"He was a good man, once," Ramien sighs, looking down at Hulrun's body. "His work drove him mad. It may have been too much to ask of any one man, to fight cultists for decades and not Fall."

Gord is still furious, and in no mood to hear a eulogy to the Hulrun bloody Shappok. 

"He was an evil butcher! Torture, slavery, tyranny, he did it all, for decades on end! People say he dresses in white every morning, and his work stains him Iomedae's color! He was ready to murder you when I got here, and you still defend him?! There is no Good in excusing Evil!"

He hacks off Hulrun's head, and throws it into the chasm. 

Camellia may have, in her eagerness to be of help, made a slight miscalculation.

Can she, um. Slip away while everyone's looking at the dead Prelate?

You're not nearly well enough trained in slinking away after a backstabbing.

"Wait, please! Don't kill her!"

Horgus Gwerm throws himself between Camellia and a surprised Wenduag, who looks at Gord for orders.

"And you!" He rounds on Camellia. "Another slaver, happy to coast through life on the pain of others!"

Camellia freezes. "I - I have no idea what you're talking about," she manages.

"A slaver?" Ramien is familiar with the somewhat broad way Gord uses that word. "What, exactly, are you saying this young woman has done?" Other than take the Prelate's side, which is frankly an understandable choice for any citizen of Kenabres lacking the full  picture of what was going on.

"She imprisoned a soul in her amulet, and draws power from it for her magic. She admitted it to me herself."

Gord strides swiftly over to Camellia, who is either too wise or too terrified to resist, and yanks her amulet from around her neck. 

"Can you free it?" he asks Ramien.

"Imprisoning a soul is necromancy. Very Evil, and very illegal too," he says for Horgus Gwerm's benefit as much as anyone else's. He doesn't know why Horgus Gwerm leaped to shield this girl with his body, although there are obvious suspicions.

"I will certainly do my best to free the imprisoned soul. Thank you, for bringing it to me."

"Can someone please explain what just happened?"

"That," he kicks the headless body, "was Hulrun bloody Shapok. Head inquisitor, ruler of the city and tireless rooter-out of conspiracies true and false. I'd say his crimes could fill a book but he wrote half the damned law so people say they weren't crimes, they were mistakes." He glares at Ramien, not because he dislikes Ramien but because there's no-one else available.

Luckily, Ramien has some inkling of what Gord's feeling and the natural disposition of a peace-maker. "Many things he did would be crimes for any other," he agrees. "He was wrong, tragically so. I do think he did more good than harm, for most of his life. And I believe he was trying his best. There was no evil in his heart, only - tiredness, and hurt, and loneliness, until they drove him mad."

"If you kill a hundred people and one was innocent, is that doing more good than harm? How about one in twenty? Five? Who even knows how many innocents he murdered over the years?! And that's on top of everything else, the forced confessions, turning people against family, torture" -

"We came here to ally with the crusaders against the demons, and the first thing you had us do was kill their ruler?!"

Did she just help kill the chief of Seelah's tribe?

...maybe Seelah will forgive her if she turns Gord in?

But it's really Iomedae she wants to serve, right, not Seelah, and she's not sure it'll give her an in.

"I don't need an excuse, because he attacked me, but killing him is helping us fight the demons! He was mad, even more than usual! He attacked Ramien - the top Desnan cleric - and he attacked you because he saw demons in every shadow and didn't like how you look, and he wasn't going to stop just because you surrendered and asked nicely! If we need unity to fight off the demons then we're better off without him!"

Lann is very concerned but will try to hold off judgement until he hears the paladins' version of the story. They do, at least, need enough unity to all get to the Defender's Heart.

Rovaldo is so terribly confused. He was so sure that he was now working for the people who didn't want to kill Hulrun! He was trying really really hard not to want Hulrun to die!

Yeah, that's a fair point really. If Gord is going to have to leave town in a hurry, he needs to settle Rovaldo somewhere before all the paladins declare him their mortal enemy or something.

He tells Ramien an abbreviated version of Rovaldo's story. He thinks his penitence is genuine; he might still be bullied or frightened into Evil, but he doesn't actually want it for himself. As far as Gord can tell on the basis of a few conversations, anyway. Is there room for him with the refugees in Desna's church?

Absolutely! Ramien won't turn him away. When the city's settled down again, he'll try to find Rovaldo a better place to stay or a better way to follow, depending. Being the actual ex-cultist at the site of Hulrun's death won't do him any favours if the inquisitors come calling.

It's still scary to leave Gord's personal protection, but at least he can trust Ramien much further than he would a paladin.

It's nearing evening and Gord is exhausted. Not physically, because he didn't fight that hard and he cast a lesser restoration earlier anyway, but emotionally.

Also, all his spells are gone, except for the disguise self and the short-lived mass disguise self that he gets every day no matter what he prays for.

This is to say he'd really like to get to his target without further incident, and then he would really like to eat and rest without being bothered by the paladins despite having killed Hulrun Shappok. And thrown his head into a hole in the ground to hopefully stop them from raising him before it's eaten by a centipede.

One step at a time, though.

He could just keep out of other people's business! Like not helping Ramien when Hulrun was probably about to kill him.

Or like not helping this elven girl who some people are about to burn on a bonfire.

Oh for Elysium's sake -

Gord doesn't even bother with talking this time, he just charges.

He does still yell "Surrender in Gorum's name, and you will live," because habits die hard and this is a habit he deliberately cultivates.