D&D General How much trouble are the Slave catchers in for taking A 4 year old Crown Prince whose mother was A Escaped Slave?, which legally makes him a slave

[JMISBEST]

There is nothing reasonable about this. They did not have reasonable grounds.



See, a special birthmark is an old trope used in literature a lot. And it's usually to indicate royal or an otherwise "special" bloodline. But in slaves? Why would the slavers memorize birthmarks?

This is SO unlikely it strains credulity. Here is what you should do:

Skip the birthmark entirely. It's stupid, it doesn't work. Instead, have a mark applied to ALL slaves - a brand, a tattoo, something like that. This mark was hidden on the boy by his mother. BUT the mark also had something magical about it (in case of tempering), something the mother did not know about - and neither did his guards (more on them later) know about it. So a routine border check, which the guards thought would be no trouble, revealed the prince to be a slave, and he was captured.

You've already spoken below about a spell. Again, you don't need the birthmark.



Again, WAY too convoluted, and not believable either.

• This is WAY too much trouble for slavers to capture a young boy.
• Are they slavers or "the authority" (you spoke of "arrest" earlier)? If they are the authority, they don't need these shenanigans
• A naive 4 year old is not listened to by his guards in matters such as this. If there is violence (muggings etc) they will protect their charge, not spread out.

Its a birthmark that always appears on the foreheads of male members of his mothers family, it has nothing to do with his mother being a slave, after all since it only appears on male members she wouldn't have it

As for how did they realize by the birthmark that his mother is or was, by which I'm referring to the fact that they don't know she's dead but they know that because she escaped 17 years ago that theirs a good chance that she is dead, a escaped slave, which means that since they don't know his fathers a king they class him as a slave

Back to the subject of the birthmark I would guess that theirs a registry of birthmarks that can be used to identify escaped slaves and even though it couldn't be used to identify his mother, since only male members of her family get it, it could be used to identify a male descendant of hers, and in this case it was used to identify a male descendant of hers

You did say that him bearing a birthmark that looks a lot like the 1 that all male members of a family that has been entirely slaves for close to a millennium isn't reasonable grounds to detain him and find out if he's the child of a escaped slave

After all even though being a slave snatcher doesn't require a high INT, but having a high INT helps, they will all have A INT stat that's high enough for them to all to realize that since he's only 4 years old he can't be a escaped slave, but he could be the son of a escaped slave

To that I say that it seems like you've overlooked the fact that different countries have different opinions of what is reasonable grounds to detain someone because by the laws of his mothers homelands they did have reasonable grounds

 

[Bagpuss]

To that I say that it seems like you've overlooked the fact that different countries have different opinions of what is reasonable grounds to detain someone because by the laws of his mothers homelands they did have reasonable grounds

Yeah but I bet the USA had reasonable grounds to detain a certain prince recently, but you don't go causing diplomatic incidents over it.

 

[Umbran]

This means that The slave snatchers didn't snatch the 4 year old to check if he was a escaped slave, rather they had reasonable grounds to arrest him

No, they really didn't. You cannot have reasonable grounds for arrest if you don't have jurisdiction. The laws of his mother's homeland are irrelevant if the boy isn't in his mother's homeland at the time.

They may have felt they could get money for the kid back in the slaver country, but that's not "grounds for arrest". That's "motive for kidnapping".

 

[Charlaquin]

Like are the adventurers supposed to stop the slavers?

If so, then the elaborate backstory about why the slavers think a prince should be enslaved doesn't matter. They're slavers - they deserve death.

Stop trying to find a way to justify slavery and let the players kill them

Note that the very first sentence of this thread is “I've had A Idea for A Unique DAD Character but I've got a question.”

OP is a player. They often come up with elaborate and convoluted backstories for their characters based on dreams they have, and then come to the forums asking questions like “how much did The King mess up by marring his Nine Year Old Daughter who is secretly a Thousand Year Old Succubus (which in Succubus years is the equivalent of a Very Intelligent 6-Month Old) to the Seventeen-and-a-half Year Old Prince of a Small But Wealthy Country who is also A Thief?”

