The Imperial Civil Service Part II

Thyrnesse has always retained the ancient palatine civil service in the form of the Knights of Miles, who are belted knights, courtiers, and civil servants rolled into one. These second sons have served the kings of Thyrnesse since time immemorial and continue to serve the emperor in that capacity. However, in the time since the foundation of the Third Empire in X.501, the civil service has expanded rapidly. We have spoken of the roles that may be played by outstanding members of the civil service and wizards of the Imperial Schola. Now we must turn to the roles of the vast numbers of secretarii and exactly how they function.

How do you join the Civil Service?

Secretarii are a class of scribes and recorders who are chosen from amongst the scholarly class of the great cities of the empire. Appointment to the civil service is made by the emperor himself, with the assistance of a magisterial court staffed with clerics of the Quilian and Hierian temples. Only freeborn nobility (second and third sons, as well as any citizen born in an urban commune) are admissible to the civil service. Farmers and the like cannot join the civil service—but nor would they want to, almost universally lacking the ability to read and write.

Sacred Heralds are also members of the civil service, with ranks above the palatine secundi but below the primari.

What kinds of things do civil servants do?

Comprised mostly of Quilian and Hierian priests, the civil service provides many essential functions of the empire—tax assessment, recording and promulgation of law, assessment of the various repairs in the great cities, assessment of roads, and administration of the imperial system of wayhouses along the Pillar Road that runs as a highway from Miles all the way west to Byrne.

What are the ranks of the service?

The civil service has two branches—the Palatine Service and the Provincial Service. Palatine servants work as secretaries beneath the inner and outer curia, recording everything that's said and done. These are known as the sercretarii domus. Secretarii domus are divided into the tertii, secundi, and primari. Above the primari are the Secretarii Curiali, who serve the emperor directly and record the goings on of the court and help promulgate laws by hiring heralds and viators.

The Provincial Service is also divided into tertii, secundi, and primari, but the Provincial Primari are the chief servants of each Duchy and Imperial County, and report back to the Secretarii Curiali.

Manicipium in Miles

Legal jurisdiction is a complex construct in the Third Empire. In many places, the structure of jurisdiction is more implied than theorized, leaving who has command over whom a patchwork of common law and rulings where people just *know* things. For example, knights in most lands in Arunia have the authority to arrest or detain anyone below the knightly class. However, centuries of scholarship undertaken by emperors and clerics of Haeron have elaborated the system of manicipium to a much more carefully calculated degree. Indeed, it has been codified and written in the great lawbooks of the Lawkeeper's Temple.

So the first question is a simple one, namely: what is mancipium? It's a legal concept that determines who has the authority to arrest, arraign, judge, and detain whom within the Third Empire. In its most anceint and extreme manifestation, manicipium was the authority of a noble householder to dole out death to any of his dependents regardless of the law. The rule of the patrician was literally a rule over life itself.

A compilation of First Empire law known as the Codex Theolinus (supposedly commissioned by the third emperor, Theolon the Priest) set out a rudimentary attempt to curb the power of the great noble tribes under his command. By the reign of Fabarxus (to whom we owe the grand Faberlaine Wall surrounding Pillar Hill) the concept of manicipium had been fully extended to resemble the modern 10th Age notion.

Who has manicipium?
The notion of manicipium has been narrowed from its archaic form to one that is imbued in the imperial class system. Lords have direct manicipium over their demesne; all knights who serve them, all peasants who live in their realm, all merchants who's residences are found within their realm. These lords, the Magnas, Socioari, and Dynasren (Barons, Counts, and Dukes), have the authority to judge anyone who calls their demesne home as well as any peasants from any other realm.

Knights possess this self-same power; they act as direct agents of their lords. However, while a lord has manicipium over his own knights, they cannot judge the knight-agents of other lords.

Thus:

The Emperor
|
Lord
|
Lord's knights  ------  knights of other lords (outside manicipium) ------ imperial knights (outside the lord's manicipium, but under the emperor's)
|
any peasant

...wherein manicipium flows downward from the emperor, through the lord of a demesne. If a knight commits a crime within the realm of someone other than his own lord, the offended lord must plea to the knight's lord for restitution. Thus is established the rule known as Lex Agentia, the Law of Agents, whereby an agent can only be judged by his own master. Of course, this means that the emperor's personal servants are outside everyone's manicipium save the emperor's... and the emperor has manicipium over every subject of the empire (including agents of other lords).

