Longevity And Justice

Umbran

Mod Squad
Staff member
Supporter
That’s why fantasy should either use real dark ages punishments....

"Real dark ages punishments"? Um. It is called Dungeons and Dragons. It isn't like the real world dungeons were filled with monsters, you know. They had prisoners.

Now, the violations that'd end you up in a dungeon may have been different than what we'd imprison a person for today, but let us not act like dungeons weren't there. Prisons, in some form or antoher, have been with us since back in Greek and Roman times. They were real from then on.
 

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billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
I am skeptical that prisons would exist in a fantasy world. More likely you'd have some sort of physical punishment - losing an ear, limb, eye, etc, depending on the crime, or just executed. Especially since religion in fantasy worlds is not simply a matter of faith, but built into the universe.

Theoretically, religion is built into the universe in our world as well - for people with faith, at least.
But the suitability of prisons and other corporeal means of restraining someone - including the chains of slavery - would depend a lot on the pervasiveness of magic. If not that pervasive, traditional methods would still be effective and may be appropriate.

And in higher magic settings you'd have things like quest/geas instead. (Indeed, the D&D Geas comes from a Clark Ashton Smith story about someone being punished for interrupting a wizard)

Even in a lower magic setting, I think this works well and fits well within the fantasy genre. Putting the offender under a geas until restitution is provided or some other condition met would be pretty effective and be quite an adventure push mechanism.
 

MechaPilot

Explorer
Do you really need much to imprison a mage? I mean, wouldn't a blindfold, a ball-gag, and restraint mitts work? Can't use spells if you can't see the target, or enact verbal or somatic components.

Effectively, mages become the maximum-security prisoners of the fantasy realms.
 

Tonguez

A suffusion of yellow
"Real dark ages punishments"? Um. It is called Dungeons and Dragons. It isn't like the real world dungeons were filled with monsters, you know. They had prisoners.

Now, the violations that'd end you up in a dungeon may have been different than what we'd imprison a person for today, but let us not act like dungeons weren't there. Prisons, in some form or anther, have been with us since back in Greek and Roman times. They were real from then on.

Well actual dungeons weren't all that common and for Peasantry they weren't much used either. Fines, Stocks, mutilation and death were the most common forms of punishment used.

The Donjon was the most secure part of a Keep, often a Tower and in Dark Ages was where the Lord lived. It was later that Nobles moved into more comfortable rooms and the Dungeon was used to store valuables and/or hold political prisoners (hence the Fairytales featuring Princesses in locked towers).

It was later again that Prisons were transferred into the basements, becoming the Dungeons we usually think of. The point though remains, the inmates of those dungeons tended to be rebel and political dissidents, many being chained to the walls and the torture, maiming and starvation were all commonly used as punishments in those Dungeons - they weren't nice, sanitary places.

Then of course you have things like the Oubliette, which is going to be as much trouble for an Elf as it is for a human (though possibly fine for a gnome)


"O Pomfret, Pomfret ! O thou bloody prison, Fatal and ominous to noble peers Within the guilty closure of thy walls, Richard the Second here was hack'd to death" - Shakespear, Richard III
 

Dessert Nomad

Adventurer
Now, the violations that'd end you up in a dungeon may have been different than what we'd imprison a person for today, but let us not act like dungeons weren't there. Prisons, in some form or antoher, have been with us since back in Greek and Roman times. They were real from then on.

Modern police forces and prison sentences really only date back to the 19th century, they weren't around in medieval time. Sentencing people to long Jails for holding people were common, but they were intended to hold someone until trial and punishment could occur. Punishments, especially for commoners, would be death, exile, fines, torture, maiming, enslavement, loss of titles/lands, and the like; locking someone in prison for X years wasn't a typical punishment. It happened occasionally, mostly to important people, but the idea of 'give him 20 years in prison for murder' just wasn't standard the way it is now.
 

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
In a PbP game I am in here on the boards the prospect has been raised of trying and sentencing two drow. While I do not expect length of sentence will be an issue in this particular trial it did make me think: how do you sentence people justly when different races have radically different lifespans?

Does it really matter what your races life expectancy is if you get sentenced to work in the silver mine?
 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
"Real dark ages punishments"? Um. It is called Dungeons and Dragons. It isn't like the real world dungeons were filled with monsters, you know. They had prisoners.

Now, the violations that'd end you up in a dungeon may have been different than what we'd imprison a person for today, but let us not act like dungeons weren't there. Prisons, in some form or antoher, have been with us since back in Greek and Roman times. They were real from then on.

Obviously if you commit a crime you are giving the the insane wizards for experimentation. That's where Owlbears came from. Have you ever wanted to be part of something ... bigger?
 

