Re: Punishment in Orlanthi Law

From: Paul Andrew King <paul_at_...>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 08:15:30 +0100


>So she steals the kid and gets rid of it. (she's a bit of a hothead)
>Even so, she can't
>bring herself to kill it, not outright. We haven't yet decided
>exactly what she does. One
>theory is throw it in the river, the other is leave it on a
>mountaintop. Both classical ways
>to do infanticide. The last is the rather disturbing idea of her
>secretly bringing it into a
>heroquest and using it as something that is sacrificed or lost
>during that, thus stranding
>it in the otherworld.
>
>What I want to know is what would be the expected punishment for this?

Permanent Outlawry (i.e. for life). It's the chief's son and the chief usually has the final say - and it'd be very hard for anyone else on the Ring to disagree even if they wanted to. Then she's just another enemy of the clan and "fair game".

The way I'd see it is that as soon as they know that the kid has been taken and they have worked out that she did it she'd be declared outlaw. If there's hope that the child is still alive they'll be more concerned with getting him back than killing her (so the hunters would be looking to capture and interrogate her - probably involving torture).

> Would it be
>considered kinslaying and she slain on sight?

If they decide that the child is dead, then that's far and away the most likely outcome. If the child is dead or even if that was her intent it is probably bad enough to bring Chaos on the clan - so the clan will be engaged in purification rites, watching out for an attack and she'll be blamed for anything that happened.

> Would she be branded as a traitor of
>some kind and exiled? In the end she gets away, although not
>unscathed. I'm trying to
>figure out what the Orlanthi reaction to this would be.

"Violence is always an option". But she'd be outlawed first so that killing her is not kinstrife.

-- 
--
"The T'ang emperors were strong believers in the pills of 
immortality.  More emperors died of poisoning from ingesting minerals 
in the T'ang than in any other dynasty" - Eva Wong _The Shambhala 
Guide to Taoism_

Paul K.

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