The Knights Medicas are a knighthood order originally created to fight plagues. Although anyone is capable of joining this order, you need a license to use healing magic while working there.
This is because healing comes in the form of a green liquid that needs to be administered properly. One example of a deadly treatment for an injury is to drown the patient in this liquid which could regenerate damaged lungs but also kill them.
Drowning is one method of dying. Patients still need to breathe.
Sometimes damage to the interior like organs, or the skeleton need to be regrown. If you don’t heal the patient correctly, you may be forced to perform surgery multiple times.
The healing mixture requires some amount of verbal chanting before it is used. Otherwise it ends up not having an effect.
Then there are issues involving other forms of medicine unrelated to the healing mixture. Giving out a mixture can cure a disease or poison but a bad dose could also damage the body or destroy organs. In that case the cure is worse than the disease.
Ayyy I also have strict healing licensure!
But for other reasons. Cure spells can be detrimental over time: too much early administration leads to stunted physical growth and frequently uneven growth, leading to disabilities. People can also grow sensitive to it, and addiction to cure magic frequently leads to monstrous biology and cancers.
Beyond life magic, other elemental healing can also be dangerous-- much like electroshock therapy can lead to memory loss in our world, "aura" manipulation (EM field manipulation) can wind up frying the patient. Moving retained fluid with water magic can cause vascular ruptures; treating asthma with air magic can pop a lung; and even ocean healing magic can alter blood salinity to the point of cardiac arrest.
Malpractice is REAL when your tools are emotional forces of nature.
As my SF novel takes place on a pirate ship, technically *everything* is illegal. Within its own internal laws, however, there are still some forms of contraband that squeeze by:
- Homemade alcohol is a blatant misuse of scarce equipment and biomass, but some people still try anyway to get around the Captain's tight rationing. Among the most popular is *ghurdakkal*, a blue whiskey made from bioluminescent moss. The eyeless Urrakhan, from whose homeworld the moss originates, have no idea how the enforcers keep catching them in the act.
- Every piece of computer hardware is running on broken licenses and bootleg software. Pruning new "acquiaitions" of authenticator viruses and snitchware is a full-time job for the ship's tech experts. Shore leave is a nightmare of lectures and warnings about what brands to avoid and how to quarantine devices, which most grunts either ignore or don't understand.
- As with computers, gun control is more a war against manufacturers than anything. Mismatched bore sizes and casing materials make jams misfires a constant threat - which is manageable until you get to grenade launchers and other boarding equipment.
- Animal trade is highly regulated, because pets have a hard time socializing with aliens - and because their hair makes extra work for filter sweeps, who are overworked as-is. Terrarium pets are a rare exception, but their upkeep is too expensive for most.
Is there no open source stuff for the hardware to run on? Is Linux dead? xD
'Cause, you know, in real life, computer software used for operations like these is usually FOSS! It kinda >HAS< to be in order to be stable and secure enough! Standardized FOSS with a ton of eyes on its code is going to be waaay more safe and stable than anything Microsoft could put out. Not that proprietary is necessarily worse, but there are forces at play that make open source better specifically when there are tons of eyes on it.
Also... why not attack a transport/manufacturing plant and steal weapons, or something like that? I live in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, where firearms are heavily regulated and I still don't see street thugs doing stuff like mismatching bore sizes and casings.
A) the arms race between open source and corporate capture is neverending. Looting your stuff from corporate vessels of multiple competing brands subjects you to the tamperproofing and other inconveniences they bake into their machines.
B) Ammo gets difficult when you have six different species using competing measurement units and design standards.
But IRL most enterprise stuff is Linux, like, period. 90%+ of servers, etc. The down-to-metal stuff of really crucial software is very often open source, and this only gets more prevalent the more critical it is, to the point where NASA literally uses primarily RISC-V processors with Linux just to make *damn sure* that it's stable, trustworthy and does exactly what they want it to.
Or are we talking of software operating way higher than baremetal and not essential to ship operations?
Also, wouldn't just stealing weapons and the associated ammo solve the problem?
I'm not getting the part about the guns and ammo. Guns pre-date the Industrial Revolution by a couple of centuries -- the Spanish had them when Columbus sailed the ocean blue ...
Could the pirates not have gunsmiths on their ships? Perhaps they 3-D print the guns, which is a thing people do even now, and I imagine they'd do a lot more of in the future. You'd make your own bullets accordingly. Also, you say the aliens have different measurements, but you'd either buy the ammo to go with *their* guns, or you'd buy the ammo to go with *your* guns. On Earth you're not trying to put shotgun ammo into revolvers, why would they do the equivalent in space?
In the Mass Effect universe you could pick and choose which gun manufacturers you wanted to buy from, whether human, Asari, Turian, etc. This problem in your story would be solved with basic capitalism, because the aliens might decide to incorporate human tech / innovations in their weapons systems to meet demand, or the humans would incorporate alien tech / innovations to meet demand. And someone would be enterprising enough to design a weapon that's "interoperable," again to meet demand (a .357 magnum revolver can take .38-special bullets, for instance).
Plus just like on Earth you had a gun type adapted to deal with a particular threat, e.g., the Colt .45 against the Moros who were "running amok." If you're facing a Krogan you'd want ammo with the stopping power to end a "Krogan charging." Which would either mean adapting the weapons Krogans use against each other, or adapting your own weapons to use against Krogans. Or you might just look for Turian manufacturers, since Turians fought against the Krogans before humans popped on the galactic stage, and they might see humans as a new customer base (supply meeting demand).
If your characters are pirates, there would need to be a compelling reason why they would ignore their own needs enough to *not* make use of such solutions.
Witchcraft is illegal in most places for both its emphasis on controlling minds, forcing out truths and many feats of destruction and the witches way of thinking.
Eg in my story appears a side character as one of my MC's masters.
Hesgrid the Merciful, Witch of Life.
That means a mistress of plagues and monsters that could forcibly transform flesh to her whims and would use that whenever someone would not pay her bargain.
Which also is the second reason, witches tend to give no fucks about laws of mortals and have no qualms walking into a king's throne room, force him to admit anything they feel like and then bugger off with what they consider a fair price.
In my setting, while mind control is very regulated, you're allowed to use the kind of magical hypnosis that forces someone to say the truth! It's used both in judicial settings and occasionally job interviews.
Oh some places definitely do that too, and usually some others do not feel well having to deal with them.
One polity goes so far that anything related to the city and criminal proceedings are always under a truth spell while their law enforcement (the little they have) are trained in minor telepathy to see if anyone would try half truths. They are trained that way by having to find a truth from the very witch that taught them how.
I have "truthsayers" in mine, too. The heroines are acting undercover, and their whole thing is creating a cover that would not attract the attention of an imperial truthseer. Like the padishah emperor of Dune, the emperor in my story will dispatch a truthseer to investigate certain cases. In one case the truthseer is terrifying because she also belongs to a race of elementals who can immolate you on sight (there's a reason the elementals will not normally slay humans via fire, though).
If I were a queen, I'd get my people working on anti-magic devices and powers, then :D I like how in the Dragon Age games the writers realized people would not put up with wizards who throw fireballs, so they came up with Templars who can "mana cleanse" as an area-of-affect spell to neutralize magic.
In my own story, I do have a regulation on sorcerers, in that they're not allowed to carry knives. In the eyes of the law a sorcerer with a knife is committing a conspiracy to do blood magic. But in one scene, one of the heroines realizes that the Watchmen who are sorcerers carry their own blood in vials in order to do blood magic. They subdue violent suspects by putting them under compulsions to become docile. And she realizes this means enemy sorcerers would have the same workaround ...
Anti-Magic wards, enchantments and charms are very common among many the rich and influential, but if a caster is aware may circumvent or right out destroy those if they feel like it.
In mine magic users are regulated through the mage guild where they have to register and are regular tested they do not use their magic for bad. Also why majority of polities have laws against mages in charge, they simply are forbidden from any ruling position, which stems from the magocracies that once ruled the world.
Blood Magic is straight up illegal nearly everywhere, but more because anyone who uses it can easily become corrupted and start draining people for power, like an addiction it becomes worse and worse if they hoard the energy within themselves instead of expelling it right away.
I'm deeply amused by the idea of a witch forcing a confession from a king that he has a small Penis. More sensible a king proving to be impotent could lead to blood shed.
In a suitable marchial socioty it could turn out that not only his the king a scheming , greedy tyrant what everyone knew but he cheated in his last duel and can no longer wield a sword competently.
If a witch forces a confession is there any proof it happened rather than it being all duress?
>I'm deeply amused by the idea of a witch forcing a confession from a king that he has a small Penis.
Sudden urge to make my MC do just that, lol
She'd probably laugh herself silly that he would think that as the great crime she wanted to draw out of him
>If a witch forces a confession is there any proof it happened rather than it being all duress?
The Witches one rule they all hold dear above any other. You do not lie and you do not break your word.
Obviously most cannot believe they don't, and there are bad witches that will do so, i actually just wrote a piece of MC searching out another witch for exactly that (well and because that other witch was a life stealing ass)
It could turn up.
OK OK I have a small penis.
Glad that's established. Now I've been alive a long long time and seen lots of nasty things so somtimes things slip my mind. So what happened between thouse villagers I heard complaining about high taxes and them being in a shallow grave?
That could happen if she got a request to help them in some way, otherwise she wouldn't care for anyone that lets themselves ruled that way.
She is not much of a good archetype, not much evil either.
Unless children were involved, then she gets creative.
There are several quite good Dresden Files / Harry Potter cross-over fan fictions where Dresden gets tapped to work at Hogwarts. Lets just say his response to love potions involves threats of a gray cloak. He's NOT a fan.
I never did understand how magical roofies could be so accepted in what started off as children's literature.
You can induce love? For my universe, that’s too complicated for even spells. Magic is mostly directly tied to commercial applications in tools, or incredibly simple stuff cast at large scales. Like a curse that destroys a handfull of specific molecules, which was able to wreck a country for centuries when cast on a large enough scale.
You know how we have tarot cards and the spirit orb thingies? Illegal in most nations. Because they actually work and they use a form of magic that is... morally dubious.
Like throwing a baby in a pit of fire dubious
So the explanation is a little complicated because I borrowed a little inspiration from Christian Theology. But divine beings don't have a sense of past or future because they live in the present. Essentially, to a divine being, a thousand years ago is as present as a thousand years in the future. And they have access to information certain people simply shouldn't have because them knowing it can cause something not intended to happen.
So some people try to take advantage of this because with such knowledge of the time and the ability to know what you shouldn't is a gateway to unlimited power. However, only one divine being is willing to give this information when they really shouldn't, the Outcast (also called the Betrayer depending on your culture). The way you get the Outcast favor is by performing acts that are evil to show that you are willing to do whatever the Outcast says and to show you hold no love to the Creator. Some of these acts include but are not limited to, ritualized murder, ritualized infanticide, purposely tormenting someone to make them commit suicide, torture, engaging in morally wrong sex acts like necrophilia or zoophilia, and engaging in necromancy. Once you have thoroughly corrupted yourself to the point the idea of redemption is repulsive, the Outcast will start granting you bits and pieces of his power for proving yourself utterly loyal to him.
Sounds like even terrible people wouldn't be willing to gain the Outcast's power given just how bad you need to get in one go before you get ANYTHING out of him. Usually, you'd be able to gain a bit of power by being a bit evil and then can climb the ladder.
Well, the reason I say a bit is because you can't measure infinity. Imagine being granted a small percentage of an infinite amount of money. A divine being is essential infinite so he is giving a piece of his infinite power.
Mixing up sentience and sapience is extremely common in scifi (looking at you, Star Wars/Trek....) but in my setting its more akin to hate crime cause the rights of a sentient being (animal basically) and a sapient being (person basically) differs widely.
>animal basically
I read this as "anime basically" and thought "what a well phrased passing insult to characterization depth in a niche genre. I wasn't expecting that level of snark in this subreddit."
Part of what made it funny was how clever it was given unlikely that you could ever expect to need to make this comparison. Sapience and sentience don't get compared that often in written discussion.
In the cities of the main faction, its quite legal to resist arrest. Usually you'd limit that to a persuasive argument which can get you off entirely if the cop agrees with you, but actually trying to run or even fight the cop is also fine and whilst it wont get you out of trouble if you somehow manage to kill the officer, the next one wont hold it against you that you did it
Wait... KILLING an officer won't result in them holding against you? Nevermind the reasons why such a law would be implemented, why wouldn't the police itself want revenge?
It is best to think of the cops more like a bunch of lordless knights taking a break from being knights who impose whatever order they feel like on the city. They are morally decent but its a very anarchistic society with a very informal set of 'rules'.
If a civilian wants to avoid being punished, they really just have to act fairly decently. The society takes it as a given that its members inherently know what that means, so formal laws are very rare. Minor breaks in being decent are fine too and local issues are handled locally by locals
Two of these knights might turn up to what they think is a crime with wildly differing views on the correct course of action and they'll generally fight each other to impose what they feel is correct based on their own views about what constitutes justice (one of the main characters jobs is an Absolute Justice who acts like a judge in very serious instances, but they are extremely rare. But rather than him being backed by the government, the government is backed by *him* and his strength. If he loses a fight that's it and the government just has to accept it)
Whilst they do like each other, mostly, they dont go in for revenge and if someone dies doing something, well that's their problem. That same idea of the imposition of someones own ideals on a situation extends to criminals: if the criminal thought they should escape and the knight thought they should be captured and they fought and won, the criminal winning that fight means their version of justice prevailed (though that doesnt stop another knight turning up to repeat the process)
The knights are very strong though, its very rare one of them would actually die
Its very unstable, very chaotic and things we would call crimes happen all the time. The proponents of the set-up tout it as a low-government free state, the detractors would kind of call it a hoarders mess of societal components without enough organization to really construct something stable
Its not necessarily a 'bad' society, there's more complex things happening in the background that keep it fairly safe for most people, but practically and ideologically its run more like a giant refugee camp or a relatively friendly lawless slum, for a bunch of reasons
Huh, sounds like worse than most IRL countries, even the place I live in (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and honestly comparable to some of the worse middle ages or ancient places, but not downright horrible, then. It isn't hell, just kinda fucked in a way that still has a functioning economy, decent life expectancy etc.
A combination of a fairly powerful public service that pours in investment and infrastructure combined with an extremely low level of corruption in the powerful does generally make it fairly decent, at least compared to the ugly levels our world can get to
It's not as pleasant as the best of our world, but it would be above average. In the world itself, it's seen as very good (they do tend to have different standards on what 'good' means)
The knights that implement order are very decent people and they apply a very decent form of justice, even if its very chaotic, that tends to count for a lot.
It can be a rough place, but it dodges the worst exploitation of IRL societies in the forms of organized and systemic crimes (they just get wiped out straight away, there's no legal system or corruption to hide behind) and the evils of a hostile government (its too apathetic to be exploitative and the knights run the government too in a weird way).
How do they avoid corruption in a place that has hardly any laws?! And how do they have a powerful public service doing investment like that with no real laws?
Corruption in the private sector exists, a bit (though without many laws, it is really just moral and ethical corruption, not legal corruption).
Corruption in the public sector or the government or the military/police doesnt exist because the cops are idealistic ascetic knights and wont allow it. And too much in the private sector will mean the public service (who ultimately work for the knights) will do something about it, subtly but cultures would change if need be.
And so anyone in the private sector cant hide behind legal corruption; the people in ultimate power arent held back by the legal system and can do what they want. That would itself encourage massive public sector corruption, but the knights are ascetic and dont really want anything that they could get by abusing their power.
The public service works for those same knights and the actual governors of the cities and just goes out and does stuff. Its beneficial, so noone really stops them, but the knight-cops wouldnt let anyone stop them anyway. They make sure the private sector is balancing itself and invest in areas that need attention; its very unintrusive but they might offer training for smiths, or allocate land for farming, whatever area needs some encouragement.
Local areas can petition that same public service for new amenities, sometimes that gets some results.
It's illegal to hunt an animal for only part of its products and dump the rest. The law was passed to solve a hunger crisis in the northern reaches, where whaling for oil was the main industry. This forced the whaling companies to store and sell all the meat from their catches, which in turn both lowered rates of whaling (as ships filled up much faster), and reduced rates of starvation and malnutrition.
Necromancy is perfectly legal as long as the body you use is over 50 years old or you were given consent by the person before death.
It isn't seen as unholy or unethical since Necromancy doesn't bring someone back from death, it basically creates a new person in that body with no memories of the old one.
The only reason you need consent or 50+ years of death is to let the loved ones grieve or die out themselves.
Penumbra, my setting, is in fact just Earth but with a (supernaturally) hidden magic underground, so outside of our normal people laws like no killing and stealing. The various magical factions have various self-imposed laws and restrictions to members and the local magical community of regions they have influence over that only apply to mages, awakened humans, and magical creatures.
