"Isn't there any soft labor as needs doing?"

"If there was, say, a farmer's son, who started a fight with his neighbor while drinking and accidentally ruined the other boy's eye, what would we sentence him to do? Work in the fields for the Crown's benefit, rather than his own and his father's? That's just a fine of his father by a different name, and the boy might thank us for it, if he chafes at his family as many young men do. Certainly many city boys would say it was the worst fate imaginable, but I'm not inclined to believe them."

Well-raised boys don't do that but probably they're not making laws for those.

Enric doesn’t really see ‘it’s the same as a fine to the father’ as much of a problem. That’s whose job it is to keep the boy from getting into drunken fights. 

“If anything, make him do some work for the family of the boy who lost his eye. Unless working a field together gets them fighting again, instead of helping them put away the grudge. If that’s the case, maybe we have to send one of them away to find work somewhere else. I guess that’s why you need to pick someone wise to judge these things.”

It’s always sad when that happens though, when the only way to resolve a dispute is someone having to leave the village and look for work somewhere else. 

"I think there's a lot of crimes that are hard to punish fairly if you can't 'inflict pain deliberately' at all! Can't we just... not say 'no deliberately inflicting pain as punishment for a crime'? I don't think I've ever heard of a justice system that does that — to be fair, I don't know what the justice systems are like most other places, but that just sounds kind of insane?"

"I agree with Avenger Ferrer. Whipping is a necessary grade of punishment between maiming and humiliation for those incapable of paying fines." He hears Axis does everything on fines. He's sure that works very well when everyone is an axiomite.

"I don't see that maiming's much use anyway, as long as people can get their parts back for a dollar apiece. I agree it doesn't make sense to try to get by with no use of pain as punishment."

"Between execution and humiliation, then."

"It's only one of the archmages doing that, right? For anything where we'd normally want to do maiming, we could also brand the body part, or something, so that she knows she shouldn't put it back."

"I think there are things we would like to end. When we must execute a man, it should be clean and quick, not impalement on Asmodeus's spikes, nor drawing and quartering, nor being flogged with a cat for a hundred strokes until the arms come loose of the body. I don't think we can do without whipping, and maybe there is little we could ban and leave it, in which case we must leave it. But I would very much like to declare something that indicates to whoever can read our constitution that we are not choosing our punishments to be as cruel as we think we can get away with." And something that Jilia can read to reassure herself that she will never have to order one of those again.

"Agreed. 'All executions must be swift and conducted without torture?'" He's actually opposed to this one but it's worth Good points that can hopefully be spent on more important things.

"That seems good. Should we be giving everyone the option of the final blade? I guess there are probably difficulties with transit, there."

"When available," he says, nodding.

"Where I'm from they make executions worse for worse crimes. So that people don't just say, 'oh, well, I already did something that'll get me executed, anything else I do after that doesn't matter' and do a bunch more crimes. ...Do they do something different where you're from?"

Victòria thinks this is a genuinely hard problem! Obviously you've got to execute people who murder innocents but she's pretty sure it's hard to hurt someone twice as badly as executing them if they killed two people.

"—wait, why would we give them the Final Blade?"

"So they don't go to Hell!"

"Obviously if someone — I don't know, burned down a house full of innocent children because they got mad at their parents — they should go to Hell!!! Or, like, the Abyss if they're Chaotic, but same difference."

"No one deserves Hell. Even Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn don't deserve Hell, though I'm sure they are both there and Rugatonn may even be thanking Asmodeus for the service of tormenting her. There is nothing anyone can do in this life that earns them the eternal torment of Hell, or the total nonexistence of Abaddon, or the random chance of either of the Abyss. Even if Iomedae fulfills her ancient promise and frees every soul remaining in all three in a thousand years, it would still be more punishment than even the worst serial killer deserves. Pharasma may call it just, but the gods of Good call it Evil, to wish any of them on anyone."

Nod nod. "The hard cases belong in Nirvana where they can be butterflies and ladybugs and never hurt a soul."

Nod nod nod. "It is always better to conquer your enemies by making them your friends than by tormenting them."

Enric is still thinking over what Jilia said about not wanting something that looks like ‘trying to be as cruel as we can get away with’. He’s not an archduchess so he can’t say ‘why are you trying to let them do as much evil stuff as you can’ out loud, but he’s feeling it too.

As for hell, they’re the enemy. That part is obvious.

"—That makes no sense?? Like— let's say you died and went to Nirvana, right, I don't know where you're headed" and don't really expect you're Good "but hypothetically. And you're flapping around as a happy little songbird or whatever, and you're in a little songbird choir, singing nice little songbird songs with your songbird friends or whatever they do in Nirvana, and then — on your right side is someone who burned down a house full of innocent children, on your left side is someone who tortured innocent people to death for criticizing Asmodeus, in front of you is a rapist, behind you is someone who murdered your child — and they're all just happy, they're not getting what they deserve, they're having a great time in their songbird chorus and never mind the people they hurt, and you're supposed to like that they're there with you — that would be awful! Would you want to be sitting there in the middle, surrounded by people like that, even if they were birds and couldn't hurt you?"

"I hear more about the Summerlands from the other Erastilians than I do Nirvana but I would be pretty surprised if the ex-con songbird choir was required for anybody who didn't like it."

"—well, you brought up Nirvana earlier, but if you want to imagine the same thing but it's in the Summerlands instead I don't think it really makes a difference! Are you really okay with them just getting away with it—"

"I think I'd feel pretty proud, if I was in Nirvana, of knowing that we could turn even people like that to the side of Good, and that we were strong enough not to have to hurt them."