>From: Light Castle <light_castle_at_...>
>Anyone have some good suggestions for historical parallels or ideas I could
>use?
Well, largely in the sorts of societies we're looking at here, it's very much "might makes right." That is, there aren't so much "law enforcement" individuals at all as people who the powerful have given authority to so that they can keep order. This is hard for us to wrap our modern heads around sometimes, but basically there were no "law enforcement" individuals. Take a Sherrif from England. The term derrives from Shire Reeve, and generally means somebody appointed by the king to collect taxes in an area. The Marshall is a guy who is assigned troops to use in case of revolts mostly.
Now, this doesn't mean that rulers don't understand that there's value to the people operating in an orderly fashion from day to day. But this doesn't mean that there's any "justice" at all neccessarily. Yes, in order to keep people happy, a lord might dispense justice over his people if they ask for it. But how he does so is completely at his own reasoning as to how he thinks best to do so. In other words often there are some very general rules set out, but in specific cases where the few very general rules do not pertain, the ruler merely makes a decision as to what happens.
My point is that in this situation there's no need for people who have the position of doing nothing but keeping the peace. What you usually get is soldiers who otherwise exist to protect the ruler's power, being used when the ruler feels neccessary to take some action.
So what I think you do for a character in this case is simply say that he's a soldier who has been assigned by an absent ruler to try to keep order somewhere (perhaps with some subordinate soldiers if the job merits it). Then let the player figure out how to do this without any real framework other than any rules like the ones you mention like weirguild that you know exist. The "law" is the will of the ruler as the character interprets it.
Should be quite fun. :-)
Mike
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