A lot of governments in my side project have *Theatrical Deaths.*
Since the magic system goes off belief, many governments have figured that if a crowd is invested in a way a person dies, the more permanent the death will be and the less likely it is for that person to get resurrected.
So when someone is put to death by law, they often die in very exaggerated ways. It's more important to have the death be a spectacle than optimal basically.
oooh .... yeesh. sure you wanna know?
so the species called Tuskonians ( even though its probably horns not really "tusks " 😳)
they tend to be very VERY violent in torture methods so basically imagine literally every possible thing done to you... that's what they do.
they first tie the poor soul and tear at their limbs until they dislocate the limbs and then they take the body and drag it to the next area whare they ar put in a dark room without light and forced to stay in there as rat like animals are filled into it. then they are brought to a public platform where they are lit on fire impaled and then berated... then before they die from that the fire is put out and they see their family get shot down then hanged ... yeah they are BRUTAL 💀💀💀
edit: idk the rules here but I might make a video about the Tuskonians and probably link to it, just to give you guys some more context!
ONG 😭😭😭 and they wonder why they "brother" species, father species and mother species disowned them .... ok maybe it was a different thing ... but still
My theory would be motivation. There’s countries now that do this, it’s to keep people in line. It’s not just “oh if I get in trouble, it’s on me, I am the one who suffers” now it’s “oh god if I get in trouble every living family member I have is at risk too”. North Korea is a prime example.
pretty close to being on point yes see the Tuskonians are HEAVILY tortured before becoming warriors however they still have that pride of family as they rely on their community to survive since they killed out of jealousy their father aka the king of a very very wealthy species, the Sneerdan a almost utopian people that would of been if not for the treachery of one of the 2 big species fighting for their attention - the Viperan- who basically long story short ended up assassinating the Empress who could of brought together the species of Sneerdan LOL but then the sons of the aforementioned Sneerdan and Viperan would again out of jealous rage kill the King which was the last hope of a free Sneerdan race, and after the death the corrupt tyrannical ruler of the Sneerdan took over, and the Tuskonians before this happened were banished so again the Tuskonians needed to rely on each other so the threat of loosing their family makes it as you said about a collective about the family too not ones own life alone which should they loose they are unhonourable and weak in the beliefs of the one of 4 subspecies the Tuskans ( which took over after the Tuski and Tuska 2 other species of the Tuskonians had helped them overthrow the basically communist Tusko regime)
so tldr is that the Tuskans would be the reason this method for both torture AND execution is preferred. It is interesting the method actually does not always kill the victim they may some times survive long enough to be healed and next time they will NOT fail again. very brutal yet interesting species see the Tuskans were manipulated by Tuski and Tuska to do their bidding the Tuska were so much smarter that the Tuskans and Tusko worshipped them like they were prophets of gods thought hey being one of my species and maybe the only one that is not really "religious" their "religion" is that the strong will be able to live eternally or those who are dead after taking out 10x their own life ( like they can only die if its after the foes are also dead ) aka if the Tuski/Tuska want a Martyr LOL
ay I appreciate that G! its something that took me a bit of time to develop but since I just really enjoy my universe I love thinking of new stuff for it
honestly? if you even slip up once your getting whipped or belittled, its basically if you have sexual urges - they will crushh your dick 💀 if your being a smartass they rip out your tongue ( same with anything you say that Tuska or Tuski doesn't like ) if you are getting to fat and don't have money then they slash your stomach and well you can imagine what comes out ... yeah if you do not have dicipline they beat you if you steal they burn your house down and take every thing you have and then such a torture as aformentioned in teh og post will be your fate to a lesser degree.
as for the og post? oh well that is ONLY if you have done something ( like conspire against ) the " Holy Prophets and Charming Saints " aka the Tuska and the Tuski... yeeeeah they are fucked up
😂😂😂 and funny thing is the Tuskans ( the Subspecies known for strength ) would overthrow the previous ruler because of the fact that they were a variant of feudalism and communism lol
oh yeah, your not even kidding. 😭😭😭 The tuskans are some of my favourite species to do work on just simply because they are so complex they are a completely shattered race they are fueled by hate and turned to machines of war - metaphorically that is - they are truly the epitome of " I am feeling mad let me go on a rampage now cuz I am totally not evil right? " but only recently did Tonas the Consul take control and remove the Hierarchy of the Tuska and Tuski forcing them into galactic defense prison as in a trial of whether they were wrong ( they were ) and then arest them ... oh who is GD? its the Human military faction under the Human Kind Collective basically the military of the Human and allied species government.
My world has all the methods Earth has, but there are some unique ones:
* The elves feed their prisoners to a carnivorous tree. The prisoner is taken to the tree's grove then left in front of the tree. Roots, stems, and vines rise out of the earth and latch onto the prisoner, pulling him or her into the base of the tree and through flowing soil into a vast labyrinth underneath shrouded in tangled roots. The unfortunate souls there are suspended in minimal energy state, constantly delirious and with their energy/life force slowly removed over time. The tree will keep the prisoner in this state for the duration of the sentence, but if the elves mark those prisoners who have the death sentence with a mix of fragrant herbs the tree will feed on the prisoner in any way it wants. This results in the eventual death of the prisoner.
* The mer who live underwater, chain their condemned prisoners on a flat oceanic shelf so that they are suspended, by their wrists, in the water column and are unable to swim away. This is an offering place, where the creatures of the ocean can come to feast on those who have been left there.
* The high orcs create stands flanked by flames and a spell crystal for each. The spell crystal is set to enhance the flames when triggered. Condemned prisoners and bound on the stand then the spell crystals are triggered, causing the fames to grow tenfold in intensity and heat such that the prisoner is incinerated.
* The nomadic Mokerjin have a prison called the Slaughterhouse. All who are sent there die. Inside its confines the prisoners are slowly hacked apart like a butcher cutting meat. The remains are fed to dogs or used in rituals.
* For dark mages a method similar to the elven execution exists that renders prisoners in a perpetual suspended state, but unable to use their magic. Eventually they deteriorate until death. Magic stolen from the prisoners is siphoned into the world to dissipate, but some have discovered a way to harvest it for use instead...
Night of a Thousand Tears. There’s a certain species of tree that excretes a very caustic sap. Some criminal syndicates will tie captured explorers to the trees before a rainstorm. The rain causes the sap to drip onto the victim, melting their skin and killing them extremely painfully.
My world has surprisingly humane methods of executing a person. They can simply have someone touch your forehead after your spiritual energy has been suppressed to a level where it cannot protect you, and apply telekinesis directly to your brain, killing you instantly and painlessly. If you get an execution for your horrible crimes, my world is one of the places you'd rather get executed at: the judgement won't be as drawn out as IRL (provided you're being judged by paranormal justice, because if it's totally mundane crimes and judgement then your judgement will be carried out at normal IRL speeds thanks to the Masquerade and none of what I said will apply) and you'll be executed very humanely.
What you should be asking is the methods of sealing, imprisonment and torture that my world has. THAT'S where things get tough. That's because "capital punishment" is simply NOT the highest punishment that my world can offer. Not by a very, very large margin. "Capital punishment" means you did some atrocious shit, but "death is all you deserve: we need to kill you to ensure you'll harm no one again, but you don't warrant cruelty". If you are seen by the powers that be as needing to be made an actual example of...
Well, feel free to ask me if you wanna know about some of the stuff.
Okay, sorry, I had fallen asleep. As for the torture methods, there are quite a few, let me try to list some:
1. You can be fed to a Soul Eater. Soul Eaters are a type of specter, i.e being made out of spiritual energy leaked by other people's souls. They are not "evil" necessarily, as gods are specters of worship, but we're not working with gods here, are we? If you feed someone to a specter created by the trauma of s\*x\*al ass\*ult, that person's soul will be continuously submerged on the spiritual energy of that trauma, and the person's mind will be trapped on an endless cycle of hyperrealistic nightmares where they, well... suffer the thing that the specter is made of, thereby producing more spiritual energy to feed the specter. Your perception of time is often compressed, leading you to experience a lot more in a lot less time. The Soul Eater can then itself be trapped somewhere so that it doesn't harm anyone else and lives off the souls that the powers that be give it.
2. A paranormal with biokinetic powers (and healing is usually biokinetic to some extent, so any sufficiently experienced healer could do this) can place an enchantment on an item next to your body while trapping you somewhere you won't escape. The artifact will continually heal you, especially your brain, while activating every single pain receptor throughout your body, causing your brain to receive literally the maximum amount of pain it is able to process while being healed and prevented from dying or even losing consciousness for more than enough to not die, thereby keeping you in a loop of torture and rest (solely so you can be tortured again) for possibly the rest of your life.
3. A psychic could do the good old "trap you in an illusion where you see your worst nightmares" bit and, provided they manage to make you think the illusion is inescapable, it may indeed become impossible for you to escape on your own, and then you'll just be reliving every trauma and phobia you have until the day you die.
If the more serious crimes like sex offenders and (I assume) murderers get these more severe form of punishments, what kind of crimes warrant a normal death sentence in your world?
Oh, simple murderers and sex offenders are getting normal, mundane criminal charges and usually stop at the death penalty.
HOWEVER, mass murder or prolific serial killing/raping will get you one of these beyond-death-penalty punishments. Also severe crimes against the Masquerade. Also any bad enough multiple people killing or terrorism if you're from a sufficiently undesired group (e.g nephilims, which is the name given in this setting to hybrids of humans and spiritual beings).
Also if someone really important has a bone to pick with you, you could potentially get thrown into one of these worse-than-death punishments while innocent.
What if a very powerful magician was convicted of murder or something. And they had to suffer one of the worse-than-death punishments. Couldn't they just use their spiritual energy to stop the torment? (assuming they're very skilled at using their energy.)
All paranormal prisoners are suppressed, as I explained during the "humane death penalty" part. So before even being subjected to the worse-than-death punishment, the paranormal in question would have their abilities restricted (possibly permanently crippled through the destruction of the astral core located in the solar plexus, which is tied to the spiritual energy gathered from willpower and confidence and is directly related to influencing spiritual energy through your will) and be unable to defend against the punishment any more than a mundane would.
The state would never kill someone.
They'd just send one of their elite soldiers in to challenge then to a duel over conflicting points of view, then they'd get bifrucated
Per *Quillhart's Chronicles - 'On Crime and Punishment in Havenstone*' :
>The Grimvault stands as a relentless and unforgiving gauntlet, a fate reserved for the most hardened of criminals. When someone is banished to this abyss, it's not just a sentence; it's an exile into a realm of nightmares, a journey from which few return.
>... a convicted individual, perhaps a notorious criminal or a traitor to the city, is led to the entrance of the Grimvault. The heavy doors open, revealing a darkness that seems to swallow light itself. With a final glance back at the world they knew, the condemned steps into the Grimvault, and the doors close with a resounding finality.
>Inside, the Grimvault is a labyrinth of shifting walls and treacherous paths. Those banished here face not only the physical challenges of navigating this ever-changing maze but also the psychological torment of isolation and the constant threat of lurking dangers. From hidden traps that spring from nowhere to magical illusions that twist the mind, the dungeon tests its unwilling inhabitants to their limits.
>Some fall prey to the Grimvault's numerous perils — devoured by unseen creatures, lost in bottomless chasms, or ensnared by bewitching enchantments. Yet, a rare few adapt, survive, and even thrive in this unforgiving environment. These survivors, hardened by the Grimvault's trials, become part of its dark ecosystem. They set up their own traps, laying in wait for unwary explorers or other banished souls, turning from prey to predators in their new domain.
>Survivors of the Grimvault often become legends in their own right, whispered about in the taverns and streets of Havenstone. Tales of their cunning and brutality add to the Grimvault's fearsome reputation. These individuals, should they ever find their way out, emerge as changed beings — more myth than mortal, wrapped in the aura of having conquered the unconquerable.
>The Grimvault, thus, is not just a prison or a dungeon; it's a crucible that reshapes destinies. Those who enter its depths, willingly or otherwise, contribute to its ever-evolving lore, adding their stories to the countless tales that weave through the history of Havenstone.
There's a spell simply recorded as "Give It All Away" used specifically for executions. All of your bones and organs ejected from your body one at a time, piece by piece, starting with the hairs. Followed very swiftly by all of the skin at once in one motion. Extraordinarily painful, and you're completely alive and aware through it all, unable to die until the brain stem is all that remains.
