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My party have just got back to Cauldron after journeying to The Lucky Monkey. They captured three Alleybashers and a couple of the fighters, although Wart surrendered and oddly enough they seem to quite like him as he helped capture others (me being bored and messing with some eithical concepts).
They have just handed them over to the Guards, and Shensen has said she recognises some as those that helped Tongueater kill Sarcem. So, murder of the High Priest of Saint Cuthbert. Death sentence virtually guaranteed then, trial after the Flood Festival, but as the Saint Cuthbertian player stated: exactly how is it carried out?
My players had several ghoulish ideas:
1) Drowning. Chains and weights and throw them in the Crater Lake (indirectly feeding the half-fiend morkoth below but they don't know that). Oddly enough the Pelorian crusader (paladin variant) favoured this as it was punishing them by "casting them down into the airless darkness, beyond the grace and Light of Pelor".
2) Hang, draw and quarter them as Cauldron has four gates from which to display the "fleshy remnants" afterwards, as the Wee Jasian put it.
3) Hand over to the Cathedral of Wee Jas, so those clerics with the Death Domain get some practice, and as it is a Death effect a resurrection is required. The Wee Jasian player liked this as he has the Death domain. They corpses of murderers who have been executed will most likely end up here anyway.
4) Standard hanging (possibly from the walls) or beheading by the Lakeside (as Cauldron lacks a civilian meeting square).
So, what are your ideas? Have the players captured villains that would be executed? Did they turn them over to the authorities? How did you cover it? As the Saint Cuthbertian in my game says "It is not enough that we slay the law breakers in dark places, the people must openly see lawful justice being served".
Saying that I have had Jenya Urikas declare holy war upon the Hextorians as at this point the players are utterly convinced that the Church of Hextor is behind everything and that it is trying to brutally dominate Cauldron. Probably has a lot to do with me running Evil Unearthed and the fact Kor Bloodaxe was in it (a Hextorian cleric) and I had him have orders from someone called T E. What I am driving at is the cleric of Saint Cuthbert has not been ordered to bring Triel back, he is merely to carry out the application of her sentence, which involves her repeatedly colliding with his war mace. This will be fun as the paladin wants to bring her back alive. This seems hypocritical at face value but that leads to another point.
How do you cover civil law and religious law in the game? As can be seen elsewhere my party are all lawful humans and all have some divine spellcasting capabilities and one each worships Saint Cuthbert, Pelor, and Wee Jas. Creates lot's of intersting roleplaying. How has the law affected your players?
It would be interesting to know what the designers of Cauldron think about this "officially", and whether any of it is broached or covered in the new hardback.
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I see Cauldron as a fairly corrupt place, and the tone for this is set right from the start in Life's Bazaar, when it is revealed that the pseudo-Last Laugh thugs will be sprung from jail. So I view that when it comes to civil law, justice can be bought and sold (but beware he who crosses someone with more cash and an axe to grind - in the game I run, someone has crossed the Aslaxin family, and the Aslaxins are using their money and influence in attempt to buy the PCs incarceration).
Given my interpretation of the Cauldron legal process, I have had to also make interpretations on how Jenya and the church of St. Cuthbert would interact with it. As the new head of a very lawful faith, I view Jenya as someone who sees herself as a role model for the community. She would view taking the law into her own hands as unlawful. As such, she does not view her church, or any member of her church above the laws of Cauldron (no matter how corrupt she may deem them).
In practical terms, when my characters brought in Alleybashers and Thugs (and ultimately Skaven), they were all turned over to Jenya by the PCs. Jenya then turned them over to the town guard - but not before administering lawful if harsh and intimidating interrogating techniques. Once in the hands of the town, Jenya uses her political and temporal influence (and the influence of other faithful in Cauldron) to move the justice system towards a conviction (i.e. she works within the law to bring down Cuthbert's mace on the guilty). Sometimes she succeeds. Sometimes the guilty get away (I had Skaven get released - a potential foil for the future).
An interesting side-note. When Jenya found out about Ghelve's role in facilitating the kidnappings, she insisted that he be brought to justice. He was arrested on the evidence she provided. He was then released after offering to give his land to the Lord Mayor. Jenya made public what Ghelve had done. Upon release, he then moved out of Cauldron to Redgorge realizing that there would be no business left in Cauldron for a locksmith who had given away his master keys to criminals. So in a roundabout way, some justice was done...