Richard Aiken wrote:

>  I wrote:
>  >   The idea (which may not be well baked) is ...
>  >   Also to stop matters of policy being settled by fights.

>     The second idea is reasonable.
>     But why the requirement that the challenged person use a champion? But the challenger can't?

Hmmm. It was a few years ago when I came up with this idea, so I may not recall properly
or completely. And, as I said, the idea may not be well-baked to start with!

However, I think the idea was that Nobles IMTU tend to have interests and importance in fields
other than engaging in personal combat, so having them murdered by some young spark for
political reasons is not a good thing for society as a whole (unless of course it is - your
TU is your TU, and go for it).

For a real-life example, could Bill Gates' child, having joined the military, challenge the
Chair of the Joint Chiefs? Well, no, not in RL. But in anyone's TU? Yes? No? Why? Why not?
If you have your Nobles ruling from some sense of personal authority (which excludes the
Chair of the Joint Chiefs, who is a political appointee, this authority should be challengeable.
How? Assassination? Duel challenge? What are the limits here? I have no real answers, except
those choices I made for my TU.

To take a not-so-fictional example, check out the later parts of the movie Scaramouche (the
Stewart Granger version, at least).

This is set in the very early days of the French Revolution. The existing nobility, most
of whom know how to duel, identify competent politicians from the ranks of the commoners,
pick excuses to fight them, and then kill or cripple them. (This appears to be historically
accurate, at least according to Carlyle.)

On the whole, I consider that sort of activity to be a Bad Thing when designing a stable
(multi-thousand year) society. So I wanted to make it difficult (but still possible, just
for spice), to successfully pull off a political assassination disguised as a duel.

Having the challenger take the personal risk of a duel, while being unable to personally
harm the challenged, seemed to fit the bill. The challenger could easily be facing a bodyguard
who has probably spent four hours a day for the past ten or twenty years learning some weapon
(probably a sword, I like the idea of a duel being melee, rather than ranged, combat). Now
perhaps, occasionally, as a matter of luck, the challenger will win, and may gain some
personal honour as a reward. More often they will fail, and become another of the ranks
of the forgotten (unless, of course, some more senior Noble notices them and decides to
sponsor them in some fashion).

Anyway, those were my ideas, as far as I recall them. If it helps to put some colour into
someone's campaign, then I am happy.

Jonathan