Royal Bounty

While the Kingdom’s Knaves united and came to identify themselves collectively as “Bounty Brothers”, the guards, judges, and bounty hunters who were after them did not stand around and watch.

The Kingdom’s laws governing the attribution of bounties, misdeeds, crimes, and sentences were sanctioned about a century ago by Queen Menalda. This shrewd ruler founded, among other things, the Queen's Guard and what is now commonly called the “Royal Bounty”, a convoluted and elephantine system that manages and controls all the Kingdom’s Bounties, its Chancelleries, and communications between them, as well as the Registers in which information regarding the malefactors of each region is constantly recorded. Although the Kingdom has since been through civil wars, schisms, and conflicts of all kinds, for everyone’s convenience, Menalda’s Royal Decrees, and the Royal Bounty itself, are still in force and function as follows.

Repeat offenders who persist in certain wrongdoings may also be branded with Marks, such as Thief, Witch, Smuggler, Swindler, Outcast, or Assassin. In some regions of the Kingdom, punishment for the worst misdeeds can be death or mutilation, but because the very cheap labor provided by prisoners is so convenient, such practices are rarely adopted.

Royal Bounty Law

• All of the Kingdom’s Bounties are recorded in the Royal Registers kept in the main Chancelleries, and continuously updated through official messengers and missives, including variations on Bounties for sentences served; sentences being served; new misdeeds; or death of the malefactor. Each Bounty must be accompanied by a portrait, physical description, and personal details of the malefactor.
• Regardless of where they are committed within the Kingdom, misdeeds of the same type are equivalent in terms of severity, sentence, and Bounty Value.
• Bounty can be redeemed at any Chancellery of the Kingdom. When this takes place, the regional or city authorities in charge inform other Chancelleries of the capture and inflict on the malefactor the sentence prescribed.
• Whoever delivers a malefactor to one of the Kingdom’s Chancelleries will receive the Bounty Value in gold coins, after their identity has been checked and following a week of detention to guard against tricks or illusions (it is during this week that most escapes take place).
• If malefactors are caught by guards on duty or other law-enforcement agents, they will only receive half the Bounty.
• Those who provide verified tip-offs that favor the collection of a Bounty will be rewarded with 10% of the Bounty Value, upon payment of the same, deducted from the total Bounty amount. Alternatively, Bounty Hunters may agree to pay on the barrelhead, out of their own pocket: this payment, often half of the value, cannot be accounted for or refunded in any way, even if the prisoner escapes.
• When Bounties are finally collected and malefactors officially brought to justice, their Bounty will remain in effect until they have served their entire sentence (in case they should escape).
• The sentence corresponds to a number of days of detention, pillory, or forced labor equal to ten times the total Bounty Value at the time of capture. For example, if a wanted person’s Bounty is 20 gold pieces, he or she will have to serve two hundred days in prison.
• Very low sentences, usually up to 60 days, are served directly in local prisons; alternatively, prisoners are exposed to public mockery, pillory, whipping, and such.
• If their sentence exceeds 60 days, at the appointed time, prisoners will be sent with a group of other inmates to the region where the misdeeds were committed: condemned to forced labor or to the galleys, they will pay off their debt, hopefully toiling like mules under the lashes of ferocious jailors.
• Many do not return from the galleys or labor camps; but plenty are back on the loose a few years later, owing to particular achievements, good conduct, pardons, or amnesties.

Unwritten Laws

What Royal Decrees fail to mention are the Kingdom’s arbitrary customs and abstract prescriptions. After all, this is the Bounty Kingdom, where justice is administered via endless compromise and alleviations, clauses and amendments: everyone knows, but mum’s the word.

• When nothing can be gained by reporting, don’t report. And if no one officially reports a misdeed, then nothing happened. Charges against persons unknown do not exist.
• If no one can accuse, recognize, or identify the wrongdoer, then no one did it. Guards couldn’t care less but might find some goon to blame to make the big shots happy.
• Anyone wishing to report a misdeed will have to be extremely convincing, prove that it’s all true, and provide a realistic portrait of the malefactor; otherwise, no one did it.
• Guards like a cushy life, and are willing to listen to anyone who gives them a simple, plausible, and convenient version of the facts; several witnesses providing similar versions will be heard and believed.
• Guards don’t like to be disturbed and will take it out on anyone who bothers them or forces them to work.
• Bigwigs, Queen's Guards, and other officers will be heard and believed almost automatically.
• If no violence is involved and no weapons were drawn, it’s all much easier to ignore.
• Anyone who suffers a scam is a fool and deserves what they get. Anyone robbed or cheated unawares is a fool and deserves what they get. Excluding important people, of course.
• There’s no point in going after malefactors or drawing weapons to catch them if their Bounties aren’t high enough. It’s far better to wait for a Bounty to go up before attempting capture. Except when the culprit is handed over tied and unarmed… After all, guards only get half the money.
• Guards always welcome tip-offs, but they, too, consider knaves who snitch to be Infamous.