Toni Sihvonen (order #92780) 62.142.248.1

Toni Sihvonen (order #92780) 6
off your finger owes you l/lOth wergild or less: for a
limb, the price might be six healsfangs (60% of wergild)
or more. Stolen property is usually not worth more than
six healsfangs, or its exchange value, whichever is greater.
Your liege and your cynn can collect wergild on your
behalf. Your cynn are also collectively liable for wergild
fines you incur, unless they renounce you (below).
If you are somebody’s legal ward - a child under seventeen,
an unmarried daughter, a wife, a hostage, a heorthgeneat
- you have no inherent wergild. To give testimony
in court, you must use your guardian’s wergild or,
better, let him speak for you. For compensation, your
wergild equals your guardian’s - or double that if you
are female or underage - and is your guardian’s to claim.
A gerefa has his own wergild, but may use his cyning’s
wergild while doing the cyning’s business. [Wergilds:
page 1291
Did the Saxons obey their own laws?
Like most barbarians, the Saxons used “compensation” laws
to limit vendettas. Like most barbarians, their sagas and
chronicles are nonetheless full of bloody vendettas. One can
dismiss these as amusing or cautionary legends; still,
instances of barbarian laws enforced with a happy outcome,
or of barbarians restraining their behavior for fear of the
law, are hard to find. Players should remember that right
and wrong in these societies was decided by which side
brought more resources to a suit. that there were no police
to enforce such decisions, that the rich could buy justice and
khe well-armed could ignore it, and that by our standards a
5igh level of violence was openly tolerated.
On the other hand, Saxon legal decisions were sacred rituals.
Witnesses put their hands on a holy thing (an altar to
Wotan or Tiw: later on, a Bible), forfeiting their souls as
well as their wergilds if they lied. One Saxon lawbook calls
perjury a sin, equal to murder, sorcery, and incest. The stories
that seem to treat vendettas lightly also display a real
dread of bootless crimes and of the ultimate Saxon punishment:
being renounced or outlawed as a nithing.
Literate Saxon cynings had their laws copied and distributed
to every ealdorman, thegn, and (later) abbot in their lands,
reflecting a Saxon expectation that each of these men
should know the law and uphold it among his followers.
That expectation applies to Saxon characters in Pendragon.
Player thegns and ealdormen should know their own cyning’s
laws. They should also consider the advice of a later
Saxon cyning, Alfred the Great: “Do not judge one judgment
for the rich and another for the poor; nor one for the
more dear and another for the more hateful . . . A man can
think on this one sentence alone, that he judges each one
rightly: he has need of no other law-books.”
Boot Crimes
There are two levels of pardonable crime: those for
which the accusers must accept a wergild payment or
other fine, and those for which the accusers can refuse it.
If accusers accept payment whether by choice or by custom,
they have settled the case and may take no
vengeance. If they legally refuse payment, or if the lawbreaker
does not pay promptly (for violent death, the
offender must pay 20s at the funeral and the balance
within forty days: lesser crimes might have twenty days’
grace), then the accusers can pursue vengeful mayhem
against the lawbreaker’s cynn up to the level of the
wergild refused.
Accusers must accept wergild for persons killed in war or
other cyning-sanctioned combat, or in defense of self,
others, or property, or by accident. They must accept it
for petty theft and for goods illegally seized in a property
dispute, from a trader who sold them stolen goods or
who sold a weapon to a murderer, and for other kinds of
minor or unintentional property damage. They must
accept it for the battery or rape of their ceorls or other
servants (“rape” in this sense means unauthorized sex; the
woman may or may not have consented). They can pursue
a feud only if the fine is not paid.
Accusers have the option to accept or refuse wergild for
deliberate, unsanctioned killing, major property crimes,
and battery or rape against their guests, hosts, or cynn.
Cattle theft, which is epidemic among Saxons and freely
practiced against Britons, is theoretically in this category,
but byrde can often raid the cattle of lesser men on the
pretext that they are collecting delinquent feorm,
wergilds, or supplies needed for a campaign. Accusers
who refuse wergild for these crimes are signaling the start
of a blood feud.
Wergild and vengeance are family obligations. It is the
gravest dishonor to let a cynnsman lie unavenged. Failure
to pursue wergild (one way or another) reduces your
Honor and Love: Family. [fines: page 129. New Trait and
Passion Rules - Failure to Collect Wergild page 1231
Bootless Crimes
Beyond ordinary standards of compensation are bootless
(“unpardonable”) crimes against cynn and theod.
Fighting over goods or grievances is part of public life, but
some men steal goods by sneaking into another’s house,
or murder their enemies by ambush and then hide the
bodies. Others carry a woman away from her father’s
house by night, or kill with poison, arson, or sorcery, or