Getting Arrested¶

"Hands where I can see 'em. You can come quiet and sleep it off, or you can make this hard and we'll do it the other way. Your choice - but only one of those leaves your purse where it is." - Sergeant of the Watch, Ghelmyon

So you got caught. A guard saw the knife come out, or a shopkeeper screamed, or your name's been on enough lips that the Watch finally came looking. This article is the aftermath - what the guards do, what the cell looks like, and how you buy your way back onto the street.

For how to commit a crime quietly (and not end up here), see Crime & Stealth. For the wanted boards and hunting other people's bounties, see Bounties & Wanted. This article is the consequence end of that pipe.

At a glance¶


What brings them	A witnessed crime - guards present, or they arrive next phase
Severity matters	Petty theft is shrugged off; assault and worse get an instant response
When collared	You get a choice: submit, fight, flee, bribe, or talk
Submit	You're jailed - the safe, survivable outcome
Jail holds you	A sentence in phases, scaling with how wanted you are
Drunk tank	Minor offenders sleep it off - no record, no bail
To get out	Serve the time, or `bail` - pay coin to walk early
Stolen goods	Confiscated on arrest - the loot doesn't come with you
Resisting	Adds to your bounty and turns the guard hostile - a real fight

How the guards decide to come for you¶

Not every misstep brings the Watch. The guards weigh how bad the crime was and who saw it:

Petty theft - palming a few coins - is beneath their notice unless a guard themselves catches you. A nervous bystander mostly just looks away.
Real theft of goods, if witnessed by the right people, gets reported: no guard at the scene, but boots start coming. If there's a patrol on the next street, they'll arrive the following phase.
Assault and worse - drawing a blade on a townsperson - gets an immediate response if any guard is standing there. They turn on you on the spot.

Two things feed how hard they come: your bounty in that town (the specific price on your head) and your notoriety (your general infamy - Unknown, Suspicious, Known Troublemaker, Wanted, Infamous, Public Enemy). A first-timer in a sleepy quarter gets a stern look; a known face who's racked up a bounty gets the full treatment. See Reputation & Standing for how those meters climb and cool.

First hour grace. While you're still learning the ropes, the Watch warns instead of striking - "Watch yourself, newcomer." That safety net comes off once you're a proper resident of the world.

The moment of arrest - your five choices¶

When a watchman actually collars you, you don't just snap to a cell - you get a say. The choices, and what each really does:

Submit. You go quietly. This is the safe outcome: you're escorted to the cells, given a sentence and a bail price, and you live. No fight, no extra heat. When in doubt, submit.
Fight. You shove the guard off and the guard turns hostile - now it's a real combat, and resisting arrest adds to your bounty on top of whatever you were wanted for. Win and you've made enemies of the whole Watch; lose and you're worse off than if you'd come quiet.
Flee. A roll against your Agility. Succeed and you bolt to a nearby street and vanish into the crowd - but they'll be looking for you. Fail and the guard grabs your arm and draws steel - straight into a fight.
Bribe. Slip them coin to look the other way - a Charisma check, and you need the gold on you. Land it and "I didn't see anything, move along." Botch it and the offended guard piles more bounty on for the insult.
Talk. Argue your way clear - a harder Charisma check. Win and the guard sighs and lets you off this once ("one more incident and you're done"). Lose and they proceed with the arrest anyway, same as submitting.

The honest read: fighting and fleeing make you more wanted; bribe and talk are gambles; submit is the floor you can always fall back on.

Surrendering mid-fight - yield to the law¶

You can also end up arrested out of combat - by giving up. If you're already swinging at the guards and it's going badly, dropping your weapon and kneeling (surrender, or yield for a softer de-escalation) ends the fight. Guards arrest you - same jail pipeline as submitting - rather than finishing you off.

This is the key thing to know about yielding to the law specifically: a guard who accepts your surrender takes you in, they don't kill you. That makes surrender a genuine escape hatch from a losing fight against the Watch - you'll lose coin and time, but not your life.