Celebrim

Legend
In my homebrew setting, incarceration is a very rarely applied judicial penalty. Prisoners are generally incarcerated only for so long as they are awaiting trial or the application of some other penalty.

As a side note, the most notably long lived PC race in my game, elves, cannot generally survive incarceration. They physiologically require beauty to live the way they require breath or water, and would die after a few weeks of incarceration in a typically dank cell anyway - regardless of the length of the sentence.

Most races in my homebrew, if they thought about it, would consider incarceration to be cruel and unusual punishment. They practice torture, sell criminals into slavery, and use a variety of painful executions, but would consider incarceration about the worst thing you could do to another sentient being.

So the issue has never really come to mind.

To the extent incarceration is practiced, it is practiced as a form of slavery where the slave is likely to revolt or try to escape and as such must be allowed only limited freedom. You would then be locked up to whatever extent you could be locked up and continue to work, and likely chained up at night. In many parts of the fictional world, slavery as punishment is practiced only to redeem a debt, and as such only is intended to extend for a certain period of time. This of course doesn't stop many cultures from working slaves to death, or locking them in a mineshaft until they die, but in either case the term of the sentence would be fixed without regard to the logic of punishment. The ones practicing slavery as a limited term are motivated by the logic of restitution, so your enslaved until you pay back your debt, after which you get your life back. The idea then that a longer lived race would need to pay more wouldn't really occur to them as the debt had been paid. The ones practicing slavery on a permanent basis are motived by the logic of profit. It never makes sense to free you ever, so what does it matter what the length of term is? The advantage of a durable long lived race like a dwarf is you get more labor out of them? Why ever let them go?

I should also note that racism is rampant in my homebrew world, so generally speaking the only punishment you can expect to receive if you aren't the same race as the magistrate is death. If the law doesn't support it, the suspected perpetrator would simply be lynched. Heck, the people doing the killing probably wouldn't even see it as a lynching - they'd just see a monster and well, they'd kill that monster as unreflectively as the average PC kills an orc in a stereotypical beer and pretzels game. In the case of Drow, no one knows that they aren't extinct, and if they did realize they weren't extinct they'd try to finish the job. There wouldn't even be much debate about it. They are monsters: kill them, duh.

As far as laws regarding juvenile offenders, there really aren't any. There is no idea of "trying a juvenile as an adult", because they don't really distinguish legally between a law-breakers on account of age. A judge might, of his own accord, decide to extend some degree of leniency toward the felon on account of age, but quite literally if a nine year old hit another nine year old over the head in the street and took a silver penny from him that he was going to use to buy a brace of hens for his mother, then they would be 'capital highway robbery' and they'd hang the nine year old felon unless some accommodation could be reached or the judge was particularly soft hearted. Accommodation here means that victim isn't particularly keen on pressing for the full legal penalty and is willing to accept a lighter sentence, and the judge thinks that the kid just was a stupid kid that didn't realize the full import of their actions, the kid that was hit over the head is fully recovered, and owing to the relatively small amount of damages, some lesser sentence presents itself as an option. Otherwise, the kid swings and don't be too surprised if gawkers show up and hawkers show up to sell them food to eat while they are waiting for the action to happen. And that's in relatively nice kind-hearted places on the map where they pride themselves on being reasonable and merciful.

So again, the notion that races of different ages needed to be treated differently on account of age wouldn't enter into anyone's head in the way you are thinking. And on account of the aforementioned racism, a 90 year old elf that looks like a 10 year old child would only likely be treated like a child by an elven magistrate. In some parts of the world, a human magistrate might not be able to even realize that that isn't what mature elves look like, as the two races don't often mingle.

I guess my point is that justice in my homebrew has a distinctly pre-modern feel to it. The Code of Hammurabi for example has none of the features you are talking about. They didn't have the wealth to incarcerate people in their leisure and support them and pay people to guard them and look after them and build buildings to house them. If you were dangerous, they couldn't really afford to deal with that. If it was a non-violent property crime, then you paid a fine and if you couldn't you were sold into slavery to cover the fine. And there are no exemptions for age.
 

Thomas Bowman

First Post
In the middle ages, jails were only temporary holding facilities until some other punishment was devised, punishments included things like, a fine, enslavement, removal of body parts, torture, and execution. People were only jailed long term when a ransom was expected, and that usually happened with wealthy prisoners.
 

Bawylie

A very OK person
I guess my answer depends on whether we’re talking about justice in the sense of civil, societal, English Common Law type deal or if we mean Divine Justice.

Is there a separation of Church and State?

Maybe atonement could take a myriad of forms including fines, quests, curses, geas, deeds, etc.

Probably don’t even need incarceration.
 

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