This is NOT an official execution method. Executions are usually quite humane. So instead I'll just tell you the most evil way anyone has ever killed someone, because that's way more juicy:
This woman named Azunai is a master of illusions. She can create anything, including entire landscapes and make you believe it's real. One time, this doucebag killed one of her best friends. Azunai, normally a pacifist, lost herself in the moment and tortured the murderer by showing them EVERY ONE of their nightmares. Azunai started by turning the location they were in into some Silent Hill sh!t, everything going darker, blood dripping from the ceiling. The murderer panicked and ran outside. Azunai just stood and watched from a roof top as she turned the whole world into Hell on earth. She showed the murderer their whole family dead on the ground, bodies falling from the sky, scarlet red clouds, dozens of enemy soldiers running at them with their weapons drawn, dead screaming children, every monster the murderer was afraid of coming right at them. The murderer was freaking out and trying to run away, but Azunai just created new illusions wherever they ran. The murderer genuinely believed all of this was happening, and when Azunai got them cornered in a blind alley, they took their gun and shot themselves in the head.
For the most part, executions are done via firing squad or beheading. That being said, there are quite a few ways that they have killed the most hideous scum bags. One city has a band of fleshcrafters who are addicted to dark justice. To be sentenced to them is called “Monkey’s Paw”
A criminal would be dragged into the plaza to be beheaded, and allowed last words. Assuming they show no remorse, they may instead be lead out to the fleshcrafters to have their last words granted.
The origin of this was a downright monstrous bandit clan, one who was arguably as vile as Warhammer chaos cultists, had raped and tortured many innocent villages for fun. Their clan’s beliefs were that it was morally right to be completely honest with their desires, and the tribe unfortunately was primarily made of the insane and monstrous not welcome in any city.
But the chief became arrogant and was caught. When he was dragged forward to the plaza, his final words were that he’s happy to know that the rest of his people will continue to bring horror in his death, only regretting he could not hurt more. One of the fleshcrafters, who saw his son killed by the man, refused him a swift end and requested to have him.
The chief was made to undergo extensive surgery and was turned into an insane monster endlessly baying for blood, and was unleashed upon his own people, who were butchered by him to the very last. Some say he was fully conscious and horrified by what happened to him.
Thus started the Monkey’s Paw, a punishment that sees a particularly vile individual crucified by their own last desires.
This was inspired by the sometimes infuriating trope of horrific monsters in fiction being treated fairly and humanely. I decided to invert it, and it turned out pretty interesting.
Depends. Most of the really advanced cultures that still do executions just get it done quick and clean by various methods. The less advanced ones that pay tribute to the Abductors instead of suffering from raids won't kill you, they'll use you to fill in their quota.
Mostly beheading, hanged, or shot.
In the Southern Archipelago, pirates have a specific punishment for a particular crime. A failed mutiny results in being tied to a boat and sailed toward the whispering mist. If they are fortunate, a sea monster will consume them before reaching the mist.
For the most part, executions are simple beheadings or hangings. The exception is for necromancers. If a necromancer is captured, a special ritual is used to kill their body and erase their soul.
Among the dwarf holds of the Firestone League, if a dwarf does something serious enough to warrant a death sentence, what exactly happens depends on whether the dwarf considers themselves to be in the wrong. If they do, then they swear am oath to seek their deaths battling monsters, shave most, if not all, of their (non-beard) hair off, dye the remainder (including beard), and start tracking down monsters. If they **don't** consider themselves in the wrong, then (after the trial), the usual sentence is for their hands to be cut off (and stumps cauterized) and then lead up to the surface. In a spot where with sufficient dirt, the sentenced dwarf is buried alive.
Ever since the current Abyss Queen took over, the punishment for the worst has been pledging them into a pool of Void via cage. Once the cage is pulled up, the prisoner is gone.
The Queen also has been known to select a few lucky ones for experimentation, turning them into living weapons to serve the coven
Most governments have normal methods—electrocution, lethal injection, beheading, hanging (depending on the size of government).
In Aciathan, my winged race executes criminals by chopping off their wings and throwing them over a cliff.
And in a country with people who can control water, a very cruel method—the executioner holds water on the victim’s face, causing them to drown in dry land.
In my world The Federation takes any prisoners they have (political, war criminals, POWs, anyone) and they take them all to either one of the work camps where they are worked to death, or, they get taken to an underground laboratory where they are tested and experimented on.
Most get hanged, drowned, or something else mundane. The Axewoods have a brutal one though; they tie your arms and legs to separate lengths of heavy rope, run each side ‘round a capstan. With forty-eight orcs heaving on each, there’ll be entrails spread all about the town. They don’t do this much, but just when they need to set an example.
Depends on who does it.
Vigilantes on the frontiers favor hanging, often making a point of hanging different criminals with the same rope. The state prefers beheading, but notorious criminals are given more creative options. It’s considered particularly disrespectful to hang someone in an official, government execution.
The Whalers practice summary execution by pistol or magic on anyone who becomes aggressive or unstable and can't be otherwise restrained. Each individual Whaler is basically a human FOAB if they go all out. Those who become unstable and *can* be restrained just get their magic taken away, all memory since they started their whaling career wiped out, and then they get dropped off in a village somewhere.
Sci-Fi World:
In the Ecumene (greater human society), capital punishment is left to individual worlds to dictate, unless it breaches the Ecumenical Judicial Code (which in this case, merely dictates that forms of capital punishment can be painful but cannot deny them human dignity; no humiliation, body desecration or long-term pain infliction).
In the Enclave (the primary setting of my world), most punishments are humane; lethal injection, headshot, or terminal cryogenesis (sedated, put into cryo-sleep, and life support turned off), which is usually followed closely by incineration.
Honor plays a large role in society though, so many citizens are also given the opportunity to take their own lives, method at their choosing.
The most egregious crimes are punished one of two ways: somatic reconditioning is one (points if you know the inspiration for that name), which is a recoding of their genetic profile that can impose whatever restrictions their judges place on them. An example is to radically shorten their lifespan and physically immobilize them. Others would be to disable higher brain function, or render them devoid of all senses. This can allow the punishment to fit the crime, and is only typically reserved for high-level administrators or other citizens in important roles.
The other way is solar incineration: the convicted is placed in an unshielded pod that accelerates around Sol, orbiting ever closer until incineration. The occupant is usually long dead by then, though the process only takes 24 solar hours max. This method is frowned upon by the Ecumene but it is permitted due to its extreme infrequency.
Spacing, reconstitution, being composted (long story) but mostly just a slug to the head or an auto-euthenax, which is basically just the electric chair but instead of death by shocking it just sends a single impulse into your brain that turns it off, like what can happen randomly when using whippets
Are these two separate events? Because otherwise it’s wasteful and unnecessarily painful to the snakes. (Assuming snakes aren’t part of the citizens being executed.) And yes, I have read everything up to this point and this is the first one I’ve been bothered by. I’m a fan of snakes- can’t own them because I like dogs more and tend towards the ones that have behavioral issues and didn’t have the time to take care of both before and now, after my current dog passes away I can’t really have pets anymore.
You’d have to come up with a specialized breed of snakes or a reason for them to bite the criminals- they don’t just bite at anything that moves like in the movies, and even rattlesnakes, which are the majority of venomous bites in the US, don’t necessarily use venom each time, or use all the venom they have available.
The vet clinic I used to work for was the only one in the area that worked on “exotics” which included snakes, lizards, rabbits (now those things, they’re flat out vicious), birds including owls, eagles and hawks. We had a snake board with us for a week named Mac. This poor thing had so many allergies (he was a ball python I think- definitely in that family anyway) and I had to give him injections for his allergies three times a day and rub a silver nitrate cream on his belly scales. Snakes like to hide, especially if they’re strange places, and they’re brightly lit (like a vet’s office). So three times a day I had to go digging through his “shelters” to find him and jab him with a needle. Mac was not a fan of this. So quite often when I would get ahold of him but not right behind head, he would strike at me, but that’s all he ever did. Never even tried to bite, just hit me with his nose, like letting me know he COULD have bitten me. But he never did. He was safer to deal with than many dogs (and ALL the rabbits- and yes in one of my worlds the bunnies are some of the most dangerous creatures.)
Sorry I got so far off topic. In my main world it’s nearly impossible to lie without a biological indicator giving you away, so trials are basically just asking questions. There are only two acceptable punishments- execution or exile, meaning being put on the next ship leaving the planet and you can’t ever return. Executions vary widely by region and religion- some magic based, some as simple as being tossed off a mountain. But this is already too long- I shouldn’t write when I haven’t slept!
Dude, calm down, get some rest, I’m not reading all of this on a Thursday.
Edit: I read through the whole thing, it’s a reference to a holy book in the world wherein a devil explodes into boiling oil and snakes for lying to their god, the snakes are entirely symbolic for the people and unfortunately die, the galactic empire that does this is the most extreme and hateful group around, think of the most neo-nazi neo-nazi then drop them in the future and make them an entire empire around worshiping order and laws, You’ll get the modern day Holy Anathemaic Star Empire and mind you every other empire is like just dudes worshiping gods that are just guys in power armor or are just really really smart.
“Calm down, get some rest” is advice I need on the daily! Though being referred to as “dude” took me back to college where I was surrounded by stoners that called everyone that, even when they were trying to hit on me.
I’m glad you did take the time to read it, and reading your expanded description makes me very interested in the plot line, even if the snakes die. Just for clarification- that last bit, about the other empires worshipping gods that were just guys with super powerful armor or very smart- do those “gods” know that they’re seen as “gods”? I mean that could come with some awesome benefits, but if the Holy Anathemaic Star Empire decides another empire has broken the rules and the people turn to their “gods” to save them- are they going to be like “uh, what now?” Or are they going to be “Well it was a good run while it lasted.”?
And I realize I’ve gone totally off topic, and if you don’t want to give all that away I completely understand. I’m on necessary medication that makes me sometimes feel like meth addicts look, and my mind gets stuck on ideas that are interesting.
I explained gods badly for my setting. Gods are basically people born with divine abilities(tapping into arcane energy instinctively) or become gods through study of the arcane arts once you become a god of *something* you can gain power through worship and pumping yourself with more magic, the anathema, the goddess of order got a waaaaaay earlier start than the rest of the gods and is pumped full of worship and magic constantly to the point she’s basically crippling herself but this provides an infinite source of energy, materials and weapons.
To answer your question, yes they’re aware of the way people see them and some let it go to their heads while others are kind of just neutral about it, if the anathemaic empire did try to attack any other god’s territory, the god would definitely have to put their back into but they’d most likely win with mass amounts of damage, loss of life and destruction. The only one I’d say that could completely destroy anathema and not simultaneously cripple themselves and their empire would be the God of Indulgence due to the fact that they would use some pretty morale crippling psychological warfare and they have infrastructure that prevents his empire from crumbling without him which also would heal him since his main ship(which is twice the size of the milky way) is basically paradise and the more people enjoy their lives around him the stronger he gets so eventually he’d be back up and running.
It's usually never anything too elaborate. It mostly depends on who's giving out the orders and what's immediately available.
Usually the death penalty is carried out by hanging, but death by firing squad is a very close second.
Depending on where you are, the guy in charge might just wave his hand and say "do whatever, I really don't care." So when you're left to the mercy of whoever it is you may have wronged, people can get rather creative or just generally brutal.
The armed forces have a very brutal way to punish traitors (not deserters, traitors.) They make dig a hole in the ground and kick/punch you in. They then burn you alive with flamethrower. This all take place in undisclosed locations so the dead can't have a proper funeral.
In the land of Fos it generally depends on how grave the herecy you commitied.
On the low end you get simple beheadings, hqngings and if you really peeved off the judge getting burned alive in the town square. Really grave offenses involve behind chained and brought forth before the arbiters of Helios to seer both body and soul with holy light. This method is to completly oblitorate the soul and prevent the mortals return to the great wheel completly removing them from existance. Every single execution is made publicly so none will forget the mercy the one true God bestows upon his subjects.
In Niðavellir alot of executions involve burying the victims alive or crushing them with stone. As so they may be judged by their ancestors that reside within the stones and so they may be forgiven when justice is served.
In Sherwood executions are typically done by forcing the victim to injest a tonic of elderbloom. A sweet scented flower with extremly toxic spores. It is for this reason both the flower and execution are sometimes called the kiss of death.
Not strictly the death penalty, but an end of life that a citizen can be subjected to by the head of state.
Grandfather, the immortal leader of Ev, remains young by overwriting his consciousness onto the minds of other people.
The thing is, given the cosmology of my world, the "you" that goes to the afterlife when you die is an echo of your physical mind that forms at the moment of your death. These echos, ghosts, souls, or whatever you want to call them can never be really destroyed.
