From: [d--r--r] at [mustang.uwo.ca] (Dave Harper)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Armies and PCs - Desertion
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 1996 08:15:04 GMT

6.3.3.1.2  Penalties for desertion

          Deserting is a crime punishable by death.  Characters who
desert do not spend the full length of their service, but only gain
the benefits of the length of time they actually served; if the
character fled one day before their first anniversary in the army,
they only receive the benefits of a 6 month enlistment, etc.
Furthermore, these characters start as wanted criminals in one nation,
which may harm their later careers (or their lives). 
          Characters may later pay a weregeld to avoid execution at
the hands of the military authorities for this crime.  The common
penalty is to pay 40 gold per year the character failed to serve,
rounded up to the nearest season, enough money to field one soldier
during wartime.  They must also replace or pay for the value of all
the weapons, armour and other equipment the characters took
with them when they left, even if those would have been normal for a
character leaving after that length of time to keep.  Finally, if the
character was in the special forces of an army or navy, they must pay
double this value to represent the training and equipment spent on
that character.  However, every year that passes between when the
character deserted and when they begin paying the weregeld adds 5% to
this sum, cumulatively.  In general, only nobles and some wealthy sons
of merchants can afford to do this.
          Individuals who desert during combat are in an entirely
different situation; they are treated as murderers and receive no
chance to pay a weregeld.  They serve as examples to other soldiers
and help keep troops from bolting during real combat.  Although it is
very rare, some nobles have been known to make deals with their
sovereign for the lives of their sons for this crime; such deals
usually end up costing well over three thousand gold apiece and
usually involve land trades.

        Oops, sorry...definition of Weregeld - "life price", coming from the
Norse, used in medieval times (up to the crusades) to represent the
value of a man's life.  In general, you could pay a Weregeld as
payment to a man's widow if you murdered her husband in order to
escape being executed for murder, and your family would pay a certain
amount for your safe return if you were captured or kidnapped.  The
Weregeld was set by law at 7 times the annual income of the character.
I did the math, and in my game, a king's ransom is about 25,000 gold
pieces!!