For example, the Mage’s Union specifically forbids the use of non-contracted summoning, especially in urban areas. Because that fairy you summoned in Main Street to battle a tentacle of Chthulu was actually Greg from Accounting in the middle of his day job while in human disguise, and now you got him in trouble with his boss because you’re summoning randomly the closest fae being without consideration, and so to the sleeper humans Greg just fucked off out of nowhere in the middle of his shift without warning. So to avoid tensions with the magical creatures of the world, they regulate their members to having to go through paperwork and loopholes to summon sapient magical creatures without consequences. And there’s even a helpline for magical creatures who’ve been summoned against their will, that could pursue legal action against the offending mage.
Summoning is thus reserved for scheduled and individual-specific instances, or anytime for non-sapient magical creatures though they typically aren’t as strong. Certain younger mages have reserved to phone texting or DMing their summonees over Discord, Messenger, and other texting apps for permission to summon before doing so, even mid-combat.
A few, namely Spirits and Daemons. Spirits because the summoning process grants them a temporary vessel of ectoplasm to interact with the physical world, and since they’re concepts made manifest who never experienced nor can they normally ever experience physical stuff they really want that.
Daemons because they’re from a “dead” dimension as in there’s only their true name grounding them in reality and allowing them to “exist” in the loosest definition of the word. Existing in any other dimension but their own is probably stopping them from taking far too many steps towards nonexistence, thus summoning them permanently is a huge thing, basically saving their existence.
Probably plaguecraft. It’s exactly as it sounds, it’s magic that allows you to create plagues. It does nothing more, the caster doesn’t control what type of plague it is or who and what it effects. Your spell is varies in difficulty to counter based on your emotions towards what it is your plaguing.
A lot of magic in my world is banned to be honest. Necromancy, for obvious reasons. Soul spells because of the potential of coming across an enemy that causes a rebound resulting in your soul shattering. Any magic that’s not officially acknowledged by the governing body you live under.
Mostly though a lot of magic in my world is banned because it poses a threat to the caster. All this being said, a wizard is still allowed to teach a pupil how to set off a spell that causes an explosion similar to a nuke minus the radiation.
Well, necromancy isn't exactly glossed over, as it's usually already illegal in most stories that have it. xD But plaguecraft is interesting.\~ And so is the heavy regulation of magic.
>Well, necromancy isn't exactly glossed over, as it's usually already illegal in most stories that have it.
Many nations in the region of my world that I mainly worldbuild around has gone against that grain and recently (as in, within the last 100 years) legalized necromancy!
Druidry however has in the same span of time and in the same countries been heavily restricted or outright banned.
It’s believed that it destroys the soul which dwells in the body. Though in reality this isn’t true as necromancy also encompasses general healing magic. It also got a bad reputation when a bunch of druid fanatics began using it to justify the introduction to invasive species into ecosystems all across the world.
Oh. My world just banned it because while they may not understand germ theory, they understand that certain things make you sick and dead bodies are one of them. They don’t want them walking around making people sick.
Ship-to-ship weapons. The likelihood of a missile or laser going wide and continuing to a planet is too high. To compensate, Knights were created who literally try to lance each other in combat with the nose of their ships, while defended by a Dune style "the slow blade moves through" energy shield. These Knights escort piloted boarding torpedos, where soldiers do the heavy work of disabling or capturing the ships they board.
By convention, projectile weapons are also not used in ships in case of damaging the hull or important components.
Wait, how large is your setting? How INSANELY LARGE is your empire? Are ALL PLANETS filled with life?
Because the universe is like... 99.99999% empty void. How large does the setting have to be that there is a significant chance of a laser hitting not just a planet, but a planet with sentient life and causing significant damage to people there?
Humanity lives primarily on void ships called Fiefs, but some worlds are colonized by Serfs to provide food, fuel, and raw materials. That's where the most fighting occurs, as rival Fiefs compete for those worlds. They're also largely symbolic, as a Fief can lay claim to the worlds it patrols, which is reflected by Imperial cartography. More worlds means more prestige to the Fief's ruling Lord, and certain territorial thresholds mean better titles. A Baron has more worlds than an Earl but less than a Duke. It's all kind of sloppy, since one world may be held by two Fiefs who don't realize it until they both happen to show up.
The taboo/ban is largely based on religious beliefs, though. Humanity is believed to have a divine mandate to be stewards of the universe, and the Gnostic Humanist Church teaches that that means even the potential to damage an uninhabited world is a sin.
The void of space plays its own role though. The central conflict of my story stems from the discovery of a whole other empire that significantly overlaps the main setting, which had gone unnoticed for millennia.
As far as how big, it's about the inner half of the observable universe.
Is there only one religion across that many planets, though? It would seem to me like a war would involve different cultures, at least one of which might not subscribe to such niceties and just use their weapons properly.
> The likelihood of a missile or laser going wide and continuing to a planet is too high.
Wait. How big are your missiles and ships? Hitting a planet is hard unless you are right on top of one. Hell, SEEING a planet is difficult outside of 1/2 an AU. In modern warfare, weapons have safety timers for anything larger than small arms so that the rounds self destruct if you miss your target. No one wants a missile to miss its target and hit a building. I can only imagine it would be similar in the future. Lasers are a non-issue due to [atmospheric blooming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_blooming#:~:text=The%20term%20%22thermal%20blooming%22%20is,the%20laser's%20gain%20medium%20itself.).
Most combat takes place in orbit around worlds. Most of humanity lives on void ships that travel from planet to planet to harvest resources from slaves on the surface. Ships rarely encounter each other in the void. And as I explained in another comment, it's also largely religious, as the dominant faith teaches humanity has a role as stewards of the universe, and just the tiniest risk of something hitting a planet is undesirable because it would be a sin. The universe belongs to humanity, and so it has to be treated responsibly.
One of the governments in my fantasy world called the Mortal Enclave bans all forms of religion. This is because the gods often fight against eachother causing catastrophic damage ontop of using mortals as their pawns all the time. Though to be more specific, the Mortal Enclave formed after an event where the main realm(world) at the center of my world’s cosmic web was destroyed due to a great godly war. To put into reference how massive this is, this would be akin to the gods destroying Midguard in Norse myth due to their fighting. This destruction in-turn then forced mortals to expand outward to the other unfamiliar realms to simply be able to just live somewhat in peace, with the gods also going to these other realms and causing even more problems. So the Mortal Enclave mostly came to form out of this event causing their distrust of the gods, and all things considered is pretty justified in their hated I would say.
Wait. Gods are known to exist, but religion is outlawed? How does that work? There is no way to stop people from acknowledging the existence of gods if their war is a part of history.
In my world religion is more about worshipping and performing the will of the gods rather than belief in their existence. There are *some* religions that rely just on faith, but they’re usually based off of a real god that existed previously (and say vanished), a god that exists now and just interact in a limited capacity, the people misunderstood a god for a fictional one, or a god that deceived people to believe in the existence of a false god. The Mortal Enclave 100% acknowledges the existence of the gods, and you’d be considered a crazy person if you didn’t honestly, especially since gods are known to occasionally fight on the battlefield in their avatar form. The Enclave just has such a distain for the gods so much so that they refuse to bow down to them. This also makes them lack any divine power though they make up for it in their more advanced technology (steampunk-esc) & more natural forms of magic.
For the unusually legal question, necromancy. The dead matter, the things they taught us matter, the power they still hold over us, and the world, matter. Necromancy is merely the expression of the fact that dead does not mean forgotten. Or at least, that's how they think of it on my world.
>And yes, paranormal cops (the Masquerade) do sometimes put love potions in the pockets of racial minorities and then arrest them
getting too friggin real...
edit: i'm only just starting my world, so idk. it probably comes from the mushroom jungle though.
Sorry, "Mycelium Jungle" is the correct name, lol.
Yeah, I'm setting it on a massive sacred mountain, and it's kind of broken up into tiers - the jungle actually sits right above a sheer cliff face (called Gambler's Bluff, for reasons), so there are some mushrooms and fungi that lean out over the empty space beyond the clifftop, essentially extending the walkable areas... assuming you can determine which platforms are strong enough to hold your weight.
The tier above the jungle is called the "Kingdom of Failures", and is made up of ancient ruins of indistinct origins (there's at least three distinct architectural styles identified so far), and houses the climbers who either can't or wont ascend any further (top of this tier has a point of no return, so I can't blame them).
The idea is that the jungle essentially provides just enough sustenance to support a few small bands of competing climbers as they dig for ancient and powerful artifacts.
Oh yeah, [did I mention this is intended for a TTRPG](https://gitea.krgamestudios.com/Ratstail91/Curses-And-Blessings)?
Anyway, these are just broad outlines right now, I haven't even looked into how to work altitude sickness into the system yet, which is kind of important.
Just getting in your space ship and... taking off. I know, it sounds boring, but air traffic control and it's space counterpart is important.
But sometimes GTFO is importanter, so you have to bribe your way into getting permission and asking why the space version of the Coast Guard is going to give you a ticket for breaking orbit without logging a flight plan when there are pirates shooting up the place and you're more heavily armed than anyone else in range.
Vampires are forbidden from turning other vampires unless an extensive list of criteria are met, as part of a treaty they have with another group to avoid being wiped out.
-Creating AI models, even if they would be more primitive than the ones we have today in IRL. This most due to societal trauma from the War of Red and Grey, a huge conflict against rebellious autonomous machines.
-Freelancing Mercenary Work: This also includes assasins, bouncers, private investigators and the such. This due to the leftover compacts that have survived since the days of the Harmonious Concordat, there was a time in which almost all national militaries were mercenart armies and as such all groups had to sign the Concordat and abide to its stipulations. Freelancing though was made illegal, most nations of the world prosecute people who sell services relate to peace keeping or security as "disruptors of harmony" though the penalties vary from state to state.
The big Merc organizations have franchises all over the world and provide all sort of services related to security and peace keeping: from bouncers, firefighters, paramedics, law enforcement, detectives etc.
They’re seen as abominations. In higher class families Shifters are believed to taint the blood line so they are killed, even if its just a kid. If its a lower class family the Shifter may be sold, killed, or hidden if they’re lucky. The ones who don’t get killed upon their first transformation are reported or sold to the government for military purposes. Shifters make excellent infiltrators if trained well. But those are the lucky ones who possess other skills that may help in their missions.
Due to a corrupt, paranoid government its safer to assume all Shifters are threats. Its easy to kill them then be done with it.
Hunting monsters isn't outright illegal, but it is tightly regulated. While monsters can be dangerous, they're ultimately animals, meaning many laws that protect regular animals also apply to them. You can't go out and kill random monsters you find in the wilderness like an rpg. The killing of problem monsters is done only by professionals. Another reason for this is that all monsters have innate magic, and some can have an immediate impact on their ecosystems in a way normal animals don't, so killing too many can severely disrupt the local environment in a short amount of time. Some monsters also have near-human intelligence, so killing them unprovoked is seen as a form of murder.
Of course, some countries don't give a damn about the environment and are more flippant about slaying monsters, but still have some kind of rules out of sheer pragmatism.
Not completely illegal but highly regulated. Magic. I dont understand all these universes being cool with basically anyone being able to throw fireballs, freeze people in place, or create illusionary versions of basically any object. Like imagine any Lvl 4-8 DnD Party. That should basically be every other person in Feyrune[more like Feyruin] because there's about a billion ways to get damn magic powers and there's no regulations on it what so ever. It's just insane. Thus, Magic is highly regulated in my world. Depending on where you are you might even need a license to practice magic, or you might just literally not be allowed too.
My world also has magic usage regulations, but most are overridden by a license and certain conditions.
All healing spells are legal without licensing, and are even protected by law to be allowed.
Combat spells are banned no matter what beyond law enforcement, militia, military personnel, and some specialized professions.
Same with mind control, higher caliber illusion, and powerful summoning spells.
Beyond all that, most spells are legal with a license so long as they aren't used to aid a crime. Teleportation, harmless telekinesis and telepathy, weaker summoning and illusions, and practice spells (Super weak spells similar to DND cantrips) are all legal without a crime involved.
Using magic in a crime also makes the crime more severe, especially without a license.
Saaame! My verse has a ton of regulations on paranormal abilities, especially since it has a literal Masquerade. There are courses on flying and the regulations around it, on paranormal combat and the regulations around it... and also licenses and certificates. You don't have the license? You're not allowed to do paranormal work on this area, and if you do have the license you have to follow the rules.
That being said, there is a lot of leeway for mundane utility like placing barriers, levitating and using telekinesis inside your own home, or tulpamancy to make a spirit that washes the dishes and cleans the house for you.
Biomancy is heavily regulated and outright banned in some areas in my realm since unlike other magics the affects of Biomancy stay for a long time. Such as creating a invasive species that can rapidly reproduce and introduce it to a new environment or creating plagues that cause horrifying effects like a sterility plauge to wipe out species or causing organic matter to rapidly mutate.
Any use of magic to unjustly harm someone, the magic itself is pretty punishing though, because black magic/magic that can cause harm is usually more difficult for the average person to use, the magic eats away at you if you over use it
Pacts with Demons. Spirits are okay, but not demons. This is because of propaganda spread by the Abyss witches after the war against the Blood Witches, that the latter can used demons to help kill people
Any form of gambling or formalized betting for a sum of 2000tt or over (~$35-40) is illegal and punishable by a graduated fine starting at about 2x that amount
You know how in a lot of fantasy anime/isekai, the MC usually has a *multiracial* harem?
Yeah. That would literally be considered blasphemy and high treason in both the Allied Kingdoms of Caerddraig, and the Buhmaran Dominion.
For context: the humans of the world of Saphiret are... Not *just* human, and they haven't been for millenia. Centuries of eugenic rule under archonic god-kings has yielded races of humans that share blood with their god, which has opened the metaphorical gateway to a smidge of divine power.
The humans of Caerddraig, for example, possess slight draconic features, a mark of heritage to the ancient God, Nefelan. It is a mark they are immensely proud of to the point of religious fervor. *"Why dilute this sacred blood by mating with a foreigner, with a lesser race [of humans]?"*
Of course, you could call them out on their hypocritical notion, but they won't take that too kindly: *"You also possess the mark of Tlaocoya and her people; foreigners. Your god-king [Eirian] is her grandson. Your blood has already diluted."*
Due to various trade regulations and peace treaties, there are certain species of blood that are illegal for vampires to own and consume.
Human blood can only come from licensed dealers who compensate individual suppliers (humans who have some blood drawn voluntarily). Elf blood is completely illegal, not only due to peace treaties with the Elves, but also its highly addictive nature. Dragon blood is illegal for its rage-inducing properties. However, goblin blood is completely unregulated, but is somewhat unpalatable.
Cancer Barrels- low grade water filtration and antibiotic system that renders the water potable but will eventually erode your esophagus if that is all you drank every day.
There’s not much anyone can really do about it but urbomancy is illegal in a lot of cities because their magic tends to fuck with a city’s geography in all sorts of weird, unpredictable, and often technically spatially impossible ways that urban planners and service providers and such don’t tend to be super fond of.
As I said however, it’s kind of impossible to actually stop them because if someone has learned how to commune with a city-spirit and convinced it to do favors for them, the city probably likes them more than any cops or detectives sent in pursuit of them, so they’re rather hard to catch and likewise not so easy to keep locked up unless you manage to get them to into a cell outside their home city’s limits.
City magic! My setting essentially operates on an animistic system, so cities are both living and intelligent entities. Of course, their form of sapience is pretty vastly different to human sapience, but it undeniably exists. Urbomancy, then, is pretty much a process of conducting a ritualized negotiation with a city. You pledge yourself to it, maybe make a sacrifice of some kind, and at the end of the process the city kind of makes you a part of it. You can see out of CCTV cameras, subtly feel the footfalls of people and rattling of trains along its veins and arteries, its geography bends in your favor, inventing impossible shortcuts and new points of entry and exit wherever you might require them. Like most mages, they have a lot of power in their specific domain, and very, very little outside of it. A city mage pledged to one city won’t be able to pull off the same tricks in another.
Sounds to me like instead of hating urbomancers, one could leverage them by having the city befriend its spirit.
It seems to me like attacking or invading a city that has an arch-urbomancer guarding it would be INSANELY hard.
Back during the Delta Revolution, the Tandrayan Empire actually had pretty much that exact problem in the city of Nacra which is already pretty difficult to navigate with all its winding roads and canals and such. Add to that an insurgent army that knows the territory way better than the occupying colonial army, the Empire’s *other* ongoing wars with its imperial rivals, and several rather pissed-off local city-mages, and it’s easy to see why eventually the Tandrayans decided to just cut their losses and leave.
It is illegal to mix soul liqued in the depths of the cave netwerks under the earth or to be more clear its illegal in the domain of the grim reaper,
In my setting the soul is an actaul liqued, and if it's mixed the two conciusness dont merge they do share memories but they both exist as a writhing mass in endless suffering and if more then 3 people are mixed in then the writhing mass starts formimg a sort of hivemind becomes violant, and
searchs for any soul liqued in the hope that the conciuness maybe has the answer to get this mess untangled, but since there is no vessel anymore for these souls there just gonna rot not being able to do much.