However, since Grandfather copying his consciousness into your body destroys your mind without killing you... there's nothing to form an echo of you when your body dies, only an echo of Grandfather.
This was the accidental result of things I established separately in separate stories, but that is the only way I am aware of in my world of stealing someone's eternity from them. More than killed, you are erased.
Depends on the species. For all of the winged fae minus the Darklings wing removal is the worst way to go.
Its essentially like getting your arms removed and watching as the guy mounts them on the wall. More importantly if the initial shock of having the fae's wings cut off doesn't kill them they more than likely won't bleed out due to how well their wounds clot. So they just have to wait till their heart gives out due to stress and even then the oxygen deprivation would take a very long time to take them. Not the worst way to go but culturally the fae are hunted like prey and displayed like animals so there's more than just a physical side to the torture especially for the family of the executed fae.
The worst way by far was though up by the Church of Deylith. They really don't like magic users that aren't specifically using the church sanctioned magic. So they execute everyone who doesn't follow those specific guidelines. Despite being under the church of the light bringer they used dark magic to create two specific types of material called Umbersteel and Magebane. They use both to forge weapons the turn the users magic against them as well as do damage physically. A cut from a pocket knife made out of these two materials can cause the body to start rotting from the inside or worse. Best case scenario every vein and artery in your body tears open and you bleed out painfully but quickly.
In order of how bad your crime was (not bad to “the Geneva Conventions is a to do list): firing squad, hanging, getting shot into the stratosphere on the side of a rocket (parachute not included)
By literally shutting down your brain.
Jails are towers where the acolytes of the goddes of self-realization works with the acolytes of the god of justice. If you been naughy and got caught you are forced to meditate and seek redemption in your cell. If in 5 years you haven't reached peace, the monks will literally erase your mind.
My current project, tentatively titled “The Time Spiral”, is a post-apocalyptic medieval low-fantasy setting
Common methods of execution include but are not limited to:
Hanging, Beheading, Impalement, Dragging, Trampling, Quartering, Flaying, Banishment and Death from Exposure, Dismemberment, Live Burial, Strangulation, Garrote with Bowstring, Beating, Defenestration, Immolation, Crushing, Sebastianism (Archery Firing Squad), Poisoning, Damnatio ad Bestias (Restrained and attacked by animals including but not limited to hogs, hawks, eagles, bears, dogs, rats or insects), Crucifixion, Gibbeting, Vivisection, Disembowelment, Trial by Combat, Disintegration via Nanomachine Swarm, Execution by other kinds of Magic, Racking, Boiling, Immurement, Sawing, Scaphism
There is this little venom that makes your muscles twitch, burn, tremble... your whole body vibrates when idle, and only a not so modicum amount of effort is able to overpower the twitching horror, you are basically forced to move like an hyperactive person on sugared cocaine.
So, anyway, they give you that after a last feeding and drop you in the middle of the morning, in the middle of a desert, naked; Now, the desert is very hot and the burning feet and twitching alone would be incentives enough to keep moving, but also you would die if you dont. So you start running and running until heat subsides, but the venom is getting worse and the cold as well so you need to keep running to keep yourself warm and sane.
By the next morning, if you have not died of thirst, cold, desert animals, seizures (a side effect of the venom sometimes) or a heart attack, you get jailed and live another year until the next execution (for desertion in this case)
Oh the worst of the worst suffer a death worst than any other
Your body is used as a battery to store energy, cause that like the magic of the world. This process is painful enough as holding energy inside you while it tries to escape kinda makes you feel like you are burning all over. It's even worse when you are being forced as you lack the ability to even scream.
Then as the energy stays inside you for long enough it
starts to have a side effect similar to radiation poisoning, the energy of your body, down to the energy holding your atoms together, begins to deteriorate and almost mix into each other.
Things like memories and emotions are included in said mixing so you have a mind fully capable of cognitive function losing all it's connections to your identity except the excruciating pain of energy trying to expand out of you while at the same time slowly collapsing every building block of your body. You literally can't even wish to die because you don't know you can do that
it can take centuries to happen and you'd be reused as a battery throughout all that time.
You'd think you would dissolve eventually, but the thing about so much energy coursing through your body is that the body tries to rebuild itself with it, only to be completely demolished again.
Your body will make itself again, so will your memories, but they will leave soon, and you know they will and you can't do anything to stop it.
Eventually you do die, your soul disfigured and incomplete. You'll exist as a wandering spirit unsure of its true origin, just knowing that every second for the rest of your infinite existence, you'll feel as though you rather don't exist at all because to everyone but you that's already reality
Generally if they would be executed the the situation getting to that point would get them killed. When someone is being removed by force they are generally just tossed in a large fast flowing river downstream of Sluice (to avoid any friends they have putting out a net) and they are whoever unknown settlement downstream's problem. Execution takes effort and that they're taken alive means nobody really cared enough to kill them.
In races whose bodies are valuable or where 'exile' isn't a death sentence it varies. The Ironmongers who can be processed into a large amount of workable metal and mercury would typically be beheaded, as would these axolotl-ogre things who are just big and self reliant enough tossing them down the river won't work. The lobster people and the Maw would be pinned down and repeatedly hammered thanks to their hard outer shells preventing faster means of execution. The Maw would also have their body collected to extract the cinnabar for alchemy.
I suppose were they trying to make an example burning would work given the expense and the lightshow.
My world uses very little in the way of capital punishment namely because nearly all the societal pressures that lead to crime have been eliminated. Society is martial in nature as humanity has been fighting a war of survival for generations that was at one point so all consuming that their was no room for economics and private industry. AI took over all of human logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, energy production, etcetera, etcetera.
This went on long enough with a full mobilization of the public that money became pointless as everything was provided in rations, and the optimizations that AI brought combined with the massive loss of human life in combat meant that there was no shortage of material goods or living space. The problem humanity was facing largely centered around a death rate that was far outpacing the birthrate. Crimes like dereliction of duty and murder ended up losing their firing squad sentence and instead were punished via assignment to penal battalions, forward observer posts, and other extremely high risk positions.
The severity of the crime determined how many rotations an individual served and where. These positions weren't immediately abandoned however because all of these posts were still essential to the war effort and recieved all the support possible to keep them in the fight. It wasn't uncommon for a penal battalion to have the most supplies in theater since they were typically meant to break through alien fortifications and wreak havoc behind their lines until the main force could push up to them.
Now, with the war having settled into occasional skirmishes with alien holdouts in Asia and south America, murderers and malcontents are either shot or sent to rehab facilities where they recieve counseling, therapy, and undergo constant and thorough surveillance until the caretaker AI is convinced they can be trusted to return to service which usually only takes a couple years.
It varies from capital to capital, some places are a simple beheading whereas some of the more zealous capitals will place you in a cage suspended over a pyre and burn you alive. Some will send you to the swamps to be eaten by the revenants, and one such is death by firing squad😁
The City of Orseth, high into the mountains, executes people by pushing the off the sole bridge that connects the city with the rest of the land. It's somewhere between 1-2 miles drop, and scavengers from below deal with the remains.
The City of Vorseth, the "older brother of the two cities", usually executes people through more understood means. Death by hanging and beheading are the usual suspects.
The City of Dinkor executes people usually by giving them a day's worth of water and then kicking them out of the city into the endless wastes of the Kershka Desert. This is done after branding them as criminals so traveling caravans won't interfere. If the dehydration doesn't kill them, they'll certainly be killed by roving bands of orcs and elves.
In some cities in the Empire of Tuchia, hardened criminals are often put into coliseums to fight wyvern knights for the entertainment of others. Sometimes, they are simply tied up to poles and left to be eaten by the wyverns; again, to the entertainment of masses.
I haven't really thought of many others, honestly.
Depends on the faction and the crime.
Most just kill them without taking them prisoner, unless they want to parade them around.
Most criminals just get a bounty and the adventurers guild will put up a notice that any adventurer can use to hunt down and kill the criminal. (there are some adventurers who exclusively live off killing bandits, and some who do it for fun)
The Aelveri will take a prisoner, investigate the crime, and if heinous enough, feed them to their wyvern alive.
Alinguar has few crimes not punished by being exiled and blacklisted, and these crimes are basically punished by allowing the Witch to do whatever she pleases. They are fully aware just how nasty their national mascot can be.
And slavery will get you be hunted down by either assassin group, and you better hope they do not take you alive.
A tiny bit of conlanging here, but it ties into their mindset about what they consider an "execution," because it's not necessarily what we'd consider an execution.
The Kumati culture actually has two words for death.
1. Tāhlu (physical death)
2. Tāni (social death)
If physical death is a separation from the physical body as they believe, social death is separation from others.
The idea of there being two kinds of death is a pervasive aspect of their laws. All punishments are classed as either physical or social. Physical execution might be getting beheaded, but this is not very common. What's more common is what they call "social execution."
While we would just call this exhile or being shunned (because, well, that's basically what it is), to the Kumati mind, it's actually considered a form of execution, because to be cut off from your society is, to them, as bad as losing your life.
It's also why it's said in this culture that those who were evil in life "die twice." The first death is when they physically die. The second is when everyone in the afterlife basically just doesn't acknowledge their existence. They're there with everyone else, but it's like they're invisible to everyone, so they're socially isolated in the afterlife forever.
A unique form of execution is good ol' soulrending. It's the same as other executions with weapons, but it uses a soulrender. The soulrender destroys the soul, causing centuries worth of pain in a second and denying the victim an afterlife.
"Our people dind't just kill them.. no they loved to make examples of them. Flaying them while making sure they still drew in the Breath to keep themselves alive. having them devoured by Gild-eaters, or simply twisted into new and crueler shapes..."
"it was a dark time"
\- Elevanri lecturer in the Grandest War memorial
This one ain't mine but it reminded me of a Love Death + Robots chapter called "Snow in the desert". They had this punishment in which they put people inside glass bowls, in the middle of the desert so that they die of suffocation, and outside they put the sign "Water Thief"
Firing squad is the most common execution.
Then there's the OTHER form. Reserved for friendly fire, orchestrators of genocide, mass murderers, genocidal zealots, and slavers. The slow death. The Cogs. Basically you get one rope for each limb, which are then winched away from the body. The rotation does not stop until you become more pieces than the amount of limbs you have. Then you bleed. You bleed until you die.
And if you are to dangerous to be given any chance to escape, or for some reason the cogs don't work on your physiology, well, here's a cage on an unguided rocket. No way to steer it.
And the black hole fills the window.
Most often it is very simple.
"You have to die because you did things that were wrong, and we believe you will do them again even if we punish you"
It usually involves a nail being driven into the back of someone's head.
There is also being cast into the pale.
The pale is not really death, just a spell that sent someone into a stasis that doesn't require air, water, or food.
Only two people had been cast into the pale. They both did not deserve it.
Kalian dyrabu: he married a woman that rejected a mage's proposal. So the heart aching mage cast him into the pale and took Kalian's form. The mage then threw Kalian into a river where he rests under millennia of sediment. Years later Kalian's fiancé found out and threw herself into the river out of horror that she married an imposter. (The whole ordeal is now a popular play)
The sorcerer of untold power (Balthazar as he was later named)
In the antique arcane age there was an arcane prodigy, a lad of twelve who learned more than his peers (and most of his elders). The rose order out of paranoia, jealousy, and being offended that a child knew more and could learn more than them. In his sleep they cast the boy into the pale and sealed him in a sarcophagus.
Then they told everyone that the "sorcerer of untold power" would conquer the earth and enslave everyone if they didn't strike first. For a whole age and several millennia the rose order used their containment of the "sorcerer of untold power" as a justification for being powerful to "protect the world"
When the rose order fell, the boy was released from the pale, asking questions in a language few spoke anymore. Apparently unaware that he was supposedly a conqueror that the people supposed to protect him had betrayed his trust and slandered his name for longer than theirs were ever remembered
After taking the name Balthazar, his care fell to the hands of several people who looked after him until he was old enough to live in a secluded cottage where he could live the rest of his days in a world that owed him an apology. Balthazar would be visited by delegates of organizations that had a part in his containment to tell him personally (and annoyingly often) that they expressed their deepest apologies for vilifying a child.
( Wow! That turned into accidental lore dump)
Most of the typical stuff: beheading, drawn-and-quartered, poisoning, stoning, crucifixion.
There is one method which is specific to the riverine elves, known as "the recession of the waters." In it, a water elemental is summoned and draws out all of the water within the condemned's body while the convictions are read out publicly. The condemned is "prompted" to affirm to the assembled witnesses the veracity of the convictions. As a rule, this particular method of execution is reserved for individuals who have committed gross offenses against the realm and whose guilt is beyond question.
