Something that has come up in several different games of The One Ring has been the topic of taking someone prisoner and delivering them to justice in some settlement or other. This comes up especially often in relation to a certain published adventure with a despicable dwarf, but has also happened in other situations as well. I wanted to capture my thoughts on this matter, and how I approach this type of situation in my games.
I understand the drive to do this. We are roleplaying Tolkienian heroes, oriented to the good, and non-Orc enemies should be captured and tried by those with more authority. The problem is that the sense of justice and judgment that holds in our world doesn’t really hold in Eriador. We have a “justice system,” and we put punishment and locking people up out-of-sight and into the hands of “qualified people.”
But the towns and villages that remain in Eriador are small, disparate remnants of an emptied, collapsed kingdom. There is no central authority. Each settlement makes their own law. Nobody wants to take prisoners off of your hands. Nobody wants to lock up prisoners for long periods of time, continuing to feed and care for them in the meantime. People certainly would not appreciate you to bringing problems INTO their homes!
In fact, what we think of as “jails” or “prisons” are (mostly) non-existent!
- Different villages might have a lock-hole to keep a drunk overnight or to briefly hold a criminal awaiting trial. This would be the most that you might find, and even this might be something that doesn’t exist!
- Bree would likely have the above, or even a small jail of sorts. But a 1e adventure notes they would have to construct a gallows for an execution, they don’t have one ready.
- The Shire is not a place I would take prisoners for justice…
- Perhaps the Halls of the Dwarves are similar to Bree here.
- Tharbad is probably the one place with a proper prison, but conditions are grim and justice is wanting in that place. Also, why would the Master want to take in an external prisoner, unless he was someone who escaped from the city that will be publicly executed as a warning to others?
- Why would the elves appreciate you bringing a bandit to their borders to deal with?
If you bring a prisoner to one of these places, the first question that should arise is what do these people care about the alleged crimes?
- If you take a dwarf to the Halls of the Dwarves (where they were already exiled from!) for troubles in another land, what do you expect these people to do about it? It didn’t happen in their land, you were the one who brought him back.
- Perhaps you’ve taken a problematic dwarf to Bree for the Reeve to dispense justice. But the relevant crimes in Bree, at best, might be a failure to pay for goods and services. You probably had something bigger in mind for punishment!
In many cases, the people are likely to not be interested, and if they can be persuaded to care, they’re going to offer lesser punishments than what the players are expecting, including the prisoner’s likely freedom.
Because the nature of punishment is not quite the same as what the players are expecting. If you’re not keeping prisoners long-term, you are left with a small set of outcomes. These outcomes are not oriented around an ideal of “justice” as much as maintaining social stability and limiting the possibilities of vendettas and revenge cycles. Execution is extremely unlikely as an outcome, though if crimes were heinous enough it might happen. That means you’re left with:
- Financial settlement (e.g., paying a fine, weregild for a death)
- Another form of restitution, like a period of indentured servitude or manning a necessary-but-unenjoyable position for a time
- Exile or outlawry (declaring them outside the protections of society, free to be hunted down and killed)
This judgment is likely to be decided by a local leader, a council of leaders, possibly involving a neutral arbiter to set the terms of settlement among the parties.
So, for the most part, nobody’s going to help you take prisoners off your hands and serve them justice (unless you’ve been asked to do just that). If they do, it’s not going to be the “justice” you’re wishing for. They’re likely to be banished at best, and that means their freedom to do the same elsewhere.
What options are left?
- Make the prisoner swear an oath before releasing them (which should be taken very seriously, very Tolkien-esque)
- Try to scare someone straight
- Hope that the hard life in the wilds will care of killing them eventually
- Eat the misdeed shadow and dispense your own justice
A tough set of choices for the heroic players who wish “justice” to be served in a more “civilized” manner!
References
- Phillip’s Notes on The One Ring 2e – for more Loremaster notes and resources