Mimic Hearing Ends When Witness Chair Eats Exhibit A

BRINDLEMOOR, CHAPTER 9 HEARING ROOM, 0 FEET UNDERGROUND (still checking) — Chapter 9 ruled this morning that a mimic is a monster for the purposes of hazard pay, ending the grievance filed by the hirelings of the Fourth Attempt. The ruling came about four minutes after the witness chair bit the hearing examiner.

The hearing opened on time, which Chapter 9 staff called "unprecedented" and a few called "suspicious." Examiner Odalys Brackenmoor sat at the bench. Ansel Pottage, steward of the hirelings, stood at the lectern with the contract that listed a mimic as furniture, one thumb still in a bandage. The party's bard, who asked to be named, sat in the gallery on what he described as "a very welcoming stool."

Deputy Registrar Pell Oddingwick argued for the guild. Schedule C, he said, covers "miscellaneous furnishings," and a mimic is miscellaneous by nature. Pottage replied that the chest, the stool, and now apparently the witness chair were all in the same room, and asked the examiner to count how many of them had teeth. Oddingwick called this "a leading question about furniture."

The turn came when Brackenmoor asked the mimic, which had been invited and was seated as the witness chair, to state its name for the record. It did not. It closed on her sleeve. She was freed in two minutes by the court usher and a ladle. Her hit points went from 13 to 9, a box score the hearing room's scribe entered in the minutes with visible pleasure.

"The witness has demonstrated its character," Brackenmoor said, rubbing her arm. "Furniture does not do that. A mule might. A mule is a beast and gets hazard pay. I find the mimic is a monster whenever it bites, and I will take no further questions on the stool."

The ruling backdates hazard pay to the first bite and adds one clause: anyone calling a thing "just a chest" must open it first, at their own expense. Pottage called it "fair, and read aloud, which is all I ever ask." Asked about the replacement thumb, he said the guild had "taken it under advisement." Oddingwick said the outcome was a "soft launch of the monster framework" and that Chapter 9 remained "on track."

Shieldwall Mutual Assurance Society, which had hoped to avoid choosing a claim form, chose the monster form. "It's longer," an adjuster said. "But it has a box for thumbs."

The stool in question has still not been identified as a mimic. It has been taken into Chapter 9's custody and is, for now, being held in the evidence room. The cook who was sitting on it declined to comment. The mimic itself left the building as a bench in the lobby, where it has already bitten two petitioners waiting on permits. Reeve Maudrey Fennick has been asked to rule on whether lobby seating is a monster. She said, "We are aware of the bench."

Ten-foot pole count for the season: eight. The eighth was lost to the lobby bench, which I should have known. I rolled poorly.

— H.D., filing from below