Draft:Rampart Gaol

Omega 0.90.4

The Rampart Gaol is the city jail immediately north of the Order of Paladins headquarters. Four cells sit behind portcullises, with the entrance between two guard posts. Visiting the entrance does not itself imprison you; arrest and sentencing determine whether you are placed in a cell.

Arrest and sentencing

Surrendering to hostile law enforcement, failing certain robberies or refusing the Duke's first quest can invoke Rampart's justice. The outcome depends on your affiliations and previous prosecutions:

• An active Order member is expelled first. That invocation does not proceed to probation, a cell or pacifying the guards. A later arrest can then follow the ordinary rules.
• If the Order has been destroyed, ordinary prosecution no longer operates.
• Otherwise, the guards are pacified. A Chaotic character has a chance of acquittal through the Rampart Chaotic Liberties Union: the chance is the magnitude of negative alignment out of 200, reaching certainty at -200. Acquittal does not advance the prosecution count.
• The first ordinary conviction gives probation and places you outside the gaol.
• The second places you in a randomly selected cell and lowers the portcullises.
• The third and later convictions also inflict a beating, with possible damage increasing by ten for each conviction: 0-29 unavoidable damage on the third, 0-39 on the fourth, and so on.

An acquitted character is released in the eastern city, rather than immediately outside the gaol. Ordinary imprisonment leaves you with your equipment; the problem is escaping the cell, not recovering a confiscated inventory.

Escaping

Cell floors contain triggers that lower nearby portcullises. The release tiles are on the corridor side of the bars, so they do not provide a convenient button inside your cell. City travel is disabled on the cell and gate tiles.

The walls north of the cells include weak masonry that can be tunneled through. This provides a route for a character without a teleport spell. Tunneling can injure an unarmed digger or damage a fragile weapon; a striking weapon is a more durable tool than a dagger. Repeated imprisonment repairs the cells, so an earlier escape tunnel is not a permanent opening.

Shadowform can pass through the walls and bars. Teleportation and disintegration offer other routes when available. A garage-door opener raises the portcullises and is consumed on use. Avoid stepping back onto a trigger after opening the bars: the trap can lower them again. Trying to bash the bars directly is a poor default plan, with a Strength-out-of-1,000 success chance and unavoidable injury on failure.

Strategy

For an ordinary character, accepting a first conviction can settle an alarm with probation and pacified guards. The older spoiler's suggestion that guards cannot be pacified after an offense does not describe this ordinary sentencing route. For a paladin, the initial expulsion takes precedence and does not grant that reset; surrender is a serious loss of membership, not a free escape service.

Do not confuse a safe's alarm with every other siren. A safe in a Rampart residence can force you back into the city before sentencing even when a floor siren would not summon help. This includes safes in hovels.

Trivia

The Rampart Chaotic Liberties Union is a wordplay on the American Civil Liberties Union. Its lawyer gives Omega's alignment system a suitably partisan interpretation of civil liberties. The surrender dialogue also borrows Monopoly's jail instruction, as described on the Justiciar page.