Are there exceptions?
Yes. Many. The most important being the exception of urban communes and the very complex exception of the Special Commune of Miles.

Communes
Urban centers, known as communes, are generally governed by a council of merchants. Manicipium here falls under the Lex Mercantis, which was developed by merchants of that ancient Republic. Namely, all people within a city, no matter their origin, are under the manicipium of the municipal law courts... unless they are the agents of a lord from outside the city. Citizens of the communes fall under the manicipium of any lord who's lands they travel through and may be judged as though they were peasantry whenever they leave the city.

The Commune Mileas
The Commune of Miles has rules much like other communes, save knights and foreign agents committing crimes within Miles are subject to the judgement of the cities' courts. Unlike other communal citizens, people born within the circuit of the walls of Miles may only be judged by the law courts of Miles proper. If they are arraigned before a baronial, comital, or ducal court and they can prove they originate from Miles, they must be tried within the city by judges from the Temple.

Witnesses, Seals, and Contracts

Of course, now that I've started law school my mind is turned ever towards the things I'm reading about and talking about pretty much every waking hour of every single day. What's this latest topic? Why, it may be based on the ancient and modern laws of CONTRACT.

Ancient laws of contract (mostly what we would call common law outside of the regions influenced by Justinian's Roman canon) focused on a special, ritual space that separated out the act of signing the contract from the acts of every day life. These were liminal moments, powerful moments, when binding legal documents took force. IN modern contract law, you can make a contract simply by assenting to an offer verbally (as long as its not a sale of goods; Statue of Frauds covers that). Not so in the ancient and medieval world.

Contract as Oath
I. Seriousness of the Undertaking
II. The Seal
III. The Witnesses
IV. The Oath and Punishments

I. Seriousness
Contracts in the ancient, medieval, and particularly the post-Enlightenment world were entered into with a sense of seriousness. Ritual surrounded them. Documents were prepared, witnesses gathered, and oaths sworn. The written instrument was merely the expression of the contractual bargain. This is, perhaps, one of the reasons why medieval abbots felt no shame in producing what we would commonly today call "fake" charters that detail sales of land to the abby. The abby knows the land is theirs—thus, the false contract merely confirms a deeper truth.

People did not sign contracts in a lighthearted or casual way. Promises were important, and thus swearing promises were often accompanied by involving the Gods (or God in Christian Europe). This illustrates the ease with which contractual agreements and promises are actually put aside (very easily, since there's no supernatural force behind them) in stark contrast to how difficult society wishes it were to put a contract or agreement aside.

II. The Seal
It is no longer true today that the written instrument of a contract really even requires signatures. The paper is something external. However, in the heyday of the Serious Contract it was required for every party bound by it to make their mark with a seal. In the Middle Ages this could take place in the form of a signature, but the entire document was usually sealed with some seal or other. It was very common (for extremely important documents) for the local bishop or perhaps even the regional king to imprint his seal in wax upon your parchment.

The seals (signature + imprint) give the contract validity.

III. The Witnesses
The gathering of and signing of witnesses was extremely important in certain types of charters. The more important your witnesses were, the more important your charter. You want your bishops and high ranking church members to witness for you because that speaks leagues about your own personal authority and respect.

IV. The Oath
Many contracts also included a number of cursing clauses, damning those who break the promise. It wasn't uncommon for charters, for example, to wish horrific punishments on people who alienated the land granted to an abby. Charter-cursing forms an entire subfield of study and is extremely inventive.

This supernatural sword of Damocles exists to lend force and weight to what is otherwise really just a piece of parchment and what, in reality, can be ignored with impunity. This element also bears a strong relationship to the verbal oath given in pre-literate societies.

V. So What?
So nothing, asshole. Why are you so rude? This is all interesting stuff to spice up the world of your D&D game. Contracts in the 10th Age, for example, must be sealed by an "official witness," that is a member of the Temple of Miles, so they are seen by the God of Law and Smithcraft, Haeron the Hammerer. This element of the semi-divine mirrors the ways in which medieval contracts invoked God.

You can do that too, if you want. It helps take your game away from the humdrum world of the mundane everyday and into the fantastic past.

