Crime and Punishment

The law is simple, the punishment fits the crime, ex. If you can not pay for the apple you stole, you lose a finger. The use of spellcasting in crimes always leads to a more severe punishment.   The three levels of law breaking are organized as follows misdemeanors, crimes, and serious crimes.  

Misdemeanors:

Are prosecuted in a lord's court only if there is a charge, include infractions such as vagrancy, brawling, fisticuffs, and theft of items worth less than 1 gold, total.   Punishment: Shaming punishments that range from so-called discrediting, a sort of social reprimand, to public humiliation in the pillory. These are followed by fines of up to 5 silver or corporal punishment, which may consist of caning or flogging. The forced cutting of ones’ beard or hair is another classic form of shaming punishment.  

Crimes:

Include break-ins, major acts of theft (goods valued above 1 gold), fraud, arson, assault, slander, and false accusation.   Punishment: Crimes are often punished by fines, which may be supplemented by corporal or shaming punishments, depending on the severity of the crime. Thieves and slanderers are often sentenced to mutilation, which entails the removal of one or more body parts according to the nature of the crime. In addition they could be given jail time as well.  

Serious crimes:

Includes offenses such as highway robbery, piracy, rape, abduction, and aggravated assault with a weapon, murder, manslaughter, smuggling, tithe fraud, false minting, malfeasance in measurements, blasphemy, treason against one’s land or lord or consorting with fiends.   Punishment: Serious criminals are branded and must often perform forced labor in quarries, pits, or mines, usually for life. They are akin to slaves and generally do not die from old age. These may also be punished with a death sentence. Only nobles have the right to die by the sword.  

Jail Time:

Crimes and Serious crimes often go hand in hand with Jail time. In the case of doing time, the family of the criminal is forced to pay for the expenses if the criminal in question can not. It is not a common punishment for it is far more beneficial to everyone to let the criminal pay off his depts in labor.  

Trial of Ordeal

An ancient judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to a painful, or at least an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. The test is one of life or death, and the proof of innocence is survival. In some cases, the accused is considered innocent only if they escaped injury or if their injuries healed.