Hall of Justice

Torthuíl's judiciary system is more sophisticated than most city-level systems across Aketi. This is due to their long history of being a major trading power, and the requirement that goes with that of being known as a fair and just place to do business. When a wrongdoing is committed, they take the accusations seriously and look into the matter at once. Anyone is allowed to bring their problems large or small to the sitting jury of the day during open hours and have it heard. This is how many interpersonal disputes are mediated in the common course of a day, and some contracts are decided upon. If you will wait to be heard, then you will be listened to fairly.   When an actual wrongdoing of large enough scale seems to have taken place, there is an investigation into the matter. This mostly takes the course of eyewitness accounts and visual assessments, although they do keep constant track of it with dedicated judicial scribes. Magic hasn’t been used over time due to a public mistrust of high level casters (most of the city is solidly middle class and worked for what they have, so the appearance of ‘easy power’ is something they do not take kindly to), so more in depth means have not made an appearance until fairly recently. The city took on a permanent caster known as Alestan who is capable of spells of truth, and after some time of deciding if they trusted him or not they began to implement his magic in higher level cases. His costs were not cheap though, so it was only on very important or high-profile investigations that they used his magic - however, it was almost always to great effect, as it was a failproof way of getting the truth. Understandably the people feared that high level casters such as him might do things to them with such mind-swaying magic, so laws were passed prohibiting use of high level magic within the city without a license. Cantrips and nonintrusive spells up to level 2 are permitted freely, but are subject to the same rules as physical actions would be (so no harming another, etc).   The head of the Hall of Justice is Ashen Tinn, an older human woman. She is the head jailer, justice officer, and judge and oversees all cases that go through, although in practice only the highly important or high profiles get her personal attention. Most cases have a sitting lower level jury or justice officer presiding ‘in lieu of’.