Dark Fate, Chapter 111 (Patreon)

Chapter 111 – Laws

With my summoner having finally reached the level where we could pool our abilities to summon devils, I brought forth the first lawyers of the realm. Negotiations were relatively pleasant, and we both came out of it without selling our souls or anything like that. However, now that I had lawyers ready to work on cases between Ceres and Earth, and some devils which I brought back to Ceres to serve as lawyers and magistrates, that prompted me to take another look at the kingdom’s laws.

The Laws in the Kingdom of Ceres were fairly simple, at the start. Basically, they boiled down to “don’t do things that the King dislikes”. Most of the laws were basically things covered in the contracts people signed when they moved to the kingdom, and so there was System enforcement going on, there. But I knew that wouldn’t work forever.

See, the Immigration Contracts were a stopgap, to safeguard my interests until my power base could be secure. It was not a sustainable way to govern a kingdom. Eventually, kids would be born, and they wouldn’t be covered by the contract. And tourism and trade would be completely dead if everyone had to sign contracts before getting off the ship. So, I needed to make an actual code of laws.

The usual stuff went in there, of course. Penalties for theft, breaking and entering, and so on. Nondiscrimination was a must. Couldn’t go treating people differently based on their race, class, profession, religion, sex, gender, or orientation. Murdering a free person was against the law, obviously, as was killing another person’s slave, but I did set up a dueling ring where people could demand satisfaction for slights, and those fights could be to the death. Actually, I expected those fights to be a bit of a moneymaker, since the Kingdom had the right to record and broadcast the duels.

Naturally, I put limits on dueling. People under the age of consent for their species could not be in duels, either as challenger or challenged. I wasn’t going to let there be pictures of children having to fight adults for their lives getting out there on the internet. That would cause more backlash than I wanted to deal with.

Also, not all the duels would be the same. After all, variation was the key to sport, and not every grievance required death to redress the injury done. Also, I intended for dueling to be an actual sport in the kingdom, so not all duels would be judicial in nature. In fact, there would be slightly different rules for judicial duels, which would be fought to redress grievances or harms, and sporting duels, which would be more along the lines of a prizefighting league.

With that in mind, there were three levels of dueling.

Level 1 was strictly nonlethal. Weapons and spells had to be used at nonlethal levels, and any ‘accidental’ deaths would be investigated as murders. Fights would go until one side yielded, or was knocked out. For judicial duels, the loser would then be forced to pay a fine to the victor, determined by an arbitrator before the duel. In sporting duels, the victor would get a payout, which could change depending on how many bets were placed.

Level 2 was fought with lethal weapons and spells, but it was not, technically, to the death. Accidents were treated as that. Too many accidents, and a someone might be barred from competing at Level 2. Either way, the fight went until one side yielded, or was unable to continue. In a sporting duel, as before, the victor got a payout from the betting pool, but that wasn’t the only thing they won. Before the match, each duelist would wager a slave, and to the winner goes the spoils. If they didn’t have a slave to wager, then the loser would become the victor’s slave for one month. In judicial duels, it was much simpler. The loser was enslaved, to the victor, permanently.

Finally, there was Level 3. All duels at this level were to the death, whether they were judicial or sporting. Naturally, these were likely to be the rarest ones. The only stipulation was that you could not use any weapons and spells that would threaten the crowd in the stands. Otherwise? Anything goes. And the victor gained all the property of the loser.

Of course, that wasn’t the entirety of the legal system. People could choose the ‘trial by combat’, especially for civil matters, if they wished, but there was also the option to have your case heard in court, either by a magistrate, for lesser offenses, or by me, for cases involving higher crimes, like treason. Treason and high crimes did not get the liberty of asking for trial by combat. There would be no snaking out of punishment if someone was caught betraying me, or my kingdom.

At any rate, thinking about the legal system also brought other issues to mind, beyond things like treason, murder, and civil matters. For instance, what would be the Kingdom’s stance on the World’s Oldest Profession? Or on sex crimes in general? I knew a lot of people were asking those questions, since I had revealed myself as a literal sex demon.

The answer I came up with was simple. There would be a scaled, consensual ‘free use’ policy in the Kingdom. The consent question was determined beforehand, by having people wear different color bands on their wrist, with each color meaning something different. And people weren’t limited to a single choice. They could change bands as they went through the day, depending on their mood, or if they just needed a break. Doing something not allowed by a person’s band would constitute rape, and would be punished by judicial enslavement.

‘No Band’ was the default. That meant the person was not available for public use at this time. You didn’t have to have a band on to get it on with your partner in your own home, but doing it (consensually) in public with no band would get you the equivalent of a parking ticket and a fine. Nonconsensual acts were not allowed with No Bands, period.

