Question: SO! I'm in America, obeying the laws and stuff (totally legal stuff). THEN I teleport to Egypt, 'cause I can. Anubis is there, and he says "Oh, you were just doing something in America that is illegal here." How does that play out? Where and how does jurisdiction get defined when it comes to Justice?
Jurisdiction, for purposes of the Justice purview, is always defined as "the laws of the place I am in right now". That means that as long as the laws permit your behavior where you are actually doing it, you are fine.
Here's how it plays out:
Scenario One. You are in Boston and you do something that is illegal in Boston. You have broken a law and anyone, no matter where or who they are, can use Justice on you if they find out about it. It doesn't matter if you leave Boston and go somewhere that that action is legal; it was illegal when you did it and you therefore committed a crime. Welcome to the Star Chamber.
Scenario Two. You are in Boston and you do something that is legal in Boston. Then you go somewhere else, where the same thing is not legal. Because you took that action somewhere that it was legally permitted, no one can use Justice on you for it. You are innocent of wrongdoing, no matter how much some people might dislike it.
So, in your example, Anubis wouldn't be able to smite you with any Justice for your previous actions; they were entirely legal and Justice will not support him punishing you when you didn't break any laws. If you repeat those actions in Egypt, where they're not legal, he can punish you then, but not before. (Of course, he may still hate you, which could take all kinds of unpleasant non-Justice forms depending on what you did and how annoyed he is about it.)
On the flip side, if you happen to do something in Egypt that is illegal there but that you do all the time at home where it's perfectly okay, Anubis can and probably will reduce you to quivering, justly-punished jelly, because Justice doesn't care if it's legal somewhere, just that it's illegal where you are right here and now. Justice also doesn't care whether or not you were aware that something you did was illegal, so it's prudent to find out what the local laws are lest you accidentally break them and end up with a face full of Guilt Apparitions. And, if you do something illegal in Egypt and then flee back to the U.S., where it's no longer a problem, Anubis can still come after you and whammy you in the face while standing on American soil, because you committed a crime and the fact that you ran to someplace where no one would have cared doesn't make Justice forget about your transgression.
Honestly, Justice is a lot simpler than mortal international law, jurisdiction and extradition rules. If you break the law, you're guilty, no matter where you go or what you do next. If you do something that's legal, you're innocent, no matter where you go or what you do next. The law of the land is always the final arbiter.
The exception to this rule is, of course, the Code of Heaven boon, which is the only way Scions or gods can lay down some divine correctional smackage without the local laws backing them up. So your Scion could do almost anything legal in the U.S. and Anubis wouldn't be able to punish him with Justice... unless he happened to be talking some smack about how lame the Egyptian gods are, in which case Anubis can happily greet him with a nice juicy Banish as soon as he tries to bring that foul mouth past Egypt's borders.
Don't forget that Justice gods do not even have to be fair about it. They can be greedy, corrupt bastards who completely let their friends off the hook while punishing you to the fullest extent of the law.
ReplyDeleteThe Justice purview is not like the Order virtue. It comes with no compulsion to punish, or judgement about who you have punished, as long as the targets of your mischief are genuinely guilty.
That might make THEM vulnerable to justice boons as well, but those are the breaks.
Alas, it is so true. Justice isn't about fairness; it's about enforcing what you want to enforce. It can be used for great good, but it can also be used to be an evil bastard (see: Sedeq).
DeleteYou can use Justice to save the innocent from their oppressors, or to smite people you don't like with vengeful punishments way out of proportion to their crimes. It's all about what kind of justice god you want to be.
One thing that always got me from reading the Ragnorok supplement that actually highlights what you said above about Justice not being fair:
Delete*Spoiler*
was that one scene with Fenris where he asks why Tyr was a god of justice since Tyr was the one who deliberately betrayed him (Fenris)?
That really struck me and my group when we played it and we decided to ask Tyr the very same question. His less then satisfactory answer was probably why we decided to go help Thor instead of him at Ragnarok.
The text at the top of the Justice page could use a little clarifying...it states "...those who are innocent of the crime in question UNDER THE LAWS OF THE LOCAL AREA are immune to any attempt to use this purview to punish them..."
ReplyDeleteMaybe I was just derping out, but I always thought that meant that you had to be innocent under the laws of the local area, irrespective of where you committed the crime.
Note to self: Find out how to use italics in this thing!
Oh, I can see how that might be confusing! Let me see if I can figure out a better way to word it.
DeleteAlmost everything is illegal somewhere, so if it worked like that people would be constantly getting in trouble for doing nothing more than walking into a place.
Oh, and you can do italics with basic HTML:
Delete< i > italic text < /i >
Just without the spaces inside the carats. :)
Is there anyway for Justice Gods to be your lawyer in any way? Like provide due process or argue your case? Like say...I don't know, Anubis, wants to use Justice on you for some reason to punish you for something. Would it be possible for Thoth to jump in and say 'excuse me my good colleague but that would not be decent' and argue your case as his client?
ReplyDeleteHe can argue all he wants but there's no interrupting the boon.
DeleteTom is right - once the boon goes out, nothing can be done about it unless you have Pardon and the situation warrants using it.
DeleteBut that doesn't mean that lawyering can't be a thing in divine courts. After all, the justice god is deciding to use a boon on you if he finds you guilty, so divine lawyers can leap in to try to mitigate that. They could point out that there were mitigating circumstances, suggest alternative punishments, call for other involved parties to come give their side, or anything else you'd do in a normal trial. And as a result, the justice god might decide to levy a lighter sentence, punish the offender in a non-boon way or use a less painful Justice boon than he had originally planned. The boons themselves are incontrovertible, but a god has to actually decide to use them, so you can always try to lawyer up and convince said god to be lenient with you.
