f13.net

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1078520/Woman-walks-market-holding-severed-head-man-tried-rape-her.html

I'm sure there are a lot of women going "Hell yeah!"

A fucking sickle.

India doesn't have justifiable homicide, or murder in self-defense? The article lead me to believe she was still going to be charged.

Justifiable homicide maybe, but no way that was "self defense."  I'm pretty sure she was out of danger long before she finished sawing through his neck. 

As she would be here. Those things you mention don't stop you getting charged, but they may stop you getting convicted.

If it was a cow head they would probably give her the death penalty. Of course, cows don't try to rape you.

Yet.

:oh_i_see:

Please tell me you were attempting irony and don't actually believe old racist crap like that?

First thing I thought of when I saw the topic was of some petition thingie someone, somewhere, had going about how rape was bad. Which, of course, is highly effective.

I wasn't expecting beheadings. :ye_gods:

How on earth was that "old racist crap"? If anything it could be construed as "cultural misunderstanding", but "racism"?

Because it's the exact kind of rubbish that the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and The Sun (paper versions of Fox News for you Americans) like to peddle. Them foreigners, all barbarians dontcha know! What they need is a damned good civilizing, from us honest white folk!

Of course these days most of the lies in a similar vein are aimed at muslims, but that's progress for ya.

I'm not accusing Paelos of being racist, just pointing out that the whole "Hindu death sentence for abusing cows" is a lie, the roots & perpetuation of which lie in imperialism and racism.

How hard is it, exactly, to cut a head off with a sickle. 

I'm picturing her spinning in place with the sickle, Mortal Kombat style.

Do it right, it takes one solid swing.

Also highly depends on the sickle and its sharpness. Front part of the neck shouldn't be too difficult to get through, but the connective tissue and spine might be a bit rough. I only know this from my buddy who is a butcher and this is going off pigs and such - so maybe humans are easier.  :grin:

All I know is that cows are revered as holy, or at least slaughtering of cows seems to be illegal in most of India. If that's wrong, by all means say so and provide links to back up that claim, but just going "yarr yarr old racist crap" smacks (to me) of knee-jerk anti-racism.

According to the article she will likely get charged with "culpable homicide", whatever that means.

Sickles don't typically have a hell of a lot of weight behind them, so I don't see a single swing, especially by a woman, beheading the guy. Also, due to the curve, she probably couldn't saw through the neck if he was laying down. So... she sets his dead body back up in a sitting position and hacks away?  :ye_gods:

All I know is that cows are revered as holy, or at least slaughtering of cows seems to be illegal in most of India. If that's wrong, by all means say so and provide links to back up that claim, but just going "yarr yarr old racist crap" smacks (to me) of knee-jerk anti-racism.
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Well, I just asked a Fijian girl and a Pakistani girl, and neither has a clue if killing a cow is actually a crime or not in India. So I'm no help.

She was fighting for her life.  Very likely she had a surge of adrenaline.  If she got lucky and went between two vertabrae, it could be clean.  Probably she had to hack, but it's not a given since a sickle would be an inefficient tool for that as well.

Cows are considered sacred by Hindus who don't eat beef but it's not illegal to slaughter cows in India - although former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee did make such a proposal back in 2003 (Source (http://www.hindu.com/2003/02/24/stories/2003022404980700.htm)) Illegally killing a cow in India may lead to a hefty fine and jail sentence but so does illegally killing one in the UK.

It is illegal to kill cows in Nepal (a Hindu kingdom) though.

Last time I used one it was actually pretty goddamn heavy.

See? Much better.

As to the proposal, the document I glanced at was http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2018/stories/20030912004703100.htm and it seems to indicate that it IS illegal, except in a few provinces. It would be better if someone actually KNEW, however, rather than guess as I'll be doing.

Since no one else is going to say it,




Don't fear the reaper.

I'd still believe self-defense for the actual killing. The beheading was probably after the fact and thus should be a secondary issue. If she has a history of being abused or is close with someone who is/was, she walks.

Remember, sometimes no means no. And sometimes no means I'll chop your fucking head off.

