Law and justice
The Watch and the law
Crime is allowed. So is the Kuttenberg City Guard, which keeps the king's peace across the land with rope, fine and pillory: fines, bounties, wanted notices and judges all answer to it.
| The Watch may | |
|---|---|
| Bind | Bind a suspect's wrists (/restrain - their hands are tied behind their back until they are untied) and untie them (/release). The watch binds at once; anyone else may only tie up someone who agrees (a bounty hunter's catch who gives up, a scene played out). Anyone else beside a bound person may untie them (E > Untie); nobody unties their own rope, and a prisoner serving a sentence stays bound. |
| Fine | Fine someone up to 500 groschen on the spot; they pay or refuse. Fines go to the coffers of the officer's faction. A fine refused or let lapse stays unpaid for 7 days: the fined one can still pay it at any moneylender (/payfine, or Pay my fines in the moneylender's menu - the purse first, else the account), and until then the law may confiscate from them. |
| The pillory | Put a convict in the stocks at a pillory for up to 60 minutes, for the whole realm to hear of - never less than a town court's cell allows. The stocks used are the pillory of the town the convict is in (or one within 300 m), never another town's far away. |
| Bounties | Post a wanted notice with a bounty. Someone who never told you their name can be posted by the id over their head (/wanted 14 0 tall man, red hood | robbed the smith): the notice reads your description (without one, what they look like: "A man, dark brown hair, bearded"), never their name. The town's watch does the same with /twanted. The City Guard's notices show on every screen. A lordship's Constables post theirs in the lordship's name: "wanted in the Lordship of X" on the board, heard only by its Constables and its court, handed over at one of its pillories, with the bounty paid from the Constables' coffers. F2 > The realm > Wanted notices (or the stocks at a pillory) shows the board. At every pillory and town hall, Read the wanted notices lists those wanted in the realm, each with a description (man or woman, age, skin, hair or tonsure, beard or clean-shaven). A town hall also has Read the town's contracts. Anyone who brings a wanted person, bound, to a bailiff collects the bounty, paid from the coffers of the faction that posted it; anyone may report a sighting, which marks it for the watch.A bounty is 200 groschen at most (400 in all on one head), posted by ranks with the right to post bounties, and paid only on a notice at least 30 minutes old. It is never paid to the side that posted it - the poster, their account or PC, their faction (or one who left it within 14 days), their party - nor to the wanted person's own account, PC, faction or party: such a notice comes down unpaid. A bounty on someone of your own faction, party or PC is refused when posted. A head is paid for once a day, and a hunter collects three bounties a day at most; notices whose price was not paid stay up. The person handed over goes straight into the stocks: 10 minutes for each crime on the board, half an hour at most. /stuck does not get them out, and the court may still try them. |
| Impound | Send a horse (/himpound [amount] [reason]) or an empty cart (/cimpound [amount] [reason]) to the impound lot, with a fine of 0 to 5000 groschen and a reason - see the impound lot below. |
| Records | Look up anyone's convictions at the bailiff's, or with /record First_Last. |
| Subdue | Bring someone down without killing them: a blow with your fists or a blunt weapon (a mace, a club, a hammer, a staff) that would kill a player where your law runs knocks them out instead, for about 90 seconds. See Subduing and carrying below. |
| Carry | Lift someone bound or knocked out over your shoulder (/carry player) and set them down again (/carry once more, or /putdown). Leading a bound person on foot stays /prisoner player lead. |
| Search | Go through the whole pack and sack of someone bound or knocked out (/search player) and seize what you need as evidence. On anyone else, /search only looks for contraband. |
| Search a cart | Within 4 m of a player's cart out in the open, the action wheel's The cart slice (also F2's lines for what is here, and the Search button on each cart of the Law window) opens its store like a person's inspection: its items and goods, the contraband marked. Confiscate destroys the contraband alone - nothing lawful can be taken - and the owner is told and it is logged as a person's search. The same slice's Impound opens the Law window with that cart's impound form ready. |
Subduing and carrying
The watch can take a troublemaker alive. When a member of the watch, where their law runs, lands a blow with fists or a blunt weapon - a mace, a club, a hammer, a staff - that would kill another player, the blow leaves them on their last few points of health instead, their bleeding stops and they fall knocked out for about 90 seconds. Nobody dies: there is no wear on their gear from a death and no trip to the infirmary. A sword, an axe, a dagger or an arrow still kills, so choose your weapon.
| While they lie senseless | The watch may bind them (/restrain), carry them, search them whole, read their letters, or put them straight into the stocks at a pillory. |
| When they come to | Still unbound, they get up where they lie, dazed for 20 minutes (a light wound, as after a fall: hard work goes a little slower; a bandage or the infirmarian ends it) and are told the watch subdued them. If they were bound in the meantime, they wake with their hands tied and the rope holds them. |
| Carrying | Stand beside someone bound or knocked out and use /carry player: you heave them over your shoulder and walk at a carrying pace. /carry again or /putdown sets them down. A blow on you makes you drop them. Someone who came to while you carried them gets up once you set them down. Having just fought them, or others who can no longer fight, does not stop you lifting them; but while someone still on their feet within 15 m is fighting you, the carry waits and the detain window's Carry card says so. |
| Never | in a sparring duel or a tournament bout (they keep their own rules), on a raid's ground or in a town under siege (a battle is a battle), nor on the staff on duty. |
The pillory
Nobody keeps the pillory but the stocks themselves: a convict stands in the stocks, and a guardsman stands watch a few steps before them. The use key on the stocks does what the bailiff's talk did - the wanted notices, the trials, the stocks, the brigands' news.
