Waiting until unghost to grab your things in front of an inner that just killed you seems odd. But I guess if ICly this was seen as a betrayal then oocly knowing that it would happen again could cement the event.
Still, the inner is sworn to guard their cabal’s item of power against any and all that would come for it. That explains IC why the ooc mechanic is in place. How does the inner know that you weren’t coming to take the orb (IC)? Pledge just means that you want in, it doesn’t mean that you deserve in, so Watcher can’t be sure that you and this theif aren’t in some kind of cahoots with one another. It’s a bit of a stretch to you or me, but the Watcher swore to guard the orb with his life, and can’t leave room for doubt.
I was actually reminded of the role for Sigard where I had him face a dilemma of his own brother making a poor choice in anguish to kill a duergar and drow baby. Sigard knew that the babies weren’t old enough to make an evil choice yet, so in his eyes they were innocent. As such, when his brother(both storm giants) wouldn’t listen to reason and attacked the babes anyway, Sigard was forced to strike him down. I purposely set the scenario up to show that being good doesn’t prevent someone from making a poor choice, and that it can take only one to make all of your past efforts irrelevant to the situation.
In that scenario Sigard knew his brother was a good soul, but his anguish drove him to a choice that Sigard couldn’t allow (killing innocents), so despite it being his brother and a good soul he killed the man to prevent an evil from happening.
The watcher’s choice in the log is to trust some pledge that he doesn’t know who approaches the orb. Trussed up or no, he has to choose whether that is real or a trick to lull him into complacency. The Watcher chose to err on the side of caution and hope for forgiveness in the aftermath.
That forgiveness is up to the gods and the victim, and at least one of those were not satisfied.
The shifter has a right to be angry IC, every right. But why wouldn’t he question the other members about what happened or explain to them what happened at the least. He’s not obligated to do so, but just getting angry and then waiting until the Watcher can attack you again before taking the things from your corpse seems odd.
At the same time, questions should have come from the forties as to why he was fighting the Watcher would have been good rather than to assume the worst and take his things. Certainly more could have been done on both sides to avoid the fallout, but that being the case the fallout wasn’t entirely out of place given the actions and reactions of both parties.