I finished Edge of Anarchy a few weeks ago, and then spent two sessions of "down time," when a few different players couldn't make it, covering two to three weeks of in-game time between the end of EoA, and the sinking of the Direption to start off Seven Days to the Grave. I used the "fluff" sessions to give the players a better opportunity to become familiar with the city itself (the Guide to Korvosa is invaluable for this).
One of my PC's is a member of the Korvosan Guard, who stopped showing up for his shifts when the riots broke out. His first character was eaten by Gobblegut, and so his current character (friend of the dead character) bumped into the remaining party just as the riots were getting going, late in the evening. The party went the next day to recover other PCs' bodies (and gear) from the ship tied to Gaedren's warehouse (two died to the Drain Spiders), and in the process, the Korvosan Guardsman & other party members took a bunch of Strength damage.
Due to that, and a few other issues, the party did not want to brave the riotous streets until they were back to full Strength, and so did not return the brooch to the Queen, and then go meet Cressida Kroft until 3.5 days after the riots had broken out. Thus, he was not in Kroft's good graces from the get-go.
Anyway, after finishing EoA, during the fluff sessions I ran a few encounters with the Guardsman working a few shifts (getting back into the Field Marshal's good graces). In the first of those, he and his patrol (I had the other players playing as other guardsmen for a half hour; I made little character sheets for them) were searching the Shingles for Trinia, the fugitive (as the intro portion of 7DttG mentions the Guard doing). In the process, they fought a few chokers, and ended up looting a thousand coins, and a scroll (yay random treasure rolls). In another encounter (during a shift a "week" later), they killed some street thugs that had murdered someone during a mugging (showing the rising crime wave that 7DttG mentions). There was potential loot from that encounter as well.
Then the question came up of what happens when fighting things while "on duty?" Presumably the muggers would have their gear turned over as evidence (they killed one mugger, and a second one surrendered), thus the party couldn't gain it as loot. But what about monsters? And what if all the humanoid criminals refuse to surrender, and are killed?
I've done an internet search to see if this issue has come up in threads before, but I'm not finding anything. A quick perusal of the books doesn't seem to turn up any mention one way or another. Without any other guidance, I'm tempted to go with "the Laws of Korvosa apply to humanoids and other relatively intelligent creatures" (thus, imps and pseudodragons may have protections under the law), but the Law doesn't care about menaces like Chokers (intelligence 4), and they can be killed & looted at will.
Thoughts? Should I just put the demarcation at humanoids being protected under the law (thus imps & pseudodragons could be killed on a whim with no legal repercussions)? Anyone have a lead on any reference in the books to rules about members of the Korvosan Guard getting loot from killing people and/or creatures while on duty?