J'Accuse: Law, Adventurers, and the Judicial Duel

Some developments with the Hounds have led to a conflict (and, really at its heart, a misunderstanding) of how adventurers interact with the law—or how they must necessarily interact with the law. You see, this sequence of comments stuck out to me from our game the other night. They revolved around the idea of the difference between money earned "legally" and "illegally" by the party. Cain the Dorl (who is a LN mercenary) was upset and disturbed by the party's wanton murder and looting (note that most of them are CG) of a morally reprehensible local that they decided to rid the city of. There was no question that this fellow was in league with some bad forces. Vagr Blackstone was the hookup for the Temple of the Three Shadows and he serviced both thieves and smugglers across Tyrma by getting them in touch with the Shadow Temple.

That being said, the party murdered him without provocation. Indeed, they drew him out and ambushed him to prevent him from putting out a contract on a friendly local dwarven smith. They followed this up with a deadly raid on his hold, slaying most of his thugs and servants. Cain stayed well clear of this second activity.

After all was said and done, most of the group felt that what they had done was justified and that they had earned Vagr's money (which they stole from his hold) fair and square. Cain didn't feel the same. When his player said "But you essentially just murdered this guy and robbed his house," they responded, "Isn't that how adventurers always get money?"

This brings up THE LAW. Do adventurers essentially just kill people they don't like and take their stuff? Certainly, they seem to engage in this behavior a lot. Is it the only way that adventurers can behave? That is a murkier question by far.

PART ONE: Whither the Lawful Adventurer?

Not a lot of people that I play with tend to play lawful characters. Most fall somewhere on the sliding scale between neutral and chaotic. It just seems to have worked out that way. Does this mean that there can be no lawful adventurers? I heartily think not. Whatever the reason that my players have for avoiding law (except for Cain's player, who embraces its structure as necessary and right nine characters out of ten), that doesn't preclude it from being an acceptable alignment for an adventurer.

If all adventures break down to the simple premise that the party identifies someone they want to kill, murders them, and then steals the things which are their belongings... well, of course none of these adventurers are lawful. That narrative is one that has been very powerful and popular in D&D discourse—describing adventurers as "murder hobos." But I think the power of that characterization has completely obliterated or obscured the potential for lawful adventure in the main channels of discourse.

So, if lawful adventurers are not, by definition, impossible it must follow that some adventures are comprised of more than "identify foe, kill foe, loot foe."

 PART TWO: The Setup

Here are some scenarios that look very similar:

1. The party, looking around for work, is brought to the manse or curia of a baron. He offers a reward if the PCs will slay an evil wizard who lives in town.

2. The PCs encounter an evil wizard in town and decide to kill him after discovering that he is murdering people in his basement.

3. The PCs are attacked by goblins on the road and slay them. They trace their tracks to their lair and slay those too.

4. The PCs find some bandits or outlaws and decide to wipe out their camp.

The question here is: Which of these scenarios violate a lawful alignment?

My answer is thusly: only #2.

"WHY!" I hear you clamor. "What could possibly make #2 different from #3 and #4?"

The answer lies deep in...

PART THREE: Medieval Law

We're used to a society in which the law applies equally to everyone. If you meet a man on a highway and he tries to rob you, you are not justified in killing him unless you can say you legitimately fear for your life. If you meet a homeless man living out in the woods, you are not justified in killing him.

The same is not true in a society of medieval laws. Outlaws, bandits, goblins, and all manner of creatures do not have the protection of the law. The evil wizard who lives in the town does. Thus, only when the baron (assumed here to be the local law) gave the alright (for, if he is the local lord it is within his power to condemn this man to death and remove the just protection of law—or at least it is assumed so in this case, though perhaps a trial must be in order if the lord does not have that power).

These people who abandon the protection of law are all over the medieval record. Living outside civilization, essentially, curtails your rights. You are a legal non-entity. And while it would still behoove a lawful character to ask about slaughtering bandits in the forest, or to bring an evil wizard to the nearest town for justice, they would be under no LEGAL obligation to do so. As Frank pointed out, a LE character would feel that same urge, perhaps to bring the mage in for a higher reward but might decide midway along the route that he was too dangerous to transport and just kill him. No laws there are broken.

#2 could be brought along to the lawful end of the spectrum if it was amended with: and bring this information to the local baron, who holds a curia to investigate, discovers it is true, and authorizes them to deal the wizard's death.

PART FOUR: The Judicial Duel

A last note: sometimes, in polite society, people just couldn't get along. You could accuse someone of something until you were blue in the face but maybe there was no way to resolve it; your lord, for example, refuses to hear the case. Judicial dueling can therefore substitute court in many lands and is completely legal and acceptable. This is an out, perhaps, for lawful characters who simply must destroy their foe—challenge him to a duel. This will either result in a great loss of honor for him, his death, or the PCs death.

