RegulationsThese are relevant references from the Books where Regulations are mentioned. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. Arrive at your own conclusions. I wish you well, Fogaban Kazrak, who had been Administrator of the City for several years, had been popular but his straightforward attention, after he had put aside the Red of the Warrior and donned the Brown of the Administrator, to numerous and complex civil and economic matters, such as reform of the courts and laws and controls and regulations pertaining to commerce, I talked long with Thurnock, discussing the plans for the enterprise in the forest, and my wishes for appointments and regulations at the camp. At the thing, to which each free man must come, unless he work his farm alone and cannot leave it, each man must be present, for the inspection of his Jarl's officer, a helmet, shield and either sword or ax or spear, in good condition. Each man, generally, save he in the direct hire of the Jarl, is responsible for the existence and condition of his own equipment and weapons. A man in direct fee with the Jarl is, in effect, a mercenary; the Jarl himself, from his gold, and stores, where necessary or desirable, arms the man; this expense, of course, is seldom necessary in Torvaldsland; sometimes, however, a man may break a sword or lose an ax in battle, perhaps in the body of a foe, falling from a ship; in such a case the Jarl would make good the loss; he is not responsible for similar losses, however, among free farmers. Those farmers who do not attend the thing, being the sole workers on their farms, must, nonetheless, maintain the regulation armament; once annually it is to be presented before a Jarl's officer, who, for this purpose, visits various districts. It seems certain that more than one fellow has been kept on the chain far longer than his sentence would seem to require. For example, it seems certain that small infractions, invented or discovered, of regulations, or discipline, are utilized by work masters, at least from time to time, to "extend" the sentence, or de-facto servitude, of the worker in question. The diet of the captive, as had now been made clear to her, is subject to the selection and regulation of the captor, as is that of the slave to the master. "You noticed how he inquired into our employments?" said Marcus. "Of course," I said. "Soon," he said, "there will be regulations about such things, and papers, and permits, and ostraka, and such." The caste of Initiates, incidentally, provides a socially acceptable refuge for men who may not wish, for one reason or another, to relate to women. It is probably a kindness for a society to provide mercies of this sort. This observation is not intended to reflect on the caste as a whole. It is my surmise, incidentally, that the great majority of Initiates, for better or for worse, abide by, and respect, the regulations of their caste. You are within the walls of Treve. You are sheltered by her Home Stone. You cannot deal with the property of Treve with impunity." "You have delayed us long enough," snarled the leader of the black-tunicked men. "We came yesterday to the pits, and you put us off with some absurd technicality." "We have our regulations, Master," said the pit master. The second major theory proposed to explain the ban of Priest-Kings on body armor is that the Priest-Kings, in their benign concern for human beings, one of the diverse life forms with which they stocked the planet, thought the banning of body armor would reduce injury and conflict, that it would lead humans to abandon war as too dangerous and perilous of pursuit by a rational organism. If this is the case, it seemed they may have overestimated the rationality of the human species, or underestimated the lengths to which it might go to acquire land, wealth, women, and other valuables. A variant on this theory, though one less benign, or misguided, is that the regulation from the Sardar was intended to help keep the numbers of human beings on the planet in check, that it functioned, in a sense, as a populational control device. Certainly there was much disgruntlement in the Cave amongst the humans, and, as nearly as I could determine, amongst several of the Kurii as well. The new regulations chafed all. The relevance of this small exchange, if any, had to do with the fact that it is extremely rare for a Gorean warrior to have a beard long enough to be grasped by a foe, a beard by means of which a throat might be jerked to a knife. There are, of course, many varieties of facial hair which do not involve courting that particular hazard. Sometimes, of course, in certain units, presumably in the interests of uniformity, discipline, group appearance, group identification, and such, regulations are imposed governing such matters. |
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