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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3658332" data-attributes="member: 4937">The pronoun 'you' here is a little bit confusing.  I'm not entirely sure if you were addressing me specificly, asking me for a normative judgement, or if you wanted to continue a discussion of what a speculated society might do.  I hope it is the latter, because I don't have a Helm of Alignment changing, much less a sufficient supply of them to set up a  criminal justice system that depended on them.  I think that there is alot to that actually.  I would speculate that for a variaty of reasons, a society employing the Helm would want to create a ritual through which a person passed and ritually died and was reborn.   For the reasons I listed above, if that ritual had a criminal justice purpose, it would probably be a good idea of that ritual was painful.   Likely such a ritual would be combined with some ritual healing/cleansing.  I can very much see the penalty for capital crimes like murder or rape being lashed to the point of unconsciousness, then magically healed, ritually cleansed, and a helm of opposite alignment put on your head.There are real world parallels that should occur to the reader, but I can't discuss them here.Again, with the 'you'.  I'm not sure what I would do is relevant, but in asking myself what a victim might see as proper restitution I suspect that there would need to be a 'blood for blood' rule in cases of violent crime.  Generally, 'good' societies strongly take into consideration the desire of the victim to apply a penalty, and then cap that desire for vengeance with some maximum penalty allowable under the law, say "Eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth."  Even the most libertarian society would probably acceed to the convicted's wish to have the helm applied, but the most libertarian would probably be afraid to apply it without consent.  In fact, requesting to have the helm applied would probably be seen as sufficient proof that the person was redeemed, although the danger here would seem to me that if they request to have it applied they may no longer need it and in which case it would do more harm than good.  Presumably, a truly evil person would no more consent to having the helm applied than a truly good one would.   I imagine societies would differ in how much duress they could put a person under to get that consent though.  Some societies would tend to say that the act was more important than the convicted's belief, and sense this was manifestedly for the good of everyone including the convicted, you could apply a great deal of stress to get the consent.  Other societies would say that if the person repented/converted/requested to be helmed under duress, it wouldn't count - and in fact it worse than didn't count since it made the whole process dishonest.Probably not.  The main thing is that the society has to see that the debt that the criminal owes is paid, and that the magistrates to which they've entrusted thier dispute will take it seriously.  How much dept society would believe the convicted owed would depend on the society.  One problem is that in the extreme case, a society wouldn't even consider the option of a Helm of Opposite alignment because they would believe that the person now owed his life and nothing less would do.   The B5 option mentioned earlier might allow an escape clause here, in that there might be a particular serving order which the Helmed would have to enter into - thereby paying off the debt by spending thier whole life serving others.Frankly, I'm not sure what I assume.  However, I do know that different cultures place different emphasis on the nature vs. nurture divide.   I don't know which answer is correct.  I do know that some societies are going to say that humans at least are not intrinsicly good or evil, and that they are the product of thier environment.   If that is the correct answer, then the helm of opposite alignment is only a temporary solution.  And, if it is only believed to be a temporary solution in even a few cases, then its going to present big problems to a societies legal system because it violates the contract between the society and the law that the law will take disputes seriously and act to protect society.</blockquote>

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