Wergilds

[Brootse]

If there has been a combat outside war between two thanes who belong to different tribes, and the thane from tribe A has killed the thane from tribe B, but was wounded himself, how much would the wergild be? Would the wounds of the thane from tribe A be deducted from the wergild?

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Brootse said:

If there has been a combat outside war between two thanes who belong to different tribes, and the thane from tribe A has killed the thane from tribe B, but was wounded himself, how much would the wergild be? Would the wounds of the thane from tribe A be deducted from the wergild?

This is a bit unclear, but since most wounds are readily healed in Glorantha, I imagine they would have to be serious and semi-permanent in order to qualify for wergild. If they are, I imagine both the death and the wounds would count.

[Brootse]

2 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

This is a bit unclear, but since most wounds are readily healed in Glorantha, I imagine they would have to be serious and semi-permanent in order to qualify for wergild. If they are, I imagine both the death and the wounds would count.

Yeah, I thought it a bit strange too, but in the Runequest Gamemaster Adventures p.103 it's stated that the wergild for wounding someone is half of their full ransom. Perhaps it's more about the offence than the long lasting damage. Eg. some cultures on Earth demanded wergild for tying up someone or cutting their hair.

[Akhôrahil]

7 minutes ago, Brootse said:

Yeah, I thought it a bit strange too, but in the Runequest Gamemaster Adventures p.103 it's stated that the wergild for wounding someone is half of their full ransom.

Yeah, and my interpretation above is my attempt to make sense of it. Why would anyone have to pay that big a wergild for something that you just routinely healed up afterwards? It only makes sense if we're talking actually crippling injuries. No-one else cares that it really hurt for a bit, especially in a duel you jointly got yourself into.

Related question: I'm assuming you can avoid wergild by doing a resurrection yourself? 3 points of reusable Rune Magic for Chalana Arroy must surely be vastly cheaper than 20 or 50 cows.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Brootse]

4 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Yeah, and my interpretation above is my attempt to make sense of it. Why would anyone have to pay that big a wergild for something that you just routinely healed up afterwards? It only makes sense if we're talking actually crippling injuries. No-one else cares that it really hurt for a bit, especially in a duel you jointly got yourself into.

Related question: I'm assuming you can avoid wergild by doing a resurrection yourself? 3 points of reusable Rune Magic for Chalana Arroy must surely be vastly cheaper than 20 or 50 cows.

The CA temple charges the amount of the raised person's wergild.

[Akhôrahil]

9 minutes ago, Brootse said:

The CA temple charges the amount of the raised person's wergild.

Not a problem If you have a CA PC. Also, that’s super expensive for something at 3 Rune Points reusable, although I guess they want to discourage abuses and it’s not exactly a market economy... 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[French Desperate WindChild]

13 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Related question: I'm assuming you can avoid wergild by doing a resurrection yourself? 3 points of reusable Rune Magic for Chalana Arroy must surely be vastly cheaper than 20 or 50 cows.

Well it is not RAW but I would say that the price to apaise the offence against the gods / ancestors / spirits / etc... when you get back someone (even altered psychologically) from death  should be expensive

[Akhôrahil]

Just now, French Desperate WindChild said:

Well it is not RAW but I would say that the price to apaise the offence against the gods / ancestors / spirits / etc... when you get back someone (even altered psychologically) from death  should be expensive

I really wish the rules would implement the Relife Sickness. And I personally think wergild is a purely economic transaction - you have to cover the value of that person lost to the clan. A lot like the brideprice.

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

I really wish the rules would implement the Relife Sickness. And I personally think wergild is a purely economic transaction - you have to cover the value of that person lost to the clan. A lot like the brideprice.

I wish too

[Akhôrahil]

I'm thinking of having them do some check on resurrection, then get some penalty is it fails (perhaps a high enforced Passion?). Penalty removed if they switch to CA or Humakt (and I personally think Uleria should be an option here as well).

[Leingod]

Wergild isn't just about pure economics and value lost; it's a way of sublimating the impulse to take revenge to keep feuds from happening. If one of "your own" has been hurt, you as an Orlanthi are obligated to seek redress and restitution, whether that be from violence or from legal recourse.