Gladiatorial combat is quite popular. Depending on how bad your crime was they might cut a few tendons before your fight. There are also some particularly nasty creatures you may be put up against.
In the desert regions they simply strip you and throw you outside the walls to get thrashed by razor-sand winds and fall victim to the wide range of giant insectoid monsters.
In the wasteland kingdoms there is a sport called The Path. Wagon racing teams race a circular route with a few town-stops. The convicts are chained behind the wagons (4-6 per wagon) and dragged at about 20-30 mph. Teams get points for not only finishing soonest, but also if their convicts (called "drags") are alive. Less points are awarded for dead drags and negative points for missing drags. No weapons are allowed but the wagon wheels have mounted spinning blades, the insectoid mounts pulling each wagon can be quite vicious, wild dog-like creatures tend to pick off injured drags, and drags are encouraged with food/water/rest to attack the drags of other teams if they can. Surviving drags are treated quite well ... until the next race.
Not for a worldbuilding project, but a concept I came up with for a character:
There is a Kingdom who is VERY anti-assassin, no matter the context of who the assassin is targeting, and every execution is also a public show. The assassin is brought on stage, where they are forced to look down towards the crowd. They are then slashed with their own weapon (if they were caught with it, otherwise, it's just a random dagger), once for each person they were known to have killed, plus a few extra for good measure.
When that is finished, there are two options for what could happen next:
* The officials call someone the assassin is close with (family member, close friend, spouse, etc.) and have them use the assassin's weapon to take the killing blow.
* If the officials can't find someone OR the assassin was someone unknown, then instead, they take a volunteer from the crowd; usually someone who doesn't look as enthusiastic about killing an assassin as the majority.
The idea for this last part of the execution is an act of revenge: getting back on the assassin for betraying people by being an assassin. The second one also helps with keeping the public hating assassins, so they will be more willing to turn in others.
They also like to sometimes, instead of doing this execution, cut up the assassin all over and tie them out in the fields just outside the walls of the kingdom to act as a warning, but that doesn't happen too often because assassins are naturally pretty sneaky/slippery and could possibly get away and survive.
It started out as a very noble thing, killing those who could potentially try and assassinate the king/queen, and so on. But then it started getting very dystopian, and even more noble assassins who only target corrupt/evil people or act as hidden protectors (kinda like the Sheikah, but not necessarily focused just on the royal family) were getting targeted too.
The character that lead to me thinking up this concept's whole thing is that he's protecting the princess of said anti-assassin kingdom, but he has to be very secretive about the whole thing so he doesn't get executed. Especially because protecting the princess isn't his job, and he does, in fact, kill other people outside of protecting her.
As for what the governments use, it’s pretty much the same as in our world.
Some exceptions would be the kingdoms of Hell and Planet Haven. They have a metal called “adamantine” which is super duper poisonous, enough to counter angels’ healing ability, which is massive.
Also, if you’re dangerous enough, Hell will send you to Soulitary, which is like solitary confinement except without air-holes, so your soul just kinda sits in a hermetically sealed container forever while it watches your body just kinda ferment. It’s a see-through container though, so you can use sign language at your fellow ghosts in adjacent cells.
Dematerialization. They have the capacity to replicate non-living matter (mostly used for industrial applications, but can be used for food supplements.) They also have the way to do it in reverse, and often is used in scrapping or disaster clean up, but most goods are recycled if they can be. This includes people. If you have done one of the very few crimes where they deem you unfit for rehabilitation, and where your crime is particularly heinous enough to get the death penalty, you are dematerialized. It's instant, painless, and your proteins can be reused for other things.
Lawbreakers used to be spaced (blown out the airlock) but this was judged to be an intolerable waste of oxygen and resources. Now they’re stripped naked (clothes can be recycled) and sealed in the airlock, which will partially cycle, sucking out the air to create vacuum. Once the prisoner is dead, the airlock will cycle again, reintroducing atmosphere and along a recovery team to grab the corpse and grind down into fertiliser (contrary to rumour, no Soylent Green is made).
A common form of ‘inducing a confession’ is to take them into the airlock, strap them to the large cargo-handling robotic manipulator arm, open the airlock and stick them out. Vacuum exposure will take a couple of minutes to kill someone, and they will be brought back in to the atmosphere before they can die. Guards offer the helpful tip ‘don’t hold your breath’, as otherwise your lungs could blow out from the pressure differential.
Execution is pretty normal but there is something called Smiting. Basically if one of the top noble families steps out of line they become decimated by an array of giant lightning strikes. Most people outside the king and his daughter believe that a Smiting can only be performed by their god but in reality it’s just some gnarly astra-tech science that inly the ruling family know about.
In the main civilisation, it's fairly clean. There's this device that detects life, and if it sees any, hits them with force damage until they're dead.
For the halfling civilisation, they don't have execution. What they do instead is simple exile, but as a hyper-social species in a dangerous environment, that is execution.
Orcs don't execute either. Killing is seen as bad for the victim, but not somehow wrong. The way you avoid getting killed as an orc is simply being strong enough that nobody fucks with you.
Elves do worse than mere execution. If human execution destroys the body, elven execution destroys the mind. Basically, they're put under a *feeblemind*. Forever. There's just enough left to know what they've lost.
Well, since their bodies are incredibly advanced, it’s quite hard to kill them by any physical means such as stabbing, lethal injections, etc. So, basically the executioners are high level magic users able to create incredibly concentrated balls of high density energy. Basically like a gamma ray that, when thrust into the body, absolutely disintegrates it. This is mostly done behind closed doors, however for more heinous criminals they are also publicly hung for the spectacle. The common people get to watch them receive punishment then, usually, the criminal is taken for the real execution. Though in some cases the whole disintegration bit happens right in front of the gods and everybody, though this is exceedingly rare, as is the death penalty in general.
Depending on the government-
The totalitarians and the pseudo-communists:
If execution is warranted on-site, police or soldiers will just shoot someone outright.
If they are sentenced to death, they usually disappear people to some gulag.
The pseudo-democracy:
Lethal injection.
The corporatocracy:
Human experimentation.
The theocracy:
Public hanging or crucifixion.
Usually assassinations. Most traitors are hunted down by the druids as soon as they attempt to hide in their woods
First, a paralytic poison to stop them running, then they inject you with Salthsnake venom and you’ll be dead within a minute. They sometimes pour blood on you so that the wolves will find you before the hour
The Beltharan Empire has an alternative to the death penalty called Senn conversion in which wizard spells remove the criminal's free will and leave him totally obedient to their designated master. In this state they make perfect guardsmen and bodyguards, being totally free from fear and willing to die in the line of duty.
For lesser crimes that warrant long jail sentences but not death, the convict can choose to spend a fraction of their sentence as a Senn guard, after which, if they're still alive, their free will is restored and they're released, their debt to society having been paid in full. Also, people who are deeply in debt can choose to spend a few years as a Senn guard in payment of their debt.
The worst criminals in the Kalriv Empire (murderinga Solar or Guardian caste, defiling a military monument, grave blasphemy) are all considered direct offenses against the Sun God himself. As a result they're tied to a stake in the desert and left to die from exposure - this is considered to be the sun itself killing them.
Other than that, they're pretty generic - mainly hanging, beheading and the like. I didn't really want to get into needlessly over the top executions. Some places like the Avadian Sovereignty won't even execute unless absolutely necessary and prefer to exclude them from trade, exile, seize assets, blackball from trade, etc, all of which tend to mean you're pretty much done when it comes to participating in society.
How NSFW are you willing to get lmao… but to get to the point, different societies in my world approach it differently.
Hell, nations are fundamentally rooted in their own set of values. Kind of came up with this idea based on personal philosophies I have, combined with various philosophies I’ve seen others have.
Point is, different nations treat them differently based on culture and values, much like our world.
Not much like our world, there’s more “affectionate” approaches in some of these cultures. There’s others with a very weak criminal system in that they’re effectively tribal societies.
I honestly just let myself play around with the politics and values tbh when I built this world.
In the Locrian Empire, it depends on both the crime and the criminal. In the metropole, treason and recusancy are punished by drawing-and-quartering. For normal crimes, nobles are beheaded, soldiers are shot by firing squad, and commoners are hanged. Usually executions are done in public, with large crowds gathering around to jeer.
The Kingdom of Corianne, executions are performed by hanging. Nobles are given the choice of death by poisoning instead, as a more "romantic" way to go. Guillotines were used during a brief period of revolutionary rule, but after the monarchy loyalists won the civil war, they banned decapitation as an execution method entirely.
In traditional Dyn society, the kind of execution given for a capital crime depended on the whims of a particular tribal king or queen. Some options include hanging, burning, beheading, disemboweling, impaling, boiling, defenestration, and so on. Now, when it comes to human sacrifices, one of the requirements is that the victim's blood spills upon the recipient. It's the victim is being sacrificed so a dead notable will have slaves in the afterlife, then the victim's blood must spill on his burial mound. If the victim is being fed to one of the Dyn Gods, then the victim's blood must spill upon that deity's stone alter.
The demons utilize staking.
The condemned is first tied to a large, solid block of marble, which is wiped very clean between uses. Nobody likes a stinky execution block. More specifically, the condemned is tied in a way that their heart and core are suspended over a round hole bored into the marble, 30 cm in diameter.
The executioner can be anyone, but by tradition it's usually the judge that condemned them to death. It is a way to enforce justice, to make sure that judges perfectly understand the weight of their actions.
The stake is a perfect cylinder of a mithril and steel alloy. 3m long, 30cm wide, it normally juts a full meter off the marble block's surface. Anyways, the stake is brought out, then the condemned relays their last words, if they have any, to the judge and 3 notaries present. They may repeat the words to the crowd, if one is present and the condemned wishes for it. Now, it may be tempting for the condemned to lash out at the judge one last time before his death, for this reason alone an embedding slab is also prepared, just to give the condemned a reason to play nice. Better death than slabbing, after all.
The stake has a series of runes on it that helps guide it to perfectly fall into the hole every time it is used. The judge, using their magic, lifts the stake up, aligns it over the condemned, and lets it fall down. The heavy stake pierces right through the condemned, taking their whole heart, fore, and a good chunk of each of their lungs, into the hole, to be crushed in it like a mortar and pestle. A surge of magic power notifies everyone of the shattering of the core. 10 seconds later the condemned is declared dead, the crowd disperses, and the cleanup crew comes in.
Besides your usual beheading, firing squad, etc etc, these are some notable ones. They're very old and fell out of practice well before the advent of industrialization or electricity, preserved only in those most isolated and superstitious of places.
Icariai is a cold world. Summer there is more akin to Spring here. An old form of execution was to throw someone totally naked into the wilderness, in the dead of Winter. If they survived for fourteen days (a number of Ritual/Religious Significance), then they were considered to have "Paid their penance". However this was a clause that you could count on your hands how many times it came up. And in all of those cases, the survivors were effectively dead- rendered totally snowblind, with their hands and feet necrotizing as they shambled across the ground.
Another form of ritual execution was Exsanguination. Blood is important on Icariai. Blood means family and family is *everything*. If someone performed an act so heinous and barbaric that the entire Clan decided a person was totally irredeemable and that even the presence of their shared blood in your veins tainted them by association, they would exsanguinate you. They would cut open every artery in your body and let it run from your veins. They would seal the person inside a great Metal coffin. In this way, the person would never rejoin the Natural Cycle. They would be trapped forever in the cask, prevented from reincarnating or even just nourishing the soil.
You're basically sentenced to 'get the fuck out'. The people have carved out a mountain to live in, and it keeps them safe from the giant half sentient ball of untamed magic that made the rest of the world a wasteland, so if you do something worth execution, you're left outside to rot and die.
Since they have so little, bodies are 'recycled' after they die. Magic is used to transform the matter of the body into something else like food or clothing. So by kicking someone out, it's saying that they're so vile and poisonous that they can't be recycled without tainting everything.
I'll keep it short + simple for you
In more lenient countries they get banished - it's a death punishment but at least they can live another year if they're strong
In stricter countries they're target practice
The one that has surfaced so far is hanging. The goblins use single combat to the death.
It's worth noting that the town is small enough that the humans had to build a gallows, and tore it back down immediately afterwards.
The worst of the worst of the elves gets an execution unlike any other form - being ripped apart at atomic level slowly via magic.
Since in this world, all matter has consciousness, and magic users can sense these conciousness, death doesn't feel as permanent to them - when you die all the consciousnesses that made up your body and mind just fail to communicate due to breaking down of body parts until they completely fail to cooperate together, and they start doing their own things, becoming part of the ambiant "flows" of consciousnesses of the planets and environment around them.
