When I was running Daggerheart's quickstart, The Sablewood Messengers, the players elected to nonlethally incapacitate the Thistlefolk bandits (three ribbets, judging from the illustration, and one of indeterminate ancestry). This did not surprise me in any way; I knew each of the players tendencies, and I knew that they would instinctively opt to spare, particularly since I was depicting the Thistlefolk in a cutesy manner.

The PCs debated the merit of sparing the Thistlefolk, insomuch as the latter had clearly murdered a merchant in cold blood just to erect a ~1% more effective ambush. Eventually, they settled on tying the Thistlefolk to the carriage and dragging them towards Hush, full speed ahead, pulling them across roots and brambles.

The players and their PCs expressed interest in turning over the Thistlefolk to authority figures. I consulted the Sablewood document ( https://www.daggerheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Sablewood-05-20-25.pdf ) and saw that the Sable Sinecure "merchant's guild effectively runs the Sablewood." I figured that the guild would have a branch office in Hush. I informed the group that they could take the Thistlefolk to a local Sable Sinecure merchant representative, who would almost certainly execute the bandits to send a message against anyone who would disrupt trade in the forest.

The group did so. The representative came out, twirling a six-shooter imported from the Drylands. We played out a public execution scene in the middle of the Firstmoss Festival, in which the representative used the Thistlefolk as target practice. The locals cheered, due to the very poor reputation of the Thistlefolk in the Sablewood (as per the document). The Sable Sinecure guild representative took the fruits, the vegetables, and the corpse loaded from the scene of the crime, verbally thanked the PCs for helping clean up the woodland, and walked away without giving a tangible reward.

The group was roughly fine with this.

That is my anecdote.