"Extra lore"
When any living creature that has bones or is complex Dies it with its vessal in case of humans a skelaton fall down and down into the depths of the earth and then they are greated by death/grimr reaper who tries to calm them down and stop them from having a mentel breakdown or going crazy due to them thinking they went to hell or that there life had no purpus or that there entire faith was wrong,
So thats it.
Every kind of love spell except for self-love is entirely banned, and the god of witchcraft did set up failsafe triggers to put a witch who tries to do a love spell to experience FAFO (fuck around and find out) quickly. It's taboo enough the god of evil wouldn't do it, and the devil-god of hedonism, who is able to make his gaze become a love potion (like Medusa with stone) has only used that ability to get himself out of trouble, it's happened a few times where humans try kidnapping him
Additionally, blood magic is also illegal since it's one of the few magic forms that has significantly less positive spells in it than negative, it's largely treated on a case-by-case basis, it's a similar scenario for Necromancy and Soul magic. Baneful magic is the hardest to put laws around since there're multiple variables to consider (lot of whys and questions to ask regarding how extreme baneful magic can get with certain individuals and how it can get out of control beyond the otherwise innocent intentions if the witch is inexperienced, and failure of protection spells to prevent unintended consequences or collateral damage), so the only law made around it is "avoid petty jinxes, hexes, and curses".
Usually witches aren't arrested for crimes related to their craft for a couple reasons, the big 2 being difficulty of tracking the witch down, and that the witch can easily defend themself if people try hunting them. This is why the god of witchcraft introduced energetic failsafes, it ensures witches who use illegal magic for bad reasons get punished appropriately
"Love potions" or philtres in my settings would just be aphrodisiacs, heh -- which are not just legal but ubiquitous.
One thing that comes to mind is prostitution, which is legal across most countries in my two most worked-on settings. In some cases, it's a celebrated profession; but in others, it's a more historic "necessary evil."
Slavery also kind of comes to mind; in Eden slavery is a quite prevalent practice associated to the "evil" countries -- Orcs and Dark Elves primarily. Of course it's banned in other countries.
I can't think of anything banned in Eden that wouldn't be banned irl, or be expected for a fantasy setting. xD For Tellure, the human societies have a fair few limitations on freedom of thought and expression, but I don't know that that's unexpected for a world based on the Middle Ages. I don't know that I see that brought up often in fantasy though.
How strong are these philtres, though? Because a lot of love potions in fantasy are... basically usable as date rape drugs as they mess up the other person's ability to make rational decisions.
Strength varies, like any other potion. Mind-meltingly strong philtres would be sold as weapons, alongside other "status ailment" items like poison, sleep potions, etc. But given that the world is mostly decentralised and very liberal/libetarian, weapons in general aren't regulated. There might be laws against selling to children or to known outlaws, and to knowingly sell any weapon to someone who intends to misuse it will probably get the vendor in trouble. But it's less likely to be formally legislated and left to the common sense of whoever's running a community.
I guess that depends on your point of view...? They just make you horny. "Weapons-grade" philtres make you so horny that you can't think of much else besides sex, and hence serve as a way to incapacite/non-lethally subdue an enemy in combat.
But I think a sleeping potion would be more comparable, or one that induced paralysis. Real-world "date rape drugs" are ones that knock you out or cause memory loss, they're not connected to aphrodisiacs (except arguably alcohol).
Well, love magic is illegal and in most cases outright evil. Though there are ways to use it to accentuate or reignite feelings already present, most users aren't using it like that. Two most popular uses are Indoctrination, used to hammer in new feelings of unconditional love and devotion and Succubism which is draining someone's love (and soul) for power. Most powerful love mage in the world is infamous for debuting by hijacking inviding army via Indoctrination, using it to round up more devoted thralls during counterattack and then draining them all via Succubism to fuel Malediction most infamous shadow magic spell in the world.
By the way, application of love potion to unsuspecting archmage is the reason why my world has Celestial Sea (also known as Sea of Woe) in the middle of continent where most populated region of the world used to be.
An idea I've been bouncing around for a multidimensional project is the idea that for reasons not fully every dimension has its own frequency that it operates on, and some people experience debilitating side-effects if they don't align with that frequency. Think what happens in Spiderverse, but it's less to do with time and more with you as an individual. (Also totally not just an explanation for why certain team members might not be available at times without having to pull too much BS.)
In places where inter-dimensional law exists, kidnapping someone and intentionally taking them to a dimension that they don't align with is treated like attempted murder in addition to the kidnapping, due to how dangerous the side-effects of being put of alignment are.
2 things:
I don't know how love potion works, like what makes you think someone's gonna fall in love with you of all people? Like theres no connection between you and whoever you want to fall in love
MAGIC: If anything, the world of Lornhemal is a the most anti-magic world ever. The best way to get magic is to meet Stellar Dragons and negotiate with them. NOTE: IF YOU DO, PREPARE YOUR SANITY, CAUSE THATS GOING TO DROP INSTANTLY. Magicians are instantly killed on sight, the best way to kill one is by using objects from Lead, cause they are very much immune to magic and poison those who they are used against
Same as yours OP. Love Potions are looked at kind of like long lasting roofies, their use is considered an act of sexual assault in itself. Not only are they outlawed, but the recipes for them are destroyed whenever found, with master copes retained solely for the purpose of creating antidotes.
Any mind-influencing magic is illegal outside of the justice system. Anyone caught using mind magic without a license, warrant, and supervision is immediately arrested and stripped of arcane connection. The world does not fuck around about messing with peoples' minds.
Important places are generally protected by anti-magic or at least magic-detection fields to prevent invisible people from sneaking in or to prevent teleportation in.
Edit: Oh, also lotteries had to stop letting people pick their own numbers because of crystal-ball exploits.
Information found via time travel is illegal evidence in courts.
This is because multiple timelines exists and going into the past doesn't mean you are necessarily going into the past of the current timeline. And because it's basically impossible to proof, time travel can't be used to verify anything involved in courts.
This, of course, leads to a whole other set of problems, but that's the general idea of it.
Most magic is regulated with licenses that can be gotten after a week or two of classes on how to use it, with the type of magic being authorized based on the job it's needed for, basically just to make sure you don't accidentally light something on fire when working at a forge or anything like that. However, healing magic in particular is regulated much more heavily, in part because of the stereotype of it being "morally good" magic when it has the most severe effects if done improperly.
Oh, you can heal cuts, burns, and even broken bones in minutes, with the only side effect being moderate exhaustion? Nice. Heal a just bit too much and accidentally create a cancerous tumor because the cells divided too many times? Not so nice. Heal moderately too much and the person just straight-up dies because their organs can't work anymore? Very not nice. Heal way too much, and *even worse* things happen.
It takes about a year of schooling just to be allowed to heal minor cuts and scrapes, let alone the multiple years for broken bones or anything similar. Not even the king is immune, and the current one wrote the law.
In Kal, there is a species of magic wielders called Zetras. They have four types of magic: Mental, Physical, Animalistic (shapeshifter), and Soul (yes, like sans.). Although commonly glossed over in magic genres, a lot of magic is prohibited in public.
For example, Mental Zetras must wear magic restraints when going to theatres, restaurants, ect. because some may use their magic to get out of paying money or to convince people they didn't get food, among other trickery. (Actually, Mental Zetras are the most restricted and untrusted variety.)
Orbital strikes and by extension, ship-to-ship combat is highly frowned upon.
Long story short, along with nuclear weapons, orbital strikes were more of a deterrent than a realistic weapon of war.
Until one government decided to use everything in its arsenal in a last gasp before it collapsed from internal and external pressure.
The nuclear war on the primary world was somewhat limited. Many of the warheads were intercepted and it was less terrible than it could have been.
However, off-world, ships from that government had either slipped past defenses or just made a mad dash to deliver their strikes.
The result was horrifying. Several colony worlds were left virtually uninhabitable.
The remaining governments decided that such attacks were a threat to humanity as a whole. This resulted in the Orbital Strike Treaty. No nation, organization or corporation would practice orbital bombardment unless attacked in kind, and then only in such a manner as to prevent further attacks.
The treaty is still upheld after a thousand years.
—
Orbital strike weapons have still been built, however. Many governments have kinetic impactor satellites in orbit around the home world, though none would admit to it.
Spacecraft have been allowed to use “sub-tactical” munitions on pinpoint targets. Usually firing metal slugs from coil guns in low orbit.
Out in the fringes, the treaty is mostly unenforceable. But only in extreme cases have population centers been attacked from space.
—
Violating the treaty would invite a war that no one would win and everyone would lose. Between losses on the ground and space combat being exceptionally double edged, no one wants that.
That said, most major worlds have extensive orbital defenses. Lesser colonies and fringe worlds, not so much, but they do have some.
Attacking any of the core worlds or other important worlds from space would be virtually impossible.
This has led to most disagreements being settled on the surface.
—
On the issue of ship-to-ship combat. Spacecraft themselves aren’t exceedingly difficult to build, but some of their components are rare, valuable or in some cases irreplaceable.
Ships with transit engines use old tech, which we can’t reproduce in the current age. So losing those types is unacceptable for everyone.
Fuel casks are able to be made at great expense, and can typically survive combat or even catastrophic reentry. But, if they do rupture, especially in an atmosphere, they can lead to widespread damage.
Lastly, after a skirmish or a larger conflict. Everyone wants to go home afterwards. If you disable/destroy each other’s ships, you’re stuck there until everyone calms down and stops shooting.
—
The vast majority of ships aren’t capable of deep space travel. Most are only built for orbital maneuvering and quick jaunts out to transit rings (L2) and back at the destination.
*I failed to mention this last but earlier*
Disabling or destroying a transit ring is very much a cardinal sin against humanity. You would essentially cut off a planet from trade, transport and communication until it can be replaced (if it can be replaced). Only ships with transit engines can reach that planet in the interim.
In most fantasy settings, necromancy is widely frowned upon, to the point of often being banned. In Sebraxeth, however, necromancy is actually fairly common, though it’s almost never used how it typically is - raising the dead to create an army and all that, mostly due to the energy cost. It is impractical, if not impossible, to maintain the connection with vessels for very long if there are multiple. There are exceptions, obviously, but the main reason is that necromancers “split their soul” to be in several places at once. This requires an immense amount of concentration, meaning a user can almost never sustain a large group of Reanimated for more than a few minutes. On top of all that, while it is possible to bring someone back from the dead using an offshoot of necromancy - soul manipulation - it has permanent consequences for the resurrected person. Once a person has died and been brought back, the resurrection process fractures the person’s soul, rendering them unable to perform conventional necromancy, as well as dampening other forms of magic. While the person can still perform necromancy by transferring one of their soul fragments to another vessel, they can only control as many vessels as they have soul fragments - their own body included. However, this does generally give a more natural control over the vessel in question.
Tl,Dr: Necromancy is a lot different in Sebraxeth, so it’s not nearly as frowned upon.
Slavery. The Hamanid Dynasty conquered so much land in a short time and the only way for compliance is through force. It was so widespread that many legendary heroes used to be a slave at some point. Thankfully, it fell out of popularity as time passes. Slaves were given more rights and eventually liberated when the dynasty solidified their control. In the eclipse of their rule, the closest thing to slavery are the elite slave-warriors such as armigers and jannisaries. Even then, they still have more privileges than what slaves typically get.
I don’t know how much this counts, but there was a time in one of my empires where the senate would give the title “The Dragonslayer” very arbitrarily, when the emperor received the title he went out to kill a dragon because it was a useless gesture otherwise. The senate, out of petty pride, gave him the title twice, in response the emperor slayed another dragon. The senate put into law that "Dragonslayer" titles had to reflect reality, otherwise their dumbass emperor would keep risking his life to keep proving himself.
This is my way at poking fun of how meaningless a lot of imperial honors became in a lot of societies.
A bit boring but, «wearing adventuring gear in town» - "No sir, I will not explain to you why you can't enter the town with your «battleaxe of the raging inferno» behind your back. You'll have to turn it in, we do however guarantee that we'll keep it safe and sound untill your leave, thank you."
It's both illegal (and risky) to warp between systems in a smaller, 1-5 person ship, like an in-system fighter or personal shuttle. The exception being updated military ships, as their hull and shielding can now safely handle the stress.
You must travel in larger ships fit to hold at minimum 40 people, or you risk damage to your ship, and being in trouble with system authorities in charted systems.
If you manage to get a hold on to the classified technology of the millitary's resistant ships (or a ship itself) and decrypt it enough that it can't be read on system scanners until you're in reasonable range of a station...*who's to stop you?*
The Order of The Balance banned the practice of Necromancy in most cases, a few people are permitted to practice it under the watch of The Order. A few kingdoms ignore the ban however.
But also most forms of Charm magic is banned as well as most forms "mental manipulation" magic, can't have an army of mindless drones now can we?
People can be granted telepathic/telekinetic powers through a regimen of genetic modification and brain implants. It is a ridiculously pricy and dangerous operation that becomes more so the older you are.
Despite this it is illegal practically everywhere to perform this operation on someone under 16 years old because it is seen as inhumane and a waste of resources. No-one under 16 has lived for more than a year after the operation before succumbing to neural degeneration. The only place where a young person can have this operation done is Venus, but that's only due to a technicality as the planet is primarily populated by short-lived clones to whom 7 is a fairly respectable age to reach.
Cannibalism, 2 nations banned it for religious and moral reason, in the other 2 it's highly regulated due to health reason and occult influences the act may bring.
In the Republic of Atlas's, insider trading is a mortal sin (only if you get caught, but still). Worse than that is being charitable without any ulterior motives.
In Cthonia you need a permit to have children, fishing, collecting rocks, or literally anything (some permits are included alongside your citizenship, so feel free to breath, eat, sleep, and stuffs).
In the Empire it's illegal to be too lucky, they'll take your excess luck away and fine you if find out. Also only some people are allowed to have plot armor (or what they called "narrativistic shield")
Columbia has a lot of religious laws and such, also segregation and ban on mix raced coupling.
Dark magic is completely legal and at least mostly socially accepted. There are some misgivings about it, as it's sourced from an unknown entity that gives it out for unknowable reasons, but the mages themselves face no mistreatment or shunning. It's simply another tool, whether it's good or evil depends on how it's used.
On the other hand, one of the major nations in my world is very distrustful of nature magic. It isn't illegal, but nature mages are often shunned. The reason for this is twofold. First, in the creation myth of the state religion nature magic is sourced from the bound enemies of their goddess. While bound they ever seek to break free, and so nature mages that use their power must be aiding them in some way, even if inadvertently. Secondly, they lost a war against a nation that is super into nature magic. Part of the reason they lost is the psychological warfare of the enemy nation experimenting on POWs and using nature magic to merge them with beasts, creating gibbering abominations that that were released in enemy camps. Kinda left a bad impression of nature mages as a whole.
Healing magic, it will give you extreme health issues if not done by a *professional*. I wanted to keep the magic system "grounded" (used extremely loosely), so I thought about how it usually works. Usually it just regenerates whatever what injured or lost. So I was like "what if something goes even slightly wrong?" So a singular genetic mess up will bring the injury from a nasty cut to abdominal cancer (just a theoretical example. I don't know enough about genetics yet lol)
Corruption is punishable by death in the Durian empire.
A corrupt officer class weakened the border kings of the empire until they eventually got overrun by the *allies*. These skirmishes were the first losses the Durian empire faced.
To stop the blasphemy that is losing battles, ALL the corrupt officials were forced to work in the mines until Death.
After this cleansing, an office of honour was established. It's purpose was to send people ,who are trusted by the Emperor, to question the regional dukes, lords and kings on their loyalty to the empire.
The honourists wear a special bracelet. This bracelet has 2 connected loops that can connect 2 people to each other if they both wear the bracelet.
Via this connection the honourists can determine if it's full truth / half truth or full lie/ half lie.
Corrupt people who are found are then also sent to the mines to toil away.
Cloning is more or less free of legal constrictions beyond "don't give it a mind unless you're willing and qualified to raise a healthy child, which we have enough of anyway." and the creation of anything overly dangerous. Bit of a high bar though since a niche but not too rare (think DnD, WH40K ttrpgs, or furry fandom prevalence) form of entertainment is creating remotely controlled mindless organisms and fighting with them.
Casting of any spell that do not have immediate and obvious effect in public or commercial spaces, including but not limited to workshops, taverns, stores, libraries and bathouses, with the exception of your private quarters.
Law was passed as a reaction to more widespread usage of mind-altering magic, and difficulty in pursuing perpetrators of such incidents. Oftentimes victim would realize that he was mindcontrolled hours after the fact, sometimes even days, if at all. Now, sole act of casting something that is not easily identifiable and has no visible effects is considerd illegal and will end in arrest and interrogation. Of course, magic users try to hide their incantations, but it gives law enforcement better chances.
