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Ransom


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How does Ransoms get collected/traded? Let´s say our adventuring party has captured dark troll hunter, trying to steal cows. Who pays the ransom and how do players go get it? Troll clan pays? So they need to go to Troll Woods from where the troll is from? Is the captured hunter troll with them.. and so on?

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7 minutes ago, Caras said:

How does Ransoms get collected/traded? Let´s say our adventuring party has captured dark troll hunter, trying to steal cows. Who pays the ransom and how do players go get it? Troll clan pays? So they need to go to Troll Woods from where the troll is from? Is the captured hunter troll with them.. and so on?

Typically communities have established points or networks for handling that - the Issaries cult often handles this for many human societies.

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Caras, we had a situation recently where the party managed to catch a Telmori Alpha and wanted their clan to receive the ransom he offered. I let the players work out the details. 

First one of them decided that making a sign from twigs and twine that was placed at the intersection between the two groups territory was a mutually recognised sign of parley. 

They then came up with there being a large stone formation covered in Beast Runes that the two opponents treated as common ground to resolve such issues. When each side placed a hand upon the rock negotiations could take place.

I think these sort of interactions are great to leave to the players and see what they come up with.

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We played out the hand-off of some Praxian prisoners, animal rustlers captured in the Desolation Hills, in a game I run.  The caught thieves were Bolo Lizard riders.  A Sable Rider player character rode up onto an eminence and made signs the nearby Bolo Lizard clan couldn't miss to call for a ransom exchange.

WIthin a few hours a lone lizard rider approached the player party to negotiate, with an unknown number of their clanspeople lying in wait just out of sight.  The player characters were more interested in dispensing with their prisoners than bickering over the price, so the 'negotiation' was more a clarification of terms: the price to be exchanged, the place and manner of the exchange.

The lizard riders left the ransom as a cache further along the party's line of march.  Lizard riders watched the site, and by agreement would not approach to retrieve their prisoners until the player party had left.  The player characters are a mostly honorable lot, and were in a hurry to get out of the Desolation Hills and on to their goal, so they stuck to the letter and spirit of the ransom agreement.  They stopped at the cache site, tethered their prisoners with their lizard mounts, retrieved the ransom and went on their way.  The whole affair amounted to a year's bonus pay for the group's animal rider warriors.

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1 minute ago, Luxus said:

When someone is ransomed back, is he/she/it ransomed with all armour and weapons?

That can be highly contextual.  Personal wargear is usually up for grabs; battle ransom is a blood-price, an exchange of a community or family's goods for the life of one of its members.  What they were carrying on them at the time of their capture is usually forfeit to the victor, the same as if they'd killed the captive outright.  If something the captive was carrying was really magically powerful the people ransoming them may be interested in paying extra to get the item back, especially if the object in question is significant to a cult.  Returning anything that significant for free along with the ransomed person is the sort of gesture you'd make to treat the vanquished magnanimously after a win.

A character I played was responsible for ransoming back the corpse of the champion of the Yarandros hero-cult in Tarsh for resurrection, and returning the champion's ceremonial skull-helmet was a significant point of contention in the ransom negotiations.

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1 minute ago, dumuzid said:

That can be highly contextual.  Personal wargear is usually up for grabs; battle ransom is a blood-price, an exchange of a community or family's goods for the life of one of its members.  What they were carrying on them at the time of their capture is usually forfeit to the victor, the same as if they'd killed the captive outright.  If something the captive was carrying was really magically powerful the people ransoming them may be interested in paying extra to get the item back, especially if the object in question is significant to a cult.  Returning anything that significant for free along with the ransomed person is the sort of gesture you'd make to treat the vanquished magnanimously after a win.

A character I played was responsible for ransoming back the corpse of the champion of the Yarandros hero-cult in Tarsh for resurrection, and returning the champion's ceremonial skull-helmet was a significant point of contention in the ransom negotiations.

That's the way we have been playing it too. Just started wondering because sometimes prisoners armor+weapons are more valuable than their ransom. Iron dwarves especially.

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6 hours ago, Luxus said:

When someone is ransomed back, is he/she/it ransomed with all armour and weapons?

If you are ransomed, would you expect to walk away with all your equipment intact or would you be stripped of all equipment?

