A lot of her casual commentary was mystifying. I knew what a rift was, apparently that place I had been exploring while my brain wasn’t working quite right on the alien ship, but what was a rift break? Whatever it was, tended to put the town into siege mode while it lasted. Maybe it was like the overload that the ship had warned about.
Essence was some kind of superpower or something that everyone had. It was used for advancement, casting ‘pattern’ spells, and sort of was a catch-all term like magic or force. People’s ‘aspects’ were sort of animal spirit guides that seemed to attach to them at birth based on their affinities, personalities, and paths, whatever that was.
It seemed like an interesting workaround for the whole ‘no visible system’ thing from it being a protected world, but I had no idea how it would affect yours truly. The closest thing I had to an aspect would probably have been Jessie, and so far the synthetic intelligence hadn’t put in an appearance.
It wasn’t unpleasant, the big fluffy tail growing from the base of Wandi’s spine right above her extremely appealingly curved bottom was oddly endearing. It looked incredibly soft, and the fact that the woman waving it around, once she finally started approaching more closely, was a rather attractive taut little bundle of curvy energy with a frigging cannon added to the appeal. What can I say, I was a traditionalist, I liked women and I liked guns, and putting the two together was as natural as peanut butter and chocolate.
The way the town was set up reminded me a lot of the old west. The ‘new world’ used to be part of the settled lands, the old world, but had been torn apart by a combination of an invasion of greenskin hordes, ‘rift breaks’, and monster plagues thousands of years ago. Things had settled out a little in the last few hundred years.
The old world was the ultimate rule of might makes right. Extremely powerful essence users created their dynasties and took over chunks of land, turning everyone beneath them into serfs or peasants, and the less powerful rebels who had zero chance in the old world were slowly resettling the new world and carving out their civilization away from the godlike power of the nearly immortal old world royalty. Very far away.
“So what does the law look like in Kanten? I don’t want to accidentally break some law and wind up in jail.” I said, looking at a very tall wall that was slowly approaching in the distance.
She looked at me oddly, “Umm… we don’t have a lawkeeper.”
I was a little confused, “No one commits any crimes?”
She shrugged, “Sure they do. People are only human, and more than a few settlers are fleeing justice from the old world. But if someone does something bad to someone, their family handles any revenge that’s needed. Individual shops will sometimes band together to hire a higher-tier peacekeeper, and of course, places like pubs and dance halls have their own rules and enforcement.”
She sighed, “There’s a town charter, obviously, with the standard six laws, and the hunters and guilds take care of some of the more serious problems that affect their ability to do business, but the last four lawkeepers that were chosen didn’t last very long. Before that was old Grindley, but he was nothing more than a tool for the banker’s guild and a bully who wanted to become a new overlord. He finally raped the wrong family’s daughter.” she pointed at the gates very far away. “What’s left of him is still swinging by the gates.”
She shrugged, “Technically we are part of the nation of Vateran, that’s where the town charter comes from and the regent came out from old Pennton, but all he does is collect taxes and pay for the walls and hunters, as well as his own peacekeepers and tax assessors. I mean, taxes suck, but it’s better than getting killed by greenskins, tribals, or monsters trying to wild farmstead. There are some free farmsteads scattered around, but even they have to pay taxes and retreat to the town when there’s a break or a wave.”
“So no real law? What happens if someone is… weak, without any real family or guild to back them up, gets hurt or robbed?”
She sighed. “Every few years a peacekeeper errant comes by to make sure the town is still here and paying taxes to Vateran following its charter, and technically someone can set up an appeal if someone violates the charter.”
I shook my head. Okay, worse than the old West. I wasn’t a big law and order type, since most laws existed just to give the powerful even more power, but this… sounded bad even to my sensibilities. “What are the six laws?”
She smiled, “Pretty obvious. The law of property, the law of family, the law of honor, The law of body, the law of mind, and the law of soul.”
After asking her, I got a better idea of the six laws. They seemed simple, but the repercussions were fairly complicated.
1. The law of property. If you could keep and protect something, it belonged to you if no one else could keep and protect it. Taking something that belonged to someone else, just because you could, was a no-no that was supposedly punished by whatever authority existed.
2. Children could be protected by their families. Until they became adults, usually around 16, their family was law. In addition, you had to keep your mitts off of another man’s woman, but the ramifications of the law sorta started leading into confusing areas where I don’t think Wandi and I were speaking the same language.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
3. The law of honor. When you gave your word, you were expected to keep it. If you swore yourself to another person’s protection, like vassalage, they protected you as well, but there usually was some sort of back and forth. Here, if a person’s word wasn’t good, nobody would have anything to do with them. Contract law wasn’t a thing, because if you couldn’t trust their word, how could you trust a contract?