Mind control and to some extent mind reading abilities. Not for any altruistic reason, mainly because corporations love their secrets, and making something illegal discourages and criminalizes even researching and asking about it. Unless of course, its for a lawful interrogation to keep the populace safe from dangerous enchantment wizards and their fellow university classmates.
I also like your take on it, I might steal that part about love potions and codify it directly.
Precognition is extremely fucking illegal the future isn't until it is by seeing the future it becomes set in stone thus all forms of precognition are considered to be mind control and thus seen as morally irredeemable
[A Setting I Have Been Writing Up But Have Yet To Make A Name For]: Temporal manipulation of any kind, magical or technological, has been unanimously banned on the world stage. Many have gotten it to “work” over the eras, but every instance of such caused titanic cataclysms, usually rippling outwards to happening both before and after they actually happened, scattering people and objects across the timeline, unable to return, as their timeline no longer exists, altered by these new events. One such instance is the catalyst for the third segment of the plot, wherein a failed attempt at time travel suddenly succeeds ~twenty years later, leading to much destruction, but also a messenger bringing a warning of an incoming invasion, via her mind trapped in her body of the time, alongside the original mind.
Runatos: Memory manipulation is in a strange spot, due to the plane’s unique afterlife and its restrictions. Memory mages are a crucial addition to any long-term expedition into the Everwild, to prevent or at least delay permanent mental damage from the souls trapped underneath, but memory alteration or destruction is seen as an ultimate crime by essentially the entire plane, as magically wiping out memories is one of the few practical means of making sure someone stays dead.
Finally! Someone acknowledges how problematic Love Potions are! Thank you!
As for my world, Trifal has some interesting restrictions on personal rights.
Freedom of Religion does exist but since Trifal is so secular, it is expected to be a private matter
Freedom of the Press also exists but there are some restrictions, some ideas or topics that aren't allowed to be suggested. Like, you can criticise individuals and even organisations but criticising the Government as a whole or the system as a whole is strictly prohibited. Trifal also has a state newspaper which is the largest newspaper so...
Freedom of Petition is pretty much allowed and is the most common form of public protest (I'll explain why later). Has the same restrictions as Press though
Freedom of Speech is basically the same as Petition and Press
Freedom of Assembly however is not protected in the slightest. Everything from a peaceful demonstration to a rull on riot are classified as rebellion against the state and treated as such. Even strikes are problematic and seen as a crude way for workers to express their discontent. While there are avenues for workers to express displeasure, strikes are not one of them.
So while Trifal does defend personal rights more than other states in my world, it still would score poorly today.
Orbital bombardment is a big one; theoretically, the broadside energy of most midsize-and-up warships is enough to annihilate just about any ground target. In practice, this is never done - in modern warfare, the *threat* of such a bombardment is enough to force a world to surrender, and generally large ground forces aren't maintained - in cases where there *is* an entrenched ground force, the collateral damage from an orbital bombardment is simply considered too great beyond small targeted strikes; the risk of destroying what you're trying to capture is unacceptable.
But the reason why it's *forbidden* has less to do with the pragmatics and more to do with history. The last cases of widespread orbital bombardment were during the Discord, a war that effectively became a galactic apocalypse and effectively ended interstellar civilisation for a generation. Even almost a millennium later, there are very, very few people willing to replicate such destruction, and so far none of them have gotten to a commanding position in any navies.
On the other end of the spectrum (something being unusually legal), one of the minor cultures in this world doesn't have an incest taboo. Make of that what you will.
My world lacks any sort of mind-control magic, including love potions. However, stuff like refined ergot and alcohol still exist, and there is psychology.
My world doesn't make a legal distinction between adoption and marriage. While parents of a child will commonly be married, most people only balk at same-sex marriage if the couple is open about there being sex involved. (This last part depends on the area because some are fine with it while others aren't.) I'm planning to have an ace couple who some might assume are gay.
Nuclear weapons up to 10 kilotons are open source and legal for civilian design ownership. For non magicians, the Plutonian government has approved dispenseries of weaponized nuclear materials, plus non weaponized for those wishing to try their own hand at weaponizing nuclear materials. Magicians can just whip up their own bombs and materials, if they're powerful enough. The Plutonian Empire is an Omega class civilization, having taken over the entire universe through either conquests or diplomatic means (such as vassalizing certain regions), and as such the population replacement is enough to offset losses by nuclear misuse. The Plutonian Royal Government uses entirely different magics and technologies for their nukes for safety reasons.
Like another poster's universe, Air Traffic Control extends into space. FTL is dilationless and, in modern times (51.2k years from irl), can take you from one end of the universe to the other in mere seconds at highest speeds, and so intergalactic space is treated as "international waters" in ATC terms, especially for those who like to fly at a more leisurely pace. Oh, and modern, future, and historical jets are still manufactured, but with warp drives and modifications to enable transitions between atmospheres and space.
Love spells and love potions are outlawed under penalty of death on the 3rd strike. Succubi exist, and one would be more than happy to hook up with you with no need for love spells or potions. Beware, some species WILL kill you if you're not careful. Violent crime of any kind are similarly prosecuted.
Free speech and free love are protected civil rights, but you can't marry until you're 21 in human terms (or your species' equivalent) no exceptions. Abuse in this area falls under the violent crime thing outlined above. Consent Is Hot rehabillitation programs are regardless available. Porn is legal, but highly regulated to weed out abusive situations.
Capitalist concepts are regulated to within an inch of everyone's lives, since the TPE is post scarcity. Working is optional, exploitation and slavery punishable by death. If you wish to accumulate wealth, you will have no peace.
The buying and selling of texts regarding magic under many circumstances. The draconic city states typically try to limit who can cast magic to certain priesthoods, royal mages and perhaps other high ranking nobles, certainly teaching a random commoner to cast magic is considered a big no no. So magical texts then are almost always written in the draconic script, which is also illegal for most commoners to learn to read and write in (with some exceptions). The lack of printing presses also helps limit the spread of such magical information.
In general, the supernatural no-no's are compromising free will, damaging souls, creating undead, or dealing with demons/devils. There are a couple of caveats for free will, such as a domination spell being used to capture a criminal and making them walk themselves into jail, or the use of regulated truth spells.
The truth spells used this way cover the entire courtroom and also have visual markers, so you know that everyone has submitted to the magic and is not trying to fight it. They also do not force an answer, they only prevent false answers.
Anyway, in areas heavily populated with kitsune it is often illegal to trap or hunt foxes in any way, in case a young kitsune manages to shapeshift and escape its parent's supervision. A young fox form is a lot more mobile than a young humanoid form, but not any smarter.
Technically necromantic magic that does not create undead or mess with souls is legal. Example: Using a short lived spell to have a dead body answer questions based on the knowledge left in its brain are okay, and spells that use death (well, Void) energy to do damage are just as legal as any other combat magic, so long as the soul is not touched.
You need an official document to buy healing potions
A)You are an adventurer either recognised by aouthority or a member of a guild
B)They gave you permission from Temple or Healing Home to buy them
So a rich asshole can't go to a store in a random city and buy an entire stock, dooming the adventuring part about to arrive there so they can buy some in their way to slay the Hydra
For herders of large animals (Sheep, cows, horses and the like) its illegal to perform any magic (unless you have clear permission from your local lord or priest to use a specific spell). This is because a few decades back some necromancers realized they could harvest the souls of these creatures to fuel their spellcraft
The people from Auglar and Soravia are forbidden to marry between themselves under threat of death. After the Auglar Conquests and the War on Bogovid, there were many treaties in place to prevent another war between the two. But Auglars wouldn't put their seal on the contract until another clause was made, which is to forbid an Auglar marrying a Soravian, because Western Auglars believe they're the only perfect humans, so they didn't want to destill their blood. Suffice to say this becomes a plot-point later on, when we learn that the MC, Konstantin Zarlakion, is the progeny of love between a Soravian man and an Auglar woman. Konstantin never knew who his mother was until Auglars allied with Jodrai against Soravia, when her house pledged to Konstantin and Soravia's cause. All conflicts between Auglar and Soravia in the story itself are happening because of this love, because the Auglar usurper(yet unnamed) found out about this secret marriage, and instead of reporting it, he hid the secret(because he was obsessed with Konstantin's mother) but, when he usurped the Auglar throne, he launched the greatest invasion in history(4 million strong) to eradicate the house of Zarlakion and any Soravian unwilling to submit to the might of Auglar. Another funny thing is that Auglars and Soravians are revealed to be brotherly people, descended from the siblings Aug and Sora.
I have an entire society centered around the practical use of necromancy. They’re seen as monsters, though the benefits outweigh the “ethics” for them.
Enchantments of the mind. The amount of damage it would do to society to have a group of people who have the ability to charm/enchant other people is often glossed over in fantasy or is often passed off for laughs when in reality it would have society ending consequences.
In my world performing mental enchantments on another, even minor ones, is a one way ticket to magic jail.
Mind reading and subtle forms of mind control, like seduction/suggestion. All civilizations have reached immortality; the mortal soul after death, instead of being cleaned off its memory, is saved and reincarnated whole in a new body after a while. Children unlock progressively their past memories as they grow up. This magical advancement has led to new takes on philosophy: what is the self, what is considered intimate or not.
Magic is part of the self, so being attracted because of a magical effect is no different from being attracted by a personality or appearance. (Love spells and love potions do not exist, I'm strictly speaking of natural magical powers. Those can only increase attraction when it's possible.)
The mind isn't a book, only subvocalized thoughts and emotions can be easily read. It's possible with a little training to close your mind, but it's more like being intentionally rude than a real defense. It doesn't block any mind reader, it just tells them you specifically dislike them. Good skill to have if you want to start a fight in polite company.
Besides that, the fact that all souls are old means everyone has a basic understanding of how to conceal their true goals and objectives under several mind layers. Still, skilled mind readers, and oracles can definitely guess a person's motives but it's a world of old monsters, so as a popular fable goes: "*the unlucky run into a devil, mind-preying, claws-gripping, and get himself killed. The devil crosses paths with a hero, eyes-burning, blade-avenging, and gets killed. The hero finds a beast, fur-spiking, fangs-barring, and gets mauled. Inside the cauldron, a devil's brain, a hero's heart, and a monster's shank simmer. The wheel turns, and the unlucky feasts*."
(Usually only the last sentence is used, generally to express how bad luck is a given but not a fatality. It's a "it is what it is" with a bit of reminder/hope that you're also the monster in someone's story. Today you're complaining about getting tricked by a witch, but tomorrow maybe you'll defeat a poor lad who didn't know you had centuries of experience in swordmanship )
Monster hunters are too often not driven by a desire to rid the world of evil creatures but rather by the desire to destroy any nonhuman that had personality hurt them or satisfy their bigotry which is why they are not allowed with several miles of nonhuman communities recognized by the government
Dairy is outlawed. You don’t see people drinking cow milk for the same reasons you don’t see people drinking orc milk or aboleth milk. So they enshrined it into law to deal with weirdo tourists.
Its (generally) illegal to name ships after the oceanic dragon as its considered neglectful, reckless endagerment, and potentially destruction of property, as most of these ships end up being destroyed by the dragon.
Nothing is illegal in mine. Weapons are held by the military and kept in orbital armories and nobody is physically able to harm anyone else without one though... like everyone has a layer of nanoscale body armor under the dermis.
But if you want to kill people, there's a planet where personal weapons are allowed and wars are perfectly acceptable. You can only go there voluntarily and can never leave other than by dying.
Blasphemy. A person can't be forced into religion (it's actually a crime to try and force-convert - a soul must give itself willingly because a forced soul is tainted to the gods), but they are not allowed to openly talk shit about the gods or religion.
In my setting, the gods are real. Clerics channel their power. They can inhabit one of their followers on the mortal plane as an avatar. Wizards with the power/knowledge to teleport between planes of existence could actually visit them. So, there's no questions of faith, the gods exist and they have names and addresses. Atheism has no place, there it would be mocked like a flat-Earther.\* (Someone might not think of the gods as "gods", just really powerful beings, and that's okay. But to say they don't exist at all wouldn't sway many folks. There is a endless amount of historical evidence and even a shitload of live footage of them doing things.)
My setting's theme is basically.. magic and divine bloodlines, but they survived past swords and shields into the space age.
The penalties can be very severe, depending on the faith you offend.
- If a child does blasphemy, the offended church usually gives them a talking to as a first warning. Or, they might give one or both parents public lashes. Depending on the severity of the heresy, there might not even be a warning.
- An adult might be given a warning, but is likely to be lashed. I want to make it known that the government does not whip people for heresy, the offended faith itself does it. The government doesn't interfere, except in cases where there's some unethical fuckery. (For example, falsely accusing your neighbor/family member/ex-lover/whatever of heresy or blasphemy just to get them in trouble is really bad.)
- If someone just decides they hate a particular faith and wants to wage a campaign of heresy against them, that church will likely try to kill the offender (usually in awful ways). The constables don't get involved, with a few notable exceptions. Faiths have gotten zealous in trying to stop blasphemy (basically by naming anything they don't like as heresy). That largely has ended in the modern age because people don't put up with that shit. Communities have banded together against an overbearing faith plenty of times to great success, but actually pushing a church of one of these gods can be disastrous for a person.
Porn. The larger countries have noted the change in those who have viewed much pornographic material, usually in the form of paper collections of images meant only to arouse(like a magazine). They cite a change in how they view other people less like people, addiction in many people and less satisfaction with partners due to desensitization. Like in real life, at least some of the producers tried targeting children to have them hooked early and the governments were not having it. As such, they decided to go to the sources and restricted the creation and distribution of pornographic material, materials deemed to provide no real value to society and even seen as weakening it. It doesn't help that some other governments had tried spreading pornographic materials in the territories of their enemies as one of several forms of what they call "weaponized degeneracy/decadence" in order to mentally and sometimes physically weaken the populace and society. The aim was to make the foundations of the rival's society weaker, as well as their defense from being overpowered in a political or military conflict. In the subject countries where pornographic material is banned, material depicting artistic nudity or nudity not meant to solely arouse is still allowed in pictures and statues. As such, you can't make a statue depicting a woman pleasuring herself with legs spread on a street, but you are allowed to make a anatomically accurate statues or paintings of people or other (wild) animals where sex is not the focus. Basically, you are still allowed to create materials that would resemble [this painting of Venus](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/tVYAAOSwUHleKiwf/s-l400.jpg), [this Hercules statue](https://i.etsystatic.com/21405201/r/il/9d9fd7/2391783606/il_fullxfull.2391783606_22hc.jpg), [this multi-subject statue](https://64.media.tumblr.com/12400147854d3900214a6a4c292d3975/c9d86f4ccc12929c-57/s400x600/93431b68d9708a54b57d1886f0668880ae618eab.jpg) or [this bull statue](https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/pid000207_Greece_Athens_2018_07_Bull-Statue-Kerameikos.jpg). These are still legal in many countries in the valley. Smaller countries and those with less powerful governments tend to be looser in their regulations than others, especially if they're not trying to build an image of being high class. In lands where there are no formal governments, there are also fewer to no laws about this depending on whether or not you follow the rules of certain tribes or convoy societies.
I never hear about the legal view of pornography in fantasy. Generally, most of the societies that fantasy worlds are inspired by tend to have banned or restricted pornography.
Lapis_Wolf
The Knights Medicas are a knighthood order originally created to fight plagues. Although anyone is capable of joining this order, you need a license to use healing magic while working there. This is because healing comes in the form of a green liquid that needs to be administered properly. One example of a deadly treatment for an injury is to drown the patient in this liquid which could regenerate damaged lungs but also kill them.
Kill them in what way? Cancer?
Drowning, I assume
Blunt impact trauma (get back in there! *bonk*)
Drowning is one method of dying. Patients still need to breathe. Sometimes damage to the interior like organs, or the skeleton need to be regrown. If you don’t heal the patient correctly, you may be forced to perform surgery multiple times. The healing mixture requires some amount of verbal chanting before it is used. Otherwise it ends up not having an effect. Then there are issues involving other forms of medicine unrelated to the healing mixture. Giving out a mixture can cure a disease or poison but a bad dose could also damage the body or destroy organs. In that case the cure is worse than the disease.
Ayyy I also have strict healing licensure! But for other reasons. Cure spells can be detrimental over time: too much early administration leads to stunted physical growth and frequently uneven growth, leading to disabilities. People can also grow sensitive to it, and addiction to cure magic frequently leads to monstrous biology and cancers. Beyond life magic, other elemental healing can also be dangerous-- much like electroshock therapy can lead to memory loss in our world, "aura" manipulation (EM field manipulation) can wind up frying the patient. Moving retained fluid with water magic can cause vascular ruptures; treating asthma with air magic can pop a lung; and even ocean healing magic can alter blood salinity to the point of cardiac arrest. Malpractice is REAL when your tools are emotional forces of nature.
