Wolfsong wrote:I'm the opposite. I kinda want to see actual laws and sentencing in the game that isn't just "Oh...So, how about you die now?" OR "So, how about I put you in this locked room until you die?"
I am kind of disappointed how widespread the lack of slavery is in the game. Don't get me wrong, I can perfectly understand why random slavery is not instituted and why every attempt to do so eventually leads to a massacre of the slavers. But at the same time, I always expected to find some town somewhere that had a system where prisoners could be made slaves of their victims, or in the case where there is no specific victim left, to the government. Pirate comes and kills your wife, death sentence. Merciful? Okay, he's your slave for life now. Robbed you? You own him until he has paid you back the value of the stolen goods (I would say whether you got your stuff back or not this ought to apply) plus some specified bonus.
I am happy to see that plenty of my characters have faced exile for their "crimes". Although most of the time these crimes were only mouthing off.
I've never seen any town implement gladiator battles between prisoners. I suppose that might be due to an insufficiently low population of prisoners, so the only way you could do that would probably be to gather up local prisoners on a regional basis, which sort of requires at least a semblance of regional governance, which can be hard to find in any meaningful sense.
Or a penal colony... not just boring endless indoor "repair my shit" tasks but a legitimate colony! Some desolate backcountry town could be turned into a penal colony that might encourage some prisoners to choose to live. Have a garrison of seasonal guards drafted from towns in the region, or hire full-time professionals. Allow prisoners to work outside in limited numbers and shifts in exchange for good behavior, plus better food, clothing, booze, entertainment, et cetera, which they can pay for with their own money that they earn as a cut of their own slave labor. For lesser crimes, they could eventually pay off their price and be set free.
Some old thread once asked if Cantr is a dystopia. Ignoring the post-apocalyptic emptiness most regions face, ignoring the vast hoards of treasure sitting behind locked doors never to be seen again, ignoring all of that... purely from a justice/legal perspective, I say yes. I say that you cannot call anything a civilization if law is in the hands of whatever angry mob happens to be awake that day in that town, where they might hand out a death sentence one year for a crime that is forgiven with a simple apology the next time around. Because for the most part, sentences are determined on an arbitrary basis by mob rule or at best a dictatorial decision by the keyholders, never recorded for the sake of proper procedure and establishing case law and internal consistency, where alleged criminals are rarely if ever afforded any rights and no standards of evidence exist. At best we might call this a kind of tribal justice, but definitely not a civilization.
That event coupled with RL ended my interest in the game at the time. I didn't really get to play him long enough to be very familiar with the game. I do remember he chopped wood and made a longbow the old way. I might have a report that has it though. I'll look.
