Thanks
Is is legal to summon angels?
Could you prosecute a demon summoner and binder for slavery? Kidnapping? Magical assault?
I guess you could summon a dretch to do a tap-dance in a party without any ramifications. :P
I guess you could summon a dretch to do a tap-dance in a party without any ramifications. :P
-That's how it starts, innocent enough. These things always always turn out going horribly wrong, however. Look at Studio 45, in Waterdeep. Had a few pixies there, everything was all fun and games, then the pixies got mad, cast Otto's Irresistible Dance, and...Well, let's just say, the death toll is still slowly rising...
A mage might get away with it for research purposes - summoning a fiend, asking it some questions, with no harm done. Most wizards and priests do, it seems, even guys like Cadderley. Perhaps in a city they'd need to get permission from the head mage, someone like the Blackstaff (Khelben, or whoever succeeds him), for such things.
Consorting with fiends on a regular basis would be a black mark against anyone's character, like running with gangsters or terrorists.
But a summon monster should probably be like any spell, its legal repercussions entirely due to how it's used.
Crimes that fall under any of these Plaints are classified as Severe, Serious, Lesser and Minor, with punishments assigned accordingly.
I couldn’t find a specific law prohibiting the summoning of fiends and worse.
The closest I could come was a listing under Crimes Against Citizens, where a law prohibiting magical assault exists. This is a Severe Crime punishable by fines, damages paid to those assaulted and an edict prohibiting the caster to use magic.
So if a summoned creature gets loose and assaults a citizen, or is used for ill deeds, this would apply I’d think.
But as was said earlier, a summoned creature going uncontrolled could easily find its way to violating any of the Plaints, from shape changing itself to impersonate a Lord of the City [punishable by death on the spot] to Unlawful Hindrance of Business (for example, if the creature ended up battling wizards from the Order of Magists and Protectors in front of a popular tavern regularly frequented by the merchant nobility, the tavern owner could claim loss of business).
Just as well such a creature deliberately used to commit any other crimes (murder, spying, etc..) would make its summoner liable and the subject of swift justice if found out.
Also, could scholars summoning fiends to study them be arrested by the watch just for summoning them?
If not, wouldnt a good clergy (Tyr maybe) go against that group...Some kind of preemptive strike?
If the citizen had the aid of the Order of Magists and protectors, all the more reason for the watch/guard not to get involved (again, in my opinion only).
Whether Tyrans would interfere depends largely on the nature of the summoning and the perceived threat level. Assuming the Tyrans aren’t fanatics (which is quite possible, depending on your needs as a DM) I’d expect them to not interfere with true scholarly endeavors.
That said I don’t think they’d look kindly upon fiend summoning of any kind.
I would expect them to be called upon, though, should such endeavors as fiend summoning lead to some sort of disaster or loss of life, especially if the fiend gets loose in the place where it was summoned or makes its way into the city proper.
Excellent topic, by the way.
Another question. If the High priest of Tyr was a zealot, what kind of actions would the tyrrans take in a case like the one discussed previously?
The would certainly remain within the law (Dah!) but they would certainly try to eradicate such a scholarly group if they were told discretely that fiends were secretly summoned by a group of wizards (a group of malconvokers for example).
I am trying to see how to make the scholars look like the good guys even though they are conjuring demons and other fiends.
Technically, you be 'assisiting' the Fiend by bringing him to the Material plane. The Fiend, in turn, has probably commited innumerable acts of depravity on the Prime Material Plane, and therefore would be wanted by the law to answer for those actions. By bringing him to the Prime you would be assisting him, which by our laws is considred "aiding and abetting" a known felon.
If found culpable, they could even charge you with accessory... for EVERY SINGLE BAD THING the Fiend has EVER done.
Its a good thing our laws don't apply in a fantasy game (otherwise you would resurrect somene, and they would have no legal right to their own property anymore).
On another note, couldn't the 'bad guys' have the adventurers arrested for breaking and entering? :P
He might be heard to say, "Learned men without faith are most dangerous. Once they discover a source of new knowledge, they must have more of it and will go to any length to get it, much like a vampire starved for blood.
A guy like this would mentally justify interfering with and even sabotaging the scholar's summoning efforts in the name of justice and order. In his mind, trafficking with fiends who have committed any number of vile acts previously (as Markus pointed out above) just cannot be allowed. The pursuit of pure knowledge is no excuse.
More from our High Priest, “Without faith to shield them, learned men can only become pawns of the fiends they summon. Knowledge alone is no shield against a fiend’s vile nature!”
So, this zealot might start small, by dipping into the church coffers to buy up magical supplies for summoning paraphernalia. Once the supply dries up, he might order his men not to aid in any quest or expedition that could uncover more such miscellaneous magical ingredients for summoning.
(Maybe this is where the player characters come in. They get hired on after answering a call for adventurer aid and learn along the way from one of the merchant sponsors of the expedition that, “You were hired on in part because the Tyrans simply won’t help us anymore. I wouldn’t read too much into that, no. Surely they must have other, more important issues to attend to.”
If the scholars persist, I think the High Priest would directly sabotage the summoning so the fiend gets loose, then place his men nearby to break in and slay the beast, then publicly call for the summoning to stop and embarrass the scholars into inactivity.
When questioned by the watch as to why he positioned his men nearby, the High Priest will say he received a vision from Tyr to be Mr. Johnny On The Spot to save the day. A little lie for the greater good is OK, right? ;)
Then he'll proselytize to the watchmen and ask them to aid his order's efforts, with hints that he knows of other illicit summoning going on and is willing to share the information in exchange for their aid.
So these men of the watch join him on the assumption it is divine faith guiding the High Priest's hand, not realizing it’s the priest’s own personal vendetta to see justice done at any cost.
In closing, what does a fanatical high priest do with lots of summoning materials? He goes off his rocker and summons the worst fiend imaginable, right in the heart of the church, in order to personally slay it and “keep the Realms safe” for one hundred years.
The summoning will of course fail (that is, the Pit Fiend [or whatever is appropriate for your player’s level] will be summoned but not controlled) and then player characters have to be called in to save the day. There’s the cap for your adventure, right there.
I think this argument would provoke the zealot to act fast since it kind of mean the forces of good are less powerful than the forces of evil.
I'd like to see my players against the forces of law and good (since they are actually all CG). This would be a good adventurer with moral dilemma! They'd be investigating a group of wizards, see them conjuring fiends and actually be the "good" guys!
Please keep sending your input. It gives me alot of interesting ideas
Well, would this high priest send paladins or other champions of his faith to arrest or remove the scholars?
Heck yeah I think he would.
If he got an adversarial response from the scholar-mages studying the fiends, I wouldn't put it past him to run the whole school over if that's what it took to stop the fiends from being summoned.
He could then deal with the Masked Lords of Waterdeep and their magisters later.
Would you see this high priest send his warriors to eradicate the corrupting presence of the scholars and their summonded fiends? Would he have a more moderate approac, even for a zealot?