I had to contend with similar questions after my group, via a sequence of impatience and misunderstandings and critical failures and a CN rogue doing CN rogue things, ended up killing all the Oakstewards in the plaza and getting caught and imprisoned after discovering that the (fake) aiudara were not an easy escape vector. Here's my input:
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Does the alarm summon more Oakstewards?
I imagine Underbrush patrols are closer and more prevalent in the city, and could be there within a minute. Five minutes later, some Oakstewards would arrive from Vinehall to reinforce and question the perps if apprehended.
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If the party manage to get the readings without hurting the Oakwardens they have still broken the rules, so what should the punishment be if they are caught?
Depends on their explanation for why they were messing around with the aiudara. If it was simple academic curiosity, probably just a fine, surrender of the arcane sensor, and expulsion from Sevenarches. If they drop Fianara's name and her involvement in the plot, the Oakstewards are on high alert right now about elven incursions poking around their territory so they likely end up imprisoning the party and sending a unit to apprehend Fianara for further interrogation to determine if there are deeper links to Kyonin.
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What would the penalty be if they do hurt the Oakwardens?
A public beating and deportation. I see Oaksteward governance as very much eye-for-an-eye, trending more severe than not considering they've controlled these lands for millennia through the rise and fall of multiple empires. In the case of murder, well that calls for the Voice of the Wind to make a personal appearance and cast judgment. Probably the death penalty + reincarnation into some kind of small animal.
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Even if they get out of the city to deliver the device, they will have to come back in again, and will now be 'wanted' so again what penalties should be imposed?
As long as things have remained relatively non-violent, continued deportations with increasing fines, perhaps coupled with increasingly heightened castings of Tree Stride to deposit them further and further from Sevenarches. Any nation with locked down borders is going to have some familiarity dealing with unwanted visitors, so by this point the Oakstewards would deal with it as a routine nuisance, and perhaps a guard could be persuaded or bribed or intimidated into letting an infraction slip by. Between that and Fianara's disguise kit, as long as things stay non-lethal it shouldn't be a severe problem for the PCs to operate in the city.
But if they kill someone, well, that's a different story. In my particular story, while the party was imprisoned in Vinehall awaiting the arrival of the Voice of the Wind, two members of the party who missed game 1 staged a prison break just as, coincidentally, the city's first Gorga direct attack was happening at the same time. After the interior guards were eaten by a Temagyr out of view, the party busted through an exterior wall and jumped into the river to escape and avoid the increasingly chaotic Underbrush patrols on the city roads. After an underwater encounter with some mephits and their pet eels, the party made it back to an incredulous Fianara, who later lured Lemma out to the caravanserai to continue the AP. The party plans on avoiding the city now that they're on the hook for the original murders and are now also linked to the increasing Gorga attacks. Their goal right now is to capture Bolan and trade him for a clean slate with the Oakstewards. It'll make for a tense negotiation with Lemma.