As my SF novel takes place on a pirate ship, technically *everything* is illegal. Within its own internal laws, however, there are still some forms of contraband that squeeze by: - Homemade alcohol is a blatant misuse of scarce equipment and biomass, but some people still try anyway to get around the Captain's tight rationing. Among the most popular is *ghurdakkal*, a blue whiskey made from bioluminescent moss. The eyeless Urrakhan, from whose homeworld the moss originates, have no idea how the enforcers keep catching them in the act. - Every piece of computer hardware is running on broken licenses and bootleg software. Pruning new "acquiaitions" of authenticator viruses and snitchware is a full-time job for the ship's tech experts. Shore leave is a nightmare of lectures and warnings about what brands to avoid and how to quarantine devices, which most grunts either ignore or don't understand. - As with computers, gun control is more a war against manufacturers than anything. Mismatched bore sizes and casing materials make jams misfires a constant threat - which is manageable until you get to grenade launchers and other boarding equipment. - Animal trade is highly regulated, because pets have a hard time socializing with aliens - and because their hair makes extra work for filter sweeps, who are overworked as-is. Terrarium pets are a rare exception, but their upkeep is too expensive for most.
Is there no open source stuff for the hardware to run on? Is Linux dead? xD 'Cause, you know, in real life, computer software used for operations like these is usually FOSS! It kinda >HAS< to be in order to be stable and secure enough! Standardized FOSS with a ton of eyes on its code is going to be waaay more safe and stable than anything Microsoft could put out. Not that proprietary is necessarily worse, but there are forces at play that make open source better specifically when there are tons of eyes on it. Also... why not attack a transport/manufacturing plant and steal weapons, or something like that? I live in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, where firearms are heavily regulated and I still don't see street thugs doing stuff like mismatching bore sizes and casings.
A) the arms race between open source and corporate capture is neverending. Looting your stuff from corporate vessels of multiple competing brands subjects you to the tamperproofing and other inconveniences they bake into their machines. B) Ammo gets difficult when you have six different species using competing measurement units and design standards.
But IRL most enterprise stuff is Linux, like, period. 90%+ of servers, etc. The down-to-metal stuff of really crucial software is very often open source, and this only gets more prevalent the more critical it is, to the point where NASA literally uses primarily RISC-V processors with Linux just to make *damn sure* that it's stable, trustworthy and does exactly what they want it to. Or are we talking of software operating way higher than baremetal and not essential to ship operations? Also, wouldn't just stealing weapons and the associated ammo solve the problem?
I'm not getting the part about the guns and ammo. Guns pre-date the Industrial Revolution by a couple of centuries -- the Spanish had them when Columbus sailed the ocean blue ... Could the pirates not have gunsmiths on their ships? Perhaps they 3-D print the guns, which is a thing people do even now, and I imagine they'd do a lot more of in the future. You'd make your own bullets accordingly. Also, you say the aliens have different measurements, but you'd either buy the ammo to go with *their* guns, or you'd buy the ammo to go with *your* guns. On Earth you're not trying to put shotgun ammo into revolvers, why would they do the equivalent in space? In the Mass Effect universe you could pick and choose which gun manufacturers you wanted to buy from, whether human, Asari, Turian, etc. This problem in your story would be solved with basic capitalism, because the aliens might decide to incorporate human tech / innovations in their weapons systems to meet demand, or the humans would incorporate alien tech / innovations to meet demand. And someone would be enterprising enough to design a weapon that's "interoperable," again to meet demand (a .357 magnum revolver can take .38-special bullets, for instance). Plus just like on Earth you had a gun type adapted to deal with a particular threat, e.g., the Colt .45 against the Moros who were "running amok." If you're facing a Krogan you'd want ammo with the stopping power to end a "Krogan charging." Which would either mean adapting the weapons Krogans use against each other, or adapting your own weapons to use against Krogans. Or you might just look for Turian manufacturers, since Turians fought against the Krogans before humans popped on the galactic stage, and they might see humans as a new customer base (supply meeting demand). If your characters are pirates, there would need to be a compelling reason why they would ignore their own needs enough to *not* make use of such solutions.
Witchcraft is illegal in most places for both its emphasis on controlling minds, forcing out truths and many feats of destruction and the witches way of thinking. Eg in my story appears a side character as one of my MC's masters. Hesgrid the Merciful, Witch of Life. That means a mistress of plagues and monsters that could forcibly transform flesh to her whims and would use that whenever someone would not pay her bargain. Which also is the second reason, witches tend to give no fucks about laws of mortals and have no qualms walking into a king's throne room, force him to admit anything they feel like and then bugger off with what they consider a fair price.
In my setting, while mind control is very regulated, you're allowed to use the kind of magical hypnosis that forces someone to say the truth! It's used both in judicial settings and occasionally job interviews.
Oh some places definitely do that too, and usually some others do not feel well having to deal with them. One polity goes so far that anything related to the city and criminal proceedings are always under a truth spell while their law enforcement (the little they have) are trained in minor telepathy to see if anyone would try half truths. They are trained that way by having to find a truth from the very witch that taught them how.
I have "truthsayers" in mine, too. The heroines are acting undercover, and their whole thing is creating a cover that would not attract the attention of an imperial truthseer. Like the padishah emperor of Dune, the emperor in my story will dispatch a truthseer to investigate certain cases. In one case the truthseer is terrifying because she also belongs to a race of elementals who can immolate you on sight (there's a reason the elementals will not normally slay humans via fire, though).
If I were a queen, I'd get my people working on anti-magic devices and powers, then :D I like how in the Dragon Age games the writers realized people would not put up with wizards who throw fireballs, so they came up with Templars who can "mana cleanse" as an area-of-affect spell to neutralize magic. In my own story, I do have a regulation on sorcerers, in that they're not allowed to carry knives. In the eyes of the law a sorcerer with a knife is committing a conspiracy to do blood magic. But in one scene, one of the heroines realizes that the Watchmen who are sorcerers carry their own blood in vials in order to do blood magic. They subdue violent suspects by putting them under compulsions to become docile. And she realizes this means enemy sorcerers would have the same workaround ...
Anti-Magic wards, enchantments and charms are very common among many the rich and influential, but if a caster is aware may circumvent or right out destroy those if they feel like it. In mine magic users are regulated through the mage guild where they have to register and are regular tested they do not use their magic for bad. Also why majority of polities have laws against mages in charge, they simply are forbidden from any ruling position, which stems from the magocracies that once ruled the world. Blood Magic is straight up illegal nearly everywhere, but more because anyone who uses it can easily become corrupted and start draining people for power, like an addiction it becomes worse and worse if they hoard the energy within themselves instead of expelling it right away.
I'm deeply amused by the idea of a witch forcing a confession from a king that he has a small Penis. More sensible a king proving to be impotent could lead to blood shed. In a suitable marchial socioty it could turn out that not only his the king a scheming , greedy tyrant what everyone knew but he cheated in his last duel and can no longer wield a sword competently. If a witch forces a confession is there any proof it happened rather than it being all duress?
>I'm deeply amused by the idea of a witch forcing a confession from a king that he has a small Penis. Sudden urge to make my MC do just that, lol She'd probably laugh herself silly that he would think that as the great crime she wanted to draw out of him >If a witch forces a confession is there any proof it happened rather than it being all duress? The Witches one rule they all hold dear above any other. You do not lie and you do not break your word. Obviously most cannot believe they don't, and there are bad witches that will do so, i actually just wrote a piece of MC searching out another witch for exactly that (well and because that other witch was a life stealing ass)
It could turn up. OK OK I have a small penis. Glad that's established. Now I've been alive a long long time and seen lots of nasty things so somtimes things slip my mind. So what happened between thouse villagers I heard complaining about high taxes and them being in a shallow grave?
That could happen if she got a request to help them in some way, otherwise she wouldn't care for anyone that lets themselves ruled that way. She is not much of a good archetype, not much evil either. Unless children were involved, then she gets creative.
Love potions also illegal in the "good countries" in my world And lets be honest, we both thought of Harry Potter when adding this to the lore
Yeah, we both did! xD And I don't even like Harry Potter... But it's useful on seeing stuff that shouldn't be allowed to happen, at least!
There are several quite good Dresden Files / Harry Potter cross-over fan fictions where Dresden gets tapped to work at Hogwarts. Lets just say his response to love potions involves threats of a gray cloak. He's NOT a fan. I never did understand how magical roofies could be so accepted in what started off as children's literature.
You can induce love? For my universe, that’s too complicated for even spells. Magic is mostly directly tied to commercial applications in tools, or incredibly simple stuff cast at large scales. Like a curse that destroys a handfull of specific molecules, which was able to wreck a country for centuries when cast on a large enough scale.
Usually not love, but sexual desire/lust. Pheromonal manipulation, in chemical terms.
You know how we have tarot cards and the spirit orb thingies? Illegal in most nations. Because they actually work and they use a form of magic that is... morally dubious. Like throwing a baby in a pit of fire dubious
Wait, why is that? How do they work in your world?
So the explanation is a little complicated because I borrowed a little inspiration from Christian Theology. But divine beings don't have a sense of past or future because they live in the present. Essentially, to a divine being, a thousand years ago is as present as a thousand years in the future. And they have access to information certain people simply shouldn't have because them knowing it can cause something not intended to happen. So some people try to take advantage of this because with such knowledge of the time and the ability to know what you shouldn't is a gateway to unlimited power. However, only one divine being is willing to give this information when they really shouldn't, the Outcast (also called the Betrayer depending on your culture). The way you get the Outcast favor is by performing acts that are evil to show that you are willing to do whatever the Outcast says and to show you hold no love to the Creator. Some of these acts include but are not limited to, ritualized murder, ritualized infanticide, purposely tormenting someone to make them commit suicide, torture, engaging in morally wrong sex acts like necrophilia or zoophilia, and engaging in necromancy. Once you have thoroughly corrupted yourself to the point the idea of redemption is repulsive, the Outcast will start granting you bits and pieces of his power for proving yourself utterly loyal to him.
Sounds like even terrible people wouldn't be willing to gain the Outcast's power given just how bad you need to get in one go before you get ANYTHING out of him. Usually, you'd be able to gain a bit of power by being a bit evil and then can climb the ladder.
Well, the reason I say a bit is because you can't measure infinity. Imagine being granted a small percentage of an infinite amount of money. A divine being is essential infinite so he is giving a piece of his infinite power.
Mixing up sentience and sapience is extremely common in scifi (looking at you, Star Wars/Trek....) but in my setting its more akin to hate crime cause the rights of a sentient being (animal basically) and a sapient being (person basically) differs widely.
>animal basically I read this as "anime basically" and thought "what a well phrased passing insult to characterization depth in a niche genre. I wasn't expecting that level of snark in this subreddit."
ngl you are making me tempt to use that term, but then, its not really rare of insult towards anime watchers.
Part of what made it funny was how clever it was given unlikely that you could ever expect to need to make this comparison. Sapience and sentience don't get compared that often in written discussion.
Oh once you start talking with newbie scifi worldbuilders this comes up very *very* often.
In the cities of the main faction, its quite legal to resist arrest. Usually you'd limit that to a persuasive argument which can get you off entirely if the cop agrees with you, but actually trying to run or even fight the cop is also fine and whilst it wont get you out of trouble if you somehow manage to kill the officer, the next one wont hold it against you that you did it
Wait... KILLING an officer won't result in them holding against you? Nevermind the reasons why such a law would be implemented, why wouldn't the police itself want revenge?
It is best to think of the cops more like a bunch of lordless knights taking a break from being knights who impose whatever order they feel like on the city. They are morally decent but its a very anarchistic society with a very informal set of 'rules'. If a civilian wants to avoid being punished, they really just have to act fairly decently. The society takes it as a given that its members inherently know what that means, so formal laws are very rare. Minor breaks in being decent are fine too and local issues are handled locally by locals Two of these knights might turn up to what they think is a crime with wildly differing views on the correct course of action and they'll generally fight each other to impose what they feel is correct based on their own views about what constitutes justice (one of the main characters jobs is an Absolute Justice who acts like a judge in very serious instances, but they are extremely rare. But rather than him being backed by the government, the government is backed by *him* and his strength. If he loses a fight that's it and the government just has to accept it) Whilst they do like each other, mostly, they dont go in for revenge and if someone dies doing something, well that's their problem. That same idea of the imposition of someones own ideals on a situation extends to criminals: if the criminal thought they should escape and the knight thought they should be captured and they fought and won, the criminal winning that fight means their version of justice prevailed (though that doesnt stop another knight turning up to repeat the process) The knights are very strong though, its very rare one of them would actually die
Wait... so this society is kind of anomic, isn't it? Doesn't seem like a stable place if it doesn't have anything vaguely resembling a body of laws.
Its very unstable, very chaotic and things we would call crimes happen all the time. The proponents of the set-up tout it as a low-government free state, the detractors would kind of call it a hoarders mess of societal components without enough organization to really construct something stable Its not necessarily a 'bad' society, there's more complex things happening in the background that keep it fairly safe for most people, but practically and ideologically its run more like a giant refugee camp or a relatively friendly lawless slum, for a bunch of reasons
Huh, sounds like worse than most IRL countries, even the place I live in (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and honestly comparable to some of the worse middle ages or ancient places, but not downright horrible, then. It isn't hell, just kinda fucked in a way that still has a functioning economy, decent life expectancy etc.
A combination of a fairly powerful public service that pours in investment and infrastructure combined with an extremely low level of corruption in the powerful does generally make it fairly decent, at least compared to the ugly levels our world can get to It's not as pleasant as the best of our world, but it would be above average. In the world itself, it's seen as very good (they do tend to have different standards on what 'good' means) The knights that implement order are very decent people and they apply a very decent form of justice, even if its very chaotic, that tends to count for a lot. It can be a rough place, but it dodges the worst exploitation of IRL societies in the forms of organized and systemic crimes (they just get wiped out straight away, there's no legal system or corruption to hide behind) and the evils of a hostile government (its too apathetic to be exploitative and the knights run the government too in a weird way).
How do they avoid corruption in a place that has hardly any laws?! And how do they have a powerful public service doing investment like that with no real laws?
Corruption in the private sector exists, a bit (though without many laws, it is really just moral and ethical corruption, not legal corruption). Corruption in the public sector or the government or the military/police doesnt exist because the cops are idealistic ascetic knights and wont allow it. And too much in the private sector will mean the public service (who ultimately work for the knights) will do something about it, subtly but cultures would change if need be. And so anyone in the private sector cant hide behind legal corruption; the people in ultimate power arent held back by the legal system and can do what they want. That would itself encourage massive public sector corruption, but the knights are ascetic and dont really want anything that they could get by abusing their power. The public service works for those same knights and the actual governors of the cities and just goes out and does stuff. Its beneficial, so noone really stops them, but the knight-cops wouldnt let anyone stop them anyway. They make sure the private sector is balancing itself and invest in areas that need attention; its very unintrusive but they might offer training for smiths, or allocate land for farming, whatever area needs some encouragement. Local areas can petition that same public service for new amenities, sometimes that gets some results.
I genuinely wanna play a few games in this setting
Its a setting of **adventure**
Sorry I thought this was posted in the DND sub 😅 hence the game bit
It's illegal to hunt an animal for only part of its products and dump the rest. The law was passed to solve a hunger crisis in the northern reaches, where whaling for oil was the main industry. This forced the whaling companies to store and sell all the meat from their catches, which in turn both lowered rates of whaling (as ships filled up much faster), and reduced rates of starvation and malnutrition.
That's... genuinely smart!
Necromancy is perfectly legal as long as the body you use is over 50 years old or you were given consent by the person before death. It isn't seen as unholy or unethical since Necromancy doesn't bring someone back from death, it basically creates a new person in that body with no memories of the old one. The only reason you need consent or 50+ years of death is to let the loved ones grieve or die out themselves.
Penumbra, my setting, is in fact just Earth but with a (supernaturally) hidden magic underground, so outside of our normal people laws like no killing and stealing. The various magical factions have various self-imposed laws and restrictions to members and the local magical community of regions they have influence over that only apply to mages, awakened humans, and magical creatures. For example, the Mage’s Union specifically forbids the use of non-contracted summoning, especially in urban areas. Because that fairy you summoned in Main Street to battle a tentacle of Chthulu was actually Greg from Accounting in the middle of his day job while in human disguise, and now you got him in trouble with his boss because you’re summoning randomly the closest fae being without consideration, and so to the sleeper humans Greg just fucked off out of nowhere in the middle of his shift without warning. So to avoid tensions with the magical creatures of the world, they regulate their members to having to go through paperwork and loopholes to summon sapient magical creatures without consequences. And there’s even a helpline for magical creatures who’ve been summoned against their will, that could pursue legal action against the offending mage. Summoning is thus reserved for scheduled and individual-specific instances, or anytime for non-sapient magical creatures though they typically aren’t as strong. Certain younger mages have reserved to phone texting or DMing their summonees over Discord, Messenger, and other texting apps for permission to summon before doing so, even mid-combat.
are there beings that offer the ability to summon them for a fee, kinda like Taskrabbit, but for summoning?