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16 hours ago, Luxus said:

When someone is ransomed back, is he/she/it ransomed with all armour and weapons? If a prisoner has an iron broadsword for example, can the PC's keep it even if they let the prisoner go after receiving ransom?

the question here is most "does the guy's ransom" include the "armor+weapon+..." ransom

for example : Leika's ransom is 4000L. Seeing what she owns, I consider that 4000L is not enough to pay the iron armor, the harp, the ballista and the black spear.

Of course a smart guy will probably generously give back the black spear to reduce the rancor but will expect more that just the nude queen's body price. So maybe define the price of each material and consider it as a ransom (if you can evaluate it)

 

 

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I take it the ransom value is not neessarily a fixed price, but more of an expectecation or a basis for bargaining? This could be an exciting little adventure in itself: going over the the enemy's, trying to to get back one of the big shots in your clan, but knowing that you are just short of the expected sum. Oh, and the big shot had a very important artifact with him.

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I think of ransom as much as a social contract as a monetary one. I would tend to encourage the players to return them with their belongings as what they are really committing to is a contract that they will be treated the same. Of course, they can take the stuff but they will have to accept the same might happen to them…

Agree with Badger, in the Telmori exchange that I mentioned above, the Telmori didn’t have enough disposable wealth to pay the debt and so a deal was struck that was not just the immediate payment of coin… can lead to some interesting situations.

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Player characters usually have gained many very powerful magical things, weapons, armour and so on... Maybe even an object of companions wyter... It is also very common, that when a PC has to surrender, then all of the PC:s have to do the same... That may mean A LOT of loot for the enemy... PC:s don´t like to lose their things, but I guess that just is the case. They lose everything else, but their lives in ransom.

 

 

Edited by Caras
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In the one ransomed encounter our party has gotten so far personal equipment was kept by the owners, but any "loot" or such was transferred over to the party (just some camping supplies and rations).

Total ransom amount was about 2,000, and it was paid as 25 Gold wheels (500 L), 25 heads of cattle (500 L), 4-point Lightning rune spell matrix (~800 L), and a 2-point spell strengthening crystal (~400 L). The payment came over the rest of the (about half a season) season as it was downtime between adventures.

It was a good scene, the opposing leader had a strong shield on, but threw their sword to the ground after they realized that they couldn’t get a single hit in through the Humakti’s Sword Trance -enhanced parry.

Edited by tnli
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On 11/16/2020 at 12:23 PM, Caras said:

How does Ransoms get collected/traded?

There was a big ransom event right at the beginning of my campaign.  The PCs liberated the prisoners from the Lunar Manors, where quite a few Lunar had themselves taken refuge during the liberation of Sartar, as it was quite heavily fortified (and in the wilds, and heading away from Sartar).

The PCs ended up with a lot of Lunar prisoners (and armour).  The ranking Sartar they freed (actually, his sister, who had led the PCs into the adventure, fearing Lunar atrocities in the chaos of liberation) offered to organise the ransoming of the Lunars for the PCs, for a cut (it went 50/50), as the PCs hadn’t a scooby how to go about it, nor indeed the inclination, and the Sartar prisoners were very grateful for a bit of cash.

The armour ended up with the local Humakti (again 50/50), at Indrodar’s Necklace, with choice pieces being modified to fit the PCs by the Humakti armourer (with much credit going to the Humakti duck PC, who impressed not just with generosity, but with piety and a very good worship roll).

By the end of it, the PCs had made some *very* important friends. 

And this was all on top of what had already been quite a memorable nights gaming, a climactic fight against Lunar heavies as the manors burned, and the heroic freeing of the prisoners amidst all the smoke and shouting as the flames rose. (Though not too scary for the younger members of our group).

So, if you ever wonder who burned the Lunar Manors, it was my bunch of ne'er-do-well PCs.  (What the players don’t realise to this day is that the few distraction fires they’d set had nothing to do with the conflagration that ensued, that was the Lunars who set fire to the prisoner halls, wanting the PCs occupied rescuing the prisoners whilst they fled.)

5 hours ago, Caras said:

That may mean A LOT of loot for the enemy... PC:s don´t like to lose their things, but I guess that just is the case

That's how it works in my Glorantha.  Easy come, easy go.  Isn't it the traditional GM ploy for de-powering a campaign that's got too powerful?   Thinking back to my munchin days.

Although, at the moment, my lot don't have that much that they'd miss in terms of power (the odd sword or bow doing +1 damage, their dragon scale hauberks that counts as heavy scale, excepting quiet(ish) and light(ish)).  I think what would cause tears is that their gear looks really, really cool.  A dragon bone bow certainly is a certainly a talking point. 

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