4. The law of body meant nobody could force you to do anything you didn’t want, except in the case of vassalage and family, your body was your own. Did you want to dive into a bottle or kill yourself? As an adult, that was your right. Vateran was picky about it because of the way the powerful dynasties in the old world used people as disposable playthings. There were exceptions such as town defense.
5. The Law of Mind. This was tricky because it dealt not only with your right to think or believe whatever you wanted, but also your right to speak your mind and certain essence abilities like domination, empathy, and other manipulatory abilities. It was stupidly loose, but that’s where lawkeepers stepped in. There was no First Amendment here, you had the right to speak your mind, but not the right to force anyone else to listen to you. The law of body meant that if you made too much of a shit of your opinions, someone else had the right to stop you from abusing their ears. It also meant that dueling was a thing, but the rules were… confusing.
6. The last law, the law of soul, was utterly baffling because it dealt almost entirely with essence stuff. Screwing around with souls, through necromancy or other means, was a big no-no. Also, even the law of family didn’t give you a right to force your child into a particular aspect, if you had that essence pattern. Stripping, modifying, or changing someone’s aspect was a big bad also, which was why Wandi was worried about me… since I didn’t have a recognizable aspect, she thought that maybe I was like one of the greenskins that didn’t use aspects or the fey whose essence worked in an entirely different manner.
There were no law libraries, or codified sets of violations and penalties, but certain individuals had traits that supported individual laws. The regent, for example, had domain over the law of honor and could determine its enforcement, such as taxes or vassalage. The only thing he used it for, though, was to tax and support the local town, just like the oracles had domain over the law of soul.
But the one person who had full command over the laws was a lawkeeper. They had a trait that allowed them to interpret the laws for violations and were supposed to be incorruptible without losing their path,l kind of like paladins only not as ''awful good''. Which was why, as we approached a set of giant steel doors swung slightly open to allow the road to pass through, there was a series of red-painted box cages that contained the picked-clean remains of someone named Grindley. Failing to support the laws could cost you your trait, but no one knew if a lawkeeper lost their talent unless it was shoved in their faces the way he had done.
According to Wandi, Grindley had a lot of very bad habits, including the sexual abuse of female and even male youngsters that were protected by both the law of body and law of family, which was why several families had decided, along with many others that he had abused the law of property or honor to extort, to separate him slowly into six equal parts, one for each law, to mount in their individual cages over the town’s main entrance.
“Once you are in town, you are subject to taxes and hospitality customs.”
“What are those?”
“Taxes are for trade, so if you sell stuff from rifts, farming, hunting, or crafting, you are expected to pay one-twelfth of your overall earnings to the regent while you are in town. A few people cheat, but most take pride in paying it because without it, no walls, no hunter rewards for bounties, and this town gets smashed and everyone in it dies.”
“Hospitality laws mean that if the town gets hit by a rift break, wave, or raid, you try and help as best you are able. Whether that’s on the wall, running water and snacks to the defenders, or working towards relief, everyone helps,” she giggled a little, blushing.
“What’s up?”
“The ladies at Madam Rhaein’s dance hall offer freebies, and emotional relief, as their hospitality debt to the defenders after the events. It doesn''t help protect the town, but few people complain, and that sort of reward strongly encourages the men in the town to give it their all.”
I looked at the gates to the tall dressed-log palisade walls, which were just riveted panels of metal that were open. “No gate guards?”
She looked at me curiously and pointed at the tops of the walls, where several muzzles and crossbows could be seen. “No, the defenders are up there, where the door cranks and defenses are. Why would someone guard the doors? If we got hit by a fast raid or something, they might get trapped outside when the cranks drop. Hunters have better things to do than stand out in front and get killed.”
“So what does the oracle do?”
She shrugged, “Oracles, plural. They don’t see the future, if that’s what you are thinking. They just tend to help people get in better contact with their aspects and offer advice on fulfilling your path or growing your advancement. Do you know what your path is?”
I shook my head, “No. Mostly I have been focusing on survival. I hate just getting tossed around randomly, no matter how exciting it may be. Is it the same as a class?”
She smiled, “In that case, you might want to watch yourself. You look… formidable, and even with your oddness a lot of people will probably find you very appealing. If you aren’t careful, you might find yourself getting swept up into some family before you expect it. Classes are part of your path, but your path is a combination of your tiers that helps you decide what your eventual crown class will be.”
“Do people just...adopt random strangers?”
She laughed, “No. You are acting very ignorant, which means that you probably don’t understand how things work around here. I need to take you to the oracles so that they know what the essence burst was, but outside of that, I imagine you will find out.”