Legalize prostitution  :why_so_serious:

A sickle in the right hands can be very very effective. There is an art to it, which I tried to learn from some farm laborers who could cut brush with it at a dizzying pace. There's type of swing that takes advantage of the curve of it, a movement I can't quite describe, that I can easily see lopping off someone's head. I tried to find a youtube video of farmers using a sickle but I couldn't.

In the US, the real question would be "Did he die while she was still in reasonable fear of her life?". Severing his head after he was dead and walking around with it would probably just get you a fine for desecrating a corpse, or probably waived due to 'emotional trauma'.

If, on the other hand, she incapacitated him and then decided to go ahead and finish him off, she'd probably be offered a deal of some sort, but probably wouldn't get out of prison time.

The rules vary a bit, state by state, but the general rule of thumb is you're not allowed to kill an attacker if you've already ended the threat. It's all based on state of mind and reasonable adults and shit like that, so there's a lot of leeway for circumstance.

Oh, certainly.  The police seem to believe it, too, but it's not their place to make that call.

Well, if the cow was attempting rape I'm sure they would let her off.

Seriously, you're not that myopic. Don't go hunting for THAT'S RAYCEEESSSSSSS out of a beheaded cow India rape joke.

If she says the decapitation was in self-defense that's strange enough that it weakens the credibility that the killing itself qualified as self-defense either.  If she was pissed/crazy enough to saw off his head and then parade around with it, I'm going to guess she was pissed/crazy enough that if he'd curled up into a sobbing fetal position as soon as she drew blood she'd have kept swinging until he was dead.

Not that I in any way blame her for being really scared and/or angry and wanting to make sure he didn't get back up again.  But there's no fucking way that she did some Ninja Reaper Strike move on him while he was in the act of attacking her and neatly severed his head in mid-lunge.

I think some might be mixing up sickles and scythes. A sickle is a one-handed curved knife, a scythe is the heavy two-handed Reaper deal. We have an old rusty scythe in the shed; I nearly chopped my foot off with it.

Just for the sake of made up bullshit -- imagine this. She has sickle. Man attempts to rape her. She lodges sickle in mans throat.

Man is, bluntly, dead. Self-defense, A-OK, right?

Now say that said woman, traumatized and VERY angry/upset/usual mix of "oh shit, I was nearly raped and I killed him" proceeds to vent by slamming said sickle up and down on the aforementioned hole in the man's throat -- severing said head. Still self-defense, since she was merely beating up on a corpse at this point. Carrying it around? STILL self-defense.

The critical issue is whether he was dead. The decapitation only matters if that was the death blow -- and then it only matters if she did it after incapacitating him. It really doesn't matter HOW you kill someone in self-defense. Bazooka, knife, club, whatever.

There's just the "bit where they are a threat that justifies lethal self-defense" and "the bit where they aren't" and all the legal questions revolve around what you did before and after those bits. So heck, it doesn't matter if she ninja'd his damn head off in a single lucky stroke or hacked it off after he was dead.

What does matter is if, for instance, she merely gravely wounded him with the sickle then went and hacked his head off as he was trying futilely to crawl away. THAT would be manslaughtery-type things there.

Like a Kukri.

That's not a serious weapon at all. :oh_i_see:

My wife's grandfather had a Kukri. I think he, somehow, managed to use it hunting. Given he was, according to family tales (he died before we got married) something of a legendary bad-ass in general (and who adamantly refused to speak of his military service), I can only imagine he took it from the skull of a demon lord.

Sucker is heavier than I thought it'd be, and I've seen people practicing with them on TV, and they scare the ever loving shit out of me.

A kukri isn't a serious weapon, because kukri is a silly name. SILLY SILLY NAME.

Most likely, it was a kama. I've seen some proficient people do some amazing shit with those things.

This is a random lady farmer, so I doubt she's have the right skills to 1-shot someone.

And also this is India, so I wouldn't want to try to guess what will happen to her.