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Note that the very first sentence of this thread is “I've had A Idea for A Unique DAD Character but I've got a question.”

OP is a player. They often come up with elaborate and convoluted backstories for their characters based on dreams they have, and then come to the forums asking questions like “how much did The King mess up by marring his Nine Year Old Daughter who is secretly a Thousand Year Old Succubus to the Seventeen-and-a-half Year Old Prince of a Small But Wealthy Country who is also A Thief?”

Ok that make more sense now. The thread that is, not the backstory, that is rubbish.

 

[JMISBEST]

No, they really didn't. You cannot have reasonable grounds for arrest if you don't have jurisdiction. The laws of his mother's homeland are irrelevant if the boy isn't in his mother's homeland at the time.

They may have felt they could get money for the kid back in the slaver country, but that's not "grounds for arrest". That's "motive for kidnapping".

He was in his mothers homeland, he wanted to see it, somehow his father agreed and in case anyone tried to kidnap the 4 year old crown prince they disguised him

Unfortunately no one, not even his father, knew that his dead mother was a escaped slave, and since they are now in his mothers homeland they have the jurisdiction to arrest escaped slaves and their children

Sadly for the 4 year old, which will end badly for the slave catchers, the slave catchers got a good enough look at his birthmark for their jurisdiction to give them enough reasonable grounds to detain him on suspicion of being the son of a escaped slave

 

[FrozenNorth]

Gorbatchev was a public figure. The 4 years old prince, much less and he probably didn't command a lot of interest. It's possible he didn't know about the mark. However, the OP confirmed that they used a spell to confirm his runaway slave status... but the odds of the guards recognizing the birthmark of a random slave when stopping him are very low in the first place. I am puzzled.

Crown princes are public figures. Particularly when they are young and cute and have prominent birthmarks (“It’s a SIGN!”).

The UK went gaga over the birth of William’s firstborn, and in medieval times, the king’s role is even more important.

In msny monarchies, the Crown Prince is literally considered to be the gods’ representative on earth.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Note that the very first sentence of this thread is “I've had A Idea for A Unique DAD Character but I've got a question.”

OP is a player. They often come up with elaborate and convoluted backstories for their characters based on dreams they have, and then come to the forums asking questions like “how much did The King mess up by marring his Nine Year Old Daughter who is secretly a Thousand Year Old Succubus (which in Succubus years is the equivalent of a Very Intelligent 6-Month Old) to the Seventeen-and-a-half Year Old Prince of a Small But Wealthy Country who is also A Thief?”

Threads like this make me appreciate backstories like: "I hit things with a big sword. About five percent of the time I hit them twice."

 

[FrozenNorth]

Still doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Back to the subject of the birthmark I would guess that theirs a registry of birthmarks that can be used to identify escaped slaves and even though it couldn't be used to identify his mother, since only male members of her family get it, it could be used to identify a male descendant of hers, and in this case it was used to identify a male descendant of hers

Why would there be a registry of birthmarks? Apparently this is a family thing, so are there really that many slaves with birthmarks that setting up a registry is warranted?

Again, how many resources does this nation allot to recapturing slaves? We have independent, roving bands of slave catchers that will put out elaborate charades to catch a single suspected slave. They are equipped with magical items that allow them to detect whether some one is a slave or not (how does that even work? What happens if the law changes? Does the item stop working?). Now we have a registry of slave birthmarks that is apparently easily accessible by this 7-man strong band of roving slavers.

And this sophisticated country, with widespread magical items to detect slaves and a registry of slave birthmarks somehow never noticed that the Crown Prince of another nation had the birthmark of a slave?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Why would there be a registry of birthmarks? Apparently this is a family thing, so are there really that many slaves with birthmarks that setting up a registry is warranted?

Well, birthmarks don't have to work like they do in our world. Maybe they are distinct and reliable genetic markers, and in the same way that aristocracies carefully track family trees and marriage ties, this society has a developed a "registry" of birthmarks.

Birthmark forging would likely be a thing, too.