Apprentice of a Marched Wizard

Games Discussion Ars Magica
41

If said inheritance is claimed by the slayer, yes.

Eh? I do not see why people with a claim to damages would not press their claims immediately :slight_smile: Like a piranha, bite the solvent debtor as soon as you get a whiff of his solvency, and keep your jaws shut tight! This has been a constant in debt-law practice since the time of the Romans.
The only exception would be when the damage emerges only much later. But that would be rare, and there might be provisions to limit liability. This is, again, a highly-felt problem in any society that deals with debts, since antiquity.

Eh? No no no. There's a misunderstanding here. If you are the parens of the outcast, and you are alive (and not in Twilight etc.), it's your obligation to slay the outcast, and set things aright. I infer that people might "sue" you for damages if you refuse or simply do not act with sufficient expediency. They do not have to wait for you to die.

This obligation is inherited by your eldest filius or whoever else accepts the inheritance of your estate. In fact, its very potential is inherited as part of your estate. When someone boldly claims "I am Secundus, the eldest filius of Primus, and I claim as mine his legacy!" he might end up not just with Primus' talisman, but with Primus' unfinished business too - and in particular, dealing with any of Primus' filii that might go rogue over the next decades. I do not see this as absurd at all.

42

Agreed, but what the actually text says is that the now customary settlement is the inheritance right, not a compensation paid out of pocket from the parens, and any debts of the slayee are paid «out of the inheritance».

All of this makes sense if we are talking about the inheritance of the slayee.

43

But that's just because the whole text is assuming that the parens is dead or in Twilight, so that his estate is in the hands of someone else right now.

The fact that the parens answers while he's still alive hinges on the fact that it's his duty by the Oath to do so, and thus aggrieved third parties can simply bring their case against him for violating the Code.

The issue is: who inherits responsibility for the outcast once the parens is no longer around? From the Oath alone, it seems "nobody".

But (cleverly!) the Quaesitores ruled that this responsibility is like a "debt" incurred by the parens, that then travels "attached" to his inheritance when he passes away. As long as that inheritance has more value than the net damage caused by the outcast (damage caused and debts unpaid, minus assets retrieved) it's an incentive for anyone to slay the outcast: claim the inheritance, pay the damages left after the outcast's assets have gone to his creditors, pocket the difference.

If the inheritance has less value than the net damage caused by the outcast, then whoever slays the outcast will simply say "nope, not my stuff!"; then the Quaesitores will split what the outcast had, as well as the inheritance of the parens, to partially compensate the damaged parties (probably after cutting off a fat "quaesitorial fee" for themselves, a maybe a minor "hoplite support fee" for the slayer - after all, it can be reasonably caused that they, too, have been inconvenienced by the outcast, so they become his creditors).

Does that make sense?

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44

Almost certainly no "quaesitorial fee", fat or otherwise.

By Grand Tribunal ruling, no Quaesitor can material-
ly benefit in any way from calling a Wizard’s March. Any
property that he might acquire is given to the Tribunal
coffers.

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45

Let me give an example.

Magus Primus has two filii, Secundus (the elder) and Tertius (the younger).
Tertius goes rogue, causing 100p in damages to a mage Quartus.

If Primus is alive, it's his duty to go after Tertius.
If he does so, and slays Tertius (recovering 20p worth of magical property in the process), then he has done his duty, no more and no less. The Quaesitores take the 20p and pay out 18p to Quartus, keeping 2p for themselves. That's not for calling the March, just an administrative fee, and Quartus knows better than to complain :slight_smile:

If Primus does go after Tertius, but one magus Quintus beats him to the punch, then he's still done his duty. The Quaesitores take the 20p, certainly keep 2p for themselves - not for calling the March, but for debating whether or not to shell out 2p to Quintus for his incovenience before paying the rest to Quartus. On the one hand, it's good if folks like Quintus are encouraged to go after outcasts, on the other, Primus was about to accomplish the same task for free, as per his duty. After a lot of paperwork, they end up paying Quintus 1p for the slaying, and 17p to Quartus.