Heortling society is a "revenge society," which means the primary means of discouraging wrongdoing is the knowledge that if you hurt someone, their kin are not only expected but required to seek you out and try to get even. Accepting a pittance in wergild because "he wasn't hurt that bad!/he got better!" just sends the message that you're reluctant to avenge wrongs done to your own, which just emboldens anyone who might want to wrong you for whatever reason (a grudge, to show his friends how tough he is, etc.).

It's not just about calculating exactly how much value the clan has lost (though that is a consideration), it's about not looking weak. You can't let other people think they can beat on your kin, break some bones, and then get off by just handing over some pocket change because "oh, there's healers, it's alright." That makes you a target.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Leingod

[Akhôrahil]

2 minutes ago, Leingod said:

Wergild isn't just about pure economics and value lost; it's a way of sublimating the impulse to take revenge to keep feuds from happening. If one of "your own" has been hurt, you as an Orlanthi are obligated to seek redress and restitution, whether that be from violence or from legal recourse.

Heortling society is a "revenge society," which means the primary means of discouraging wrongdoing is the knowledge that if you hurt someone, their kin are not only expected but required to seek you out and try to get even. Accepting a pittance in wergild because "he wasn't hurt that bad!/he got better!" just sends the message that you're reluctant to avenge wrongs done to your own, which just emboldens anyone who might want to wrong you for whatever reason (a grudge, to show his friends how tough he is, etc.).

It's not just about calculating exactly how much value the clan has lost (though that is a consideration), it's about not looking weak. You can't let other people think they can beat on your kin, break some bones, and then get off by just handing over some pocket change because "oh, there's healers, it's alright." That makes you a target.

All that is true, but another aspect of it is that the wergild amounts has to be reasonable. 10 cows for giving a Carl a black eye is ridiculous - no court would uphold it, and your clanmates would think you silly for being ready to start a feud over it. And this reasonableness is heavily connected to actual economic damage to the clan. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

Also, it's entirely possible that healing is not as easy, plentiful or reliable in a literary sense as RQ rules might make it seem. 

[Akhôrahil]

3 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Also, it's entirely possible that healing is not as easy, plentiful or reliable in a literary sense as RQ rules might make it seem. 

In that case, I don't think they should have been written in such a way as to make it seem so. The PCs can almost trivially heal anything, so why can't other people?

[Sir_Godspeed]

9 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

In that case, I don't think they should have been written in such a way as to make it seem so. The PCs can almost trivially heal anything, so why can't other people?

Because they're protagonists? That's a pretty common trope in writing. I'm not saying that's how you need to take it, but I at least consider all rulesets an attempt to make a more complex world "readable" for gaming, which means making stuff more reliable, more accessible to players, etc. than it might be in a more, eh, non-playable sense. You know, like hit points. I am fairly certain people in Glorantha do not LITERALLY have hit points (nor "points of worship" for that matter. That's game-system-speech.)

[Akhôrahil]

6 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Because they're protagonists? That's a pretty common trope in writing.

There are plenty of systems where that would make all kinds of sense, but one of the core tenets of RQ is that the PCs _aren't_ privileged by the rules (outside of things like a really nice character creation) - their Heal 1 works just the same as everyone else's Heal 1. How could it be otherwise?

Non-canonically (in Cults/Lords of Terror, for instance), people do go around talking about their magic points and their Xenoheal 4 spell, but I agree that this isn't how it should work. 🙂

[Brootse]

I don't think that I've ever seen a human NPC that lacked spells. Now that I think of it, I don't remember any that lacked some sort of healing spells either. But that's beside the point. Historically wergilds were paid for other than wounds or killing too.

[Akhôrahil]

Medieval Swedish law contains a number of interesting ways to handle fines. For instance, if you beat up an entertainer, then take a heifer, put butter on its tail, and if the entertainer can hold on to the heifer, he receives it as fine. You also only have to pay half the fine for people from Småland, at least if you're in Västergötland. That kind of thing.

[Sir_Godspeed]

5 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

There are plenty of systems where that would make all kinds of sense, but one of the core tenets of RQ is that the PCs _aren't_ privileged by the rules (outside of things like a really nice character creation) - their Heal 1 works just the same as everyone else's Heal 1. How could it be otherwise?

