A/N: These episodes are not necessarily contiguous. At the start of this episode, the crown has likely had many owners since Nasir.
The Priest
Once there was a priest called Brun.
I should clarify that his religion was not any variety of Christianity. But like our own world's Catholicism, his religion had a tradition of private confession.
Brun lived in a kingdom where slaves were kept. His government said it was permitted to keep slaves (on the other hand, it was not permitted to escape from slavery, nor to free somebody else's slaves). His god said the opposite. Brun gave many sermons about the evils of slavery, but was, if you will forgive the lack of metaphor, preaching to the converted. Though a handful of slaves did live in the same small town, none of their owners frequented his church.
One summer day, a traveller came to Brun's church, and asked to give confession. Brun agreed. This traveller quickly revealed that he had lived one of the most villainous lives Brun had ever heard of. What was more, he had faced barely any consequences, thanks to the magical crown that he wore on his head.
When the man's long tale of wrongdoing ceased, and it was time to assign a penance, Brun sighed. He could not assign a light penance for something of this magnitude. He told the man that he should dedicate the rest of his life to helping others, to try and make up for all the harm he had done. "And you should pray every day to God for his forgiveness." Brun thought for a second, "Also, lose the crown. It won't do you any favours on the path you will walk now."
The man left the church and Brun stealthily followed him, and was able to watch from behind a bush as he hurled the Crown of Legality into the small river that ran between the church and most of the rest of town. Brun shook his head at the man's foolishness: That bridge received frequent traffic, and a shiny metal object at the bottom of the river would not go un-noticed for long.
After the traveller had gone, Brun waded into the river, in the general direction he thought the crown had fallen. After wading downstream a short distance, he saw a glint of sunlight reflecting off the white-gold band where it had settled on the riverbed. He picked it up and then waded back upstream until he was standing directly underneath the bridge. He then carefully arranged rocks around and over the crown so that it was completely covered. He tried to make the arrangement as stable as possible so that the current would not disturb it.
The traveller left town soon after, and for months things were much the same as before. But then a party of slavers arrived in town, along with their human cargo. There would be only a few buyers in this town; they planned to proceed to the capital in a few days.
Brun sought them out and tried to convince their leader to free the slaves and, ideally, give up on the slave trade entirely. The man laughed in his face.
That night, a stealthy figure cloaked in dark grey freed their slaves for them.
Brun had not been entirely confident the crown actually worked until the slavers hauled the town guard to his church and he wasn't arrested. Even though they had little evidence of his crime (besides the circumstantial), he would normally have at least been detained and questioned. But the town's guards all seemed strangely certain that Brun could not have done anything illegal.
The future exploits of Brun the Priest were better planned. He was unusually lucky that these slavers had not posted a guard that night. And if Brun was going to risk his neck breaking people out, he wanted them to have the best chance of permanent freedom that they could get. He ended up with a team of half a dozen people helping him, doing everything from identifying poorly-defended targets to transporting the freed slaves beyond the kingdom's borders to safety. Brun carefully arranged things so that none of these people's jobs were illegal. Or at least so that the illegal parts could be done while briefly borrowing his crown.
Though the crown could protect Brun from the law, it could not protect him from his fellow man. He learned the art of fighting, both with sword and with gun, to defend himself, and had occasion to use both. Because he disliked killing, his main strategy was to maintain secrecy as much as possible. But gradually, the rumours of Brun the Priest turned into legend, and legend turned into common knowledge. Brun knew that he could not go on like this forever.
In the capital, there was an arena where slaves fought in front of a live audience. For entertainment, you see. Fights were usually not to the death, though death was sometimes the unfortunate result. The arena was a highly controversial thing (even many of those who supported slavery loathed the arena fights), but it was also an old tradition, and popular enough to make a huge amount of money, thus it persisted. So perhaps you can imagine the public reaction when Brun announced (in advance!) that he would be storming the arena, and freeing every slave within its walls.
The men who owned the arena were agitated by this. One suggested moving the slaves to be held in an external location. Then there would be no slaves within the arena walls at all, and Brun's threat would become a no-op. Another pointed out that this could be exactly what Brun had wanted them to do: move their slaves to a more exposed location. In the end, they agreed that Brun's threat was empty. What could one man do against such a well-defended target? And a crown can only be worn by one man at a time.
Brun, meanwhile, evolved his announcement into an ultimatum:
To the King:
Whereas slavery, besides being a great evil morally, is an abomination and affront to God, and,
Whereas this kingdom as of yet permits this evil within its borders, and aids those who perpetuate it,
I, Brun the Priest, hereby declare that I will not allow this state of affairs to continue.
I call upon you to ban slavery in this kingdom, as our enlightened neighbours have already done.
To the Public:
On Friday, the holy day of God, I will use God's power to call down such a level of destruction that it puts a permanent end to the arena fights. I strongly suggest, for their safety, that those who have planned to visit the arena on Friday change their plans.
If there are any who do not believe me, watch the sky carefully on Monday night. A miracle obvious to all will become visible. In particular, watch the moon. It will prove to you that God is on our side against slavery.
To the King (again):
If you would avert the chaos and destruction that is about to be upon us (of which I have only told a small part), then I beg of you. For the good of the kingdom and the good of all its people, slave and non-slave alike, put an end to this atrocity. Issue a proclamation freeing the slaves of this kingdom, so that we may be spared God's wrath.
Yours,
-- Brun (the Priest)
On Monday night, the moon went blood red. While magic could have achieved this effect for an audience of one or two people, nobody could figure out how it could have been possible to magically dupe everyone in the kingdom. The miracle seemed to be real. Brun's ultimatum and its correctly predicted miracle dominated the top of every news-sheet.
On Thursday, with Brun's deadline drawing near, dozens of messengers on fast horses were dispatched from the capital to the far reaches of the kingdom. They bore a single message: By royal decree, all slaves were to be freed, effective immediately. Those who heard were in shock: The king had capitulated to Brun the Priest's demand? But then, the predicted miracle had actually come true.
In fact what had happened was that the papers borne by the messengers were forgeries, drafted by two of Brun's team. (They had taken alternating shifts, each wearing the crown while they were awake and working.) In the confusion, roughly 40% of the slaves in the kingdom were freed. Even as the fraud was realized, most of those freed managed to keep their freedom.
While fraud (especially of that kind) was highly illegal, nobody was arrested. The messengers had been slaves freed earlier by Brun, who left the kingdom at the ends of their rides.
But though the crown could protect Brun from the law, it could not protect him from his fellow man. He was killed a few weeks later by a disgruntled slave owner who had lost all his slaves. The killer was tried and found guilty and hanged: the usual penalty for the murder of a perfectly innocent, law-abiding citizen.