Very good points, it just depends on how far out the divergence is.

You may not have noticed, but it seems to me that their concept of "obvious legal principles" is a might subjective, sort of a collective "group think"

Thus as you get more and more historical divergence, the group think could drift to give you very different principles....

That's why I like the Abyss (in particular the Courts of Chaos). General principle, he/she who hits hardest, writes the laws, and if you want to challenge the law, just bring first aid supplies.



Actually, that's not really true, there are laws, but laws between princes, arch demons and all very feudal so that the entire structure doesn't destroy itself. So it's not anarchy and there is some consistency, but just it is very jurisdictional and often situational.

Although, thinking about it, that's also sort of what the Outer Planes and whole Tribunal/Council thing looks like too.

There's actually a LOT of discussion of this at Doom. Trying to run the most prestigious prison in the multiverse takes a lot of work to juggle various legal systems that are often in conflict with each other. I generally zone out during these discussions as I do find them a bit tedious.

Edited by user Wednesday, July 13, 2022 11:49:44 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I would not advise using the "L" word around Mount Doom, you are likely to get flattened.

We purposefully chose to not get too involved in legal arguments, we decided to operate more as an outsourced penal system. You get too deep in those things and you find yourself lost in legal spaghetti, where the spaghetti strands are nearly infinite in length.

That being said, internally we try to judge whether the 'punishment' our client is requesting for their prisoner is fair, just and honorable. I.e. we don't like things that appear to be railroading, political punishment, etc. We tend to look at things like "are there any other options, less draconian" Is it a matter of public (multiversal) safety?

That last one is a big huge one. Are we protecting more people by locking this person or persons up. I.e. keeping them from destroying populations/planets/universes?

We also factor in the client and how much we trust their judgement.

So it's more of a moral judgement than a legal judgement on our part. We aren't doing the sentencing, that's our client. We are deciding whether to trust that sentencing and accept it and carry it out.

But also, let's be clear, we are a 'no kill' prison. This isn't so much altruistic or 'woke' on our part, it's simply that most of those we imprison can't be killed, or if they can somehow be killed, they'll just Phoenix Cycle and come back somewhere else at a later date, hell bent on vengeance.

So as you will see in Doom's Day and Tom's dreams, Tartarus is sort of a way to sweep problems under the rug for millennia.

Anyway, back to my prior point, trying to balance our philosophy with our clients legal systems and actually do our 'sales pitch' and dealing with our occasional rejections gets complicated.

If you ask me though, the sanitarium is actually all of the Outer Planes and almost every other non-Midgard/Material plane out there!

You are correct, it's extremely difficult to catch them. We generally require/request the arrest be made by the 'court' that finds them guilty. But we can certainly provide Bounty Hunters, for a fee. A very big fee. Plus expenses.

As to what happens when a god is captured, well it's similar to the interregnum during the Phoenix Cycle. Most gods and their planes have automation mechanisms much like "super" HALOs that the avatars use. If you are in it for the long haul, and by definition, gods are, you build your pool and associated infrastructure to withstand prolonged absences. In particular, like a HALO you would set things up so that mana can still go in and out of the pool thanks to avatars.

We do know from Book III, that Atherus' plane and pool is still operational, along with the afterlife for all his worshippers. But things are sort of in a care taker mode as far as the avatars are concerned. In their case, I assume that when anything needing an actual god comes up they can also get assistance from his kids, who are, as far as anyone knows, completely innocent and just as in the dark as to where they two gods went as anyone else.

We are going to see a lot more of this as things progress and things escalate to the 'higher levels'

For example, we know that Dis went missing on Etterdam, but yet, you may note that he is listed as one of the 'gods of the grove' in the appendix on gods and pantheons (also on this site). So presumably, somebody is 'faking it' for him.

Yeah, Jenn may be in for a mental breakdown or two...or...not...maybe she'll just be driven insane by her internal conflicts vs external reality, and well, then she'd fit it in just fine in the looney bin that is the Outer Planes!

Yeah Trevin is going to need a drink, getting caught in a war between gods is not a good thing, as we are told in one of those appendices in book 1.

Then trying to mediate said war?

Bwah! Hah! Hah!

"A popcorn moment"

As in her head pops like a kernel!

I am fond of those two kids. Not sure which I enjoy tormenting more, Jenn or Gastrope' So much fun! I need to get back to torturing them, just been so busy with Rede, he's fun too. The three of them are very good emotional counterpoints. I should introduce them!

Elves have infuriatingly good PR teams, and charm, which is why she buys into their 'diplomacy' but behind the scenes they are ruthless monsters! Of course, I do have to respect them for that.

Speaking of Santa's helper, one of the best orc holiday games I ever played was where they take elven prisoners, put them high up on a shelf and then do unspeakable things to them, until the orcs get bored and then use them for target practice, like bottles on a fence waiting to be shot! It's the famous Elf on a Shelf game!

As everyone has complained it was that whole necromancer thing that cause Doom to not follow the rules I outline above for Phoenix cycling. That was when we made all the Dooms dependent on the central Doom and the Wand of Orcus. Prior to that, the Dooms were generally independent, at least control wise (they obviously shared power as part of the power grid) If we hadn't done that the Doom network could have kept going while Orcus PC'd.

I told them, we'd probably regret it, but, who listens to me?

Rede is nice, but

Rede's life is definitely better since he's spending a LOT of time with me!

One thing I have to respect about the Asgardians is that they never tried to sugar coat the elves. They seriously maligned all of jotunkind, but were (compared to everyone else) pretty honest about the evils of elves!

The problem with your plan is that, unfortunately, elves are very good at planning and coordination. It's going to be hard to convince people that the elves are all riding around with their heads cut off.

Although I've got plenty of orc and D'Orc friends who'd be more than happy to cut off elven heads.

Pretty sure Reed is going to be trained to play a big part against the unlife. Either as an alternative to the stormlords or more PR for advertising to the unlife to pledge to work for Orkus and live a good life in the abyss lol. I'm more curious about what Oorstemoth will do once they find out the demon Tom is a god. Do they have the ego to place judgement on a god? What about the other pantheons he's allied with? Lol. And will Tom out Sam to them? It's a small part of the story but Oorstemothions are just so ridiculous. I'm really looking forward to their irrational rationalizations.

I am sure it will be an amazing shitload of paperwork to reclassify Tom as a god vs greater demon in Oorstemoth.

Just reclassifying him as demon prince would be a lot of work!

But of course, that seems to be how they get their rocks off.

And yes, the whole god thing and judgement and extradition from the Outer Planes is a huge question they are debating in book iv, even early on. I can't discuss "why" without spoiling some major things. But this is before knowing anything about Orcus the Olympian, it just comes up in the course of their current mission

COA:ITW should have been out by now, lazy T-A-G. If it was you'd at least have a clue what Rede's future holds. As T-A-G mentioned, Book IV before COA:ITW causes some scheduling conflicts with reality.

I can say it involves a previously unmentioned, and nearly unknown, School of Wizardry that makes perfect sense, but is not mentioned in the library because most wizards are unware of it.

For more of a hint, you might want to check out the House of Narthan and some of the odder entries in the family tree.

Argh, dang Elven poachers!

Big problem in the s(w)amplands, they come in and take out all the W's!

Thanks!