Two out of three ain't bad!

Raising the Bann

We use the term raising taxes to mean that taxes are going up. I will suggest an interesting point of origin, however, along the lines of the development of the term levee:

levy (v.)
early 13c., "act of raising or collecting," from Anglo-French leve, from Old French levée "act of raising," noun use of fem. past participle oflever "to raise" (see lever). Originally of taxes, later of men for armies (c.1500). Related: Levied; levying.

In the context of the tax (which I discussed earlier obliquely in the list of offices in the imperial civil service), it is normally assumed that all governments throughout all times have collected taxes regularly. This, however, was mostly not the case in the Middle Ages. Taxes in coin were actually extraordinary measures that were levied (there's that word again~) to pay for wars and other unexpected or irregular prices that the crown incurred. It can never be said enough: most taxation throughout the medieval world was paid in labor. This corvée (the proper term for a labor tax) may in fact be descended from the Roman opera publica (public labors/public works) which substituted a per-capita (by head) tax. It wasn't until the shock of the first Great Mortality (what we know as the Black Death) that the labor corvée began to be replaced with coin payments and it did not begin to seriously wane until the 16th century.

There are some irregular coin taxes that were paid; the death-tax (heriot), the tax on roads and bridges, the market tax for coming to vend your wares... but those were limited. I've tried to help model the division between coin and kind in terms of gross incomes for the nobility, but the salient point today is that the levee of coin taxes is irregular; the noble class simply did not owe a flat coin tax to their kings or overlords.

When Arunians speak of "raising the tax" what they actually mean is the one-time collection of an arbitrary tax by a royal or imperial power. When the tax is raised, it is by a single decree authorizing a collection of between 5-25% of a noble's gross income over the past year (for which reason they must keep detailed records in their holdings, usually attended to by a bailiff or seneschal).

Taxes are part of the bannum, a Carolingian concept of legal authority related to the Roman idea of manicipium and something we would translate today as "jurisdiction." Raising the bann includes the calling of knight-service on the field as well as the arbitrary levee of taxes. The emperor of Miles may "call the bann" and thus demand the assembly of knights and lords, he may raise taxes to pay for his wars, etc. Most kings or ruling powers in 10th Age Arunia share a similar power and use imperial terms (the bann) to raise taxes, though the emperor's bann is the template for the others and goes farther than most.

Interestingly, the bann is also a term used to refer to some lord's rights—in particular the communal ovens in most towns. Since the ovens are a lord's monopoly (mostly in the empire or imperially influenced lands) using them requires the common folk to pay another labor-service, this one in bread.

The Imperial Civil Service

Tamerin III, even before declaring himself emperor and the empire reborn, had been working to reinstate the ancient civil service as had his father Velas before him. This effort was partially designed to rob the great Dukes and Counts of the empire of their power to refuse the throne or otherwise logjam imperial policy. While innumerable clerks and clerics work to keep the empire functioning, they form only a massive and critical arm of the emperor's power but not all of it. The same can be said of the Sacred Heralds, who act as messengers and protectors of imperial authority.

The central offices of the civil service are accesible only to nobility—that is, freeborn imperial citizens that have never owed servile duties to anyone (including the urban communes, lords, or other sorts of masters). Thus, these offices are normally stuffed with second or third sons seeking to gain advancement from the imperial throne. It also serves as a good way for the nobility to dispense with their lesser sons who would otherwise present a drain on the family coffers, land, and holdings.

While some nobles do enter the priesthood in order to become clerks or advocatii in the emperor's service, the great offices are barred to all but nobles and common folk may indeed send their children to train as clerks or advocates as well, making that section of the service intermingled between nobility and common folk.

Some of the major offices include:

Imperial Nuncio. An emissary plenipotentiary, the Nuncii are the direct envoys of the emperor. They are called "Excellency" and wear complex layers of purple and red robes. Many of them are also minor magicians. They serve as diplomats and envoys as well as traveling emissaries, generally attended by several Sacred Heralds.

Imperial Magistrate. These advocatii are specially trained to apply imperial law and generally act in concert with a Hierian priest in order to sit in judgement before those who have committed high crimes against their emperor. This position requires perambulation throughout the empire, as not all criminals can be sent to Miles for judgement by the emperor himself.

Vaultmaster. A sort of high tax collector, Vaultmasters are located in the major imperial trade ports to collect the taxes from their lords. The Vaultmaster holds the sacred duty of watching over the treasury and ensuring the delivery of the imperial tax-in-coin to the capital.

