"Comandments" of a Lawful God?

[Olibarro]

If the Laws are designed to help all people (rather than just be for the Church, or Nobility or Adventurers) then they need to cover mundane concerns. So, analgous to "Honor your superior" would be something like "Honor your elders (family); protect the honor of your sibilings and children".

Except this is a god of Law and not so much of Good/Evil, therefore, His laws would not be designed to "help all people." Because helping people is not a concern. The Commandments are there to maintain order. Suffering and misery are acceptable as long as order is maintained.

In fact, a commandment that is actually harmful and offensive to our altruistic nature but exists to enforce order and respect could highlight this well.

There can be "Good" commandments (like thou shalt not steal), but also "Evil" ones like: At the festival of the new year, one unmarried woman who is of age from each household will be sent to the temple for special rites, after which the high priests select several dozen for a ritual that basically amounts to a 12 hour orgy. Children produced from such unions are usually removed from their mothers after birth and raised by the temple as elite holy warriors.

Or if that's too esoteric, something as simple as requiring blood sacrifice/human sacrifice can fill the bill too.

 

[Aristotle]

Except this is a god of Law and not so much of Good/Evil, therefore, His laws would not be designed to "help all people." Because helping people is not a concern. The Commandments are there to maintain order. Suffering and misery are acceptable as long as order is maintained.

This is an important point... The god in question has no concern for good or evil directly. That isn't to say that acts of evil are permitted without scrutiny, but even an evil act can be (and often is) defended by law. Idealists within the faith would probably want to see things lean in the LG direction, but their are just as many oppressors within the faith who are willing to enforce the law at a moments notice to maintain their station and power.

The setting doesn't have planes of existence, but rather a realm of creation from which souls (creative forces) come. It is an accepted fact that upon death your soul returns to that realm to be rejuvinated before returning to the world in a new form. Souls that are gripped by true Chaos are not permitted to enter that realm. Their creative forces are not permitted to continue on.

An evil essence is not restriced from this cycle of reincarnation, althoug common folk tend to believe that an evil soul is forced to return in lesser forms to pay for misdeeds in past lives. This is mostly just folk tale though. No religous doctrine has ever confirmed that evil souls are forced to undergo any sort of penance.

 

[Wolf72]

Legalism, especially, would be something to look at. I recall one anecdote about the Emperor executing a guard for putting a blanket on him when he went to sleep, as that wasn't the guard's job.

Brad

Go Qin!!!

When I think of Legalism I think of Lawful Neutral, those with a really strong conscious are Lawful Good ... and those with a very weak/evil conscious are Lawful Evil.

A while back (which version of the boards I couldn't tell you) several people posted some very good 'commandments' ... I have some copies of them on my home computer ... or you could do a search (or have a community member do a search).

ej

 

[Olibarro]

Also, Ptolemaic Egypt is an excellent example of bureaucratic lawfulism run amok. By royal decree, irrigation ditches must be of regulation depth, and therefore, we have a series of inspectors who travel the land with rulers in order to check. The Pharaoh is the sole arbitrator of disputes, so ALL grievances must be submitted in writing to his divine person, thus necessitating a whole bureaucracy of priests to filter and prioritize the greivances of the unwashed masses. Etc.

 

[Dogbrain]

If I pour a bottle of scotch down my kitchen sink, I'm a fool, but not a criminal. If I take that same bottle of scotch to my laboratory and pour it down the sink, I'm a criminal. Why? Because the laws regarding the disposal of ethyl alcohol in a laboratory say so.

If I take a dose of cough syrup at home, I'm probably not endangering my employment. Same dose of the same cough syrup at work, and I violate the "zero tolerance" policy on "drugs taken without physician's prescription"--and, depending on how the "zero tolerance" policy is worded, taking the cough syrup at home might endanger my employment. (I'll presume that I use a no-alcohol formulation in each case).

An extremely lawful society can simulataneously be quite un-regular and arbitrary. Laws do not need to make sense, they only need to not immediately contradict each other--most of the time, if you don't look too hard.