insults and proxies rather than soldiers. Djacques, an artist himself, recognized the style. Leonardo added that Irovetti’s control over his kingdom’s artists was an affront to Desna.
While the arguments landed, Djacques used Spread Rumors to seed the idea that Gregory was a foreign agent sent to weaken Hexpan from within. The crowd turned. The party gave Gregory a choice: help build Hexpan, or leave and never return, on pain of arrest. He refused both.
In the crowd, the party spotted the Orange Gnome, who watched and slipped away without a word.
The Trial
On 17 Rova, with Gregory still refusing to budge, the party put him on trial. The evidence was laid out: his Pitaxian origins, his refusal to contribute, his attempts to destabilize Hexpan for a foreign power. The verdict was banishment.
The party then wrote a hostile letter to Irovetti, telling him his agent had been caught and expelled. They sent letters to the other River Kingdoms as well, describing what Pitax had done, to isolate Irovetti diplomatically.
Aftermath
Two weeks later, when Kundal and Nok-nok ran in with news of trolls, Djacques announced to the gathered crowd that the party was riding out at once—an answer to Gregory’s accusation, delivered in public. See Assault-on-Hargulkas-Fortress.
Pitax has not yet responded.