> However I think that some cases of outlawry may well amount to
> execution. In at least some cases I expect that someone will be
> waiting just outside clan lands, to at least attempt to kill the
> person as soon as they have been outlawed and exited clan lands.
> Which is not to say that the outlaw might not manage to escape
> somehow, but just to say that the intent of the clan in some cases
> probably amounts to an intent to execute.
Once a perosn is outlawed, you can kill him with impunity - not even waiting until he gets off the tula. He is a "stranger" in the terms of the "First Hospitality" (TR pg. 34) and you can bet no-one is going to ask him if he is friend or foe the minute the outlawry is pronounced. The chief or the ring *may* offer the outlaw a decent amount of time to get off the tula, but they certainly don't *have* to. A Humakti or Urox mayu be on hand at the "trial" to determine outlawry, just waiting to cut down the stranger "legally".
In the case of the "capital" crimes of the Orlanthi, the evildoer's family may well be the ones both pursuing the "outlaw option", and the ones to kill the outlaw once they are no longer related. They may do this both to cleanse their bloodline of any taint of whatever the outlaw did, and to follow the Orlanthi virtue of "cleaning up your mess". They are supposed to have raised him better than that, helped him when he needed it so that he didn't "go bad", and tried to get him to stop whatever it was he was doing (remember, chaos isn't the only "bad" thing to the Orlanthi - there are a number of actions that are reprehensible. See TR pages 43-44).
And also remember that people will have some notice from Orlanth and Ernalda that *something* is not right when the worship ceremonies start buzzing with Agents of Reprisal. The entire clan can be "poisoned" by the actions of one person who is doing something wrong and the clan doesn't fix the problem. Communal Responsibility, Communal Consequences!
Politics play a huge part in the outlawry process, naturally. Normal outlawry probably won't have unanimous assent, as someone mentioned. But sometimes there is and everyone knows it. You can play the trial any way you want - as a foregone conclusion or as a tightly-contested legal battle that can go eitther way. The Family of the wrongdoer may want to wash their hands of him, or may want to defend him and protest the outlawry, even to defending him once he has been outlawed.
A sentence of outlawry is *never* undertaken casually (sometime banishment is, but not outlawry). The clan thinks there has been a *major* breach of social mores if the subject of outlawry is brought up. (and let's not get into Tribal Outlawry, which is *only* political in nature, and a clan may up an leave the tribe if they think it has been pronounced unjustly).
RR
He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad
R. Sabatini, Scaramouche
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