Or in reverse - Thoth could also leap in and say, "That guy is a massive tool, here's all the ways what he did was truly despicable" and convince Anubis to upgrade the poor sinner from a Guilt Apparitions to a Psychic Prison.
Of course, it's a lot harder for any lawyer to convince a god with Order (or any other Virtue offended by whatever you just did) to let an infraction go than a god without, but that'show Virtues roll.
Many mortal laws and their courts take extenuating circumstances into account while delivering judgement. How does an Order God react to this? And does the virtue allow the same consideration to be taken?
DeleteOr, to look at it from another perspective, how does Order as a Virtue react to the concept of suspended sentences?
DeleteI'm wondering something similar to what Samudra is. If extenuating circumstances exist that would, under the law, make the issue dubious... how does Justice handle that?
DeleteWhat if the circumstances are not dubious and no judge in the world would convict the individual?
Does Arete add to Justice 1 - Judgement, since you guys have repeatedly said it doesn't just add dice but dots of ability?
Order wants to see the law upheld, period. It is the Virtue that believes that the stability of law and order is what keeps the world from descending into chaos and madness, and it doesn't care about the level of an infraction, just that it exists. It often causes Scions or gods to go out of their way to make sure that justice is served or the innocent are set free, but unfortunately it also wants the beggar who stole an apple to feed his starving child in jail just as much as the murderer who killed an entire family for fun.
DeleteBut, Order is satisfied if you know that justice has been done, so as long as the local court system handles the case (and there are no problems in that process, like perjury), it's happy. If a guy is arrested for his crime, tried as appropriate and the court rules he doesn't get punished, your Order is cool with that; the system has done its job and all is right with the world.
But Order won't let you not arrest that guy because you think he'll probably get off anyway, nor will it allow you to rationalize his crime away. He broke the rules, he needs to be called accountable for it. Anything else and Order triggers.
You can still shades of grey in legal and justice matters, though; if you have Order, you're good as long as you genuinely believe that someone has been tried and/or punished appropriately. If you have a trial for someone, decide that due to extenuating circumstances he deserves a lighter sentence, and then execute that sentence, Order has no issue with that whatsoever. If Thoth and Anubis decide that the beggar had a good reason for his crime, they will still need to punish him to prevent Order from acting up, but they can do so in a way appropriate to the crime - that is, they can slap him on the wrist and tell him not to do it again, and that's probably okay.
It actually works in reverse, too - if you try to levy a punishment that is clearly not legally reasonable for the crime, like sentencing someone to death for jaywalking, your Order might revolt then, too (unless either the law says you can kill people for jaywalking, or a legally vested judge does; then it's official). It wants you to uphold society and the laws that keep it together, so abusing it either way will usually start triggering rolls.
As for Justice, it actually never has to deal with things that are legally dubious; the Judgment boon literally tells a justice god "yes" or "no" on a person's legal guilt, so it's up to the Storyteller to know the answer. If it's a yes, Justice boon away; if it's a no, there's nothing you can do. All the discussion of what happened, who did what and whether or not that should factor into sentencing needs to happen before Justice boons are actually used, the same way a trial needs to happen before an execution.
DeleteJustice can technically be a massive bitch, though - to use the jaywalking example above, a Justice god who uses Judgment and finds the offender guilty can in fact use Punish the Line on him and ruin him and his family forever. They shouldn't, because that's balls, and doing something so outrageous means that other justice gods are likely to be able to Pardon it because what the hell is that ruling, but they can do it. Justice is only the set of powers; it can't do anything to the innocent, but what it does to the guilty is entirely up to the personality, judgment and Virtues of the person using it.
Hmm. Normally we allow people to add Arete to rolls like that by paying some extra Legend, but I'm not sure in the case of Judgment. The roll is unmodifiable because it's so powerful - as noted above, Justice can literally do anything it wants to the person who loses and is guilty, so we don't want it to be something that automatically steamrolls everything around it. I would lean toward no, Arete can't do anything here, or at best you can only count the number of Arete dots rather than the normal scaling number of dice.
DeleteJohn, get out of bed and confirm!
I'm not reading everything but Justice by nature is the direct opposite of Mercy. Justice is black and white. Mercy is the circumstantial reprieve.
DeleteWhy is Guilt of the Damned so weak? The target loses a couple of successes only IF they channel their virtue rating, but for the entire scene they GAIN freedom to do whatever they want without their virtues nagging at them?
ReplyDelete(meant to say 'GAIN more freedom')
DeleteIt also poses a problem for those who are facing situations where their Virtue dot rating matters - for example, they want to use PSP boons that roll that Virtue, or they're in an Underworld where Virtue rolls make a serious difference to their ability to do things, etc. It also lowers the target's Willpower pool (dictated by two highest Virtues) for the scene for most characters, which sucks.
DeleteIt is a holdover from the old rules that could maybe stand another look, though - it's situationally very powerful, but I'm not sure how it stacks up against other level 3 boons.
How often do those situations come up? Whatever the answer is, it is probably not as often as "My roleplaying is influenced by my virtues".
DeleteMaybe it should give one of your virtues for a scene?
You've got Order 5? Then for the rest of the scene, the target of the boon (who must be guilty in the first place of course) has effectively has Order 5 which cannot be channeled for dice/successes.
This way, the boon is always going to encourage the 'guilty' party to act closer to your ideals for the scene.