Noble infighting

The noble families of Soleme are always in conflict. Occasionally these conflicts involve military personnel, and rarely members of the church. These disputes usually concern ownership rights to titles, lands, properties, etc.

Decades ago, nobles often used assassinations to resolve their disputes. But eventually the Council of Soleme clamped down on this practice. Noble families then started resolving their disputes using arranged duels.

Duelling

The rules were as follows

• The two parties must agree on terms before the duel.
• The winner of the duel gets to enact his terms.
• Duels need not end in death.
• Restrictions on the duel, such as weapon or armour restrictions, may be agreed on before the duel.
• Each party’s duellist must be either (1) a member of his house, (2) a member of a related house, or (3) a close associate of his house.

It was usually easiest to find a duellist that was a member of a related house. And typically duelling parties agreed to fight “shieldless”, to increase the likelihood of the losing party’s duellist being killed.

Legal advisors

During the duelling Period of Soleme, legal advisors devoted their time to working out “legitimate” claims their clients could make to particular goods, and “legitimate” lines of relation to competent duellists. Disputing parties often had very tenuous family links to their chosen duellists. And several fighters became go-to duellists for a large number of families.

Banning

Due to an obscene amount of public bloodshed, the Council decided to prohibit duelling, a few years before present day. The infighting between noble families continues, but it has transitioned to the Courts of Soleme, where there are always many ongoing cases.

Mechanics

In-game, duels proceed in rounds, wherein each duellist chooses one of three actions: Parry, Lunge, or Feint. If each chooses the same action, they make attack rolls against each other. Otherwise, one of the duellists wins the round, as follows:

• Parry > Lunge > Feint > Parry

The loser of a round automatically misses. The winner automatically hits, and gets to roll damage + apply a special effect depending on which action they chose:

• Parry: roll a d20; on a 1-2 the enemy’s weapon is broken; on a 19-20 the enemy is disarmed.
• Lunge: roll an extra weapon die for damage.
• Feint: choose one action; the opponent may not choose that next round.