Commentaries

The Shepherd, the Servant, the Judge, and the Scribe

A Scholar's study of the four Samarian tributaries — their purpose, their practice, and the tales they kee

Chapter III

Misharu, the Judge

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What They Represent

Misharu is Justice, and they dress for it — yellow sash, the heaviest armour of the four, a gauntlet built to strike like a snake. Their namesake is the old embodiment of righteous judgement, married in the old stories to Righteousness itself, which tells you they consider the two inseparable: justice without honesty about what actually happened is not justice at all.

How They Serve

They are the sharpest edge the Samarians carry, and the doctrine is careful to say what that edge is for. Violence is permitted when justice truly demands it and never demanded merely because violence is available. Their own mottos cut both ways — "the culprit shall be struck by justice" sits beside a harder question aimed at anyone, ally or stranger, who claims the word too easily: liberty and justice, they ask, but for whom, exactly?

A Story Among Them

They teach the same story twice to make their point. In the first telling, a man whose family is murdered hunts the killer down himself; he gets his revenge, and it costs him the rest of his life, ending in a silence nothing fills. In the second telling, the same man takes his grief to people who can actually weigh it fairly; the guilty are punished, and the man, eventually, gets to have a life again afterward. Misharu's verdict on the two is short. Revenge is a fool's game.

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