Re: Humakti temples

From: Roderick and Ellen Robertson <rjremr_at_gEHBa_lWo5Y_LYO_8Ep_LXOH539w6IJHaVpErp772aFzVNerRKCLxGwfbtFE1GMdn-U8t>
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:57:10 -0700


>>I don't think paying wergeld is dishonourable
>
> I agree. It shows your clan is interested in justice and peace. It's
> also a way to flaunt your wealth -- wergild isn't cheap, and paying
> shows you can afford it.

The question was of a king leaning on the local Humakti temple to pay for what the temple consider a righteous kill - if some idiot (or six) fights a humakti and ends up dead, who's fault is it?

The original question, however, skipped over the court case that would result in wergild being determined. If the court came down against the Humakti and determined that he was, somehow, at fault and that the idiot didn't just commit "suicide by humakti", the humakti has every right to refuse to pay and say "Humakt Willed it, I did no wrong" (which is a polite way of saying "come get it if you dare"). The dishonorable part is the local king "leaning" on the Humakti (or his temple) to pay up regardless (on threat of withdrawal of support, presumably). Telling a worshipper of a god (especially *that* god) to buckle under to political pressure instead of the dictates of his god is putting the worshipper in a dishonorable position.

The king is really in a bad place in this - on the one hand he has the local Humakt temple, an important resource, on the other we have the relatives of the dead guy - and who know what part they have in the clan? It might have been an important thane's son or nephew.

RR.
He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad R. Sabatini, Scaramouche            

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