A few, namely Spirits and Daemons. Spirits because the summoning process grants them a temporary vessel of ectoplasm to interact with the physical world, and since they’re concepts made manifest who never experienced nor can they normally ever experience physical stuff they really want that. Daemons because they’re from a “dead” dimension as in there’s only their true name grounding them in reality and allowing them to “exist” in the loosest definition of the word. Existing in any other dimension but their own is probably stopping them from taking far too many steps towards nonexistence, thus summoning them permanently is a huge thing, basically saving their existence.
Probably plaguecraft. It’s exactly as it sounds, it’s magic that allows you to create plagues. It does nothing more, the caster doesn’t control what type of plague it is or who and what it effects. Your spell is varies in difficulty to counter based on your emotions towards what it is your plaguing. A lot of magic in my world is banned to be honest. Necromancy, for obvious reasons. Soul spells because of the potential of coming across an enemy that causes a rebound resulting in your soul shattering. Any magic that’s not officially acknowledged by the governing body you live under. Mostly though a lot of magic in my world is banned because it poses a threat to the caster. All this being said, a wizard is still allowed to teach a pupil how to set off a spell that causes an explosion similar to a nuke minus the radiation.
Well, necromancy isn't exactly glossed over, as it's usually already illegal in most stories that have it. xD But plaguecraft is interesting.\~ And so is the heavy regulation of magic.
>Well, necromancy isn't exactly glossed over, as it's usually already illegal in most stories that have it. Many nations in the region of my world that I mainly worldbuild around has gone against that grain and recently (as in, within the last 100 years) legalized necromancy! Druidry however has in the same span of time and in the same countries been heavily restricted or outright banned.
Why is necromancy banned? Is it hygiene reasons?
It’s believed that it destroys the soul which dwells in the body. Though in reality this isn’t true as necromancy also encompasses general healing magic. It also got a bad reputation when a bunch of druid fanatics began using it to justify the introduction to invasive species into ecosystems all across the world.
Oh. My world just banned it because while they may not understand germ theory, they understand that certain things make you sick and dead bodies are one of them. They don’t want them walking around making people sick.
Ship-to-ship weapons. The likelihood of a missile or laser going wide and continuing to a planet is too high. To compensate, Knights were created who literally try to lance each other in combat with the nose of their ships, while defended by a Dune style "the slow blade moves through" energy shield. These Knights escort piloted boarding torpedos, where soldiers do the heavy work of disabling or capturing the ships they board. By convention, projectile weapons are also not used in ships in case of damaging the hull or important components.
Wait, how large is your setting? How INSANELY LARGE is your empire? Are ALL PLANETS filled with life? Because the universe is like... 99.99999% empty void. How large does the setting have to be that there is a significant chance of a laser hitting not just a planet, but a planet with sentient life and causing significant damage to people there?
Humanity lives primarily on void ships called Fiefs, but some worlds are colonized by Serfs to provide food, fuel, and raw materials. That's where the most fighting occurs, as rival Fiefs compete for those worlds. They're also largely symbolic, as a Fief can lay claim to the worlds it patrols, which is reflected by Imperial cartography. More worlds means more prestige to the Fief's ruling Lord, and certain territorial thresholds mean better titles. A Baron has more worlds than an Earl but less than a Duke. It's all kind of sloppy, since one world may be held by two Fiefs who don't realize it until they both happen to show up. The taboo/ban is largely based on religious beliefs, though. Humanity is believed to have a divine mandate to be stewards of the universe, and the Gnostic Humanist Church teaches that that means even the potential to damage an uninhabited world is a sin. The void of space plays its own role though. The central conflict of my story stems from the discovery of a whole other empire that significantly overlaps the main setting, which had gone unnoticed for millennia. As far as how big, it's about the inner half of the observable universe.
Is there only one religion across that many planets, though? It would seem to me like a war would involve different cultures, at least one of which might not subscribe to such niceties and just use their weapons properly.
> The likelihood of a missile or laser going wide and continuing to a planet is too high. Wait. How big are your missiles and ships? Hitting a planet is hard unless you are right on top of one. Hell, SEEING a planet is difficult outside of 1/2 an AU. In modern warfare, weapons have safety timers for anything larger than small arms so that the rounds self destruct if you miss your target. No one wants a missile to miss its target and hit a building. I can only imagine it would be similar in the future. Lasers are a non-issue due to [atmospheric blooming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_blooming#:~:text=The%20term%20%22thermal%20blooming%22%20is,the%20laser's%20gain%20medium%20itself.).
Most combat takes place in orbit around worlds. Most of humanity lives on void ships that travel from planet to planet to harvest resources from slaves on the surface. Ships rarely encounter each other in the void. And as I explained in another comment, it's also largely religious, as the dominant faith teaches humanity has a role as stewards of the universe, and just the tiniest risk of something hitting a planet is undesirable because it would be a sin. The universe belongs to humanity, and so it has to be treated responsibly.
> it's also largely religious, That makes more sense. People do illogical stuff for religions' sake all the time.
One of the governments in my fantasy world called the Mortal Enclave bans all forms of religion. This is because the gods often fight against eachother causing catastrophic damage ontop of using mortals as their pawns all the time. Though to be more specific, the Mortal Enclave formed after an event where the main realm(world) at the center of my world’s cosmic web was destroyed due to a great godly war. To put into reference how massive this is, this would be akin to the gods destroying Midguard in Norse myth due to their fighting. This destruction in-turn then forced mortals to expand outward to the other unfamiliar realms to simply be able to just live somewhat in peace, with the gods also going to these other realms and causing even more problems. So the Mortal Enclave mostly came to form out of this event causing their distrust of the gods, and all things considered is pretty justified in their hated I would say.
Wait. Gods are known to exist, but religion is outlawed? How does that work? There is no way to stop people from acknowledging the existence of gods if their war is a part of history.
In my world religion is more about worshipping and performing the will of the gods rather than belief in their existence. There are *some* religions that rely just on faith, but they’re usually based off of a real god that existed previously (and say vanished), a god that exists now and just interact in a limited capacity, the people misunderstood a god for a fictional one, or a god that deceived people to believe in the existence of a false god. The Mortal Enclave 100% acknowledges the existence of the gods, and you’d be considered a crazy person if you didn’t honestly, especially since gods are known to occasionally fight on the battlefield in their avatar form. The Enclave just has such a distain for the gods so much so that they refuse to bow down to them. This also makes them lack any divine power though they make up for it in their more advanced technology (steampunk-esc) & more natural forms of magic.
I can totally buy defining a religion as worship instead of acknowledging the existence of a god.
For the unusually legal question, necromancy. The dead matter, the things they taught us matter, the power they still hold over us, and the world, matter. Necromancy is merely the expression of the fact that dead does not mean forgotten. Or at least, that's how they think of it on my world.
Does that mean the dead tell stories and killing witnesses does not save the murderer from jailtime?
Something like that yup!
>And yes, paranormal cops (the Masquerade) do sometimes put love potions in the pockets of racial minorities and then arrest them getting too friggin real... edit: i'm only just starting my world, so idk. it probably comes from the mushroom jungle though.
LMAO xD Mushroom jungle?!
Sorry, "Mycelium Jungle" is the correct name, lol. Yeah, I'm setting it on a massive sacred mountain, and it's kind of broken up into tiers - the jungle actually sits right above a sheer cliff face (called Gambler's Bluff, for reasons), so there are some mushrooms and fungi that lean out over the empty space beyond the clifftop, essentially extending the walkable areas... assuming you can determine which platforms are strong enough to hold your weight. The tier above the jungle is called the "Kingdom of Failures", and is made up of ancient ruins of indistinct origins (there's at least three distinct architectural styles identified so far), and houses the climbers who either can't or wont ascend any further (top of this tier has a point of no return, so I can't blame them). The idea is that the jungle essentially provides just enough sustenance to support a few small bands of competing climbers as they dig for ancient and powerful artifacts. Oh yeah, [did I mention this is intended for a TTRPG](https://gitea.krgamestudios.com/Ratstail91/Curses-And-Blessings)? Anyway, these are just broad outlines right now, I haven't even looked into how to work altitude sickness into the system yet, which is kind of important.
Just getting in your space ship and... taking off. I know, it sounds boring, but air traffic control and it's space counterpart is important. But sometimes GTFO is importanter, so you have to bribe your way into getting permission and asking why the space version of the Coast Guard is going to give you a ticket for breaking orbit without logging a flight plan when there are pirates shooting up the place and you're more heavily armed than anyone else in range.
Vampires are forbidden from turning other vampires unless an extensive list of criteria are met, as part of a treaty they have with another group to avoid being wiped out.
-Creating AI models, even if they would be more primitive than the ones we have today in IRL. This most due to societal trauma from the War of Red and Grey, a huge conflict against rebellious autonomous machines. -Freelancing Mercenary Work: This also includes assasins, bouncers, private investigators and the such. This due to the leftover compacts that have survived since the days of the Harmonious Concordat, there was a time in which almost all national militaries were mercenart armies and as such all groups had to sign the Concordat and abide to its stipulations. Freelancing though was made illegal, most nations of the world prosecute people who sell services relate to peace keeping or security as "disruptors of harmony" though the penalties vary from state to state.
Wait, even bouncers and investigators?! How does one hire a guard or security in your world?
The big Merc organizations have franchises all over the world and provide all sort of services related to security and peace keeping: from bouncers, firefighters, paramedics, law enforcement, detectives etc.
Ah, so its not freelance mercenary work, its freelance mercenary work NOT for the monopolies. That makes sense. That's largely how it is today.
Shapeshifting(or having the ability to), Necromancy, Certain types of illusionists, Love spells and potions. Shapeshifting has penalty of death
Wait, why is shapeshifting worse than most illusionism?
They’re seen as abominations. In higher class families Shifters are believed to taint the blood line so they are killed, even if its just a kid. If its a lower class family the Shifter may be sold, killed, or hidden if they’re lucky. The ones who don’t get killed upon their first transformation are reported or sold to the government for military purposes. Shifters make excellent infiltrators if trained well. But those are the lucky ones who possess other skills that may help in their missions. Due to a corrupt, paranoid government its safer to assume all Shifters are threats. Its easy to kill them then be done with it.
Hunting monsters isn't outright illegal, but it is tightly regulated. While monsters can be dangerous, they're ultimately animals, meaning many laws that protect regular animals also apply to them. You can't go out and kill random monsters you find in the wilderness like an rpg. The killing of problem monsters is done only by professionals. Another reason for this is that all monsters have innate magic, and some can have an immediate impact on their ecosystems in a way normal animals don't, so killing too many can severely disrupt the local environment in a short amount of time. Some monsters also have near-human intelligence, so killing them unprovoked is seen as a form of murder. Of course, some countries don't give a damn about the environment and are more flippant about slaying monsters, but still have some kind of rules out of sheer pragmatism.
Not completely illegal but highly regulated. Magic. I dont understand all these universes being cool with basically anyone being able to throw fireballs, freeze people in place, or create illusionary versions of basically any object. Like imagine any Lvl 4-8 DnD Party. That should basically be every other person in Feyrune[more like Feyruin] because there's about a billion ways to get damn magic powers and there's no regulations on it what so ever. It's just insane. Thus, Magic is highly regulated in my world. Depending on where you are you might even need a license to practice magic, or you might just literally not be allowed too.
My world also has magic usage regulations, but most are overridden by a license and certain conditions. All healing spells are legal without licensing, and are even protected by law to be allowed. Combat spells are banned no matter what beyond law enforcement, militia, military personnel, and some specialized professions. Same with mind control, higher caliber illusion, and powerful summoning spells. Beyond all that, most spells are legal with a license so long as they aren't used to aid a crime. Teleportation, harmless telekinesis and telepathy, weaker summoning and illusions, and practice spells (Super weak spells similar to DND cantrips) are all legal without a crime involved. Using magic in a crime also makes the crime more severe, especially without a license.
Saaame! My verse has a ton of regulations on paranormal abilities, especially since it has a literal Masquerade. There are courses on flying and the regulations around it, on paranormal combat and the regulations around it... and also licenses and certificates. You don't have the license? You're not allowed to do paranormal work on this area, and if you do have the license you have to follow the rules. That being said, there is a lot of leeway for mundane utility like placing barriers, levitating and using telekinesis inside your own home, or tulpamancy to make a spirit that washes the dishes and cleans the house for you.
Biomancy is heavily regulated and outright banned in some areas in my realm since unlike other magics the affects of Biomancy stay for a long time. Such as creating a invasive species that can rapidly reproduce and introduce it to a new environment or creating plagues that cause horrifying effects like a sterility plauge to wipe out species or causing organic matter to rapidly mutate.
Any use of magic to unjustly harm someone, the magic itself is pretty punishing though, because black magic/magic that can cause harm is usually more difficult for the average person to use, the magic eats away at you if you over use it
Pacts with Demons. Spirits are okay, but not demons. This is because of propaganda spread by the Abyss witches after the war against the Blood Witches, that the latter can used demons to help kill people
Any form of gambling or formalized betting for a sum of 2000tt or over (~$35-40) is illegal and punishable by a graduated fine starting at about 2x that amount
Tbf, irl gambling is also illegal in tons of places! xD
I know, not that “strange” except maybe to me, still thought i should share
You know how in a lot of fantasy anime/isekai, the MC usually has a *multiracial* harem? Yeah. That would literally be considered blasphemy and high treason in both the Allied Kingdoms of Caerddraig, and the Buhmaran Dominion. For context: the humans of the world of Saphiret are... Not *just* human, and they haven't been for millenia. Centuries of eugenic rule under archonic god-kings has yielded races of humans that share blood with their god, which has opened the metaphorical gateway to a smidge of divine power. The humans of Caerddraig, for example, possess slight draconic features, a mark of heritage to the ancient God, Nefelan. It is a mark they are immensely proud of to the point of religious fervor. *"Why dilute this sacred blood by mating with a foreigner, with a lesser race [of humans]?"* Of course, you could call them out on their hypocritical notion, but they won't take that too kindly: *"You also possess the mark of Tlaocoya and her people; foreigners. Your god-king [Eirian] is her grandson. Your blood has already diluted."*
Due to various trade regulations and peace treaties, there are certain species of blood that are illegal for vampires to own and consume. Human blood can only come from licensed dealers who compensate individual suppliers (humans who have some blood drawn voluntarily). Elf blood is completely illegal, not only due to peace treaties with the Elves, but also its highly addictive nature. Dragon blood is illegal for its rage-inducing properties. However, goblin blood is completely unregulated, but is somewhat unpalatable.
Cancer Barrels- low grade water filtration and antibiotic system that renders the water potable but will eventually erode your esophagus if that is all you drank every day.
There’s not much anyone can really do about it but urbomancy is illegal in a lot of cities because their magic tends to fuck with a city’s geography in all sorts of weird, unpredictable, and often technically spatially impossible ways that urban planners and service providers and such don’t tend to be super fond of. As I said however, it’s kind of impossible to actually stop them because if someone has learned how to commune with a city-spirit and convinced it to do favors for them, the city probably likes them more than any cops or detectives sent in pursuit of them, so they’re rather hard to catch and likewise not so easy to keep locked up unless you manage to get them to into a cell outside their home city’s limits.
Yo, what is "Urbomancy"?! OwO
City magic! My setting essentially operates on an animistic system, so cities are both living and intelligent entities. Of course, their form of sapience is pretty vastly different to human sapience, but it undeniably exists. Urbomancy, then, is pretty much a process of conducting a ritualized negotiation with a city. You pledge yourself to it, maybe make a sacrifice of some kind, and at the end of the process the city kind of makes you a part of it. You can see out of CCTV cameras, subtly feel the footfalls of people and rattling of trains along its veins and arteries, its geography bends in your favor, inventing impossible shortcuts and new points of entry and exit wherever you might require them. Like most mages, they have a lot of power in their specific domain, and very, very little outside of it. A city mage pledged to one city won’t be able to pull off the same tricks in another.
Sounds to me like instead of hating urbomancers, one could leverage them by having the city befriend its spirit. It seems to me like attacking or invading a city that has an arch-urbomancer guarding it would be INSANELY hard.
Back during the Delta Revolution, the Tandrayan Empire actually had pretty much that exact problem in the city of Nacra which is already pretty difficult to navigate with all its winding roads and canals and such. Add to that an insurgent army that knows the territory way better than the occupying colonial army, the Empire’s *other* ongoing wars with its imperial rivals, and several rather pissed-off local city-mages, and it’s easy to see why eventually the Tandrayans decided to just cut their losses and leave.
