Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Cheese it, it's the cops! (Traveller Tuesday #12)

Time to determine the law level in each of the four Isheean nations.

The Guild-State of the Rose Brothers rolls 2d6-4 for its law level. We roll for each of five different types of law, and then average them out to get an idea of its overall law level. First up is weapons law, which gets a 2. This a low level of law; only nukes, body pistols, explosives, poison gas, and portable energy weapons are prohibited. Of course, weapons are one of sophontry's favorite things to tinker with and invent, which is an act revered by the Rose Brothers and impossible to do if you don't have them around. Trade law is also a 2, quite reasonably (for a nation like this one, anyway) leaving trade quite free. How can innovations shift paradigms if they can't get around? The law gets stricter when it comes to criminal acts, rising to a moderate 4. And it rises even higher in civil suits: 7. I imagine this represents a strong patent and trademark law, which has metastasized into a complicated and severe litigational landscape. If someone does you wrong in the Guild-State, hiring a lawyer will be scarier to them then calling the cops. Personal freedoms are about as restricted as criminal acts (4, moderate law). Overall, the Guild-State scores a 3.8, just at the very higher edge of what can be called low law; it's known as a fairly libertine area, but not unusually so.

Both Marches determine their law levels by rolling 2d6-2. Oleinik March gets our attention first, with a weapons law level of 7, high law. I can imagine Oleinikan criminals sneaking over to the Guild-State to arm themselves; after all, essentially all guns are banned here. Trade law receives that moderate 4 which seems so common. As for criminal law, it gets that self-same common 4, and civil law is even looser, at 2. The marquis of Oleinik doesn't seem to have dismantled the legal precedent that placed pre-eminence on marquesal decrees (as subject to the tangled labyrinth of what is allowed or required in the marquesal contract) over the resolution of disputes. Oleinikan and Rose Brother legal theory are almost unrecognizable to each other, both for its vastly different focus and foundation and because of Oleinik's imposed standards of legality (not laws) versus the Guild-State's consolidation of power. Finally, we figure out how repressive the March is: with a 5, it's a bit more restrictive than the Guild-State but not very much so. This all averages out to an overall law level of 4.4. It's nowhere near a draconian regime, but it is significantly more limited in what it allows than the Rose Brothers.

Jermaine March distinguishes itself as possibly the wildest place to live on Ishee with a weapons law level of 1, the lowest a nation can have and, well, still have laws. This is paired with current high in trade law; it's a 5. But criminal law is almost as freewheeling as restrictions on weapons with a 2. This is starting to feel quite like the Wild West of Ishee. I suppose that's what you get with an indifferent absentee liege lord. Civil law continues the trend at 3, but there are as many personal freedoms here as there are across Ishee (4). This laxness of the law is reflected in Jermaine's overall law level of 3, the lowest yet on the planet.

And finally, TCI's roll is 2d6-1. This means that, due to its control by an offworld polity (as opposed to the Marches working within limits imposed by someone offworld), it has the potential to be the most totalitarian of the four states. Weapons law, that cornerstone of any authoritarian regime, shows what I mean. At an extreme level of 11, not only are all weapons banned, but even the free movement of civilians around the country is restricted. Trade is mostly unrestricted, though, at a level of the 3. I've suspected that TCI was founded by the as-yet-undetermined sophont species that controls it in order to facilitate trade with the Guild-State. I guess that's quite proven now, as is the fear the nation feels about their enemies exporting their war here to Ishee (genuine or engineered by those in power? I actually think the latter is more interesting, so let's give the rulership some credit and assume they're just as fearful as their populace). Criminal and civil law aren't too different at 7 and 5, respectively. Like Oleinik, TCI is more concerned with its citizens breaking the law then in resolving disputes. It is, however, much more repressive than the other Isheean countries: personal freedoms law is a 9 (high law). Working it out, it seems that TCI has a high overall law level of 7.

We'll average all this out to an overall overall law level ;-) to use in the bUWP. That comes out to a moderate 4(.55) ~ bUWP α-3D-0704-? (α Greve-Eau Pleine-Bishop Scheumack-Ishee)/????774-?/?/??/Em

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