Judge Aldren Marr lost his left eye decades ago during a mutiny while serving as a naval magistrate aboard the Crown's flagship. Rather than retire, he resigned his commission after becoming frustrated with how often wealth and influence bent the law in favour of powerful merchants.

He purchased an abandoned grain barge and quietly began hearing disputes brought by ordinary sailors.

Forty years later, people simply know him as Old Hook.

Tall, gaunt and permanently sunburnt, Marr dresses in faded judicial robes stitched together with sailcloth and patched countless times. A heavy brass monocle rests over his remaining eye whenever he wishes to intimidate witnesses.

Clack

Nobody is entirely certain where Clack came from.

The purple shore crab simply wandered aboard the barge years ago and never left.

Clack possesses an uncanny intelligence.

The crab taps twice whenever someone lies.

Three times if the lie is particularly bold.

No wizard has managed to explain how.

Clack spends most hearings sitting beside the judge's ledger, occasionally stealing quills, eating evidence that smells like fish, or climbing onto witnesses during particularly tense testimony.

Every regular of the Barnacle Court treats Clack as a fully qualified member of the bench.

Interrupting the crab is considered deeply disrespectful.