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Now I'm inspired to think about 'encounters' for players that involve peasant superstition...
Not unreasonable. Adventurers, being often outside the normal fabric of society, might well be blamed for anything going wrong in the area. Whether the local people or lord does anything about it would depend on your scenario...
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I joked about merchants. Not necessarily a profession to play...
Perhaps not, but might be fun to expand for NPC material.
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...or about 200 sorcerers
Seems reasonable to me. Spread out over the whole of Ellesland, 200 is not a large number.
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Its illegal except if the lawmaker says so. I buy that.
That's pretty much how it was in the early Middle Ages (by all accounts). There were laws, and most people abided by them, but powerful lords could do as they pleased - unless a more powerful lord, or the king, took notice.
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That's not how its presented in DW of course
Are you sure?
True, while DW claims the lands are in an early Feudal stage of development (DW book 6, page 103), the court system it describes is actually a much later version (late Medieval). That said, the King's Bench is effectively the same as the King's (Circuit) Court and the Eccliastical Court is that which deals with Canon Law.
Sorcery is not specifically presented as a crime in DW; that appears to have cropped up in more recent discussion and supplements. Thus, we have to decide what kind of crime it is? Does it warrant the death penalty? If so, then it has to be tried by the Circuit Court. Is it a heresy? If so, then that’s the Ecclesiastical Court (DW book 6 avoids giving rules for that court).
The issue here is how it would be dealt with in "real" terms...
Assuming it's a Heresy, then the Church would get involved. This then depends on the power of the Church in your area. If the local has retained the right of
Advowson (the right to appoint an abbot),* then the abbot would be reminded to whom he owes his position – irritating the lord by accusing his "personal sorcerer" wouldn’t be something taken lightly. In addition, there's a reasonable chance that the local abbot or bishop is a relative of the lord (this wasn't uncommon in the real world), and he would have to consider carefully the ramifications of acting against his own family... (Remember that he’s accusing that lord – his own family – of harbouring a heretic.)
* In what is now France, some lords retained the right to appoint Bishops** too. I'm not sure when this changed, sometime in the 11th-12th Centuries, I think?** The bishop was in charge of a city's defence so, as often as not, the appointment was of a military (rather than religious) nature.Then there's
realpolitik. Can the Church actually deal with the lord in question?
Consider the story of Fulk III Nerra, Count of Anjou (972 – 1040 AD).
Campaigning in the Touraine area, the canons of the St. Martin's basilica refused him entry so he sacked the church. Realising this was probably a Bad Thing, he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, bought a piece of the True Cross and, on his return, founded the abbey of Beaulieu. The Archbishop of Tours, not surprisingly, refused to consecrate the abbey; so Fulk went to Rome where he obtained that a Papal Legate would do it instead - to the fury of the Frankish clergy. Content that he'd made suitable amends, he then returned to sack the lands of the Archbishop of Tours around Montsoreau, Candes, Chinon and Azay. Promptly excommunicated, this didn't prevent him going on to beat his enemies at Pontlevoy in 1016. In 1025 he took Saumur: in the course of the attack he expelled the priests of St. Florent and burnt the monastery to the ground. To make amends, he built a new church in Angers... (And so on.)
Source: "La Chevalerie et les Chevaliers Brigands de la France au moyen âge" by Thierry Ribaldone, 1988.The Church in Legend, however powerful you might have it in your campaign world, might be wary of challenging a powerful lord. Especially if that lord has not done something
overtly heretical. I suppose it's complicated and, as Dave Morris says, can't be governed by a set of tables - such situations would have to be role-played.
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What happened to Nostradamus? I'm not aware of any reliable accounts of him getting into serious trouble for practising magic (actually astrology and soothsaying in his case I suppose).
Nothing. That was my point (sorry if it wasn't clear). Here was a man who practiced alchemy (heretical) and dabbled in prophesy (also heretical) and yet survived in the days when the Inquisition were active. It can't have harmed his cause that he was admired, and had as a patron, Catherine de Medici (wife of King Henry II of France). Not every sorcerer gets burnt at the stake...
However, if he had performed overt sorcery,* in the presence of witnesses, then it's likely that no patron could have saved him. If a sorcerer is in the public eye, he has to be
subtle.
* If he had somehow blasted Hellfire from his fingertips, for example.**** No, I'm not saying he could; I'm just giving a fantasy example.