Judges of the Change

"It is always possible the records are incomplete."

- Proverb of the Azurejays, Scholar-Knights of San Sylvester

This article is incomplete and will require additional work.

The Judges of the Change are a type of medium aberration, of exemplary intelligence and full sentience, which can be found in Graven Keep. As one of the Gravenlings, they are a species believed to have been created at, and exclusively found within, Graven Keep, during a disasterous experiment by Kerr Ultwin in the early first century of the Age of the Summer of Mortals.

Judges of the Change are persons, albiet persons with unusual motivations and alien thought processes. They serve as the central command and control of the population of Graven Keep and are rarely seen outside of the protected sanctums beneath it, with the exception of leading retribution-purges into the country side after mortal attempts to reclaim the keep - a rare event.

Appearance

Describing a Judge of the Change as a floating, distended head is at once thoroughly accurate and horribly short of the mark, and also only covers a brief glimpse of the life-cycle of such a creature. It is, however, the most visible and well-documented form, as it was the only form the Judges were ever seen outside the keep in. A Judge of the Change in this hypermotile form consisted of a human brain, visible through the translucent tissues that made up the rest of its body, suspended in a cartilaginous housing itself suspended in a bouyant-in-air organ full of an unknown substance that had similar optical properties to heat haze. These white orbs could be seen floating above individual Gravenknights with their attendant Graven Wardens during historical moments when Graven Keep, reborn, was lashing out against some force or other that had attempted to take it.

"It is neither wise nor desirable to attempt to know everything."

- Excerpt of the Handbook of the Angharite Janissaries

This article contains optional lore or worldbuilding that may or may not be true at the discretion of your Dungeon Master.

It is known from surviving writings of the first and second century ASM that the Judges of the Change did not always look so peculiar, but were once much closer in appearance to their human origins. These earlier judges, known as the Celaphic Form, had mottled green-grey skin, disporportionately long arms, and elongated or engorged skulls, oftentimes protected by chitinous plates in a manner similar to Graven Warden Captains. These creatures continued to exhibit courtly and martial styles of dress. The moment and means of their transition from one form to the other is unknown.

It is also posited - by those who claim the impressive-if-true feat of being able to scry beneath the foundations of Graven Keep into its warrens, that the Judges of the Change that have survived to the modern era now exhibit a new Bastionic Form. This new form has them having merged with the various other creatures that make up the foundation levels of the keep, even having become a part of the keep itself. If this is the case, it would explain why it has been several centuries since Graven Keep has made any overt move on the surface of Ahren.

Ecology

Judges of the Change are essential to the operations of Graven Keep, and without them the Keep would likely have collapsed not long after its corruption in 50 ASM. The judges make up the hivemind for both the Gravenknights and the Keeprats, and even organize the higher functions of the Graven Wardens. In short, wherever they have gone, if they indeed have disappeared, the Judges of the Change remain the masters, commanders, and mind of the castle of Graven Keep.

"It is neither wise nor desirable to attempt to know everything."

- Excerpt of the Handbook of the Angharite Janissaries

This article contains optional lore or worldbuilding that may or may not be true at the discretion of your Dungeon Master.

After the loss of three Judges of the Change in 14th-Century conflicts, Kerr Ultwin has withdrawn them to the keep and ordered them strictly to stay on site, to the extreme of even inducing any inclined to disobey into entering Bastionic Form, a change which seems to be irreversible. That being said, not all of the Judges are from the original retinue, implying that it is possible, through some means, for Ultwin or the Judges themselves to create more. There are believed to currently be five. It's unclear if Ultwin himself is a judge of the change or another manner of creature entirely.

Origins

The original five Judges of the Change were the lieutenants and trusted loyalists of Ultwin, who violate their oaths to the Men of the Gauntlet and joined in Ultwin's thaumaturgic ritual under Graven Keep in 50 ASM. As a direct result of their willing participation in the ritual, they each had some impact on its outcome, and all were transformed into Judges of the Change.

Subsequent Judges have been created or promoted via an unknown means. It's unknown how many of the current retinue of five Judges are the original five, and it is possible (though it seems unlikely) that the five surviving examples are the original retinue.

Abilities

Judge of the Change have powerful telekinetic, arcane, occult, and divine-spellcasting abilities. As a result, they are effectively natural thaumaturges, and their mental influence is not merely limited to the Gravenlings. They are known to communicate through dreams, and it's likely their passive or active influence that both seals the warrens under Graven Keep from physical exploration and makes them so difficult to scry against.

In Relation To Others

Judges of the Change universally consider themselves immortal, probably even approximately divine. As a result, the concerns of mortals they interact with rarely enter their minds, and they are powerful enough to act with relative impunity, even outside of their rather small domain. In the past, Judges have had a history of corrupting nearby mortals, tempting them with dreams of treasure and glory or tricking them into thinking they had the secret to finally destroying Graven Keep. The most successful of these are presumably the base from which new Judges were recruited. Most, regrettably, became biomass.