Non-canonically (in Cults/Lords of Terror, for instance), people do go around talking about their magic points and their Xenoheal 4 spell, but I agree that this isn't how it should work. 🙂

As I've seen from other threads here that have attempted to directly extrapolate RQ mechanics to wider society, we get some funky results, so I still think there's something to be said for "stuff's not as user-friendly as the games make out to be."

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

As I've seen from other threads here that have attempted to directly extrapolate RQ mechanics to wider society, we get some funky results, so I still think there's something to be said for "stuff's not as user-friendly as the games make out to be."

I would be all in favour of a system that did this, but it’s tricky to reconcile the things that magic explicitly can do in the hands of the PCs, with a world that works very differently. If healing is trivial for them and they have the same magics as everyone else...

(Even just something that meant MPs weren’t basically free would go a long way.)

Edited September 3, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Sir_Godspeed]

Well, I'm really just providing some personal views that might help solve the issue of the OP, but if that doesn't go well with your own views then no worries.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

7 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Also, it's entirely possible that healing is not as easy, plentiful or reliable in a literary sense as RQ rules might make it seem. 

I've seen many postings, from both fans and more official" sources, that healing is plentiful, other aspects of health care are great: women have nearly complete control over fertility, childbirth is almost completely safe (unlike the bronze age real world), there's no Black Death or Cholera sweeping the countryside, etc...  I have argued that everybody should become an initiate to get 1 point of rune magic and access to the common spell Heal Wound (Universal catastrophic Health Care!) and get push back that "no, there's plenty of Ernaldans and Chalana Arroy around", so, in canon, half or so of all NPCs are mere lay members.

You make a valid and good point as to it being "possible", but, in this case, I believe you are wrong.

[French Desperate WindChild]

I would say you need wergild or revenge when you have to use magic to heal (when Time is not enough) or when the problem is a big offense (against honor, reputation, ...)

[David Scott]

18 hours ago, Brootse said:

If there has been a combat outside war between two thanes who belong to different tribes, and the thane from tribe A has killed the thane from tribe B, but was wounded himself, how much would the wergild be?

Weregild = Life price = ransom (RQG page 64). A thane is a noble so 1000L (page 69-70).

18 hours ago, Brootse said:

Would the wounds of the thane from tribe A be deducted from the wergild?

It's not paid for wounding.

However Runequest Gamemaster Adventures p.103 does as you noted state that they want half ransom for wounding. This is a scenario specific demand to set up the tit for tat feud. The adventurers could say that they are not paying as ransom customarily doesn't cover wounding The Orlevings on the other hand know this and demand it anyway so starting the feud (an impossible demand). They get the money for the dead and get to start a feud. If they players pay the wounding money, they are rich fools.

In my game, the adventurers rejected the wounding, but paid the usual ransom. As this wasn't against custom, nothing further could happen. The herald didn't not mention that they didn't have to pay part of it as it was a demand, but the LM in the the adventures party said otherwise.

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

It's not paid for wounding.

Thunder Rebels (p.42) had a list of "body fines":

• If the wound be not serious, there is no need for justice.
• If a high priestess be slain in her words, or a chieftain in his rites, a noble, a serdrodosi in her fits, a white woman, a kolating in his leaps, a juror in her pledging, or a champion by cowardice, one hundred cows be the price, or outlawry, or both; if they be maimed, then fifty cows. And ten cows to the gods in either case, and two white bulls for cleansing.
• If a thane be slain, or a hearthmistress, or one of the Ring, then fifty cows be the price, and five hands of seasons outlawry, or both; if he be maimed, then twice five hands of cows. And five fine cows to the gods in either case, and a pair of gelded horses for cleansing.
• If a carl be slain, or any godi, or the head of a bloodline, or a bride before her rites, then twenty-five cows be the price, and three hands of seasons outlawry if the act be planned; if he be maimed, then ten cows.
• If a cottar be slain, or a stickpicker or other beggar, then ten cows.
• If a guest of the stead be killed or maimed, then the price of the host.
• If an alynx, a bull or cow, a ram or ewe, a stallion or mare, or a boar or sow be slain, that was blessed by the gods, then a cottar’s or a carl’s price, as the casting stones say.
• If an alynx queen be struck down, or interfered with that she lose her kits, then two cows.
• There be no price for the death of a stranger, or an outlaw, or a trickster outside the bond, for there is no honor without honor, and no justice without kin.. . . .