Excommunication and Fealty
Posted by Apostate on 09/04/19
Q: I was thinking back to excommunications in game, and the big excommunication of the Great Lords, and to the RL dogma on this and whether it applies here. As they cannot swear under the Gods, obviously someone excommunicated can't make new oaths - but do existing oaths they have sworn technically count (could you just not pay debts owed? Does the person risk being declared not part of their existing fealty and pushed crownsworn at the whim of their liege? Or would it just be that they are not trusted to necessarily hold to those oaths?). Equally, one of the impacts of excommunications RL is that the Church no longer considered that the faithful had any duties of obedience to a ruler excommunicated. Now, given that temporal power rested in - as we have it in game - with local lrods with local soldiers it didn't mean much, but is that also the case here? Or is the view of excommunication that though they are outside of the Gods, their protections and the rites and swearing of the Faith, everyone else is still under that and must hold to their oaths, even to one excommunicated?
A: So much of law in the Compact ultimately comes down to the belief that by Limerance, someone's word will be honored and that vows before the gods are taken seriously. It's a bedrock concept that ties into fealty, and that bestows an enormous degree of power to the Faith of the Pantheon.
But it stops just short of someone being able to be declared an outlaw (literally Outside the Law) by the Faith excommunicating them.
During the early days of the Faith, in what's now the Oathlands and before the Compact existed, the Western Kingdom DID, in fact, have anyone cast out by the Faith of the Pantheon based in Sanctum functionally outlaw anyone that was excommunicated. But the power of declaring someone an outlaw was moved from the Faith to the Compact as a whole when the Compact was created by King Alar and the first highlords, and what became a tradition became firmly enshrined during the time of Lorwroth Kinsbane, as the excommunication over kinslaying was simply insufficient to convince sworn swords to break fealty. This was largely due to well meaning reforms done by the Reckoning-era Dominus Tin, who feared a powerful Faith and Crown coming into conflict after King Alar I was declared the King of the Compact, and thus said that when it came to outlawing and casting the highborn from the Compact, the Faith "should not exert itself over the Crown, lest we rule over all". That dogma has made excommunication result functionally in meaning that the Faith would not condemn someone as an oathbreaker that failed to keep their oaths to one cast out, but it also refused to -condemn- anyone that still decided to keep their oaths. That line of dogma, mostly encouraged by the Lycene faction of the Faith and their Mirrormasks, became particularly relevant during the Crusade of Shattered Mirrors, with individual seraphs taking markedly different stances on the excommunicated.
A: So much of law in the Compact ultimately comes down to the belief that by Limerance, someone's word will be honored and that vows before the gods are taken seriously. It's a bedrock concept that ties into fealty, and that bestows an enormous degree of power to the Faith of the Pantheon.
But it stops just short of someone being able to be declared an outlaw (literally Outside the Law) by the Faith excommunicating them.
During the early days of the Faith, in what's now the Oathlands and before the Compact existed, the Western Kingdom DID, in fact, have anyone cast out by the Faith of the Pantheon based in Sanctum functionally outlaw anyone that was excommunicated. But the power of declaring someone an outlaw was moved from the Faith to the Compact as a whole when the Compact was created by King Alar and the first highlords, and what became a tradition became firmly enshrined during the time of Lorwroth Kinsbane, as the excommunication over kinslaying was simply insufficient to convince sworn swords to break fealty. This was largely due to well meaning reforms done by the Reckoning-era Dominus Tin, who feared a powerful Faith and Crown coming into conflict after King Alar I was declared the King of the Compact, and thus said that when it came to outlawing and casting the highborn from the Compact, the Faith "should not exert itself over the Crown, lest we rule over all". That dogma has made excommunication result functionally in meaning that the Faith would not condemn someone as an oathbreaker that failed to keep their oaths to one cast out, but it also refused to -condemn- anyone that still decided to keep their oaths. That line of dogma, mostly encouraged by the Lycene faction of the Faith and their Mirrormasks, became particularly relevant during the Crusade of Shattered Mirrors, with individual seraphs taking markedly different stances on the excommunicated.