> > So, which is it? Are Humakti (and other members of cults that thunder
> > their clan/family ties) subject to the Heortling laws or not?
My TR paragraph cited by Janus is worth quoting in full -
"Justice extends to everyone who is part of the sacred web of kinship, to every clan and every bloodline. Even a grim Humakti and his followers can be brought before the courts (though wisdom is required in this!) and even a chief must offer compensation if a trickster under his protection causes harm. No one is immune - animals, dead ancestors and even storms can be brought to court, for they are part of the Sacred Order. (In such cases, descendants, or groups with magical associations to the accused stand in their place)."
Bringing a humakti before the courts is an especially tricky business, for several reasons. No doubt different clan law traditions have different traditions passed on past experience advising on the wisdom or otherwise of doing such. (Translation: narrators have a certain amount of discretion in advising players on this.) In my games, Humakti have legal immunities in certain areas described below, but can be taken before the courts for other matters.
Everyone remembers how The Black Blade gave cattle to Skardi No-Good in compensation after the Tool Day sacrifice disruptions - and we praise him in song for this. Yet we also remember the Honour Feud that resulted in half the weaponthanes being outlawed and the entire Footrot Flats bloodline being extinguished. You take a humakti before the courts at your peril.
Humakti are a classic example of a liminal category - someone or something that doesn't neatly fit into one category or another, sitting on a shadowy area somewhere on the boundary between two things. Liminal beings always excite fear and uncertainty, and are often the subject of our strongest taboos and prejudices.
Examples include people who are outside mainstream categories of "normal" behaviour and sexuality - hence the unthinking prejudice sometimes directed towards 'feminine' men, 'masculine' women, and folk with minority sexual preferences Another example is cyclists who drive on main roads - "Are they a vehicle or aren't they? Why don't they follow the rules!". And then there are the things that mediate our strongest boundary of all - that between inside and outside our bodies - hence the fear and taboos surrounding food and all bodily products.
Humakti can almost *never* be clearly categorised or described, in Heortling law or in anything else, and a lot of the fear that the cult attracts is due to this 'liminality'. They are of the clan and not of the clan, kin and not-kin, they are our greatest heroes and yet have bizarre foreign codes of value and behaviour, they seldom take spouses or have families like normal folk, they are responsible before the law and they are above the law. So humakti can be the subject of fear, loathing and taboo even before we start mentioning big swords, death-at-a-glance and casual slaughter.
There are certain clear areas where humakti *are* above the law. As ST 63 describes, once sundered, humakti are free to perform their sacred duty (killing things) free from legal reprisal. The down side is that they are responsible to their deity, who is an *honourable* deity, and if they misuse this freedom in any way they will incur divine wrath upon their hero band, temple or regiment. And divine wrath can be nasty - broken swords, total silence, inability to accept *any* healing, inability to go to sleep except in a Humakt temple! (And as a narrator, you should exercise your imagination :)). In such cases, the cult itself will enact a resolution, and in many cases this will be similar to mainstream law codes.
In other cases, incidental to their sacred duties, humakti *are* within the law, and can be brought before the courts. In such cases, the local humakti cult - the kayling - operate in place of the kin group. Humakti herds stray onto crops as much as any other, sheep get interfered with, ritual mistakes happen, clan secrets get drunkenly repeated at a feast, green limb gets served in the pot, even (shudder) love songs get sung in public, and in such cases law suits might be brought. Of course, if you're courageous, you can go straight to the humakti and invoke their sense of honour to set things right before starting the mechanisms of a court case. Oft, things will get fixed there and then.
Think of it in terms of social harmony, which is really all that the Heortling law codes are about.. Humakti in a clan are a mixed blessing.
A chieftain might tolerate one or two incidents of sacred slaughter, but not much. Humakti weaponthanes will be dismissed or even outlawed if they prove to be more trouble than they're worth, or sent on impossible missions from which they will never return.
Senior Humakti cultists themselves will teach new members restraint and honour, to make death meaningful. Casual slaughter will turn a clan against you, whether its "legal" or not. If Braggi Bent-Bow starts a feud with his neighbouring clan and then decides to join Humakt to pursue a little above-the-law slaughter, you can be assured the cult itself will make sure this doesn't happen - either by rejecting his application outright or by shaming and cutting the vengeance out of him on the practice floor. Or the God himself - in which case pity poor Braggi. Divine wrath is nasty, and dishonourable, and humakti are even more dependant and partial to a good and honourable name than most Heortlings.
So humakti themselves must exercise at least partial restraint if they are to live within a clan, which means the cult itself will restrain members from killing clansfolk and friendly neighbours. Those who cannot will become solitary wanderers or join a mercenary regiment. (In my experience, a lot of humakti do end up wandering - Pavis especially seems full of them! :))
Death Lords who wander striking down all beings left right and center are known, but they are beyond any law save the law of Humakt, and are certainly divorced forever from normal life and clan living.
There will be occasional instances where pragmatic restraint fails of course, or where a Humakti is elected king or chief or is turned to Death by a conversion experience. A clan in the grip of such a 'dictatorship of the sword' will be a terrible place indeed, where ordinary folk live in constant terror and the shadow of death lies all about. Thankfully such instances are rare.
Compromise and social harmony are central to Heortling law. Humakti understand this as well as anyone, the occasional sword-happy 'death song berserk' PC notwithstanding. :) Yet humakti are liminal, and serve a dark and fearful god with strange values and bizarre codes of honour. They are never predictable. Fear them, and deal with them carefully and openly. Think twice before involving a humakti in a court case. :)
Hope this helps
John
nysalor_at_... John HughesQuestlines: http://home.iprimus.com.au/pipnjim/questlines/
"Each to his creed," said Yaotl. "So do men choose between hope and despair."
"Yes, creeds mean very little," Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label."
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