Perhaps after Tentacles, Ingo will post the Garundyer write-up I wrote for Rise of Ralios. It is considerably different from Nik's version, however after hearing about how Nick Brooke played it, I am very fond of it!
With that in mind, I'd like to make a few points on the ongoing critique/review of Nik's Garandyer material.
>> Orlanthi are not Icelanders. Iceland is a desolate little
>> island in the North Atlantic where feuding clans are forced
>> to live with one another. Most Orlanthi live in lands where
>> the stronger can persuade the weaker to flee for their lives
>> at short notice to some distant land.
>What! The Orlanthi culture you have just described is exactly what
>Iceland is, or the end product at least - a group of people driven
>from their homelands to a distant land by Fairhair. Orlanthi are NOT
>Icelanders, correct, but certainly they have elements of their
>culture (i.e. weregeld, blood feuding etc...) to which Icelandic and
>related literature (i.e. Beowulf) make a great source - for both
>Greg, and us.
I think both of you guys are missing the point. I use the Icelandic sagas and commentaries on Icelandic legal institutions (best is Jesse Byock's "Sagas, Society and Power"), because Iceland is one of the best documented examples of "stateless" justice. The Orlanthi are similar in that they have a consensual justice system that requires judgments to be enforced by the actual parties to the suit, and because they do not generally acknowlege what we would call criminal law (offenses against the community), but instead classify everything as essentially civil suits.
Now, the Orlanthi are spread all across Central Genertela and have been for at least a thousand years after the great Orlanthi movements of the early Dawn Age. Some Orlanthi kingdoms have strong central authorities that have resulted in more of a centralized legal system. Some Orlanthi tribes are so decentralized that everything seems like contract or tort law between private parties.
The Confederation of Jofrain is probably somewhere in between. A single clan or bloodline unifies the member clans. Probably Kocholang, as a result of his lineage, has the authority and jurisdiction to settle disputes involving any member of the Confederation. Otherwise, things are probably handled by private litigation.
Jeff
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