Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist
Public (OOC) => Roleplay and Gameplay Resources => Ravenloft Setting => Topic started by: EO on October 20, 2022, 08:00:18 PM
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HAZLANI NOBILITY AND ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAW
The way Hazlan thinks about nobility is very different to the way that the Western Core thinks about nobility. Effectively, almost every Mulan PC is noble, solely by virtue of belonging to a Mulan family. To a Mulan, family is everything. Your rishad is the head of your family: the person who would represent you in a legal dispute. If they are wealthy, they may or may not provide their kin with an allowance, freeing them up to pursue a life of leisure. You are subject to the discipline of your rishad, and they must give their blessing if you want to get married. But as a Mulan, your marriage was almost certainly arranged for you by your family before you could even remember. As a Mulan, you are also exempt from taxes, and enjoy the legal protections of having a rishad: crimes against your person or property are punishable. You might think of being a Mulan as equivalent to being part of the gentry of Dementlieu.
As one might imagine, a Mulan bastard or orphan is in a rough spot. Lacking a rishad, they would need to seek some means of sustaining themselves, and may turn to employment, crime or travel.
While most Rashemi are serfs at the mercy of their employers, there do exist Rashemi freemen. They enjoy a weak (often to the point of nonexistence) sort of legal protection at the whims of the governor to whom they owe their taxes (ie. their vraylok). Killing a productive Rashemi indirectly and marginally depletes the coffers of their vraylok, and so they're unlikely to be happy about it. But a Rashemi employed by a Mulan satrap may be legally killed by their employer, so long as the latter can provide a convincing reason to their vraylok. Anyone else who kills a Rashemi employed by a Mulan, however, must answer to both their vraylok and the employer.
Foreigners, gnomes, and anyone else who is neither Mulan nor Rashemi enjoy no protection under the law of the land. Unless, that is, they are employed by a Mulan satrap. In that case, they may enjoy some of the protections of having a rishad, in exchange for putting themselves at their employer's mercy. But should someone offend against them, their employer may (should they care to) have their back. Otherwise, you are merely tolerated to roam so long as your OCR is low enough.
Most Mulan families probably aren't particularly influential, and so playing a Mulan doesn't require an application. However, if you want your rishad to be defined beyond the broadest and most generic strokes, or you want your family to hold a satrapy (ie. land), then you ought make an application for nobility (https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=42405.0) to the DM Team.
Rishad is a title of sorts, the head of a Mulan family. They are responsible for representing their family to the state in a legal capacity, and providing a census of their family members. A PC cannot start as a rishad, but may inherit the position as the result of IC events. A vraylok often delegates the task of keeping order to the rishad of influential families within their territory, making the enforcers of these families the public face of Hazlani law enforcement.
Each Mulan family employs their own enforcers. These retainers of a rishad are invariably Rashemi men, and rarely encountered outside of Hazlan's major settlements. Almost to a man, they are cruel, devious and brutal thugs who slavishly execute the commands of their masters in return for generous compensation. They have little sympathy for their oppressed kin, with their responsibilities being to protect and execute the commands of their master, uphold the law, and keep the peace of Hazlan, in that order. For these reasons, they are both despised by their Rashemi kinsfolk and distrusted by their Mulan masters.
Satrap is the singular attainable noble title in Hazlan, indicating land ownership. Almost all satraps are also rishads. Satraps are created when a vraylok (a regional governor) grants land to a Mulan family (usually a rishad) that they might see to its productive use. A satrap may not be arbitrarily deprived of that land, and thus of the title, except by the Council of Governors, which is the advisory assembly of all eight vraylok answerable to Lord Hazlik. They are however answerable to their vraylok in a feudal sense, and with due cause, their land can be taken and given to someone else, making them no longer a satrap, and diminishing their family.
A PC may not start off as a satrap, but may make an application for nobility (https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=42405.0) to the DM Team should their family possess land (ie. for their rishad to also be a satrap). As with the position of rishad, a PC may inherit a satrapy as the result of IC events. In many cases, they would also be a rishad at that point, unless their own rishad is particularly distant and influential.
The highest tier of Hazlani nobility is vraylok, a regional governor. There are only eight in existence, and each administers a section of Hazlan. This rank is only held by NPCs, and as such a PC that achieves it would themselves become an NPC. The region of Hazlan present in the module mostly lies under the purview of Ossur Kyrillian, who is the vraylok of Nordhazlan, as well as the rishad of House Kyrillian. His jurisdiction stops where the fields of Ramulai begin, which is under the sole control of Lord Hazlik himself.
The named vraylok are:
Ossur Kyrillian, vraylok of Nordhazlan
Helenah Kerpatis, vraylok of Sly-Var
Cael Galt the Greater, vraylok of Toyalis
Elkiars Xamen, vraylok of Ufrugtharlan
Pall Ibington, vraylok of Gigantsmark
The identities of the vraylok of Dunlan, Skyggeskov and Østhazlan respectively are not defined as of now. The vraylok of Østhazlan is also responsible for the village of Forfarmax, just over the border from Forlorn.