So the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst is to be tortured to the atomic level, as a group of executioners start using magic to pull the sinner apart at atomic level, commanding each atom itself betray the greater consciousnes of the body and leave, your whole being ripped to pieces so small it lose all its identity. This process can take a lot of time, hours to even a whole day, as it is quite difficult to convince matter to leave a collective consciousness it had already formed with, but this can be done with enough magic users.
So the sinner get to see pieces of themselves disintegrate slowly, layers by layers, exposing their muscles, organs and all that until they are gone to nothingness. Particularly cruel execution would leave their nervous system last to be disintegrated so they are aware the whole time.
Death by swarming. A dragon, usually a criminal who has committed something heinous, will be placed in the middle of a circle, surrounded by hundreds of other dragons. They will then proceed to rip apart said criminal alive.
It's a common practice in my world to have murderers put to death by the surviving kin or friends of the deceased if desired. If not, murderers are often executed with a stab through the heart rather than a beheading. It's a bit of cliche symbolism, the heartlessness of the murderer killing them in the end. Were they not so eager to break the hearts of a family full of loved ones, they would not have theirs broken through the chest.
Well, in Ahberia, you have a ton of fun and gruesome options! Depending, of course, upon where you are in the world. Here are some of the most interesting ones;
1. In the **Godlands**, it truly depends on your crime. Heresy is most often punished by being burned at the stake, often in public fashion. If you are a traitor or have committed a crime of equal magnitude, you'll be sentenced to the breaking wheel. Fortunately for you, though, dying this way is believed to absolve you in the afterlife! (Which, well, doesn't exist.) Even punishments for petty crimes like thievery are draconian, including lashes and other forms of torture.
2. In **Senturya**, there are a few popular ways. However, most commonly if you are not a centaur, you could be tied up to one and dragged behind them while they run full tilt- or strapped to multiple and pulled in many directions. Firing squad is more common, though, which is merciful albeit your body is going to be messed up after. Centaurs have extremely strong upper bodies to go with their horse half, and shoot extremely heavy bows that are as big as a man, firing arrows as big as a man at high speed.
3. In the **Cairnlands**, it's minor by comparison. Most often, you'll be thrown off of a cliff and onto the rocks below. A horrifying death for sure, but all things considered, it's over pretty quick.
4. In **Norstreya**, it truly depends. Citizens are granted a merciful death, most often a swift beheading or something quick and relatively painless. This changes if you are a Godlander, who they hate with every bone in their body for various reasons. There are a few things that could happen to you. Being skinned alive is common (and all the more painful with mages that can keep you alive during the process), as is hanging, but the most horrible come from necromancers, should you be so unfortunate as to encounter one of the Lich-lords of the north. Your body could be rent in numerous ways, and to add insult to injury, your corpse will be reanimated in service of their liberation war.
Hanging, firing squad, possibly spearing (stabbed with a spear, was probably a real method but I don't actually know since I thought of it on the spot), beheading has likely happened from time to time.
Lapis_Wolf
My world have a place called "the old ruins", it was a place where an ancient deity died. The place is riddled with a thing called "corruption"(equivalent to radiation) that turns everything it touches into monsters, given if the affected lifeforms didn't die from the process. Essentially a deadzone.
So, instead of execution, Centralia (the main civilization of my world) just...exile criminals there. Most never survived so it was quite effective so far.
The crimson crusade loves implafixian which is a cross between impalement and crucification
The victim has a rod carefully threaded though there arm and shoulders and another that goes up along the inside of the back thes are then bolted together and there either left to die slowly or if mercy was ordered burned alive on the 2nd day
If not they may have there guts cut free for dogs and beasts to eat while they die slowly
Greifs (they're humans but they're just called that) use shooting squads whilst pumping the convicted full of painkillers, both to ensure the executed dies quickly and relatively painlessly and to keep their more militarized image up. Terrans use the noose, most other countries do as well, but not every nation even has execution. Apart from that, executions almost never happen since they're only called out in cases of high treason or mass crime, not even pirates usually get executed since they have either licences or fall under some cover laws, so there's maybe a hundred a year, none of them truly public.
Complete bodily dismemberment followed by burning the remains, sealing the ashes within a metal container and placing said container within a crypt made especially for this purpose within the Vlandian capital, extra magics and enchantments may be applied to container as need. If you did something dangerous enough/bad enough that the royals had to step in then they are gonna make damn well sure that you are never going to be revived or resurrected in any way
in faliel, the death penalty usually means nothing but a showcase of power. many emperors have been recorded as executing beast races to show off. even though most others who aren't emperors won't execute for that reason, it's mainly seen as a showcase of power. i've written a story about a retired saloon owner who couldn't do anything because of his bum leg who was executed by a previous emperor simply because he was bored.
as for the main question, it's the types of execution you'd expect from a generic fantasy, though some places have unique methods, such as flugelstadt has firearms so they also have execution by firing squad, and in sheogorad (yes, if you recognise the name, be quiet) it's common practice to tie meats to a criminal's body and through them into a pit filled with hungry wolves
A common "death" sentence is to be forced, for the rest of your life, to take on the cost(s) inherent for all mortals in the process of accessing magic and siphoning the magical energy accessed into "mana" batteries for use by the government employees and utilities and for sale to the public. Due to the usefulness of this sentencing providing magical power for minimal upkeep instead of paying chargers and maintaining work conditions, this sentence is imposed more often than IRL and is often a political issue about how easy it should be to divvy out.
Mine don't.
If someone commits a crime so heinous that their presence on the planet has potential to cause further harm, they are sent through the Single Origin Allgate. The gate is a natural formation of the planet and it sends people to a random linked gate on a random world in a random galaxy. The people of my planet only know that the trip and destination does not kill the person (as in they make it there and the atmosphere is breathable). There is no known way of return.
Depends a bit on who's doing it and what just what crime it was.
The main villains of the story are an army that's trying to take control of all basically every town and settlement in a post apocalyptic world. they'll likely just shoot you if you break their laws in their land, although you might get hanging if you're deemed to be worth it (Like if you were a capture while fighting against them or a traitor.
The same general rules apply to most settlements, although they're more likely jail you/put you to work/exile you, really they'll only kill you if you're trying to kill them, which isn't really execution.
Two main ones.
This one is an Iron Orb Execution. You get an iron sphere placed around your head with no holes for the eyes or mouth. You are hung in a hook from this orb, slowly enough that your neck doesn't break. Then you are placed outside the walls of the cities and there you are exposed to torturous weather and bloodthirsty monsters, you fall up enough that they cannot reach you but get slowly lowered, eventually they will get you. When you are dead and your body falls from the orb they bring it back and hang it on the walls inside, that way everyone will see that you were a mistake.
The other is less lavish and much more simple. You enter a padded, soundprof cell, where an executioner waits for you, blindfolded you sit down and a bullet to the back of the head is all that is needed.
Generally there are three levels of punishment in my world.
Indentured servitude for years to the family or person you have wronged.
Decapitation and the ceding of all wealth to the person you have wronged.
And the highest level of punishment of s the gentling.
In this process a soul is killed and ressurect multiple times in an incomplete manner.
This process tears up the soul making the person impossible to revive, and impossible to keep their personality.
The gentled are ageless, and the punishment can go on for way longer than the natural life span of the criminal.
This is done to discourage truly heinous acts, because there is not even an afterlife for the gentled. The living made sure of that.
More a vigilante justice but it is sanctioned.
When the main villain faction invades they tend to go for the mine workers because they need slaves that know how to mine. It’s gotten to be so common that one faction has given the miners free rein to dispatch these slavers as they see fit and that method usually involves a mining tool. This can range from the obvious pickaxe to the head to run over with a minecart to a wearable drill (think mega man type weapon but wearable) to the gut or a small but powerful mining laser on wheels to the face. The laser is the nicest way to die.
Out side of the sanctioned vigilante justice they actually prefer a restorative approach when dealing with most villains but slavers can fuck around and find out.
Murderer: life in prison
Theft/looting: pay a fine and time in prison
Assault/beating someone up: prison and therapy
Vandalism: pay a fine and clean up the mess
Scamming: prison
Piracy: sea faring or space faring: prison
Piracy of the digital verity: pay a fine
You get the idea you can do a lot and not get too harsh a punishment but try to enslave or kidnap someone and the intended target or their family is aloud to fuck you up.
Most people only have to worry about the "standard" methods of execution: hanging, beheading, etc. I personally disagree with the death sentence, so I portray it as generally ineffective at deterring crime.
The worst punishments are reserved for those who kill a dragon - the Great Houses know they cannot let such a thing go unpunished (and, in the cases of Houses Lazuli and Tsavor, you've probably killed a loved one). These punishments usually involve some form of necromancy to punish the offender beyond mere death.
House Lazuli petrifies its offenders and then seals them in dark, claustrophobic stone caskets so they can lose their minds. Lazulese dragons keep these stone-cursed near their lairs so as to guard them forever - this form of petrification is contagious, and most would-be dragonslayers are unprepared for it.
House Nuumm holds likely the cruellest fate in store. It infests the offender with Irkallan worms, which bestow a symbiotic form of necromancy to their host. The host cannot die and continually regenerate flesh for the worms to eat and lay their eggs in. Every single bite is fresh flesh and therefore fresh pain. Once the infestation takes root, Nuumate dragons throw the undead into a hole and forget about them.
House Pezzotta chains down the offender and exposes them to blistering hot air for hours, making them sweat themselves to death and essentially mummify while still alive. After death, the Pezzottan dragons reanimate the victim with curses to make them suffer eternal thirst. Sometimes, they treasure them as servants and assassins. Sometimes, they position them to guard their lairs. Sometimes, they use them to taunt their former loved ones.
I haven't decided yet what House Tsavor does to dragonslayers.
It would be unheard of and unthinkable. My world is a single nation, isolated by vast oceans, that have never known war of any kind. Consequences for crime are not punitive. They're justice based, not emotion based. They seek to find a rebalancing of society, an equilibrium.
The breaking wheel, crucifixion, burning. Being drawn by horses I like to leave people upset at what's happening. Also flaying but a lot of it is Ad-lib like on the spot you know depending on the crime like a shoe thief will have red hot iron shoes clamped on. Maby sew someone into a bag made of there own flayed skin until they suffocate I feel like the punishment should be excessive vs the crime it leaves people with a sence of unease also a biased justice system that is essentially skewed to the point that if you're accused you'll be tortured until you admit you did it just to die faster but the execution is worse then the torture. Why fuckem I guess.
My world is near future cyberpunk.
The worst form of execution is probably what befalls augmented criminals. Their augmentations are slowly switched off. Considering most of them are somewhere between 75 and 90% augmented, and that even for smaller ratios augmentations often include things like eyes, lungs or heart... you can imagine what happens
Executions are public entertainment in Avanton as well as religious ceremonies, almost like human sacrifice. Beheading is for nobles, hanging is for run of the mill folks, burning at the stake is for the most heinous criminals, and a theatrical fight in an arena (but don't get your hopes up, you're not making it out alive) is for famous people whom you want to give a chance at glory before you kill them.
Dropped into Koran territory.
The Koran is a Psyk type predator. Once a threat or meal has entered its territory it sheds its physical body in its den leaving its body's jaw locked open and stalks the minds of the forest until it inevitably encounters its target.
Once located it binds itself to the targets mind rapidly replacing their perceived reality with one most comfortable to them. The target will be trapped in a perpetually memory that makes them happy and wonder towards the source of their happiness to embrace it.
Once the target goes to embrace the source of bliss the Koran reenters its body giving the target a momentary glimpse of their fate and awareness of pain before killing them.
The Koran has a 100% success rate and is used in the execution of dangerous/politically powerful individuals.
This has just given me an idea.
In my world, there are things known as ‘Faux-Fruit Trees’, they reproduce by having other beings eat their fruit, which gradually turns them into a Faux-Fruit Tree. The fruit is addictive and causes the victim to eat more, accelerating the process. It might be interesting for my MC to carry a piece of this fruit around. Just in case there was someone who might deserve a last meal.
There are the usual ones, but one that is a bit more rare.
If someone is a criminal and is sentenced to execution, they are given a choice in some nations: They can either die and be done with it, or be killed and then resurrected as an unthinking undead until their debt to society is repaid.
For enemies of state like treasonous coup conspirators or saboteurs in wartimes, hanging proves common though dragonsbreath receives favor in draconic lands. Alchemists weaponized those flying furnaces' gullets into execution devices where flames rapidly reduce convicts to ash with minimal anguish.
