Role: Inquisitor (introduces himself as “Inquisitor Morvath”; the Reeve calls him “Lord Inquisitor”; the job board says High Inquisitor)
Status: Active in Marin’s Hold; preaching and hunting witches at the gate
Known for: The fourth body on the witches’ posts; offering bounties on the hooded figures; commissioning the party to recover the Threshold of Twilight
Appearance
Gaunt, with a sharp, pointed nose — a very unpleasant face. Severe black clothing of fine but functional travelling leather, and a tall, wide-brimmed hat with a big silver buckle around the crown. Brielle’s eye makes his rapier silver. He walks with two guards who are not the Reeve’s men: they wear great red crosses on their mail.
Background
Known at first only through the job board: he posted the bounty on the hooded figures who attacked the outlying villages, and again once those attacks escalated to poisoning fields and taking people.
Mathilda, a hedge-witch living outside the palisade in a village that crucifies witches, wanted to recover a book of fey magic from the Schola in the Woods specifically to prove herself to Morvath. That she felt the need to is worth noting.
Session 4 — first meeting
The party met him at the gate, standing over the newest body on the witches’ posts: an old charm-seller with her cheap amulets nailed into her. He told Ivek to hold back his empathy — the agents of the devil hide among the common folk — and made plain he was proud of the catch. Randoah later saw the charms were nonsense: the woman was a charlatan, not a witch.
- He approved of Enki as a Knight of Ydris (“we can always use more soldiers for God”), then seized his head to search his neck for bite marks when Enki mentioned vampires. When Enki slapped his hand away, his guards reached for their swords and Morvath stopped them. He warned Enki to be careful whom he threatened and made him the sign of the Order of Ydris; when Enki returned it he did not recognise him and asked “who sired you?”
- He had never heard of Count Demetrius or any castle past the crossroads.
- On Mathilda: he had been watching her to see whether her powers went beyond herb-lore into devilry, but as one of the village’s last healers he mostly let her pass. He had heard dark rumours, and did not know where she had gone.
- He preaches at the gate on the evils of witchcraft and foul magics that corrupt the soul as well as the mind.
- The Reeve sent the party to him as an errand-runner. In private, Morvath had a guard hand Enki a lead coffer (a little bigger than a breadbox) and a commission: recover a book of foul magic from “an ancient temple to foul gods,” do not read it, do not touch it, seal it in the coffer, keep it secret, and bring it to him — to be destroyed. Fifty gold. The book is the Threshold of Twilight.
- The symbol on the coffer’s lid is a witchcraft mark of sealing and protection — Randoah recognised it. An Inquisitor who burns witches is carrying a witch-made binding box.
Open Questions
- Inquisitor of what body? He makes the sign of the Order of Ydris — is the Inquisition an arm of Ydris, or is he a member of it himself?
- What is his relationship to Reeve Tarly Winters and to Castellan Vane? The Reeve treats him as someone to be helped, not commanded.
- Where did a witch-hunter get a witch’s sealing coffer — and does he know what the mark on it is?
- Does he want the Threshold of Twilight destroyed, or kept?
The book was briefly called “Edge of Twilight” at the table; Threshold of Twilight is canonical.