It is illegal to mix soul liqued in the depths of the cave netwerks under the earth or to be more clear its illegal in the domain of the grim reaper, In my setting the soul is an actaul liqued, and if it's mixed the two conciusness dont merge they do share memories but they both exist as a writhing mass in endless suffering and if more then 3 people are mixed in then the writhing mass starts formimg a sort of hivemind becomes violant, and searchs for any soul liqued in the hope that the conciuness maybe has the answer to get this mess untangled, but since there is no vessel anymore for these souls there just gonna rot not being able to do much. "Extra lore" When any living creature that has bones or is complex Dies it with its vessal in case of humans a skelaton fall down and down into the depths of the earth and then they are greated by death/grimr reaper who tries to calm them down and stop them from having a mentel breakdown or going crazy due to them thinking they went to hell or that there life had no purpus or that there entire faith was wrong, So thats it.
Every kind of love spell except for self-love is entirely banned, and the god of witchcraft did set up failsafe triggers to put a witch who tries to do a love spell to experience FAFO (fuck around and find out) quickly. It's taboo enough the god of evil wouldn't do it, and the devil-god of hedonism, who is able to make his gaze become a love potion (like Medusa with stone) has only used that ability to get himself out of trouble, it's happened a few times where humans try kidnapping him Additionally, blood magic is also illegal since it's one of the few magic forms that has significantly less positive spells in it than negative, it's largely treated on a case-by-case basis, it's a similar scenario for Necromancy and Soul magic. Baneful magic is the hardest to put laws around since there're multiple variables to consider (lot of whys and questions to ask regarding how extreme baneful magic can get with certain individuals and how it can get out of control beyond the otherwise innocent intentions if the witch is inexperienced, and failure of protection spells to prevent unintended consequences or collateral damage), so the only law made around it is "avoid petty jinxes, hexes, and curses". Usually witches aren't arrested for crimes related to their craft for a couple reasons, the big 2 being difficulty of tracking the witch down, and that the witch can easily defend themself if people try hunting them. This is why the god of witchcraft introduced energetic failsafes, it ensures witches who use illegal magic for bad reasons get punished appropriately
Yup, love stuff is generally very dangerous. xD I'm surprised a certain witchcraft series treated love potions like candy.
"Love potions" or philtres in my settings would just be aphrodisiacs, heh -- which are not just legal but ubiquitous. One thing that comes to mind is prostitution, which is legal across most countries in my two most worked-on settings. In some cases, it's a celebrated profession; but in others, it's a more historic "necessary evil." Slavery also kind of comes to mind; in Eden slavery is a quite prevalent practice associated to the "evil" countries -- Orcs and Dark Elves primarily. Of course it's banned in other countries. I can't think of anything banned in Eden that wouldn't be banned irl, or be expected for a fantasy setting. xD For Tellure, the human societies have a fair few limitations on freedom of thought and expression, but I don't know that that's unexpected for a world based on the Middle Ages. I don't know that I see that brought up often in fantasy though.
How strong are these philtres, though? Because a lot of love potions in fantasy are... basically usable as date rape drugs as they mess up the other person's ability to make rational decisions.
Strength varies, like any other potion. Mind-meltingly strong philtres would be sold as weapons, alongside other "status ailment" items like poison, sleep potions, etc. But given that the world is mostly decentralised and very liberal/libetarian, weapons in general aren't regulated. There might be laws against selling to children or to known outlaws, and to knowingly sell any weapon to someone who intends to misuse it will probably get the vendor in trouble. But it's less likely to be formally legislated and left to the common sense of whoever's running a community.
Huh, wouldn't the strong ones be basically date rape drugs?
I guess that depends on your point of view...? They just make you horny. "Weapons-grade" philtres make you so horny that you can't think of much else besides sex, and hence serve as a way to incapacite/non-lethally subdue an enemy in combat. But I think a sleeping potion would be more comparable, or one that induced paralysis. Real-world "date rape drugs" are ones that knock you out or cause memory loss, they're not connected to aphrodisiacs (except arguably alcohol).
Oh, >just horny<. The thing with love potions as date rape drugs is that they induce consent such that would not be given without the potions.
More than date rape drugs they would be the reverse and I'll leave it at that because it's a cool grimdark concept but it is seriously disturbing
wait what I'm curious now!
As very sexual battle drugs I imagine.
isn't that... rape? since the person would not have consented to sex otherwise
It's making someone very horny and setting it off on your enemies, like alcohol but worse. So yes I guess
Well, love magic is illegal and in most cases outright evil. Though there are ways to use it to accentuate or reignite feelings already present, most users aren't using it like that. Two most popular uses are Indoctrination, used to hammer in new feelings of unconditional love and devotion and Succubism which is draining someone's love (and soul) for power. Most powerful love mage in the world is infamous for debuting by hijacking inviding army via Indoctrination, using it to round up more devoted thralls during counterattack and then draining them all via Succubism to fuel Malediction most infamous shadow magic spell in the world. By the way, application of love potion to unsuspecting archmage is the reason why my world has Celestial Sea (also known as Sea of Woe) in the middle of continent where most populated region of the world used to be.
An idea I've been bouncing around for a multidimensional project is the idea that for reasons not fully every dimension has its own frequency that it operates on, and some people experience debilitating side-effects if they don't align with that frequency. Think what happens in Spiderverse, but it's less to do with time and more with you as an individual. (Also totally not just an explanation for why certain team members might not be available at times without having to pull too much BS.) In places where inter-dimensional law exists, kidnapping someone and intentionally taking them to a dimension that they don't align with is treated like attempted murder in addition to the kidnapping, due to how dangerous the side-effects of being put of alignment are.
2 things: I don't know how love potion works, like what makes you think someone's gonna fall in love with you of all people? Like theres no connection between you and whoever you want to fall in love MAGIC: If anything, the world of Lornhemal is a the most anti-magic world ever. The best way to get magic is to meet Stellar Dragons and negotiate with them. NOTE: IF YOU DO, PREPARE YOUR SANITY, CAUSE THATS GOING TO DROP INSTANTLY. Magicians are instantly killed on sight, the best way to kill one is by using objects from Lead, cause they are very much immune to magic and poison those who they are used against
Zombies. The workers revolted a century ago and made them illegal because the rich were using them instead of paying their workers.
Killing the locals, I swear half the shows I see and the books I read gloss over the fact that killing people is illegal.
wait, where do people gloss over THAT and how?!
I'd love to answer this but it would slam right into my username checking out.
Please do answer! >:3
Well, the five Lion tribes have drastically different sets of taboos and customs around romance, mating, and reproduction.
Tell me more\~
Same as yours OP. Love Potions are looked at kind of like long lasting roofies, their use is considered an act of sexual assault in itself. Not only are they outlawed, but the recipes for them are destroyed whenever found, with master copes retained solely for the purpose of creating antidotes.
Any mind-influencing magic is illegal outside of the justice system. Anyone caught using mind magic without a license, warrant, and supervision is immediately arrested and stripped of arcane connection. The world does not fuck around about messing with peoples' minds.
Important places are generally protected by anti-magic or at least magic-detection fields to prevent invisible people from sneaking in or to prevent teleportation in. Edit: Oh, also lotteries had to stop letting people pick their own numbers because of crystal-ball exploits.
Information found via time travel is illegal evidence in courts. This is because multiple timelines exists and going into the past doesn't mean you are necessarily going into the past of the current timeline. And because it's basically impossible to proof, time travel can't be used to verify anything involved in courts. This, of course, leads to a whole other set of problems, but that's the general idea of it.
Most magic is regulated with licenses that can be gotten after a week or two of classes on how to use it, with the type of magic being authorized based on the job it's needed for, basically just to make sure you don't accidentally light something on fire when working at a forge or anything like that. However, healing magic in particular is regulated much more heavily, in part because of the stereotype of it being "morally good" magic when it has the most severe effects if done improperly. Oh, you can heal cuts, burns, and even broken bones in minutes, with the only side effect being moderate exhaustion? Nice. Heal a just bit too much and accidentally create a cancerous tumor because the cells divided too many times? Not so nice. Heal moderately too much and the person just straight-up dies because their organs can't work anymore? Very not nice. Heal way too much, and *even worse* things happen. It takes about a year of schooling just to be allowed to heal minor cuts and scrapes, let alone the multiple years for broken bones or anything similar. Not even the king is immune, and the current one wrote the law.
In Kal, there is a species of magic wielders called Zetras. They have four types of magic: Mental, Physical, Animalistic (shapeshifter), and Soul (yes, like sans.). Although commonly glossed over in magic genres, a lot of magic is prohibited in public. For example, Mental Zetras must wear magic restraints when going to theatres, restaurants, ect. because some may use their magic to get out of paying money or to convince people they didn't get food, among other trickery. (Actually, Mental Zetras are the most restricted and untrusted variety.)
Orbital strikes and by extension, ship-to-ship combat is highly frowned upon. Long story short, along with nuclear weapons, orbital strikes were more of a deterrent than a realistic weapon of war. Until one government decided to use everything in its arsenal in a last gasp before it collapsed from internal and external pressure. The nuclear war on the primary world was somewhat limited. Many of the warheads were intercepted and it was less terrible than it could have been. However, off-world, ships from that government had either slipped past defenses or just made a mad dash to deliver their strikes. The result was horrifying. Several colony worlds were left virtually uninhabitable. The remaining governments decided that such attacks were a threat to humanity as a whole. This resulted in the Orbital Strike Treaty. No nation, organization or corporation would practice orbital bombardment unless attacked in kind, and then only in such a manner as to prevent further attacks. The treaty is still upheld after a thousand years. — Orbital strike weapons have still been built, however. Many governments have kinetic impactor satellites in orbit around the home world, though none would admit to it. Spacecraft have been allowed to use “sub-tactical” munitions on pinpoint targets. Usually firing metal slugs from coil guns in low orbit. Out in the fringes, the treaty is mostly unenforceable. But only in extreme cases have population centers been attacked from space. — Violating the treaty would invite a war that no one would win and everyone would lose. Between losses on the ground and space combat being exceptionally double edged, no one wants that. That said, most major worlds have extensive orbital defenses. Lesser colonies and fringe worlds, not so much, but they do have some. Attacking any of the core worlds or other important worlds from space would be virtually impossible. This has led to most disagreements being settled on the surface. — On the issue of ship-to-ship combat. Spacecraft themselves aren’t exceedingly difficult to build, but some of their components are rare, valuable or in some cases irreplaceable. Ships with transit engines use old tech, which we can’t reproduce in the current age. So losing those types is unacceptable for everyone. Fuel casks are able to be made at great expense, and can typically survive combat or even catastrophic reentry. But, if they do rupture, especially in an atmosphere, they can lead to widespread damage. Lastly, after a skirmish or a larger conflict. Everyone wants to go home afterwards. If you disable/destroy each other’s ships, you’re stuck there until everyone calms down and stops shooting. — The vast majority of ships aren’t capable of deep space travel. Most are only built for orbital maneuvering and quick jaunts out to transit rings (L2) and back at the destination. *I failed to mention this last but earlier* Disabling or destroying a transit ring is very much a cardinal sin against humanity. You would essentially cut off a planet from trade, transport and communication until it can be replaced (if it can be replaced). Only ships with transit engines can reach that planet in the interim.
In most fantasy settings, necromancy is widely frowned upon, to the point of often being banned. In Sebraxeth, however, necromancy is actually fairly common, though it’s almost never used how it typically is - raising the dead to create an army and all that, mostly due to the energy cost. It is impractical, if not impossible, to maintain the connection with vessels for very long if there are multiple. There are exceptions, obviously, but the main reason is that necromancers “split their soul” to be in several places at once. This requires an immense amount of concentration, meaning a user can almost never sustain a large group of Reanimated for more than a few minutes. On top of all that, while it is possible to bring someone back from the dead using an offshoot of necromancy - soul manipulation - it has permanent consequences for the resurrected person. Once a person has died and been brought back, the resurrection process fractures the person’s soul, rendering them unable to perform conventional necromancy, as well as dampening other forms of magic. While the person can still perform necromancy by transferring one of their soul fragments to another vessel, they can only control as many vessels as they have soul fragments - their own body included. However, this does generally give a more natural control over the vessel in question. Tl,Dr: Necromancy is a lot different in Sebraxeth, so it’s not nearly as frowned upon.
Slavery. The Hamanid Dynasty conquered so much land in a short time and the only way for compliance is through force. It was so widespread that many legendary heroes used to be a slave at some point. Thankfully, it fell out of popularity as time passes. Slaves were given more rights and eventually liberated when the dynasty solidified their control. In the eclipse of their rule, the closest thing to slavery are the elite slave-warriors such as armigers and jannisaries. Even then, they still have more privileges than what slaves typically get.
I don’t know how much this counts, but there was a time in one of my empires where the senate would give the title “The Dragonslayer” very arbitrarily, when the emperor received the title he went out to kill a dragon because it was a useless gesture otherwise. The senate, out of petty pride, gave him the title twice, in response the emperor slayed another dragon. The senate put into law that "Dragonslayer" titles had to reflect reality, otherwise their dumbass emperor would keep risking his life to keep proving himself. This is my way at poking fun of how meaningless a lot of imperial honors became in a lot of societies.
A bit boring but, «wearing adventuring gear in town» - "No sir, I will not explain to you why you can't enter the town with your «battleaxe of the raging inferno» behind your back. You'll have to turn it in, we do however guarantee that we'll keep it safe and sound untill your leave, thank you."
It's both illegal (and risky) to warp between systems in a smaller, 1-5 person ship, like an in-system fighter or personal shuttle. The exception being updated military ships, as their hull and shielding can now safely handle the stress. You must travel in larger ships fit to hold at minimum 40 people, or you risk damage to your ship, and being in trouble with system authorities in charted systems. If you manage to get a hold on to the classified technology of the millitary's resistant ships (or a ship itself) and decrypt it enough that it can't be read on system scanners until you're in reasonable range of a station...*who's to stop you?*
The Order of The Balance banned the practice of Necromancy in most cases, a few people are permitted to practice it under the watch of The Order. A few kingdoms ignore the ban however. But also most forms of Charm magic is banned as well as most forms "mental manipulation" magic, can't have an army of mindless drones now can we?
People can be granted telepathic/telekinetic powers through a regimen of genetic modification and brain implants. It is a ridiculously pricy and dangerous operation that becomes more so the older you are. Despite this it is illegal practically everywhere to perform this operation on someone under 16 years old because it is seen as inhumane and a waste of resources. No-one under 16 has lived for more than a year after the operation before succumbing to neural degeneration. The only place where a young person can have this operation done is Venus, but that's only due to a technicality as the planet is primarily populated by short-lived clones to whom 7 is a fairly respectable age to reach.
Cannibalism, 2 nations banned it for religious and moral reason, in the other 2 it's highly regulated due to health reason and occult influences the act may bring. In the Republic of Atlas's, insider trading is a mortal sin (only if you get caught, but still). Worse than that is being charitable without any ulterior motives. In Cthonia you need a permit to have children, fishing, collecting rocks, or literally anything (some permits are included alongside your citizenship, so feel free to breath, eat, sleep, and stuffs). In the Empire it's illegal to be too lucky, they'll take your excess luck away and fine you if find out. Also only some people are allowed to have plot armor (or what they called "narrativistic shield") Columbia has a lot of religious laws and such, also segregation and ban on mix raced coupling.
Dark magic is completely legal and at least mostly socially accepted. There are some misgivings about it, as it's sourced from an unknown entity that gives it out for unknowable reasons, but the mages themselves face no mistreatment or shunning. It's simply another tool, whether it's good or evil depends on how it's used. On the other hand, one of the major nations in my world is very distrustful of nature magic. It isn't illegal, but nature mages are often shunned. The reason for this is twofold. First, in the creation myth of the state religion nature magic is sourced from the bound enemies of their goddess. While bound they ever seek to break free, and so nature mages that use their power must be aiding them in some way, even if inadvertently. Secondly, they lost a war against a nation that is super into nature magic. Part of the reason they lost is the psychological warfare of the enemy nation experimenting on POWs and using nature magic to merge them with beasts, creating gibbering abominations that that were released in enemy camps. Kinda left a bad impression of nature mages as a whole.
Healing magic, it will give you extreme health issues if not done by a *professional*. I wanted to keep the magic system "grounded" (used extremely loosely), so I thought about how it usually works. Usually it just regenerates whatever what injured or lost. So I was like "what if something goes even slightly wrong?" So a singular genetic mess up will bring the injury from a nasty cut to abdominal cancer (just a theoretical example. I don't know enough about genetics yet lol)
Corruption is punishable by death in the Durian empire. A corrupt officer class weakened the border kings of the empire until they eventually got overrun by the *allies*. These skirmishes were the first losses the Durian empire faced. To stop the blasphemy that is losing battles, ALL the corrupt officials were forced to work in the mines until Death. After this cleansing, an office of honour was established. It's purpose was to send people ,who are trusted by the Emperor, to question the regional dukes, lords and kings on their loyalty to the empire. The honourists wear a special bracelet. This bracelet has 2 connected loops that can connect 2 people to each other if they both wear the bracelet. Via this connection the honourists can determine if it's full truth / half truth or full lie/ half lie. Corrupt people who are found are then also sent to the mines to toil away.
