Re: A Good Cop

From: parental_unit_2 <parental_unit_2_at_...>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 20:57:56 -0000

> A player joining my game wants to basically make a police officer. Given
> the mixed Heortling/Esvulari heritage of Karse, what kind of laws and
> law enforcement might it have had?

A possible historical precedent is England under Alfred the Great and his near successors. This is the period when England was divided into shires, a process which seems to have been underway in Esvular for a while at the time you suggest.

Maybe the character is like an English "tythingman" as described at the Web page excerpted below. In Karse or other cities, the tythingman role might be a paid position and organized around districts or boroughs rather than families.

Rob Helm


Policing before police forces by Maurice W. Back http://www.essex.police.uk/pages/offbeat/o_his45.htm

Although the word "police" was not to be used for many centuries, there is no doubt that the principle of policing can be traced to the reign of King Alfred the Great (871-901)....This ideal was perfected by his great-grandson, Edgar (959-975) who divided the then unified country into shires. The basic unit consisted of ten families (a tything) and these were united in groups of ten to form hundreds. This division of the country into hundreds was to be used for administration purposes over many centuries. Indeed, Essex still referred to some 20 in the mid 1800s. Each tything had a tythingman who was pledged to give a surety for his peoples' good behaviour and who had to start the 'hue and cry' after any miscreant.

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