‘White’ was for consensual acts only. You had to ask, and you had to get consent, but you could have your fun in public if you wanted to. Ignoring the consent part was rape, naturally.

‘Blue’, ‘Green’, and ‘Red’ were all for free use. ‘Blue bands’ restricted it to opposite sex. ‘Green bands’ were for same sex. ‘Red bands’ were for everyone. If someone was wearing one of those bands, and you fit the other requirements, then anything goes, so long as no one was getting hurt.

‘Yellow bands’ were actually striped, with yellow on the outside, and a stripe of Red, Blue, or Green in the middle. The middle color signified preference, but Yellows were allowed to engage in activities that could and would cause injuries. Because some people liked that, and I wasn’t going to judge. You did need a counselor’s note to pick up a Yellow band, though.

Which just left the ‘Black bands’. Black was going to be rare, just like Level 3 duels, for a reason. Black bands meant that you could do ANYTHING to the person wearing it. Slapping a Slave Collar on their neck, or even giving them a Slave Brand, permanently stripping them of their choices? That was fine. Going for the even harder kinks, where they would need healing magic to regrow limbs? Also fine. Actual snuff? Legal, as long as they’re wearing the black band. Obviously, a visit to the counselor for a psychiatric evaluation was needed before a black band could be issued.

Now, bands could only be put on or removed by the individual (or their owner, if they were enslaved). They were enchanted so that they could not be put on someone without their informed consent. Literally, there was a System popup when someone tried to put on a band requiring them to confirm, before it would go on. I was really quite pleased with the R&D folks for that bit of enchantment. That made it very difficult, if not completely impossible, to switch people’s bands, or slip a band on someone who didn’t have one.

As for more ‘traditional’ sex crimes? I decided to take a page out of Amsterdam’s playbook, but expand things a bit more. Prostitution would be legal, and taxed, just like any other profession would be. There’d be regular screenings for disease and the like, naturally, but it would be legal, and mostly unfettered. Whether it was paid escorts, brothels, or massage parlors, it didn’t matter. So long as all free persons working there were doing so of their own will, the taxes were paid, and the health codes followed, they were all legal.

But, why would someone go and pay for sex, when they could just go out and grab anyone with an appropriately colored band and get their rocks off? Well, the answer was the same as why someone would go and pay for food when you could make it at home, or pay to change the oil on your car, instead of doing it yourself. Sometimes, people just wanted to go to a professional, and let them do all the work.

Plus, not everyone would be comfortable with the whole ‘free use’ thing. Whether they were shy, or concerned about performing in front of a crowd, or even just not confident in their looks, there were plenty of reasons why someone would not wish to put everything on display. Instead, these other options allowed for a more personal, intimate approach.

That, of course, brought up the idea of restricted areas. You could restrict things completely, like saying this was a ‘No Band’ zone, or do a timed thing, such as having a business that was a Blue/Green/Red Zone between 20:00 and 02:00, Ceres Time. Military vessels and bases were No Band zones, period. While in a No Band zone, it didn’t matter what color band you had on, everyone was treated as being No Band. Other zones? You had the option of being teleported out of the zone, or putting on a band that met the minimums of the zone.

While installing this technology, with the help of my workers and the System Interface, I discovered some extra bonuses. Teleporter pads made for quick, easy mass transit, but the contingent teleport spells to get a person out of a zone they weren’t banded for opened up new possibilities. For instance, I didn’t need to worry about traffic when sending in a quick response force to deal with crimes in progress. Just teleport the police in, and you’re good. And evacuating people to hospitals when they were injured was just as easy.

Of course, I was still going to have cops on patrol, but they would be more ‘public safety’ officers, than a quick response force. Traffic tickets, giving directions, and helping sort out minor problems. I wanted to avoid the more egregious examples of policing gone wrong, so body cameras were mandatory, and there was no such thing as qualified immunity. And cops who were charged with using excessive force faced judicial enslavement.

These were actions that could rightly be called radical, if I was still on Earth. However, Ceres was a new kingdom, and we hadn’t yet developed our culture. We had a chance to start fresh, without some of the puritan hang-ups and racial tensions that haunted countries down on Earth, due to decades, if not centuries, of ignoring problems, rather than fixing them.

Frankly, I was glad that I had all of this in place now. After all, the ship that was coming from Barnard’s Star was only a week out, now. Having all of this in place was a weight off my back, since now there was a process for dealing with situations that didn’t include all disputes coming across my desk. It made Ceres look like an actual state, rather than a group of apes fumbling in the dark. And I would need that, if I was going to be engaging in diplomacy.

Sometimes, I missed being a simple warlord.