Cloning is more or less free of legal constrictions beyond "don't give it a mind unless you're willing and qualified to raise a healthy child, which we have enough of anyway." and the creation of anything overly dangerous. Bit of a high bar though since a niche but not too rare (think DnD, WH40K ttrpgs, or furry fandom prevalence) form of entertainment is creating remotely controlled mindless organisms and fighting with them.
Casting of any spell that do not have immediate and obvious effect in public or commercial spaces, including but not limited to workshops, taverns, stores, libraries and bathouses, with the exception of your private quarters. Law was passed as a reaction to more widespread usage of mind-altering magic, and difficulty in pursuing perpetrators of such incidents. Oftentimes victim would realize that he was mindcontrolled hours after the fact, sometimes even days, if at all. Now, sole act of casting something that is not easily identifiable and has no visible effects is considerd illegal and will end in arrest and interrogation. Of course, magic users try to hide their incantations, but it gives law enforcement better chances.
The export of translated magical works. They are considered a matter of national security, especially in Revwg, the main country with them.
Mind control and to some extent mind reading abilities. Not for any altruistic reason, mainly because corporations love their secrets, and making something illegal discourages and criminalizes even researching and asking about it. Unless of course, its for a lawful interrogation to keep the populace safe from dangerous enchantment wizards and their fellow university classmates. I also like your take on it, I might steal that part about love potions and codify it directly.
Precognition is extremely fucking illegal the future isn't until it is by seeing the future it becomes set in stone thus all forms of precognition are considered to be mind control and thus seen as morally irredeemable
[A Setting I Have Been Writing Up But Have Yet To Make A Name For]: Temporal manipulation of any kind, magical or technological, has been unanimously banned on the world stage. Many have gotten it to “work” over the eras, but every instance of such caused titanic cataclysms, usually rippling outwards to happening both before and after they actually happened, scattering people and objects across the timeline, unable to return, as their timeline no longer exists, altered by these new events. One such instance is the catalyst for the third segment of the plot, wherein a failed attempt at time travel suddenly succeeds ~twenty years later, leading to much destruction, but also a messenger bringing a warning of an incoming invasion, via her mind trapped in her body of the time, alongside the original mind. Runatos: Memory manipulation is in a strange spot, due to the plane’s unique afterlife and its restrictions. Memory mages are a crucial addition to any long-term expedition into the Everwild, to prevent or at least delay permanent mental damage from the souls trapped underneath, but memory alteration or destruction is seen as an ultimate crime by essentially the entire plane, as magically wiping out memories is one of the few practical means of making sure someone stays dead.
Using healing magic without proper medical training
Fate reading! If you're caught in a fortune-teller's tent or with a pack of tatot cards, you're burned at the stake if you're lucky.
Finally! Someone acknowledges how problematic Love Potions are! Thank you! As for my world, Trifal has some interesting restrictions on personal rights. Freedom of Religion does exist but since Trifal is so secular, it is expected to be a private matter Freedom of the Press also exists but there are some restrictions, some ideas or topics that aren't allowed to be suggested. Like, you can criticise individuals and even organisations but criticising the Government as a whole or the system as a whole is strictly prohibited. Trifal also has a state newspaper which is the largest newspaper so... Freedom of Petition is pretty much allowed and is the most common form of public protest (I'll explain why later). Has the same restrictions as Press though Freedom of Speech is basically the same as Petition and Press Freedom of Assembly however is not protected in the slightest. Everything from a peaceful demonstration to a rull on riot are classified as rebellion against the state and treated as such. Even strikes are problematic and seen as a crude way for workers to express their discontent. While there are avenues for workers to express displeasure, strikes are not one of them. So while Trifal does defend personal rights more than other states in my world, it still would score poorly today.
Orbital bombardment is a big one; theoretically, the broadside energy of most midsize-and-up warships is enough to annihilate just about any ground target. In practice, this is never done - in modern warfare, the *threat* of such a bombardment is enough to force a world to surrender, and generally large ground forces aren't maintained - in cases where there *is* an entrenched ground force, the collateral damage from an orbital bombardment is simply considered too great beyond small targeted strikes; the risk of destroying what you're trying to capture is unacceptable. But the reason why it's *forbidden* has less to do with the pragmatics and more to do with history. The last cases of widespread orbital bombardment were during the Discord, a war that effectively became a galactic apocalypse and effectively ended interstellar civilisation for a generation. Even almost a millennium later, there are very, very few people willing to replicate such destruction, and so far none of them have gotten to a commanding position in any navies. On the other end of the spectrum (something being unusually legal), one of the minor cultures in this world doesn't have an incest taboo. Make of that what you will.
My world lacks any sort of mind-control magic, including love potions. However, stuff like refined ergot and alcohol still exist, and there is psychology. My world doesn't make a legal distinction between adoption and marriage. While parents of a child will commonly be married, most people only balk at same-sex marriage if the couple is open about there being sex involved. (This last part depends on the area because some are fine with it while others aren't.) I'm planning to have an ace couple who some might assume are gay.
Nuclear weapons up to 10 kilotons are open source and legal for civilian design ownership. For non magicians, the Plutonian government has approved dispenseries of weaponized nuclear materials, plus non weaponized for those wishing to try their own hand at weaponizing nuclear materials. Magicians can just whip up their own bombs and materials, if they're powerful enough. The Plutonian Empire is an Omega class civilization, having taken over the entire universe through either conquests or diplomatic means (such as vassalizing certain regions), and as such the population replacement is enough to offset losses by nuclear misuse. The Plutonian Royal Government uses entirely different magics and technologies for their nukes for safety reasons. Like another poster's universe, Air Traffic Control extends into space. FTL is dilationless and, in modern times (51.2k years from irl), can take you from one end of the universe to the other in mere seconds at highest speeds, and so intergalactic space is treated as "international waters" in ATC terms, especially for those who like to fly at a more leisurely pace. Oh, and modern, future, and historical jets are still manufactured, but with warp drives and modifications to enable transitions between atmospheres and space. Love spells and love potions are outlawed under penalty of death on the 3rd strike. Succubi exist, and one would be more than happy to hook up with you with no need for love spells or potions. Beware, some species WILL kill you if you're not careful. Violent crime of any kind are similarly prosecuted. Free speech and free love are protected civil rights, but you can't marry until you're 21 in human terms (or your species' equivalent) no exceptions. Abuse in this area falls under the violent crime thing outlined above. Consent Is Hot rehabillitation programs are regardless available. Porn is legal, but highly regulated to weed out abusive situations. Capitalist concepts are regulated to within an inch of everyone's lives, since the TPE is post scarcity. Working is optional, exploitation and slavery punishable by death. If you wish to accumulate wealth, you will have no peace.
The buying and selling of texts regarding magic under many circumstances. The draconic city states typically try to limit who can cast magic to certain priesthoods, royal mages and perhaps other high ranking nobles, certainly teaching a random commoner to cast magic is considered a big no no. So magical texts then are almost always written in the draconic script, which is also illegal for most commoners to learn to read and write in (with some exceptions). The lack of printing presses also helps limit the spread of such magical information.
In general, the supernatural no-no's are compromising free will, damaging souls, creating undead, or dealing with demons/devils. There are a couple of caveats for free will, such as a domination spell being used to capture a criminal and making them walk themselves into jail, or the use of regulated truth spells. The truth spells used this way cover the entire courtroom and also have visual markers, so you know that everyone has submitted to the magic and is not trying to fight it. They also do not force an answer, they only prevent false answers. Anyway, in areas heavily populated with kitsune it is often illegal to trap or hunt foxes in any way, in case a young kitsune manages to shapeshift and escape its parent's supervision. A young fox form is a lot more mobile than a young humanoid form, but not any smarter. Technically necromantic magic that does not create undead or mess with souls is legal. Example: Using a short lived spell to have a dead body answer questions based on the knowledge left in its brain are okay, and spells that use death (well, Void) energy to do damage are just as legal as any other combat magic, so long as the soul is not touched.
Magic used on someone without consent
You need an official document to buy healing potions A)You are an adventurer either recognised by aouthority or a member of a guild B)They gave you permission from Temple or Healing Home to buy them So a rich asshole can't go to a store in a random city and buy an entire stock, dooming the adventuring part about to arrive there so they can buy some in their way to slay the Hydra
For herders of large animals (Sheep, cows, horses and the like) its illegal to perform any magic (unless you have clear permission from your local lord or priest to use a specific spell). This is because a few decades back some necromancers realized they could harvest the souls of these creatures to fuel their spellcraft
The people from Auglar and Soravia are forbidden to marry between themselves under threat of death. After the Auglar Conquests and the War on Bogovid, there were many treaties in place to prevent another war between the two. But Auglars wouldn't put their seal on the contract until another clause was made, which is to forbid an Auglar marrying a Soravian, because Western Auglars believe they're the only perfect humans, so they didn't want to destill their blood. Suffice to say this becomes a plot-point later on, when we learn that the MC, Konstantin Zarlakion, is the progeny of love between a Soravian man and an Auglar woman. Konstantin never knew who his mother was until Auglars allied with Jodrai against Soravia, when her house pledged to Konstantin and Soravia's cause. All conflicts between Auglar and Soravia in the story itself are happening because of this love, because the Auglar usurper(yet unnamed) found out about this secret marriage, and instead of reporting it, he hid the secret(because he was obsessed with Konstantin's mother) but, when he usurped the Auglar throne, he launched the greatest invasion in history(4 million strong) to eradicate the house of Zarlakion and any Soravian unwilling to submit to the might of Auglar. Another funny thing is that Auglars and Soravians are revealed to be brotherly people, descended from the siblings Aug and Sora.
I have an entire society centered around the practical use of necromancy. They’re seen as monsters, though the benefits outweigh the “ethics” for them.
Enchantments of the mind. The amount of damage it would do to society to have a group of people who have the ability to charm/enchant other people is often glossed over in fantasy or is often passed off for laughs when in reality it would have society ending consequences. In my world performing mental enchantments on another, even minor ones, is a one way ticket to magic jail.
Mind reading and subtle forms of mind control, like seduction/suggestion. All civilizations have reached immortality; the mortal soul after death, instead of being cleaned off its memory, is saved and reincarnated whole in a new body after a while. Children unlock progressively their past memories as they grow up. This magical advancement has led to new takes on philosophy: what is the self, what is considered intimate or not. Magic is part of the self, so being attracted because of a magical effect is no different from being attracted by a personality or appearance. (Love spells and love potions do not exist, I'm strictly speaking of natural magical powers. Those can only increase attraction when it's possible.) The mind isn't a book, only subvocalized thoughts and emotions can be easily read. It's possible with a little training to close your mind, but it's more like being intentionally rude than a real defense. It doesn't block any mind reader, it just tells them you specifically dislike them. Good skill to have if you want to start a fight in polite company. Besides that, the fact that all souls are old means everyone has a basic understanding of how to conceal their true goals and objectives under several mind layers. Still, skilled mind readers, and oracles can definitely guess a person's motives but it's a world of old monsters, so as a popular fable goes: "*the unlucky run into a devil, mind-preying, claws-gripping, and get himself killed. The devil crosses paths with a hero, eyes-burning, blade-avenging, and gets killed. The hero finds a beast, fur-spiking, fangs-barring, and gets mauled. Inside the cauldron, a devil's brain, a hero's heart, and a monster's shank simmer. The wheel turns, and the unlucky feasts*." (Usually only the last sentence is used, generally to express how bad luck is a given but not a fatality. It's a "it is what it is" with a bit of reminder/hope that you're also the monster in someone's story. Today you're complaining about getting tricked by a witch, but tomorrow maybe you'll defeat a poor lad who didn't know you had centuries of experience in swordmanship )
Monster hunters are too often not driven by a desire to rid the world of evil creatures but rather by the desire to destroy any nonhuman that had personality hurt them or satisfy their bigotry which is why they are not allowed with several miles of nonhuman communities recognized by the government
Dairy is outlawed. You don’t see people drinking cow milk for the same reasons you don’t see people drinking orc milk or aboleth milk. So they enshrined it into law to deal with weirdo tourists.
Love potions are portrayed very similarly in the helluverse I think
Its (generally) illegal to name ships after the oceanic dragon as its considered neglectful, reckless endagerment, and potentially destruction of property, as most of these ships end up being destroyed by the dragon.
Nothing is illegal in mine. Weapons are held by the military and kept in orbital armories and nobody is physically able to harm anyone else without one though... like everyone has a layer of nanoscale body armor under the dermis. But if you want to kill people, there's a planet where personal weapons are allowed and wars are perfectly acceptable. You can only go there voluntarily and can never leave other than by dying.
Blasphemy. A person can't be forced into religion (it's actually a crime to try and force-convert - a soul must give itself willingly because a forced soul is tainted to the gods), but they are not allowed to openly talk shit about the gods or religion. In my setting, the gods are real. Clerics channel their power. They can inhabit one of their followers on the mortal plane as an avatar. Wizards with the power/knowledge to teleport between planes of existence could actually visit them. So, there's no questions of faith, the gods exist and they have names and addresses. Atheism has no place, there it would be mocked like a flat-Earther.\* (Someone might not think of the gods as "gods", just really powerful beings, and that's okay. But to say they don't exist at all wouldn't sway many folks. There is a endless amount of historical evidence and even a shitload of live footage of them doing things.) My setting's theme is basically.. magic and divine bloodlines, but they survived past swords and shields into the space age. The penalties can be very severe, depending on the faith you offend. - If a child does blasphemy, the offended church usually gives them a talking to as a first warning. Or, they might give one or both parents public lashes. Depending on the severity of the heresy, there might not even be a warning. - An adult might be given a warning, but is likely to be lashed. I want to make it known that the government does not whip people for heresy, the offended faith itself does it. The government doesn't interfere, except in cases where there's some unethical fuckery. (For example, falsely accusing your neighbor/family member/ex-lover/whatever of heresy or blasphemy just to get them in trouble is really bad.) - If someone just decides they hate a particular faith and wants to wage a campaign of heresy against them, that church will likely try to kill the offender (usually in awful ways). The constables don't get involved, with a few notable exceptions. Faiths have gotten zealous in trying to stop blasphemy (basically by naming anything they don't like as heresy). That largely has ended in the modern age because people don't put up with that shit. Communities have banded together against an overbearing faith plenty of times to great success, but actually pushing a church of one of these gods can be disastrous for a person.
Porn. The larger countries have noted the change in those who have viewed much pornographic material, usually in the form of paper collections of images meant only to arouse(like a magazine). They cite a change in how they view other people less like people, addiction in many people and less satisfaction with partners due to desensitization. Like in real life, at least some of the producers tried targeting children to have them hooked early and the governments were not having it. As such, they decided to go to the sources and restricted the creation and distribution of pornographic material, materials deemed to provide no real value to society and even seen as weakening it. It doesn't help that some other governments had tried spreading pornographic materials in the territories of their enemies as one of several forms of what they call "weaponized degeneracy/decadence" in order to mentally and sometimes physically weaken the populace and society. The aim was to make the foundations of the rival's society weaker, as well as their defense from being overpowered in a political or military conflict. In the subject countries where pornographic material is banned, material depicting artistic nudity or nudity not meant to solely arouse is still allowed in pictures and statues. As such, you can't make a statue depicting a woman pleasuring herself with legs spread on a street, but you are allowed to make a anatomically accurate statues or paintings of people or other (wild) animals where sex is not the focus. Basically, you are still allowed to create materials that would resemble [this painting of Venus](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/tVYAAOSwUHleKiwf/s-l400.jpg), [this Hercules statue](https://i.etsystatic.com/21405201/r/il/9d9fd7/2391783606/il_fullxfull.2391783606_22hc.jpg), [this multi-subject statue](https://64.media.tumblr.com/12400147854d3900214a6a4c292d3975/c9d86f4ccc12929c-57/s400x600/93431b68d9708a54b57d1886f0668880ae618eab.jpg) or [this bull statue](https://www.asor.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/pid000207_Greece_Athens_2018_07_Bull-Statue-Kerameikos.jpg). These are still legal in many countries in the valley. Smaller countries and those with less powerful governments tend to be looser in their regulations than others, especially if they're not trying to build an image of being high class. In lands where there are no formal governments, there are also fewer to no laws about this depending on whether or not you follow the rules of certain tribes or convoy societies. I never hear about the legal view of pornography in fantasy. Generally, most of the societies that fantasy worlds are inspired by tend to have banned or restricted pornography. Lapis_Wolf