The city's executioner is as much a political figure as the judge and sheriff...

I had a good chuckle, thanks user.

Unless he wants his own head ending on the chopping block, he'll end just being another yes man.

Also this premise convoluted and poorly thought out. Apply yourself instead of posting whatever dumb idea floats into your head

I've always held to the canon that the Executioner and the Shit-Brooker have much more in common than most people care to admit:

Excellent benefits, excellent pay, they want for nothing in terms of convenience and comfort and enjoy a well-off life of professional success due to the necessity of their profession and position... But it comes at the cost of social ostracism.

No one wants to be friends with the men who shovel shit or cut peoples heads off for a living, but you can't have a clean society without someone picking up the shit.

Executioners don't wear those hoods so they could look "cool"; they wore them to retain their anonymity.

>Be NEET
>Some chump got accused of stealing a loaf of bread, prepare to execute him
>While sharpening your axe, you talk about the virtues of proportional punishment and rehabilitation of first time offenders
>Nobody listens, the crowd cheers for blood
>Whatever, your axe is sharp enough and you've been lifting
>You give the poor schmuck a quick, clean death
>Get paid
>Piss on his corpse just because you can
>See a pig wandering around in the crowd of chearing peasants
>A brilliant idea pops up in your head
>"That pig is a heretic!"
>Under the cries of "heretic! heretic!" the peasants carry the beast to the execution platform
>Decapitate it, entitling yourself to the head of the pig
>"Sweet! Now I don't have to go grocery shopping for the day!"
>Go home, eat pig's head, gotta get that protein
>Lift a little before going to sleep
>Children avoid you in the streets so you don't have to deal with their constant whining

The only medieval life more comfy than this is that of a monk

Who keeps making these dumb one-line idea threads?

Is it just some turbo neet who posts the first random, tertiary-in-relation-to-Veeky Forums thing that comes to his mind

Has Veeky Forums become his subconcious mind? are we just aspects of some autist's mind? am I real?

>Sure you're pretty much an outcast

Except that's fucking huge. Especially in the small towns of the time. There's no escape in the anonymity, everyone knows who you are, and everyone thinks you're the lowest bottom feeder around.

>As long as you train a couple hours daily

Except you don't really have anything all that realistic to train on. Sure, you can practice your aim a bit, but you miss the important bit, which is the immense pressure of performing on a (currently) living human being, in front of a large crowd that is at best not hostile while you do it all correct, but is almost guaranteed to want to lynch you if you fuck up.

A neet, performing well in front of a crowd? Fucker would cut himself stropping the axe, drop it three times before the convict is even on the block, and probably hit his own leg on the first swing.

IIRC, this is actually somewhat true in Saudi Arabia. One of the executioners jobs is to go to the victim's family and plead with them for clemency. I have no idea if there's any actual incentive for him to do this, or if it's merely expected of him.
In fantasy world building, one might specify that the executioner gets a portion of the weregeld in addition to his regular rates, so he is ironically the medieval equivalent of a defence attorney, expected to fully understand and advocate for the person he may well end up executing.

I remember that thread.

>everyone thinks you're the lowest bottom feeder around.
Source on this? Other linked content of the thread suggests otherwise. Your portrayal makes sense for, say, an oppressed town where the executioner is the tool of an unpopular lord or something, but otherwise I'm not convinced.

>Call me an optimist but I imagine the list of folks in most communities willing to personally end a life by their own hands to be small and hesitant.

You're not an optimist, you're a naive Millennial.

>in front of a large crowd that is at best not hostile while you do it all correct, but is almost guaranteed to want to lynch you if you fuck up.

????????

what the fuck are you talking about?

why would the crowd NOT be on the executioner's side?

why would the crowd want to lynch the executioner for botching the beheading of some kiddie fucker?

you sir are an IDIOT and a MORON

>Is it just some turbo neet who posts the first random, tertiary-in-relation-to-Veeky Forums thing that comes to his mind

I'm sure its several

I'll keep a strict separation of powers, thank you.

Unless all judges are also executioners, and this is the standard appeal procedure.

Pretty much this. Until very recently (200 years or so) an execution was a fucking spectacle. If the crowd was always on the verge of lynching executioners then executions would take place in some backroom like today, wouldn't they? People were usually on the side of whoever punished some wrongdoer, and watching it was a form of entertainment. To see whether the cowardly rat would piss himself or accept his fate with dignity.

For those wondering about the medieval crowd's stance on executions, I suggest you read about Ravaillac, Henry IV's assassin.
They tore him appart by hand and some even ate him.

henri4.culture.fr/en/uc/04_02_04-The execution

There was some Saudi executioner who carries out beheadings with a sword. He spoke a lot about how he talks to the condemned and their families, helping them accept death.

>Until very recently (200 years or so) an execution was a fucking spectacle.

Politics in general were tied to public performaces. Backroom deals plan didn't work because nobody'd feel tied down by them at all.

>Politics in general were tied to public performaces. Backroom deals plan didn't work because nobody'd feel tied down by them at all.
Has it really changed nowadays?

well if you can cut through a log you can cut through a neck like it was butter.