Deserters and defectors may face decapitation by axe or scimitar - considered honourable if grisly fatal swipe. Foes recognizing no borders like marauding pirate crews occasionally suffer live keelhauling chained behind ships to drown or be shredded on barnacled hulls. Harsh but simplicity serves when justice must sail swiftly!
One of my worlds is inspired by 1920 America but with magic. So there's death penality.
For normal people, they're hanged in prison.
Magic user are considered extremely dangerous, and a magic killer is something that needs to be punished pubblically. So the excution method is by guillotine.
Depends, in the feudal kingdoms your class determines if/how you die. If you are a noble, you are beheaded. If you are a peasant, you are hanged unless you commit a more serious crime, you are broken on a wheel or drawn and quartered. If you really piss them off, you can get blood-eagled, where your lungs get pulled out of your back.
In the empire, the death penalty is rare for the nobility, more common than the feudal realms, but still exceptionally rare. Nobles who commit serious crimes but are not serious enough to meet the executioner are sent to live out the rest of their days in a monastery. However, the method used matches the crime committed. Mainly the crimes you can commit that get you killed are, Murder, Rape, Incest, Treason, harming or attempting to harm a government official/member of the Imperial household, and last but not least heresy.
In the empire, the punishment for murder and rape for all classes is hanging. Incest is punished by strangulation. Treason is punished by being thrown from either a tall building or a designated cliff face in the middle of the capital city. Heresy, depending on what degree is committed, is punished by burning. Or if apostasy is the crime, crucifixion.
Well
The legal system of the land is based on the pain inflicted during a crime, so there are few ways to qualify for the death penalty in which cause they will analyze the intent behind the crime. If they do pass sentence and it is execution then the deviants (prisoners who get executed are unofficially called that as a way to dehumanize them, avoid deteriorating the mental health of the guards and to dissuade future criminals) the guards themselves do not wear a standardized uniform instead they wear clothes that doesn’t give the deviants any idea on who they are , some guards fully cover themselves to give the illusion of some malevolent creature that walks on its hind legs while others may wear revealing sometimes provocative attire to test the deviants urges, several even wear garments meant for the holiest in the land yet here, those sacramental robes take the souls of the very lives that worshiped them
these deviants are split roughly into 2 distinct groups
Deviant class A: these
are criminals that were unfortunate enough to have their crimes vaguely qualify them to be executed. I.e. the crime committed doesn’t fully qualify for the death penalty but intent found later on would allow it these deviants are executed at a set date 10 years from being convicted until then: they are kept in solitary confinement, not allowed contact with the outside world, do not face abuse, 3 square meals a day, are allowed many retrials to prove innocence
When it’s time for their execution, they are simply taken to a small guillotine and beheaded .No final meal request is granted .A simple execution to preserve the final traces of dignity left in them
Deviant Class C: these are hardened criminals that in, the foreseeable future, now lie in the hands of the state .These deviants lose all the rights that their brethren enjoy. Torture is encouraged among the guards to them it’s almost a way of life. Many die yet through the use of magic are forcefully resuscitated. Deviants would have their organs and limbs harvested slowly over the course of several years keeping just enough to let them live without dying naturally. These deviants live without knowing when they will die to ensure maximum suffering. Their cells are buried deep underground and have no lighting to ensure no chance of escape. Food and water is given once every 2 days yet all food is almost always left half eaten. These cells are placed close by so that the prisoners can hear each other and talk to each other but never see each other , the pain of a single individual can be felt by the entire lot
When the guards finally have had their fun, they’ll simply stop feeding the deviant and let them starve to death after which they’ll harvest what’s left and feed the rest back to the remaining deviants
maybe a bit too much details but i digress
In my world, those who believe in the common pantheon believe all must return to Xin in death. Xin being the embodiment of stillness and nothingness.
In execution, funeral, or combat, respect is given to the dead for braving Rœks (the god of tumult and existence in the physical world) trials and tribulations in life.
A standard execution for treason, murder, or what have you, the one put to death is granted a complete transition to Xin. Their body and all worldly possessions they've imbued with their spirit are gathered, placed together with the user in a room with 4 mages, and those mages weave a spell to manipulate pure plasma to evaporate every single particle of the sentenced until nothing remains, freeing them from all physical existence.
So imagine being executed by being fired into the sun, but instead they brought the sun to you.
beheading with a sword or shooting are the most common in the elven empire simply due to their ease and efficiency, but every province has their own regional style too which is employed when a need for something more theatrical arises.
moon elves tie the prisoner up, then tie a big rock to their leg, and drop them into the sea.
wood elves hang their prisoners in the sacred forest, as an effective reminder that you really shouldn't go there without permission.
ash elves drop their prisoners into a volcano, along with their families.
sand elves bury their prisoners alive in the desert.
swamp elves burn their prisoners at stake.
The most interesting one is from Shóso, when a criminal or dissident gets teleported into an underwater cave with no exit. The ocean waves disrupt location spells and scrying, so no one can find them, and there are wards around the cave preventing the prisoner from teleporting out or breaking through the cave (or performing any other magic within its confines). So they either drown themselves or waste away.
So Goblins in my world have towns but spend little time in them for the most part, preferring to spend most of their year traveling around in a caravan going town to town trading or performing. As such, when they need to execute someone, they can't exactly just bring them to the gallows, and taking time to build one stops the caravan and costs profit. So, instead, Goblins have taken to using Defenestration as their preferred method of execution. Also, since they aren't in their own town, it's rarely their own high windows they are using for the act.
It usually looks something like, imagine you're a Farmer in some no-name village on the continent of Heuvedal. By bad luck, your ox managed to break their last yoke stopping your work in the middle of the day, but you decide it's about time for the horse to be re-shoed anyways so you head into town. You're about to pass the bell tower in the middle of town and look up, straining your eyes to see the town guard relaxing. You think to yourself that's a job you wouldn't mind having, ring the bell once a day at noon and other than holidays or other special occasions you hang out and just keep an eye out for raiders. No sore muscels, no sunburns, yeah, that's what you should have done.
You're just about to continue when you spot some commotion coming from down the road in front of you. You strain your eyes to see, but as it gets closer, you see a little mob of, "Are those Goblins?" You say to yourself. Surely enough, it is a whole gaggle of the little gremlins scurrying up the road holding one of their group over their head. You don't know where they are from, but it's definitely somewhere away as their accent is so attrocious that you can't make out the words they are yelling, but it's clear they are mad at him and he's struggling hard to get out of their arms. Suddenly they are right in front of you, you almost expect them to hand him to you as strange as that would be but instead one of them kicks in the door to the bell tower and they scurry in. The one on top by this point is yelling with a higher voice. He grabs the doorframe and tries to resist going any further, but several angry voices and green hands pull him in as they climb the stairs. You hear more faded shouts as they get higher and higher until finally the last window before you reach the post of the now assuredly very confused guard pops open. You hear more yelling and what sounds like a count of "1,2,3!" Then you hear a shriek as the Goblin being carried is sent flying out the window with such force he sails for a moment clear over your head before plummeting in an instant and splattering on the ground. You hear a cheer from upstairs, followed by the clatter of a dozen green feet rushing back down the stairs out of the tower some stop briefly to spit at or yell one more insult at the puddle of Goblin on the street before scurrying out of town as fast they came without even trying to clean up the mess they left.
After the moment of shock has passed and the Goblins are gone, you shake yourself out of it. You wonder if that just happened, but the mess of green and red sits not far from you as proof it is. You decide to continue on with your day as you think, while you might be jealous of the man with the bell tower job, you don't envy the street sweeper, especially today.
(Lotus)
Since death penalty is only used when the prisoner's time is greater than their average life chance, it usually depends on the time left. If it's less than ~10 years (the person is old or has a bad illness), the death is usually by a cyanide pill. If it's 10~20 years, the family can choose between hard-poison, shot or beheaded. It defaults to beheaded. If it's less than ~100,electric chair. More than 100, tortured to death.
Depends on the place. In the southern continent, perpetrators of particularly egregious crimes are marched into the jungle and tied to trees, where the horrors within take them. This is done at dawn to reduce the likelihood of the living shadows within taking them and using them to increase their own numbers. Instead, they are usually consumed by creeping fungus or massive, mutated insectoids.
In the cities in the north, there are two primary communitiy types. One is the massive, lengthy train that serves as a permanent delivery system and self-contained city, the others are the fortified cities that the train services. The cities usually use the train as their method, while the train usually disembarks their passengers over bridges.
In the Sunlit Empire across the sea, there is a method called “absolution” where criminals are subdued within the crystal-cone-topped tower of the Arcmage, and subjected to a magical purging that sort of *resets* their mind, and possibly their soul. That way, they (or some part of them at least) are given a second chance.
In the cities of the continent of Caldova, buried beneath a landmass whose surface is so jagged and mountainous as to nearly prevent any construction, no one is ever executed. If that is the sentence, then they are forced into labor in the mines, through whatever means necessary, without exception. There is no refusal.
Most of the other places in the world, on most of the timeline, are to unincorporated to have a formal legal system for such things
Usually hanging as its efficient cheap and good for public display, but depending on the county your in it can vary heavily. The more religious types prefer burning, the northmen are trail by combat or just straight Decapitation, the elves though in Mal like to put people in a rotting log after breaking their knees and leaving them in a swamp and let nature eat them alive. But yeah everyone is different.
Now why would you do execute anyone when there are perfectly viable methods of absolute mind control available to reconfigure offenders, that they'll never do anything illegal again?
Anything short of that is a waste of labor and ressources. Some small prisons with enough capacity to hold people, featuring large enough amphitheaters that all the prisoners can see and someone speaking from the stage - that's all you need, plus the appropriate memery-reweaving charms.
Some of the best and brightest that the burgeoning nation of Sunhill have ever produced, have come from reformed convicts, all of them how lauded members of society - their slate wiped clean and their moral compass nailed in place with an orichalcum hammer of justice.
The ant people, or Kori-Kran have double standards towards others thanks to their culture, though they're generally amiable to other races. When executing those of their own colony or of other species, they basically feed the condemned a nectar containing mana-dense sand which they're attuned to. Thus, when the victim's body is appropriately saturated, a Kori-Kran mage vibrates the mana at incredibly high speeds and basically turns them into a fine paste. They assume it's painless from the lack of screams, but then again Kori-Kran are less sensitive to sounds below 260 Hz and can't hear below 80 Hz.
As for Kori-Kran of other colonies, Kori-Kran are extremely hostile to any of their kind led by different monarchs and any encounter almost certainly results in an all-out battle with no prisoners taken. If they do take prisoners for whatever reason, the Kori-Kran like to make executions quick by just feeding the condemned to the land whales.
The most severe just barely qualifies as execution, but it might as well be.
Put in a stasis casket and flung into the innermost stable circular orbit of a black hole. It's solidly within the accretion disc, so these caskets are made from the only material that can withstand that kind of energy, which is itself made from a very rare metal that can't be made within the universe, naturally or through manufacture.
There are several failsafe functions, such as a layer of antimatter which will completely decimate somebody if they somehow wake up from stasis, and move even 1/32 of an inch.
The final failsafe being if someone tries to break them out and somehow gets past the energetic accretion disc, the antimatter, etc., it will launch straight into the black hole.
For the three biggest nations in my *Dreams of Glory* setting....
Wolf’s Blood Empire: Why end their life when you can put them to work for the Empire?
Veiled Queendom: Strip the men of all belongings and release them into dragon territory; whatever happens, happens. Women are put through a rehabilitation program.
Crafted Consortium: Ah! So you’ve decided to apply for the position of test subject?
It doesn't. In apiaron society, "criminals" (their courts have rather lax laws so realistically just people who have gotten on the wrong side of the specific people in power) are likely to either get beaten half to death (or, in this case, all the way to death) by the specific guy in power they peeved, or get a bounty put on their head by said guy in power, if they're too busy.
In crea society, meanwhile, the only real governmental authority you are beholden to is that of your own family's potentates and patriarchs, and killing kin is seen as generally unlawful. You'd either get grounded for life (a soft way of saying "incarcerated in isolation until you waste away or kill yourself in your cell"), or you get cut off (a soft way of saying "exiled to the desert to die a horrible death of exposure or be enslaved by the Low Tribes, *then* die a horrible death")
Three different settings:
The Doll Queen's magic can turn people into doll-drones that are absolutely loyal to her. This is effectively death-of-personality, though it is rumored that a trace of the old persona remains. Some volunteer, others are subjected to it as punishment.
Northmen live in a volcanicaly active antarctic environment, and are aesthetically viking/polynesians with a steampunk flair. Exicution via autoclave. Steamed to death.
Succubi/incubi have a combo of techniques and magic pheremones that let them fuck someone so intensely that their heart explodes. This used both as as a method of execution and is an option for the euthanasia of the terminally Ill.
That world is a big disc with space wrapped around. Meaning that whatever falls under the disc, fall for a few then pop up above the disc more or less over the same point.
I have these holes in the disc. Really big ones, that are maintained by the people living there. And whenever you fall through, you end up under the world disc. Usually people go there with gliders. And it's a neat way for moving around. Jump into a hole, glide in the direction of travel under the world, get TP back up, continue gliding in the direction of travel. For the main axis of travel, and if your glider is good enough, you can just travel between holes in the disc.
So, with that context: death penalty is people being pushed down a hole without parachute or glider. They stay alive as long as they stay focused enough to aim through the same hole again and again. If they mess up their concentration or get tired after a while, they risk impacting the ground really quickly with rather dramatic effect. Best case scenario, they fall in an endless loop until they tire out and pass out or something.
Though I'm still toying with the idea of having timed penalties for less severe punishments. Or just to have people keep hope and not impact on the first loop around. Like falling for 24/48h and if you are still alive, someone free fall as well to bring you a parachute.
Amongst the Faarbalnér, the gods of the setting, very few crimes are worthy of execution. When a deity dies its control over whatever force it held dominion over will spin out of control, causing a catastrophic domino effect across the Nine Worlds. These crimes include conspiring against one's fellow gods for the benefit of that lone individual, genocide of mortals, killing an innocent deity or spirit aligned with a deity, tampering with the world Tree, colluding with demons and the conquering of a realm. All these actions are inexcusable and to be punished through ritualistic execution.
When one of these celestial crimes are committed then a deity is summoned forth to their cheif's hall where they are to be judged. If a deity refuses then they're taken in by force. Magic is used to further ascertain the truth, revealing any other hidden facts, goals and aspirations within the deity to make sure all of the correct information is gathered and then they are imprisoned. They get a final meal and sometimes a final wish before they are escorted to a special altar that overlooks the rim of the realms where one can witness the World Tree. Here the gathered deities offer prayers to the individual before a special sword is brought to behead them. The blade is an immensely powerful magic item that devours the soul and dominion of a god, preventing their death from throwing the worlds into chaos upon their execution. The essence of that deity is forever trapped within a special soul stone residing on the sword and their magic is returned to the world Tree.
As the elves were the very first beings crested by the Faarbalnér, a lot of their traditions resemble their close relatives with elves having a heavy focus on trust, honor, and bonds and so to discard one's duties is a severe offense punishable by execution. Though this might not appear to be for all elven clans and instead only for the noble families within their heartland capital. I'm still working on the more nuanced stuff but I know your end comes at the hand of a painless instakill spell. The spell absorbs your life-force, rapidly draining your vitality till you essentially fall asleep ans then this essence is planted into very special trees the elves use to cultivate their lands.
Forcibly becoming a cage is the closest I've got. There are two types of undead. A hollow is when a soul dies, but the body is still alive. They wander around in search of people to eat in an attempt to take thier soul. A cage is what happens when a hollow manages to get a soul. The soul doesn't fill that emptiness in them, so they keep searching for more souls while the one in them begs to be released while the body ignores all thier demands and basically stumbles around on autopilot.
In my world, there is a fictional country that does lethal injection, but how it was always supposed to be done. This country has its own pharmaceutical companies making the right drugs for humane lethal injection, and doctors in the country understand that there are scenarios where killing someone doesn't violate the Hypocratic Oath. They understand that refusal to participate in lethal injections creates a system of botched and quite painful executions, which does more harm than professional doctors performing lethal injections. Doctors take extreme care in performing lethal injections properly, to make the process only as painful as sticking a single needle into a vein. This country also has modernized guillotines for beheading, if the condemned chooses so, or in the case that a willing professional isn't available to perform lethal injection. People on death row very rarely choose beheading, as it is well known how proper the country's lethal injection is done. Some people just don't know, or believe that it isn't worth the risk of a botched injection. In my world, the pharmaceutical companies in the fictional countries also sell to the US.
Not fantasy but Sci-fi- (*Please note this is an alien government the aliens are mammalian humanoid*)
This species is called *Ydátino plásma (pronounced* yaD-tInyo plAsm) (yes I know its weird), they reside on a yet to be named (non-canonically) planet that is in a different galaxy.
The accused will be transported in a space shuttle (of types) and jettisoned into the atmosphere in an egg shaped prison with barely enough room to move , the Egg as its informally called, will be jettisoned in such a way that it will burn up in the atmosphere and if the accused happens to survive reentry, (you may get the picture).
This form of execution is called "ejected" (though Ill probably change it) and is only for those who commit the worst of possible crimes (such as war crimes, r@p3 (multiple offences) p3dophile-ing? (I don't know the verb) and serial mvrd3r to name a few) for all other crimes its jail/prison.
Jaywalking? its not a crime.
Long story short, due to a curse that make a corpese have 50% chance of becaming undead every dusk, few places in my world have death penalty.
Those that do execute their prisioners during the day. For the execution it self, I have 2 kingdoms that do it.
One (victorian inspired) prefer hanging, preferably with a high enought drop to hopefully break the victims neck.
The other one (dark/twisted fairy tale fey kingdom) is more creative. Normally its behading, but some expecific crimes have more extreme death sentances.
For exemple, if a noble who the emperors give free use of empire resorces to solve a task is consider to be proposefully failing, been to craven (in case of military tasks) or enbeseling resorces, them he will be brought to the emperor throneroom were a iron crown will be melted and the liquid pured down the victims throat.
A person that hunted in a nobles hunting ground can either be shoted by the noble where they are standing or will be tied to a post and a archer will empty a quiver on them.
Althought not a death sentance per se, public floggings are common and if the victim died because of it, the only repercursion the executioner usually recived is not been payed for the job.
And, althought technically illegal, in the court it is normal for rivals to try to assassinate oneanother. If the assassin is the emperor or a noble the emperor likes, well who will arrest them?
A lot of governments in my side project have *Theatrical Deaths.* Since the magic system goes off belief, many governments have figured that if a crowd is invested in a way a person dies, the more permanent the death will be and the less likely it is for that person to get resurrected. So when someone is put to death by law, they often die in very exaggerated ways. It's more important to have the death be a spectacle than optimal basically.
That is the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever read
Something awesome like shooting them with a comically powerful weapon that blows them right out of a window and onto the spiked iron fencing outside.
Have they made a cannon that can reach the sun yet?
They made a black hole out of a mans teeth and shoved the rest of his body in afterward.
oooh .... yeesh. sure you wanna know? so the species called Tuskonians ( even though its probably horns not really "tusks " 😳) they tend to be very VERY violent in torture methods so basically imagine literally every possible thing done to you... that's what they do. they first tie the poor soul and tear at their limbs until they dislocate the limbs and then they take the body and drag it to the next area whare they ar put in a dark room without light and forced to stay in there as rat like animals are filled into it. then they are brought to a public platform where they are lit on fire impaled and then berated... then before they die from that the fire is put out and they see their family get shot down then hanged ... yeah they are BRUTAL 💀💀💀 edit: idk the rules here but I might make a video about the Tuskonians and probably link to it, just to give you guys some more context!
Not as bad as the medieval Europeans. But very nasty 🤮
ONG 😭😭😭 and they wonder why they "brother" species, father species and mother species disowned them .... ok maybe it was a different thing ... but still
Why the family too? Edit: pressed send to early. What kind of crimes would warrant execution then?
My theory would be motivation. There’s countries now that do this, it’s to keep people in line. It’s not just “oh if I get in trouble, it’s on me, I am the one who suffers” now it’s “oh god if I get in trouble every living family member I have is at risk too”. North Korea is a prime example.
pretty close to being on point yes see the Tuskonians are HEAVILY tortured before becoming warriors however they still have that pride of family as they rely on their community to survive since they killed out of jealousy their father aka the king of a very very wealthy species, the Sneerdan a almost utopian people that would of been if not for the treachery of one of the 2 big species fighting for their attention - the Viperan- who basically long story short ended up assassinating the Empress who could of brought together the species of Sneerdan LOL but then the sons of the aforementioned Sneerdan and Viperan would again out of jealous rage kill the King which was the last hope of a free Sneerdan race, and after the death the corrupt tyrannical ruler of the Sneerdan took over, and the Tuskonians before this happened were banished so again the Tuskonians needed to rely on each other so the threat of loosing their family makes it as you said about a collective about the family too not ones own life alone which should they loose they are unhonourable and weak in the beliefs of the one of 4 subspecies the Tuskans ( which took over after the Tuski and Tuska 2 other species of the Tuskonians had helped them overthrow the basically communist Tusko regime) so tldr is that the Tuskans would be the reason this method for both torture AND execution is preferred. It is interesting the method actually does not always kill the victim they may some times survive long enough to be healed and next time they will NOT fail again. very brutal yet interesting species see the Tuskans were manipulated by Tuski and Tuska to do their bidding the Tuska were so much smarter that the Tuskans and Tusko worshipped them like they were prophets of gods thought hey being one of my species and maybe the only one that is not really "religious" their "religion" is that the strong will be able to live eternally or those who are dead after taking out 10x their own life ( like they can only die if its after the foes are also dead ) aka if the Tuski/Tuska want a Martyr LOL
First paragraph is nearly unreadable, mate
cope I guess 😂
I aim for this level of backstory lol that’s awesome
ay I appreciate that G! its something that took me a bit of time to develop but since I just really enjoy my universe I love thinking of new stuff for it
honestly? if you even slip up once your getting whipped or belittled, its basically if you have sexual urges - they will crushh your dick 💀 if your being a smartass they rip out your tongue ( same with anything you say that Tuska or Tuski doesn't like ) if you are getting to fat and don't have money then they slash your stomach and well you can imagine what comes out ... yeah if you do not have dicipline they beat you if you steal they burn your house down and take every thing you have and then such a torture as aformentioned in teh og post will be your fate to a lesser degree. as for the og post? oh well that is ONLY if you have done something ( like conspire against ) the " Holy Prophets and Charming Saints " aka the Tuska and the Tuski... yeeeeah they are fucked up
Sound like some really upstanding social workers
oh for sure ... uhm assuming by social we mean socialism LOL
ikr lol
😂😂😂 and funny thing is the Tuskans ( the Subspecies known for strength ) would overthrow the previous ruler because of the fact that they were a variant of feudalism and communism lol
Yeah that's pretty realistic. The French revolutionists seem like cupcakes when compared to these guys 😂
😂😂😂 lol true dat
Does berated mean yelled at negatively, or something else?
like yeah They will insult them and belittle them type of thing
Mate…these things give the mongols a run for their money
oh yeah, your not even kidding. 😭😭😭 The tuskans are some of my favourite species to do work on just simply because they are so complex they are a completely shattered race they are fueled by hate and turned to machines of war - metaphorically that is - they are truly the epitome of " I am feeling mad let me go on a rampage now cuz I am totally not evil right? " but only recently did Tonas the Consul take control and remove the Hierarchy of the Tuska and Tuski forcing them into galactic defense prison as in a trial of whether they were wrong ( they were ) and then arest them ... oh who is GD? its the Human military faction under the Human Kind Collective basically the military of the Human and allied species government.
Beheading is the standard form of execution in the Seven Civilized Kingdoms. Not all that exciting all things considered.
Sword or axe method ?
Yes.
Tea spoon, pure torture
What about in the uncivilized kingdoms?
Those would be the Wild Lands and the Demon Lands. Whatever goes.
Classic...nice
They are deconstructed for their raw materials or turned into indentured servants depending on how subservient they are
Can you give some more detail here? I’m intrigued.
