EN
Granville and Soundararajan have recently suggested that a general study of multiplicative functions could form the basis of analytic number theory without zeros of L-functions; this is the so-called pretentious view of analytic number theory. Here we study multiplicative functions which arise from the arithmetic of number fields. For each finite Galois extension K/ℚ, we construct a natural class $𝓢_K$ of completely multiplicative functions whose values are dictated by Artin symbols, and we show that the only functions in $𝓢_K$ whose partial sums exhibit greater than expected cancellation are Dirichlet characters.