Random lady farmer knows how to use a sickle. Seriously, I'm not kidding, with just a bit of training and no particular strength, I could cleanly whack through a 1 inch thick tree trunk with the right swing and angle. And no, I am NOT confusing it with a scythe. I'm talking about the usual sickle you see on the hammer and sickle soviet flag. There's a reason its designed the way it is. The curve of the blade at the top slices into the wood/brush/neck and carries on slicing through the curve of the blade with the full force of your swing. As the curve gets more acute, it acts as a chopping mechanism. So its slice to chop in one fell swoop.

So it's a slice-chop?  :why_so_serious:

And she's not going to be some willowy chick that can't fuck a dude up, either.

This.  Its curved for a reason.

A single slice would easily take off 30-50% of the neck - one or two more strokes to complete. 

I've cut through some fairly thick bamboo with a katana, I'm pretty sure she could do the same or more with a sickle or kama that was expressly made for that kinda shit.

(http://www.cinemablend.com/images/news/14883/_1253676055.jpg)

Did she get his quickening?

And a tip impact would have a wound profile not dissimilar to a strike from a war pick.

Sooo.. 1d4?

This was a vorpal sickle.

Call it 1d6, 19-20, x3 crit. Definite exotic weapon profiency needed.

If she was a farmer, we'd say she probably had weapon focus (sickle) and possible weapon finesse (sickle) and a good chance of improved critical (sickle).

They were both commoners, so that gives him what -- maybe 12 hit points, max? So if she got in a crit we're talking 12 to 15 points of damage, on average, depending on her str bonus. Definite one-shot.

Probably should nerf sickles before some drow starts dual-wielding them.

How easy / hard it would be to go through a human neck depends on the type / construction of the sickle.

I googled 'indian sickle' and found this:

(http://ih2.redbubble.net/work.2302389.14.flat,550x550,075,f.sickle-indian-himalayas.jpg)

Looks solid enough to me to take someone's head off with a little bit of dedication.

Yeah, the sickle used by a rural indian farm peasant probably isn't going to be built the same as the one we would go into Home Depot and buy. The version we buy has a blade about an inch wide, eight inches long, and weighs half a pound at most. That thing looks like it was made out a chunk of a ships hull a seventy-five years ago, weighs a couple of pounds and has been passed down through the family. With an unobstructed swing my four year old could behead someone with it. I especially like that the end of the handle looks like a wooden dildo.

Also, equating a farming sickle and a kukri is bad.

No need, they're already right there in the 3e weapon chart. d6/x2, simple weapon.

That picture and those stats don't match. :)

Clearly I'm totally off-base there.  It's not like the one tool is is a direct evolutionary descendant of the other or anything.

Discussions like this are why f13 is so awesome.

Um..... wow.   :ye_gods:

If it helps, I've always viewed hit points as more of a "Propensity to get the fuck out of the way" than "health". Your level 20 epic warrior has the hit points to, technically, take a ballista bolt to the chest.

No human is going to survive that. Instead, your level 20 guy is far more fucking likely to have not been there insofar as he's had years of learning to get out of the way of death.

You need to go fix Wikipedia then.  A simple google search is opposed to your quote above.  Maybe banned and illegal are different?  Some states as opposed to all states?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_in_religion


I'm not really opposed to the idea that slaughtering wandering cows in India where most the population wouldn't like it is illegal.   Unless they are rapists that is.  Then they deserve the sickle.

Fuck, next time I rape I will make sure to wear metal collar. You just can never be too safe.

Ow! You hit me in the dodge!  :awesome_for_real:

Have some potions of dodge-healing.

But what level is that rapist? Is his hit die is so low that he died to one crit?

Nerds. :awesome_for_real:

I'm just waiting for the gridded terrain pics.

Duh, commoner. Or else the PC's would have been brought in. I suppose she could be a first-level fighter. I mean, they have to start somewhere.

It was obviously a level 1 encounter. She then looted his body and went immediately to the markets to dump trash items.

I gotta think that a HEAD would be a quest item for something though... Can't really craft with it so no value there - though it could be grey...

I think Sean Connery (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/97/97tjeopardy.phtml) gives that quest.   :oh_i_see: