On Judges

[cielo]

Are they a form of government, or just the people that watch everyone else? From who or where do they get their authority and Law magic? Are they needed, or just simply tolerated? I like the idea of the Judges if only for possible plots people can get from them, but knowing more about them is a must.

[memory]

As far as I've been treating them: Judges maintain and control the law magic that is woven into reality. They are ultimately separate from governments, but they are more closely involved with the governments of the civilized nations because the law magic involved there is more complex. I don't know about their authority, but I just assumed that since they're the only ones who can control the law magic (which is a guarded secret), they command some respect.

In civilized countries, they make sure law magic is maintained and are supposed to ensure that people don't die in engagements, but governments or warriors can withhold them from engagements to enable death. Their law magic is heavily woven into reality and can't easily be changed, meaning judges there are more concerned with interpreting law and managing engagements. Feral territories have less powerful law magic that is mutable to permit clan wars. Judges there watch over engagements carefully and write territory changes into the area's law magic.

[cielo]

I suggest we flesh this out more at some point in the future, because Judges are an important part of the world; like, we should decide if they've got some sort of hierarchy, High Judges or whatever. Are they regular people who don the armor and watch/manipulate the Law, or different beings sort of like how FFTA2 treats them?

[yaypenguins]

Well, what I got from FFTA was that Judges were the users of Law magic, basically making them supercops. They worked under the King and Queen of their country, as Head Judge Cid (or whatever his title was) obeyed the Queen's orders.

[Zvane the XIII]

FYI, Judges, their authority, the Law magic and all those stuff will be explained through the canons when we reach the topic of civilizations.

I'd say I'm intending to maintain the "Executive-Legislative-Jurisdictive" look and feel around here, though not as obvious as today's cabinet and parliament thing and Judges are definitely part of it.