So by extension, if the Humakti kills my brother, I could take him to court and demand wergild to compensate for the loss to my family and to satisfy my honour so I don't have to get friends and kin involved in more bloodshed with a dangerous humakti and possibly his dangerous humakti friends. If the humakt refuses to come to terms in court, I still have the option (as always) of using violence.
I don't really see how this differs from normal heorting law... remember, the law is simply a way resolving disputes, not of dispensing "justice". Immunity from the law is not really an issue - protecting yourself from vengeance is. Of course a powerful humakti with a following of fanatical killers might be able to get away with a lot but that is not a point of law...
Dougie.
"Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man? Then make sure that no one shall possess power." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 271]
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Message: 1 Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 10:33:45 +0200 From: "Julian Lord" <julian.lord_at_...> Subject: Re: Re: Humakti and Heortlings law?
Cool stuff from John re: Humakt's liminality etc :
> Janus:
>
> > > So, which is it? Are Humakti (and other members of cults that thunder
> > > their clan/family ties) subject to the Heortling laws or not?
But another difficult point is that some rare Humakti actually seek to become incarnations * of * the Law, via Humakt's Oath-Keeper r�le.
> Bringing a humakti before the courts is an especially tricky business, for
> several reasons.
One tricky point is that being powerful gives you a certain immunity from the the Heortling courts, and people are very scared of Humakti Death magic, rightly so.
> 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.
One parallel with the RW may be helpful here : Civil Law concerns settling matters in peace time, but the Humakti (much like RW armies) are governed by separate legal systems of Military Law or Court Martial, which are the real foundation stone of the Tribes and other Heortling political entities, and effectively place them above ordinary law.
This is Glorantha, so the situation is exaggerated, and given a mythic scope : so that most individual Humakti (not all Initiates, particularly resheathed ones) would be treated in Heortling Law is treated as an army would be in our own Civil Courts.
Or think of Colonel Kurtz' legal position in Apocalypse Now : completely and insanely beyond the pale.
Powerful Humakti Kurtz was, powerful Humakti ...
Julian Lord
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