Cool, but it's got to be a small country. And while you could plausibly execute anyone who would be a 'felon' by modern standards you're REALLY missing out if you don't apply fines for nuisance-level crimes like public intoxication.

seems like the backstory could work with just the "If the king dispenses justice then he should dispense the punishments too" angle. And it would make him look like a good king.

Who cares, it makes for good conversation.

Why do you think the executioner wears hood? He was often called from some neigjboring county, so anonymity wasn't that uncommon.

>>Entitled to tax sick people
But why?

Chosen by your dad. For most of humanity's history, the son (at least one of them) inherits the job of the father.

sick people in those days weren't sick for long. and if you can't take it with you, give it to me.

>I kill the executioner and start a revolt, DM.
You mean you *try* to.

Maybe the people actually like their executioner.
Sure, he's spoopy and he's the violent face of the law, but he's also in a position of authority without sharing ties with the actual powerful people of the town - the burgomaster, the rich merchant families, the heads of the guilds. He lives the life of an ordinary commoner, although a little reclused and a bit more wealthy, and sees life from their very own perspective.
If he's a good man, probably he has saved more lives than he has taken, vowing for the convicted when the high-up magistrates see them as nothing more than dogs to be put down.
Among powerful people who care only for profits or influence, he's just a guy with a good salary who can't hope though to ever get anywhere higher than where he already is. He'll always be only an executioner. He can't use his power for his own advantage, so he could as well use it to help the people he lives with.

And you want to kill this men, this men that people in town fear but also respect, and expect people to follow you.

Roll dice, moron.

Not to mention he might as well pack more of a punch that you can handle, you little murderhobo-chan.

> overweight executioner always advocates for clemency for fear of throwing his back out again

Rolled 20 (1d20)

Rollin' to teleport behind him and kill him with my katana

pssh...nothin personel...kid...

Wrong die, unexisting powers, not allowed weapon = you're clearly at the wrong table. You can play PF with the kids over there.

You're dead, you can't speak.

I guess that's one way to win an argument.

hearty fucking chuckles were had, amazing

You teleport into the executioner's cleverly hidden anti-magic stocks. The peasant rabble laugh at your silly foreign antics and vestigial sword.

-4 ninja points

>N-nani?!

The Bostanji gardeners played an important role in Ottoman society. Besides being tasked to care for the sultan’s grounds, it was also their job to execute the condemned. The head of this group, the Chief Royal Gardener, was in charge of informing and executing nobles. The chief sometimes let a very high-ranking official (especially a grand vizier) save the prisoner’s life by challenging him to a race inside the palace grounds. If the condemned reached the finish line first, he would be spared; otherwise, it was death. Of all the chiefs, one of the most famous was Souflikar. During the reign of Mehmed IV in the 17th century, he conducted more than 5,000 executions in just five years. >His method was as brutal as it was efficient—instead of using equipment, Souflikar preferred to strangle his victims with nothing but his bare hands.

Could you imagine being executed that way.
>Its cool dude, you wont die, all you need to do is outrun the fat guy who tends the roses. what could possibly go wrong.

Rolled 8 (1d20)

rolling to kill the weeb with my head exploding powers.

In medieval Sweden, and I'm sure in lots of other countries, the executioner was a prisoner sentenced for death, only for later.
This executioner, or bödel, was a social outcast . He and his family sat in the far back of church, people spit in his face etc. To mark him, his ears was cut off.
His first task is to behead the previous executioner.

Nuh-uh, user! I'm never playing with you again

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

M
MASAKA -- !

It's also worth being mentioned that behading somebody with an axe was a two-person job. One person would hold the axe to the criminal's neck and the other would pound it with a mallet.

That's pretty extreme. Here (former Kingdom of Bohemia), the executioner was still kind of an outcast, but not much worse than a leatherworker or other people with stinky jobs. The salary was quite good actually...

Well, I've never heard of that, but it's makes sense.
Now I want an executioners daughters waifu handling the mallet.

It's just not true. I mean, yeah, it was a spectacle, but executioners were outcasts in basically all Europe the whole time the office existed. Don't try to apply logic to it, it was just a cultural taboo.
Also details varied a lot, after all Europe is big and it spanned over a thousand years.
Anyway, it's funny that while executioners were generally despised, prostitutes in Paris had their own guild and their own holiday with some very colourful celebrations.

Currently politicians rarely give a shit what people say + they have huge propaganda system to help them out if needed.

Well, shit.

>Currently politicians rarely give a shit what people say

As opposed to the Sovereign by Gods grace, answering to no mortal.

>they have huge propaganda system to help them out if needed.

For starters, any state church was part of the King's propaganda machine. The catholic church was its own propaganda machine.

Your dreaming up a bunch of bullshit to justify your own feeling of powerlessness. The next step is to latch on to the typical strongman character, who will give you a scapegoat or three to blame it all on. The current political establishment being the first and obvious one, then it'll probably be on to some ethnic minority groups, and you'll feel he really speaks for you as he happily exploits your gullible nature to corrupt the country for his own gain.

>first Monday is bloody Sunday

What the fuck? Is this the village executioner or the village rapist?

Usually drunk, I believe.

How much of an outcast the executioner was can be seen by the following: in medieval Germany in some areas he had the right to spare and even free a woman he was told to execute - by marrying her.
There are numerous examples of women declining his offer and rather choosing to be beheaded.

He said crimes, not misdemeanors