Yielding to bandits or thieves is a different bargain entirely - they rob you (gold, sometimes your weapon) and let you go. Only the Watch jails you. See Death & Consequences for what happens when surrender isn't on the table and you go down.

Whether an enemy accepts a surrender isn't guaranteed - it depends on who struck first, how hurt you both are, and whether they're a reasoning foe at all. Wild animals and mindless things don't understand a raised hand. Guards usually do.

Inside the cell¶

Once you're taken in, you wake up in the guardhouse cells. A few things are true of every stint:

You're held for a sentence measured in phases (chunks of the day). How long scales with how wanted you were when they took you - a small bounty is a short stay; a heavy one keeps you longer.
Stolen goods are confiscated. Anything in your pack marked as stolen is taken when you're booked. The loot does not come into the cell with you - getting caught means losing the haul.
A fine comes out of your purse. Being processed costs coin, drawn against what you're carrying.
You're not alone. The cells usually hold a cellmate or two - pickpockets, brawlers, con artists. They gossip, drop tips on lockpicking or stealth or reading the guards, and occasionally a voice through the bars will offer you contraband (a lockpick, a crude shiv) for coin. Talk to them; some of it's useful, some of it's just cell-talk.

To pass the sentence the slow way, serve time (or wait) advances the clock phase by phase until they let you out. It's tedious by design - that's the cost.

The drunk tank - for small fish¶

Not every arrest is the real cells. If your notoriety and bounty are both low and the offense was minor, the Watch doesn't bother with a proper sentence - they toss you in the drunk tank to "sleep it off." That means:

One phase and you're out - barely a detour.
No bail, no fine of consequence, no record. They're not building a case; they just want you off the street for the night.

It's the world telling you you're small-time. Annoying, not ruinous. Climb the notoriety ladder and the drunk tank stops being an option - then it's the real cell.

Bail and fines - buying your way out¶

You don't have to serve the whole sentence. bail (also post bail / pay bail) pays a price to walk right now:

You need the coin on you - bail comes straight from your purse. No purse, no bail; you serve the time instead.
Bail scales with how serious the crime was - the bigger the bounty that put you in, the steeper the price to skip the rest of your stay. Pay it and the cell door opens.
The fine is separate - that's the processing cost taken at arrest. Bail is the early-release fee on top.

If you're cash-poor, this is exactly the kind of squeeze that makes a bank worth having - coin you can't reach from a cell doesn't help, but a healthy purse turns a long sentence into a short inconvenience. The trade is always the same: time or money.

There are quieter ways out of a cell that the wrong sort of cellmate might sell you - but picking a lock under a jailer's nose is its own gamble, and getting caught at it only deepens the hole. Bail is the clean exit.

After you're out¶

Walking free doesn't wipe the slate:

Bounty from the crime that jailed you is settled by serving or bailing - but notoriety lingers. The town remembers your face.
Resisting stacked extra bounty that follows you around until it cools or you clear it (see Bounties & Wanted for paying down your own price).
Confiscated stolen goods are gone - don't count on getting them back. Factor that into whether a job was worth it.
Push the same town too far and arrests stop being the worst of it - repeat offenders get banned, and the truly notorious get exiled. The Town Guard has a long memory and a longer reach.

The cheapest crime is the one nobody witnessed. The second cheapest is the one you submit to quietly and bail out of before it costs you a day.

Quick reference - "I just got caught, now what?"¶

Situation	Do this
Guard collars you, you're not sure you can win	Submit - safe, you'll be jailed not killed
Losing a fight against the Watch	`surrender` - they arrest, they don't finish you
In a cell, want out now, have coin	`bail` - pay to walk early
In a cell, broke	`serve time` / `wait` until released
Tossed in the drunk tank	One phase, sleep it off - no real cost
A cellmate offers a lockpick	Their call - bail is the clean exit
Tempted to fight the guard	Know it adds bounty and starts a real fight
Carrying stolen goods when caught	Expect them confiscated - the haul's gone
Bounty keeps climbing after release	See Bounties & Wanted to pay it down