Imperial Oculus. The eye of the emperor, generally commanded by the Imperial Spymaster (the Dorl), these men are visible extensions of the emperor's power who attend the courts of the Dukes and act as attendants to the Nuncio. They are each expected to make full reports to Miles at the end of each season as well as to entangle themselves in as many plots as they can to learn their details.

Imperial Roadwarden. These men and women travel the roads of the empire and look for signs of disrepair. They administer the waystation-system in and around the heartland, making certain that those who run them are doing their duty and making horses available to imperial messengers and other servants. While the upkeep of the roads fall to the various nobility on whose land they lie, the Roadwarden has the power to immediately demand a corvée of local peasantry to repair the roads upon observing their decay or poor repair. They are hated by the nobility for this power. They generally wear black and the sign of Vaela, and are friends of the Knights Mendicant.

Imperial Tax Collector. The tax collection service is despised by all and sundry. Since most taxes go to their direct overlords, imperial tax collectors merely serve to swoop in and take cash fees from the local nobility once a year. They are empowered to investigate the wealth of the nobles, grilling stewards and seneschals and investigating the total income of an estate. They then tax the noble between 10-20% of their gross income—calculating the market cost of all labor and goods and adding that to the receipt. They are always accompanied by knights from the imperial city or members of Tamerin's tagmata. Still, their disappearance or murder of imperial tax collectors is not uncommon.

Guarantor. These men and women are professional witnesses who attend courts at urban communes and make themselves available to sign as witnesses on important legal documents. Their fees form part of their stipend, while 30% of their gross earnings must be forwarded to the emperor's coffers.

The Growth of Dwarven Folkhalls

The greatest dwarven cities are not the ringtowns with their rod-diameter walls or the staunch green dwarf clan-holds that stand like frowning stony crags upon hilltops and loom over rivers. They are the mighty Folkhalls, the bastions of iron dwarven culture since the first Sons of Stone awoke beneath the earth. These halls serve as the great political players in dwarven life, some holding hundreds of clans. Allegiance amongst dwarves ascends from below; family comes first, then clan, and then folkhall, and only lastly the great dwarven kingdom as a whole.

The folkhalls follow a fairly predictable growth pattern that we can look at as an exemplar for how dwarven settlement, law, and architecture functions. First, let us examine a folkhall in its complete state: Partially above-ground and partially below, the folkhall controls a wide hinterland outside its walls. When approaching one from a distance, for several rods in each direction a traveler is likely to find tame woodlands, farms, and other "outhall" plots of land, maintained by the "outhall" clans. These garner the least respect amongst their kin for they do not live within the safety of the wall and their crafts, while necessary, are neither honed nor beautiful.

Approaching closer to the folkhall, one will see a rough mountainside that has been brought to heel by dwarven craft. Stone manors, workshops, smelters, inns, and temples all stand along cliffs, steps, or steep inclines carved into the rock. This vast collection of buildings is always surrounded by a semi-circular wall that emerges from and joins back to the mountain's shoulders, protecting the hall from invasion. The outer portion of the city is often inhabited by the crafting clans who make weapons, armor, and sought-after trade goods. The wealthy craftsmen all dwell beneath the rock.

Towering over this city is the hall-gate, cut into the mountainside. Huge beyond imagining (and, by dwarven craft, easy to open or shut in peace time) it is guarded by the Gaethaff and her militias. Beyond it lie the public halls of the mountain, which form a central hub for all the undermountain delvings. These halls include taverns, clan-shops (run by clan-brokers, the face of the wealthy clan to the outer world), clan workshops (which only clansdwarves may enter), and the Great Temple which sits at the center of the public halls like a wheel and its spokes.

Private clan-halls branch off from these central delvings in all directions. Goldsmiths, silversmiths, jewelers, architects, and even (in some cases) whole priestly clans. Noble clans as well can be found here, with their various workshops not in the public spaces but hidden away in the clanhalls, which only clansdwarves may enter. The Hall-Prince's palace, a separate and public set of delvings, generally branches from the Great Temple's delving directly.

But how are these things arranged? How are new delvings made? Firstly, each folkhall has a temple dedicated to Grafar, the Architect, where all plans and designs for diggings are kept. Land outside the mountain is limited, for the wall dictates just where buildings may be built. This land is divided into parcels or plots which cannot be broken up except with consent of the Hall-Prince and the clan who owns it. All ownership is determined by clan, and clan treasuries are used to buy up or dispose of plots.

