Bright Blessings for Sacred Time. :)
Stephen Tempest wrote:
Orlanthi law isn't about narrow blind justice or rules-lawyering - we have the Dara Happans for that. It's a pragmatic way of resolving disputes, also known as "Either we pay them now, or they'll keep on attacking us and we'll lose far more in the long term."
Hear hear.
And Orlanthi justice is difficult.
Heortling law is not about punishment, it is about compensation and disincentive to act beyond the law. And in exile, the painful removal of unsolvable problems.
Heortling law is not primarily about individuals, but rather about clans and their continuing coexistence.
I have always considered outlawry, even temporary outlawry, to be tantamount to death for many Heortlings. Kin is everything, and an individual's connections to clan and tula run so deep as to be formative in their sense of self and wellbeing. To be outlawed, sundered from kin and country, is to be sundered from one's sense of self. Even political exile exacts a heavy toll, as I tried to explore in the closing paragraphs of 'Exile, 1614' <http://mythologic.info/questlines/exile.html>. This perspective reflects the historical reality of outlawry, for example in the Anglo-Saxon 'Wulf and Eadwacer' which I once freely translated into Heortling as Lament for an Exile (below).
This sense of psychic wounding can be difficult to approach through a top-down, rules centred approach filtered through the wanderlust ethos of most pc parties. it's primarily a roleplaying challenge.
In those Thunder Rebels paragraphs under discussion, I was trying to convey some of the uncertainty of the process of Heortling law. It is never neat and tidy, and seldom satisfies all parties concerned. But justice is better than violence, and Orlanthi law is stable. By Orlanth's strength and Ernalda's blessing, it endures. It has served the clans for thousands of generations. (Contrast this, for example, with Icelandic law, which all but destroyed the colony within a few hundred years.)
If Orlanthi justice is difficult, it becomes even more difficult when dealing with chaos. The horror surrounding kin slaying and the stark reality of chaos are places where Orlanthi cannot gaze without flinching. They are the blind spots, the unhealed wounds of Heortling culture. Having to deal with kin turned to chaos invokes a fearful uncertainty that can lead to outbreaks of deadly violence. There is no entirely legal way, there is no action that can be taken without a fearful price. Yet an Orlanthi MUST act. The wind is never still.
The statutes of Malan that I conjured in Thunder Rebels, like many legal documents, cannot capture the pain, uncertainty and horror that surround any discussion of judicial killing in Orlanthi society. Yet the document's introduction does make some attempt...
"First are the crimes that none can bear, beyond justice, beyond compensation, beyond even exile. These deserve death and so much more, and none must shirk from wielding a swift blade. In shame I pronounce their names, for they sicken my breath as I speak:"
It then names the so-called capital crimes ...
"To murder in secret as a coward or a child; to murder a king in his sevens; to steal the breath of another that they die, or to curse in secret and hide one’s face; to act as a broo with woman, man, child or beast; to speak that which is holy to those who are not; to betray or desecrate the true lands, the holy places, their buildings or their temples; to kill or eat the flesh of a consecrated beast; to befoul oneself in consorting with that which is not-whole; to breed disease; to deny the clan of one’s birth, to worship as a god any born of woman."
But Heortling reality is never so simple. Justice is never a rules system to be implemented, it is a living, painful, challenging, often paradoxical, process to be negotiated. To be lived. To be role played.
There is almost NEVER a simple answer. Sometimes there is no answer all. But Orlanthi must act, the wind is never still.
Stray thoughts ...
John
Lament For An Exile
( A free adaption of the Anglo-Saxon 'Wulf and Eadwacer' by John Hughes)
"No more shall I walk with Wulf midst the grain-blessed fields of our tula, nor laugh with him in the hunting camps; neither shall we dance together in the rain as the altar fires spit and blaze. Ill-wyrded Wulf is outlaw now, and I am wed to a lesser man, his kinsman, who betrayed us both."
The carls of my clan, if he comes to our camp Will treat him as prey, they will cut him outright.
By the thunder of thanes, so fearful to foes By the curse of a chieftain, one beaten in love Wulf is goaded by godar, now gone to the forest Worse than a beast, for Odayla joins hunting.
Forked is our fate now, our joint wyrd is weakened, Its weavings unwound, We who were once were one. Sure sundered, betrayed, my true love is an outlaw And I walk in sorrow, bound now to brother.
Moot murdered, kin cursed now
Wulf dwells on an island,
Midst fasteness of fen and dark braying of broo.
His strong blade was broken, before the clans fathers
His heart now extinguished, his bright breath gone stale.
T: +61 2 6125 0649 F: +61 2 6125 9730 W: www.anu.edu.au/caepr
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