Trophy-taking and terror between Kazdel and Laterano
W belonged to an independent mercenary team during the war in Kazdel. The team gained notoriety for its frequent raids on Laterano business convoys, and many of its members have claimed guardian guns as trophies. These guardian guns, often awarded through formal ceremonies, can fetch a very high price at the Scar Market, Kazdel's infamous black market. W herself still has a number of guardian guns in her collection, but this collection was marked as contraband and confiscated following her onboarding in order to avoid inciting the ire of our Laterano operators. Among the many weapons that she often uses, is an explosives-launching device with obvious signs of modification. As for its source… after thorough consideration, we decided to not investigate the matter any further.
Sarkaz Mercenary Lounge - 'At Work' Set furniture piece, "Bounty Display Rack"
A display rack full of Sankta guns. Some Sarkaz have a habit of showing off their spoils of war to their clansmen.
[Guide Ahead] GA-8 "Shadow and Ash" Before
Fiammetta, thinking about her last mission with Andoain:
I often think back to what happened that night.
At first, it was just an ordinary cleanup mission, just another group of Sarkaz raiders.
We tracked them down as they made their escape, and came upon the place.
So, a band of Sarkaz conducted a raid against Laterano, then escaped back to Kazdel, and Andoain's team tracked them back to their hide-out. Possibly just for retribution and prevention of future raids, possibly to recover any stolen goods and patron firearms.
That is to say, Andoain's team were not sent into Kazdel as an act of unprovoked aggression for the purpose of "thinning the population of Sarkaz". They weren't even sent to find and take the Lock and Key staves, as they were surprised to find the bandits frozen in time. Those bandits just happened to try and hide in the place where the owner of the staves was holing up.
And in any case, why would Laterano risk four soldiers on a raid to just kill Sarkaz inside Kazdel when Sarkaz already kill other Sarkaz as a matter of business? The Scar Market is a thriving industry of Sarkaz mercenaries paying each other to kill each other.
Fiammetta says it was "just a clean up mission. Just another cleanup mission!!! Why did it have to happen like that? Where did it all go wrong?"
She seemed to consider such a counter-raid routine and unremarkable. She apparently couldn't believe that her four-man team could have suffered such a terrible loss. She'd been so confident that her three Sankta friends could handle themselves that she left to chase a distress signal.
How many Sarkaz civilians watched from afar, seeing Lateran counter-raids destroy camps of Sarkaz without knowing about the targets' own earlier raids?
How often do these Lateran raids seem, to unrelated witnesses, like a horrific Wild Hunt tearing through the night, snatching up and killing anyone who happens to get in its way? Soldiers on a mission in enemy territory will not stop to explain themselves.
How many innocent Sarkaz get caught up as collateral damage in Lateran counter-raids? Mistaken for raiders themselves? Killed by Laterans simply on their way in or out of Kazdel to prevent them from raising an alarm, so that the soldiers could get back home safely to their own families?
War is hell, and all soldiers sold their souls along with their bodies.
Whenever a Sankta becomes mentally disturbed enough to consider desecrating corpses and collecting human body parts as trophies, the other Sankta around that individual can feel their emotions. I imagine that Sankta's comrades would swiftly call for professional help to take the one away for counseling. If the entire unit shares and reinforces the same mental imbalance, I imagine they would be shunned by Lateran society as a whole.
That doesn't mean it never happens. Because war is hell, and you cannot kill someone else without killing something in yourself.
But it does mean it should be even rarer than among soldiers of other countries.
Entirely apart from the question of whether Gerald was right to assume that his death would be necessary to ensure any of his people would be allowed to leave the mobile sanctuary alive...
No Sankta suggested to him that his sacrifice needed to involve suicide, let alone literally offering his severed head on a platter.
Psychological projection is a defence mechanism of alterity concerning "inside" content mistaken to be coming from the "outside" Other. It forms the basis of empathy by the projection of personal experiences to understand someone else's subjective world.
In its malignant forms, it is a defense mechanism in which the ego defends itself against disowned and highly negative parts of the self by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others, breeding misunderstanding and causing untold interpersonal damage. Projection incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.
"Unhealthy psychological projection is assuming that someone you hate wants to inflict upon you the same acts of spite that you want to inflict upon them."
Taking a dead sankta's gun, even if it's useless for sarkaz, has the practical benefit of denying Laterano one more gun to defend itself with.
But if sankta halos and wings didn't vanish upon death, and could be harvested and worn by their killers? The Nachzehrer are explicit cannibals, the Wendigo were cannibals, and the Vampires are blood-drinkers.
There is a sort of person who will accuse of others of committing the most heinous acts, with the unspoken assumption, "Because it's what I would do." And people who never hear those unspoken assumptions can believe it and repeat it, never knowing where the thought really came from.
Lies travel half-way across the world in the time it takes Truth to put on its boots.