Within the mountain, things are a bit trickier. A clan who wishes to expand their halls and delvings must submit a request to the Hall-Prince. The Prince will then ensure that several things are true:

• The Architect's priests have determined that the delving will not endanger the structural integrity of the hall.
• The clan's proposed delving will not damage the monopoly of any other clan (jewelcrafters opening a gold mine, for example).
• The delving will not open new gateways into the hall or otherwise strike into dangerous caverns where foes may dwell.
• The clan has the resources required to undertake the delving on their own—clan masons and architects—or has the money to hire these from other clans.

Still, it is traditional that only one proposal for delvings may ever be submitted by a clan in a year, and that the Prince will only entertain the possibility of making one delving each month before deciding. This is precisely why the months of each season in dwarvish are named merely "First," "Second," and "Third Delving."

Property Law and Arunia

Sometimes things get away from me. Searching for a little information or trying to flesh out a minor aspect of Arunia can billow out into a multi-week project. This is one of those times and the thing we're discussing today is, as the title suggests, extremely dry analysis of property law and how it functions in Arunia. Yes, this is the kind of thing that most fantasy authors and people playing D&D would just ignore, handwave, or hastily construct a system to handle. That would serve, too, I'm sure, since no one wants to crawl through a maze of laws and lawyers to read a book about a man who moved to a city or to purchase a farm for their adventuring party. As you've probably noticed by now: I'm not most people.

So I spent a few nights thinking about property law (and all other sorts of legal conundrums) as it might apply across the various states of Arunia. These sorts of things really aren't important in the grand scheme of playing dungeons and dragons (or writing tales) there. Yet, as a concerned historian it is my insane urge and desire to codify them. I present you with a few and a promise (or a threat?) of more to come on Arunian law.

In the highly legalistic society of the Third Empire (based primarily on the reinstitution of old imperial law and the presence of a very developed culture of jurisprudence inherited from both the Temple of Miles and the influence of the dwarves judges of old), property types can be divided into a number of classes, each of which implies a different system of rule and regulation.

The simplest class is the freeholder. Freeholdings have the fewest obligations to their lords, are completely free of rent and fees.* When a freeholder wishes to dispose of his property it is his right to sell it—however, since the land itself belongs to his overlord, he cannot simply choose someone to sell to and be done with it in a private transaction. Indeed, possessing land in almost any state in Arunia is not a true possession unless it is held as an allodial, heritable holding (of which players need only worry when they attain a fortress or other such direct grant, and even then it may not be allodial). Freeholders merely possess the rights associated with using the land. Thus, when a freeholder seeks to transfer these rights, the overlord must be consulted. In this case, it generally constitutes a fee payed to the overlord in addition to whatever is being paid to the former freeholder. The overlord must also approve of the choice of new tenant, and may refuse the sale based on the grounds that the tenant does not meet his standards.

The class below the freeholder is the fee tenant. Fee tenancies owe service (or, rarely, cash) to their overlords in exchange for their holdings. They cannot dispose of their land freely, and must first obtain the permission of their overlord to attempt to transfer rights. As for freeholders, the overlord has the ultimate say over who takes up the new tenancy and may in fact forbid the tenant from selling at all. Unlike the a freeholder, a tenant leaving his property must pay his lord for the lost labors. The tenant taking it up must also pay the overlord for his pains. Additionally, since fiat rulings are frowned upon in the empire, a Board of Inquest must be established from some worthy notables of the locality to determine what the proper fee for the land is in terms of labor or coin. These Quaestors may take as long as three or four months to decide on the proper fee, during which time they must be paid (out of the overlord's purse) and it is wise for the overlord to consult with an advocatus (he probably has one in his household in the form of a clericus, seneschal, or steward) and it may be wise for the new tenant to consult one as well.

Allodial property is granted in perpetuum and can only be dispensed with by the emperor himself or by someone who holds an allodial grant. Many people in the empire and very few people in other states in Arunia are possessed of such rentless property free of all obligations save the most basic loyalty to the imperial system and adherence to imperial law.

*In this case, rents and fees are generally construed to mean labor-service and only rarely monetary payment. It's important to note, however, that in the great urban communes (the incorporated cities of the empire) that rents and fees can be labor (service on public streets, walls, fortifications, in the Night Watch where one exists, etc.) it is also possible for these fees to be cash stipends assessed by household.