I suppose it depends on exactly what oaths you assume to be sworn during the resheathing rites. If the humakti has sworn to obey and be subject to the clan's laws then he would have to personally answer cases within the clan court or be an oathbreaker.
> Indiscriminate killing by the Chief's Humakti undermines his
support.
Any humakti extreme enough to engage in this sort of behaviour is hardly the sort of humakti likely to have performed the resheathing in the first place as their separation from society and its norms and morals is almost complete. Truly indiscriminate killing is more the purview of gods like Zorak Zoran and any humakti engaging in it is running the risk of divine wrath. Now whether a killing might seem indiscriminate to a Heortling with no real understanding of humakti morality is another matter.
> Fortunately, the Chief has the resources to pay compensation, even
if
> the Humakti himself does not. Just like a hot headed son with a
wiser
> father in a bloodline. Of course, if the victim was a known
> troublemaker, the Chief might be glad to see him gone, and defend
the
> case on those grounds ('he was asking for it'). The killing then, in
> effect, becomes a police action by the Chief.
Yes and unlike an identical action by a Starkval weaponthane it carries no risk of divine retribution for kinstrife, nor will it trigger blood-feuds between bloodlines of the clan. Which may be one of the reasons why chiefs like to keep the occasional humakti on hand to deal with otherwise insoluable problems (or merely to act as an unspoken threat of such resolution).
-- Nic
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