Salem

what happens if i summon a criminal and they're offline? will their character fight back against me? will i still leave scents if i kill them even though i'm serving justice?

their character will just do nothing. killing them will leave scents since all hostile actions are considered criminal. The game currently does not distinguish between malicious intent and serving justice which is unfortunate.

you could though destroy their leanto (if homestead) and summon them inside your camp afaik and they will inst-die at that location.

thankyou!

so does that mean, if they have no homestead, i can just summon them from my own homestead?? how do i do that? when i first tracked them earlier they had none, and i didn't get any option to summon them, but now i see they have a homestead which i imagine is probably a temporary leanto, so maybe they'll get rid of that again. how long do larceny and battery scent last for please?

a few days. evidence though last x9/10 times longer.

summoning is only available when the perp is offline or at the capital. So it's possible that they were online at the time you were tracking them but had no homestead.

they were online! well i'm really glad to know all this now. thanks very much