Issaries' priests, stealing, and robbery

[scott-martin]

This is a great thread. In general if you know in your soul that something belongs to someone else and you are not making Equal Exchange to acquire it, you are setting yourself up for trouble. Otherwise god provides wiggle room. ("Everything else is negotiable.")

The adoption of money itself went a long way toward simplifying compliance. While chattel property generally has traceable provenance (someone produced it, owned it and has heirs) coins are designed to have no memory unless you mark them in some way. Every clack is the same clack. People from all kinds of cults may have held that clack but in the exchange the coin usually remains abstract and innocent of its own past. Maybe yesterday it was worth a fried ham hock. Maybe today it's a haircut. Tomorrow it's one more clink in my hoard or even just another tally mark on my sheet down in Nochet, where the actual copper has already gone out to work for other people.

The moral: if you're ever concerned that wealth in your possession is in some way dubious, cash out as soon as you can. The coins you receive are as clean as it gets. This is part of their association with the world of the dead within the Issaries Mysteries (issteries). Cash has no living family, no heirs or parents. Find a penny on the road, god sent it your way.

[Brootse]

Thanks for raising good points! I discussed this with my group, and reached to an agreement that if an Issaries' priest joins say, a pirate ship's crew, he couldn't attack or get a share of loot from random merchant ships, but if he joined the combat after the target had started defending itself, he could fight alongside the rest of the crew. And a fair captain could give him a gift for that. And if the crew faced real enemies then could fight from the beginning and would get a normal share. Also since he can get more money from selling the loot than regular pirates, thus increasing income for all of the crew, he could get some kind of cut from it.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Brootse

[g33k]

18 hours ago, Brootse said:

Thanks for raising good points! I discussed this with my group, and reached to an agreement that if an Issaries' priest joins say, a pirate ship's crew, he couldn't attack or get a share of loot from random merchant ships, but if he joined the combat after the target had started defending itself, he could fight alongside the rest of the crew. And a fair captain could give him a gift for that. And if the crew faced real enemies then could fight from the beginning and would get a normal share. Also since he can get more money from selling the loot than regular pirates, thus increasing income for all of the crew, he could get some kind of cut from it.

YGMV.  🙂

Personally, I'd say joining a band of thieves and "not attacking until the victims defend themselves" is just sophistry, and well-outside the Issaries line; but your group is free to set the lines differently, and there's no saying MY opinion is any better than theirs.

There is the concept of a "privateer" -- an officially-sponsored "pirate" that attacks specific "legitimate" targets.  Assuming the superiors in the Cult approve of the charter given the captain (and he stays within those limits (plus self-defense, of course!)) then I'd be OK with that.

 

[PhilHibbs]

4 hours ago, g33k said:

There is the concept of a "privateer" -- an officially-sponsored "pirate" that attacks specific "legitimate" targets.

I see that as being similar to raiding. Not the same as theft at all.

[Brootse]

13 hours ago, g33k said:

YGMV.  🙂

Personally, I'd say joining a band of thieves and "not attacking until the victims defend themselves" is just sophistry, and well-outside the Issaries line; but your group is free to set the lines differently, and there's no saying MY opinion is any better than theirs.

There is the concept of a "privateer" -- an officially-sponsored "pirate" that attacks specific "legitimate" targets.  Assuming the superiors in the Cult approve of the charter given the captain (and he stays within those limits (plus self-defense, of course!)) then I'd be OK with that.

 

It's a part of the Great Circumnavigation with Argrath, Harrek, and the Wolfpirates.

e: and dealing with otherworldy creatures is all about sophistry imo

Edited September 6, 2018 by Brootse

[g33k]

16 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I see that as being similar to raiding. Not the same as theft at all.

I think that's right.

 

8 hours ago, Brootse said:

It's a part of the Great Circumnavigation with Argrath, Harrek, and the Wolfpirates.

Pretty much anything at the Argrath-and-Harrek level is presumably on a WHOLE 'nother level !

I had been thinking more of the "ordinary" itinerant-adventurer Issaries priest ...  🤣

[Pentallion]

The term "Highway Robberty" was coined to describe unethical merchants.  Merchants can and DO rob customers, hence the other term, "Buyer Beware".

It's misguided, IMO, for GoG to have verbage inferring that all Issaries merchants deal honorably and honestly.  That's not seen anywhere in Glorantha supplements up to now.  Just look at the Bandits encounter in Borderlands where they sell fake treasures.  And there are plenty more.

Lanbril should be listed as an associate cult of Issaries.

[metcalph]

An example of an Issaries Bandit is Golgotti Guildersnatcher (Borderlands and Beyond p195) who as well as banditry sells fake truestones, phony slave bracelets, so-called POW matrices and 'Maps".

[jeffjerwin]

10 hours ago, metcalph said:

An example of an Issaries Bandit is Golgotti Guildersnatcher (Borderlands and Beyond p195) who as well as banditry sells fake truestones, phony slave bracelets, so-called POW matrices and 'Maps".

Any connection to Goldgotti?