If Primus is alive and well, and does not go after his filius Tertius, then he's violating the Oath. In principle, he can become an outcast too, and all his estate forfeit. At the very minimum, he can be asked to pay the minimum of all he owns and might come to own in the future, and the costs to slay the Tertius, to retrieve the 20p of assets he held, and to compensate the 80p left of damages (100p-20p).
Did I forget the quaesitorial fee? There's always a quaesitorial fee :slight_smile: Not for calling the March, of course.

All the above is obvious from the Oath. Ok, maybe not the quesitorial fee, but must we really dwell on that? But what if Primus is dead or in Twilight? That's the question raised in the passage we are debating.

It would seem that, since Primus is not around, nobody has the duty to go after Tertius. If someone does, slays him, and recovers the 20p in assets, those are due to Quartus, even though the slayer can fairly ask for a share in compensation of his role in retrieving them (not to mention in slaying a dangerous outcast).

But the Tribunal cleverly thought of a way to expand the duty to slay Tertius. Primus might no longer be around, but his inheritance is. And the duty to slay is attached to that inheritance like a curse. If Secundus has claimed the inheritance of Primus, it's his duty to go after Tertius. And not only that. If Primus' inheritance amounted to 50p, Secundus must: a) slay Tertius and b) compensate the aggrieved third parties with the 20p in assets Tertius held and all the 50p he claimed as inheritance. So those parties will get 70p (shared with the Quaesitors!) and Secundus will get nothing (but at least he won't be held accountable, as he discharged his duty). Secundus probably now rues the day he accepted the inheritance of Primus, but what did he know at the time?

If instead the inheritance of Primus amounted to 200p, then Secundus will be able to keep 200p-(100p-20p)= 120p once he slays Tertius. But if he does not, and some other slayer finally takes care of Tertius, said slayer can claim those 120p. Well, the Quesitors get their share, of course :slight_smile:

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46

No, that does not make any sense either, because what is supposedly transferred to the slayer by established custom anno 1220, is the inheritance rights. If the inheritance has already been concluded, there are no such «inheritance rights» to transfer.

Years after the passing of the parens, it is even doubtful that you can identify their estate. Magi do not keep real estate, and the bits and pieces they had would likely have been spent, gifted, or traded and spread around Mythic Europe.

Some of it does, but neither tracking down an estate inherited decades prior, nor referring to it as an inheritance right, do.

I can see what you are trying to do, but you end having to disregard one sloppily worded phrase (about inheritance rights) anyway. We can get an equally plausible interpretation by assuming sloppy the phrase you took as your unambiguous premise.

I wonder, is there an author in the thread?

47

Quaesitor do not get a share. Hard stop. It does not matter what they call it, if they take anything they have gained it from the calling of a March.

This is a ruling by the Grand Tribunal and is actually extremely important. We are experiencing something similar to what would happen in the US today called "Civil Asset Forfeiture". It encourages law enforcement to claim everything is the result of a 'crime' and then you have to sue the government at great expense to get your property back. It is horribly bad because a cut of the money goes to the law enforcement agency, the court, prosecutors, and government funds.

If you allow Quaesitor to benefit in any way from the calling of a March, that will encourage them to call Marches because it benefits them. No Quaesitor would be stupid enough to take any share because this opens them to a charge of "violating a ruling of the Grand Tribunal", which is a quick way not to be a Quaesitor anymore (if not get Marched themselves).

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48

I find the ruling you reference on [HoH:TL:63] but I doubt it matters to OP, who assumed the March was called by the tribunal. The ruling concerns the case where the quaesitoris calls a March without waiting for the tribunal. The only thing that is clear is that the quaesitoris calling the March cannot benfit from it. It is not even clear that a quaesitoris cannot benefit as a hoplit or whatever in a March called by another quaesitoris. This seems open to interpretation.

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