Leading by the rope
A bound person you lead (the detain window's Lead, /escort or /prisoner player lead) is pulled along behind you, a little short of you, never through a wall or a shut door. The lead ends past 25 m, in another world, when you mount, fall or leave, when the rope comes off, or when you put them in the stocks.
The detain window
Press E on a player: the person menu opens, and while you hold the law's powers there its first line, starred, is Watch, which opens the detain window over them, followed by Lead by the rope / Hold fast here. The game shows no prompt over someone who lies knocked out or is carried: open it from the person menu (the action wheel > the person > Watch) or with /detain player. Players without the law's powers see the usual prompt.
The window shows the person's state - free, bound, knocked out (with the seconds left before they wake), carried, in the stocks - and whether they are wanted or owe a fine. It lists the person's wanted notices, ticked by default: a fine once paid, the pillory or a town's cell settles the ticked notices you may take down - those without a bounty answered at the bailiff's measure (10 minutes a notice, 30 at most); a notice with a bounty stays for the law that posted it or the bounty hand-over. Clear (a pardon, a mistake) asks a reason. A trial's conviction settles only the notices the judge picked in the watch's window over the accused. Below it are eight cards: Bind / Untie, Lead / Let go, Carry / Put down, Search, Fine (amount and reason), Pillory (minutes and crime, near a pillory), Wanted (a bounty and "a description | the crime") and Read letters. A card you cannot use right now is greyed out with the reason ("Bind them first", "No pillory near", "Stand beside them"...). Each card does exactly what the matching command does, under the same rules and with the same records.
Search turns the window into the person's belongings: everything in their pack (worn pieces too, contraband marked in red) and in their sack, each with its icon and amount. Seize takes a piece (or a number of a stack) into your own pack, goods into your sack, as evidence. The search is written to the item log and the staff's log, and the person searched is told exactly what was seized. Their purse is shown but never taken: fines and confiscation are the law's ways to a purse. Destroy the contraband confiscates and destroys every forbidden draught, book and herb they carry, as an inspection does. The search ends when you step back, close the window, move more than 8 m away, or when they are no longer held (they woke up unbound or were untied). Ordinary robbers keep /rob: the full search belongs to the watch alone.
The Law window
Anyone with the law's powers where they stand - the City Guard, a lordship's sworn Constables in their towns, a town court's watch in its town - has a Law slice on the action wheel (Z), or can type /lawwindow. It lists everything within 15 m and updates every two seconds while it is open:
| People | Each with what the law knows at a glance - wanted, an unpaid fine, bound, in the stocks - and buttons for what you may do to them there: Fine (amount and reason), Bind / Unbind, Confiscate (for the factions the staff allow), Check papers (the notices on the board, the towns' wanted lists, unpaid fines, horses and carts held at the lot) and Pillory when at a pillory. Each button does exactly what the matching command does, under the same rules. |
| Horses and carts | The players' horses and carts around you, with their owner's name as you know it: Impound, with a fine and a reason, and Search on a cart (see Search a cart above). |
| The impound lot | Below them, what your faction (or your town's court) has impounded: what, whose, when and why, the fine, and whether it was claimed, paid or sold off. |
Keyboard and mouse both work: Tab or the arrow keys move between buttons, Enter confirms a form and Esc closes it. If the window cannot open, the same lists open in the codex.
The Wanted list
The Wanted window groups the notices by person, with their count and bounty in all, unfolded to each notice to tick, settle or clear with a reason; How bounties work gives the bailiff's real numbers. The watch (a law faction's ranks with the watch's right), a town's officers (their town's notices) and the staff on duty open the register of every wanted notice - not only the board's newest, the absent and the old ones too - with /wantedlist, from the board's menu, the pillory, the staff tools or the Law window's Wanted list button. Each line shows the notice's number, the wanted person (the name as the notice gives it; the staff see the real name behind a description), the crime, the jurisdiction (the realm or a lordship), when, the bounty, who reported it and whether they are in the realm. Search by name, crime or #number, filter by jurisdiction, crime and date (today, 7 days, older), sort by date, name or bounty, 40 a page. Where your law reaches (the staff: everywhere), Clear takes a notice down, ticked rows go down together, and Clear all for this person takes down every notice on them - each asks a reason, written to the log as /clearwanted <number> [reason] is. In the chat, /wantedlist <page | name | #number> lists 12 at a time.
The impound lot
| The fine | Set by the officer, from 0 to 5000 groschen, with a reason. When the owner pays it, it goes to the coffers of the faction that impounded - or, for a town court's watch, to the town's treasury. |
| Getting it back | At a stable (for a cart: a cartwright or a stable), use /hrelease or /crelease, or the claim button in F2 > My belongings. The owner pays the 50-groschen keeping fee and the fine, from the purse first and the rest from the moneylender. The fee goes to the treasury of the stable's town if it has a court. |
| The owner is told | At once if they are in the realm, and at every login while it is held: what is held and what is owed. |
| Unclaimed | After 7 days the horse or cart is sold off for the town: it is gone for good, along with whatever its saddlebags held, and the owner gets a letter. The sale (half its price) covers the fine, never more, for the faction or the town that impounded it. |
| The register | A faction of the law sees its impound lot in its faction window (Property) and in the Law window: what is held, claimed or sold off, for two weeks. |