6.29 ORGANISATIONAL WRITS OF REVENGE

(See also: HELP ASSASSINS and HELP CHAMPIONS)


Summary
-------
Writs are owned by organisations and pertain to an individual. So, for
instance, a city may have three writs against Bob the Evil Overlord for
offences against that city. For each writ an organisation has against an
individual one assassin or champion may be legally hired to kill that
individual, in the organisation's name. Writs are generated by various acts,
detailed below.

Keep in mind that if it's listed here as a 'writable' offence, this system is
the only means of retribution open to you. You must obtain a writ for your
organisation to take revenge.


What is a Writ?
---------------
Sometimes, a person may commit certain acts against an organisation (such as an
Order, a House, a city, etc.), and the organisation needs to be able to strike
back without the individuals involved violating the rules in HELP PK
(PlayerKilling). In order to facilitate this, we've created what are called
Writs.


How does an organisation get Writs against people?
--------------------------------------------------
When an individual commits one of the offences against an organisation that the
code recognises, a member of that organisation will be given the opportunity to
officially bear witness to that crime, generating a writ for the organisation
against the offender. This is done using the WITNESS command.

The writ is initially given to the witnesser of the offence, and the witnesser
may choose to try to kill the offender as long as the witnesser possesses the
writ. Else, the witnesser may yield the writ to his or her organisation for the
organisation to handle (either by hiring a champion or assassin to kill the
offender, or working it out with the offender in other ways).


What can I do with a Writ?
--------------------------
If you have obtained a writ against someone, you can see your writs by typing
WRITS. Until your writ expires, you have reason to attack those you have writs
against. The writ will expire after a time duration, or when you have
successfully slain the offender.

You can also yield the writ to your organisation to be handled as your
organisation sees fit. The syntax is WRIT YIELD <# of writ>.


What can my organisation do with Writs?
---------------------------------------
Once an organisation has a writ against an individual, authorised members of
the organisation may take out a contract on that individual, from either
Assassins or Champions. You may only take out one contract per writ, so an
individual will have to have commited multiple offences against an organisation
in order for that organisation to hire a pack of assassins or champions.
Further, remember that if an organisation hires an assassin or champion to kill
someone, that someone may kill the champion or assassin first, nullifying the
contract. The organisation does not get its writ back in that case.


What specific acts generate Writs?
----------------------------------
The writs system is currently in effect only for the defiling of shrines. When
someone defiles a shrine, the shrine will announce on the order channel that it
is being defiled, though it will not say by whom. An Order member then has 90 
seconds to get to that shrine and type WITNESS SHRINE. If the member got there
in time, a writ will be generated for that organisation, against that
individual. Note that you can witness -multiple times-. You'll be able to
witness once for each separate person that defiled in the last 90 seconds.

Commands for the Order:

ORDER WRITS
  - List who the org has writs against.
  - You must have the order privilege "conwritshow."

CONTRACTS ORDER
  - Lists what contracts your Order has.
  - You must have the order privilege "conwritshow."

CONTRACT ASSASSIN FOR <target> AT <price> GOLD FOR ORDER <reason>
-or-
REQUEST CHAMPION FOR <target> AT <cost> GOLD FOR ORDER <reason>
  - Hires an assassin or requests a champion to eliminate an individual.
  - You must have the order privilege "conwritmake."
  - Will be logged in the order log.

CANCEL CONTRACT <contract#>
  - Cancels a contract.
  - You must have the order privilege "conwritmake."

ORDER WRITS FORGIVE <person>
  - Deletes one PK credit against that person.
  - You must have the order privilege "conwritmake."

Commands for the individual:

WITNESS SHRINE
  - At a shrine that has been defiled within the last 90 seconds, this will
    generate a writ to the witnesser against the defiler.

WRITS
  - See what writs you possess on behalf of your organisation.

WRIT YIELD <# of writ>
  - Yield one of your writs to the custody of your organisation.


SEE ALSO: HELP PK, HELP ASSASSINS, HELP PATRONAGE, HELP SHRINES


Our reasoning behind the Writs system
-------------------------------------
The current PK rules are not suitable for handling adventurer vs. organisation
conflict. As it stands, if a adventurer defiles a shrine or kills a city guard,
whom should we let attack back? If we allow just anyone in the organisation to
fight back, then the net effect is that committing one crime against an
organisation, once, results in potentially hundreds of people having PK rights
against you, which amounts to a death sentence. If committing a crime against
an organisation is a death sentence, people know they can't really get away
with anything, and so conflict is lessened. Conflict is, however, good.

There is also the problem of determining who actually did defile a shrine. We
don't want to let people kill shrine defilers just because someone said someone
else defiled a shrine, as a single liar can cause a ton of problems that way,
but requiring shrine members to actually be at a shrine that's being defiled in
order to take revenge is too difficult, and functionally nearly impossible to
do if your order has more than a few shrines.  So can't just let people get
away with defiling shrines and not empowering the organisation to retaliate in
some way. Orders spend a lot of time building up their shrines.

In summary then, we needed a system that:

1. Gives individuals a chance to actually get away with defiling a shrine (or
killing a city guard, or exterminating a forest room, or other things we will
use this system for if the shrines work out.)

2. Officially keeps track of who the organisation has PK rights against.

3. Ensures some sense of proportionality: A single offence can't be a
guaranteed death.

We think this system does all of this. #1 is satisfied, because an Order member
has only 90 seconds to get to the shrine. We can always fine-tune the amount of
time Order members have to get there. #2 is satisfied because the system does
keep explicit track of who an organisation has PK rights against, and #3 is
satisfied because a single offence only allows a single witnesser to gain
rights to attack the defiler, OR for the organisation to hire a single assassin
or champion.


(See also: HELP ASSASSINS and HELP CHAMPIONS)