[LMB] TSK:L SP: dag and the town drunk

[Tzivia Adler]

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this story is brought to you by one remark at dag's trial ...

once upon a time there was a patroller.  he was a good patroller, and went 
out often.  he accumulated a lot of credit in camp stores, and seldom needed 
it.  years went past, and somehow he never married.  he slept in his 
mother's tent when he was in camp, and things were reasonbly fine.

then the patroller fought a particularly bad malice.  of seventy patrolers, 
only he and one other survived - and it was the other who killed the malice. 
our patroller came home with a bad case of survivor guilt and raided his 
uncle's supply of elderberry wine.  everyone thought he'd get over it.  then 
he went to the camp stores and started trading.  no one in camp would sell 
him wine - they wanted him back on patrol.  the (ex) patroller went to the 
farmers and traded this that and the other for every sort of wine he could 
get.

people stopped saying he would get over it and started calling him the 
t/o/w/n/ camp drunk.*  everyone felt bad for his mother, who had to watch 
her son waste many years of his life. finally the man came to the end of his 
supply.  it was too difficult to steal things, what with everyone watching 
out for his ground, so he went back out on patrol and died soon after. 
everyone was glad he didn't get anyone else killed of his own stupidity, 
except for the ones who wondered why he didnt prime a sharing knife if he 
was so desperate to forget everything.

now the 'what if' question, granted that the whole story above is pure 
speculation:

if a man can find a way to fritter his camp stores away without benefitting 
the camp - although they try to keep it a closed system, don't they?  no 
inter-national trade, mostly - can his camp stores confiscated 'for his own 
good'?  or do they say, he earned it, he can spend it, the idiot.

this question has been brought to you by the council's unspoken but printed 
statement - if dag gets his hands on the money that he earned, he's going to 
waste it on his farmer piglet.
well, why shouldn't he?  it's his stores, if he had spent it as soon as 
earned it, he wouln't have accumulated anythng for htem to take away.

"You've been a bad boy!  We're going to nationalize  your property!"

i also wonder, since dag knew banishment was a very real possibility, and 
since he's supposed to be good at strategy, why he didn't quietly take some 
things out of stores and stash them out of camp.  adn then take another few 
things.  and some more.  especially his horses, to take the other things to 
a farmer's market.  then they could throw him out, and he'd have more than 
his bare skin to support his wife ... no kids yet but what if htey came 
while he was banished?

ziviya

* can't really just say camp drunk, sounds too much like campy drunk wich i 
think means something very different....

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