Marpenoth 23 Office of the Mayor
Order of the Spellguard:
It is rare that I intrude in the affairs of the city, but I have become recently extremely concerned about the behavior of your Order in the policing of minor crimes.
Of greatest concern, is the apparent case of the half-orc Grunk Manythumps. From what I understand, Grunk - having just arrived in Sanctuary, and presumably unfamiliar with our laws - was insulted by a citizen in the street. Grunk objected to this, and returned insults. At this time an Agent arrived, with a Defender Animatron, and attempted to arrest Grunk for minor crimes of being a public nuisance. Grunk was frightened of the metal monstrosity and fled, non-violently. I am, tangentially, curious when the policy regarding the use of defender animatrons (emergency situations only) was changed by your order. At any rate, Grunk was arrested, and brought to trial on capital charges. As I understand, the legal reasoning behind this was that he fled from arrest (serious crimes), and due to being a half-orc and thus a "guest" his crime was elevated to capital charges. The ultimate sentence passed was exile, a cruel and almost certain death for a newcomer to our town.
Of secondary concern, is a number of reports regarding the tactics of one Agent Manth in policing illegal spell use. Apparently he has been going undercover with adventurers, dealing with a problem (infestation of goblins, or whatever else), failing to object to any spell-use during the course of the mission, and then at the conclusion of the mission, confiscating the entirety of the gold offered by the original contractor and arresting anyone who used spells. The arrested individuals are then hit with an enormous fine and left to rot in a cell.
I have been provided with a copy of Agent Manth's arrest log, and see that he has been hitting first time unauthorized magic use offenders with extremely large fines. The law book is very clear,
Unauthorized Magic Use: Minor Imprisonment Repeated Unauthorized Magic Use: Imprisonment + fine. Enormous fines for first time offenders is illegal, and even for multiple offenders the initial fines should be in the realm of 25-50 gold, not hundreds of gold pieces.
Although the town of Sanctuary is grateful to the Spellguard for its tireless efforts in the defense of our people, I am writing to remind it that it has lost its legal enforcement/arrest powers before, and may do so again unless more care is taken to behave in a fair and reasonable way.
Yorrick Bresley Mayor of the Town of Sanctuary