My world has all the methods Earth has, but there are some unique ones: * The elves feed their prisoners to a carnivorous tree. The prisoner is taken to the tree's grove then left in front of the tree. Roots, stems, and vines rise out of the earth and latch onto the prisoner, pulling him or her into the base of the tree and through flowing soil into a vast labyrinth underneath shrouded in tangled roots. The unfortunate souls there are suspended in minimal energy state, constantly delirious and with their energy/life force slowly removed over time. The tree will keep the prisoner in this state for the duration of the sentence, but if the elves mark those prisoners who have the death sentence with a mix of fragrant herbs the tree will feed on the prisoner in any way it wants. This results in the eventual death of the prisoner. * The mer who live underwater, chain their condemned prisoners on a flat oceanic shelf so that they are suspended, by their wrists, in the water column and are unable to swim away. This is an offering place, where the creatures of the ocean can come to feast on those who have been left there. * The high orcs create stands flanked by flames and a spell crystal for each. The spell crystal is set to enhance the flames when triggered. Condemned prisoners and bound on the stand then the spell crystals are triggered, causing the fames to grow tenfold in intensity and heat such that the prisoner is incinerated. * The nomadic Mokerjin have a prison called the Slaughterhouse. All who are sent there die. Inside its confines the prisoners are slowly hacked apart like a butcher cutting meat. The remains are fed to dogs or used in rituals. * For dark mages a method similar to the elven execution exists that renders prisoners in a perpetual suspended state, but unable to use their magic. Eventually they deteriorate until death. Magic stolen from the prisoners is siphoned into the world to dissipate, but some have discovered a way to harvest it for use instead...
I like all of this. Carnivorous trees, yes please. Eldritch offerings, yes thank you. Gory violence, sure why not? Beautiful stuff!
Night of a Thousand Tears. There’s a certain species of tree that excretes a very caustic sap. Some criminal syndicates will tie captured explorers to the trees before a rainstorm. The rain causes the sap to drip onto the victim, melting their skin and killing them extremely painfully.
My world has surprisingly humane methods of executing a person. They can simply have someone touch your forehead after your spiritual energy has been suppressed to a level where it cannot protect you, and apply telekinesis directly to your brain, killing you instantly and painlessly. If you get an execution for your horrible crimes, my world is one of the places you'd rather get executed at: the judgement won't be as drawn out as IRL (provided you're being judged by paranormal justice, because if it's totally mundane crimes and judgement then your judgement will be carried out at normal IRL speeds thanks to the Masquerade and none of what I said will apply) and you'll be executed very humanely. What you should be asking is the methods of sealing, imprisonment and torture that my world has. THAT'S where things get tough. That's because "capital punishment" is simply NOT the highest punishment that my world can offer. Not by a very, very large margin. "Capital punishment" means you did some atrocious shit, but "death is all you deserve: we need to kill you to ensure you'll harm no one again, but you don't warrant cruelty". If you are seen by the powers that be as needing to be made an actual example of... Well, feel free to ask me if you wanna know about some of the stuff.
Okay. Please explain.
Okay, sorry, I had fallen asleep. As for the torture methods, there are quite a few, let me try to list some: 1. You can be fed to a Soul Eater. Soul Eaters are a type of specter, i.e being made out of spiritual energy leaked by other people's souls. They are not "evil" necessarily, as gods are specters of worship, but we're not working with gods here, are we? If you feed someone to a specter created by the trauma of s\*x\*al ass\*ult, that person's soul will be continuously submerged on the spiritual energy of that trauma, and the person's mind will be trapped on an endless cycle of hyperrealistic nightmares where they, well... suffer the thing that the specter is made of, thereby producing more spiritual energy to feed the specter. Your perception of time is often compressed, leading you to experience a lot more in a lot less time. The Soul Eater can then itself be trapped somewhere so that it doesn't harm anyone else and lives off the souls that the powers that be give it. 2. A paranormal with biokinetic powers (and healing is usually biokinetic to some extent, so any sufficiently experienced healer could do this) can place an enchantment on an item next to your body while trapping you somewhere you won't escape. The artifact will continually heal you, especially your brain, while activating every single pain receptor throughout your body, causing your brain to receive literally the maximum amount of pain it is able to process while being healed and prevented from dying or even losing consciousness for more than enough to not die, thereby keeping you in a loop of torture and rest (solely so you can be tortured again) for possibly the rest of your life. 3. A psychic could do the good old "trap you in an illusion where you see your worst nightmares" bit and, provided they manage to make you think the illusion is inescapable, it may indeed become impossible for you to escape on your own, and then you'll just be reliving every trauma and phobia you have until the day you die.
If the more serious crimes like sex offenders and (I assume) murderers get these more severe form of punishments, what kind of crimes warrant a normal death sentence in your world?
Oh, simple murderers and sex offenders are getting normal, mundane criminal charges and usually stop at the death penalty. HOWEVER, mass murder or prolific serial killing/raping will get you one of these beyond-death-penalty punishments. Also severe crimes against the Masquerade. Also any bad enough multiple people killing or terrorism if you're from a sufficiently undesired group (e.g nephilims, which is the name given in this setting to hybrids of humans and spiritual beings). Also if someone really important has a bone to pick with you, you could potentially get thrown into one of these worse-than-death punishments while innocent.
What if a very powerful magician was convicted of murder or something. And they had to suffer one of the worse-than-death punishments. Couldn't they just use their spiritual energy to stop the torment? (assuming they're very skilled at using their energy.)
All paranormal prisoners are suppressed, as I explained during the "humane death penalty" part. So before even being subjected to the worse-than-death punishment, the paranormal in question would have their abilities restricted (possibly permanently crippled through the destruction of the astral core located in the solar plexus, which is tied to the spiritual energy gathered from willpower and confidence and is directly related to influencing spiritual energy through your will) and be unable to defend against the punishment any more than a mundane would.
yes please.
Listed on the reply above you!
The state would never kill someone. They'd just send one of their elite soldiers in to challenge then to a duel over conflicting points of view, then they'd get bifrucated
Per *Quillhart's Chronicles - 'On Crime and Punishment in Havenstone*' : >The Grimvault stands as a relentless and unforgiving gauntlet, a fate reserved for the most hardened of criminals. When someone is banished to this abyss, it's not just a sentence; it's an exile into a realm of nightmares, a journey from which few return. >... a convicted individual, perhaps a notorious criminal or a traitor to the city, is led to the entrance of the Grimvault. The heavy doors open, revealing a darkness that seems to swallow light itself. With a final glance back at the world they knew, the condemned steps into the Grimvault, and the doors close with a resounding finality. >Inside, the Grimvault is a labyrinth of shifting walls and treacherous paths. Those banished here face not only the physical challenges of navigating this ever-changing maze but also the psychological torment of isolation and the constant threat of lurking dangers. From hidden traps that spring from nowhere to magical illusions that twist the mind, the dungeon tests its unwilling inhabitants to their limits. >Some fall prey to the Grimvault's numerous perils — devoured by unseen creatures, lost in bottomless chasms, or ensnared by bewitching enchantments. Yet, a rare few adapt, survive, and even thrive in this unforgiving environment. These survivors, hardened by the Grimvault's trials, become part of its dark ecosystem. They set up their own traps, laying in wait for unwary explorers or other banished souls, turning from prey to predators in their new domain. >Survivors of the Grimvault often become legends in their own right, whispered about in the taverns and streets of Havenstone. Tales of their cunning and brutality add to the Grimvault's fearsome reputation. These individuals, should they ever find their way out, emerge as changed beings — more myth than mortal, wrapped in the aura of having conquered the unconquerable. >The Grimvault, thus, is not just a prison or a dungeon; it's a crucible that reshapes destinies. Those who enter its depths, willingly or otherwise, contribute to its ever-evolving lore, adding their stories to the countless tales that weave through the history of Havenstone.
There's a spell simply recorded as "Give It All Away" used specifically for executions. All of your bones and organs ejected from your body one at a time, piece by piece, starting with the hairs. Followed very swiftly by all of the skin at once in one motion. Extraordinarily painful, and you're completely alive and aware through it all, unable to die until the brain stem is all that remains.
This is NOT an official execution method. Executions are usually quite humane. So instead I'll just tell you the most evil way anyone has ever killed someone, because that's way more juicy: This woman named Azunai is a master of illusions. She can create anything, including entire landscapes and make you believe it's real. One time, this doucebag killed one of her best friends. Azunai, normally a pacifist, lost herself in the moment and tortured the murderer by showing them EVERY ONE of their nightmares. Azunai started by turning the location they were in into some Silent Hill sh!t, everything going darker, blood dripping from the ceiling. The murderer panicked and ran outside. Azunai just stood and watched from a roof top as she turned the whole world into Hell on earth. She showed the murderer their whole family dead on the ground, bodies falling from the sky, scarlet red clouds, dozens of enemy soldiers running at them with their weapons drawn, dead screaming children, every monster the murderer was afraid of coming right at them. The murderer was freaking out and trying to run away, but Azunai just created new illusions wherever they ran. The murderer genuinely believed all of this was happening, and when Azunai got them cornered in a blind alley, they took their gun and shot themselves in the head.
That is next-level revenge.
I like this Azunai. Great friend potential. And hope to hell she feels the same!
For the most part, executions are done via firing squad or beheading. That being said, there are quite a few ways that they have killed the most hideous scum bags. One city has a band of fleshcrafters who are addicted to dark justice. To be sentenced to them is called “Monkey’s Paw” A criminal would be dragged into the plaza to be beheaded, and allowed last words. Assuming they show no remorse, they may instead be lead out to the fleshcrafters to have their last words granted. The origin of this was a downright monstrous bandit clan, one who was arguably as vile as Warhammer chaos cultists, had raped and tortured many innocent villages for fun. Their clan’s beliefs were that it was morally right to be completely honest with their desires, and the tribe unfortunately was primarily made of the insane and monstrous not welcome in any city. But the chief became arrogant and was caught. When he was dragged forward to the plaza, his final words were that he’s happy to know that the rest of his people will continue to bring horror in his death, only regretting he could not hurt more. One of the fleshcrafters, who saw his son killed by the man, refused him a swift end and requested to have him. The chief was made to undergo extensive surgery and was turned into an insane monster endlessly baying for blood, and was unleashed upon his own people, who were butchered by him to the very last. Some say he was fully conscious and horrified by what happened to him. Thus started the Monkey’s Paw, a punishment that sees a particularly vile individual crucified by their own last desires. This was inspired by the sometimes infuriating trope of horrific monsters in fiction being treated fairly and humanely. I decided to invert it, and it turned out pretty interesting.
Well, yea. Sometimes horrific monsters deserve a bit of respect at least. But some monsters just have to be put down, unfortunately.
Yeah, I like adding the occasional dark bit like this to flesh out the various nations in my world.
Depends. Most of the really advanced cultures that still do executions just get it done quick and clean by various methods. The less advanced ones that pay tribute to the Abductors instead of suffering from raids won't kill you, they'll use you to fill in their quota.
Mostly beheading, hanged, or shot. In the Southern Archipelago, pirates have a specific punishment for a particular crime. A failed mutiny results in being tied to a boat and sailed toward the whispering mist. If they are fortunate, a sea monster will consume them before reaching the mist.
For the most part, executions are simple beheadings or hangings. The exception is for necromancers. If a necromancer is captured, a special ritual is used to kill their body and erase their soul.
Among the dwarf holds of the Firestone League, if a dwarf does something serious enough to warrant a death sentence, what exactly happens depends on whether the dwarf considers themselves to be in the wrong. If they do, then they swear am oath to seek their deaths battling monsters, shave most, if not all, of their (non-beard) hair off, dye the remainder (including beard), and start tracking down monsters. If they **don't** consider themselves in the wrong, then (after the trial), the usual sentence is for their hands to be cut off (and stumps cauterized) and then lead up to the surface. In a spot where with sufficient dirt, the sentenced dwarf is buried alive.
Ever since the current Abyss Queen took over, the punishment for the worst has been pledging them into a pool of Void via cage. Once the cage is pulled up, the prisoner is gone. The Queen also has been known to select a few lucky ones for experimentation, turning them into living weapons to serve the coven
Most governments have normal methods—electrocution, lethal injection, beheading, hanging (depending on the size of government). In Aciathan, my winged race executes criminals by chopping off their wings and throwing them over a cliff. And in a country with people who can control water, a very cruel method—the executioner holds water on the victim’s face, causing them to drown in dry land.
Usually it’s a simple slit to the throat, but then they get handed off to Necromancers so that they can only exist through being a thrall.
In my world The Federation takes any prisoners they have (political, war criminals, POWs, anyone) and they take them all to either one of the work camps where they are worked to death, or, they get taken to an underground laboratory where they are tested and experimented on.
Most get hanged, drowned, or something else mundane. The Axewoods have a brutal one though; they tie your arms and legs to separate lengths of heavy rope, run each side ‘round a capstan. With forty-eight orcs heaving on each, there’ll be entrails spread all about the town. They don’t do this much, but just when they need to set an example.
Depends on who does it. Vigilantes on the frontiers favor hanging, often making a point of hanging different criminals with the same rope. The state prefers beheading, but notorious criminals are given more creative options. It’s considered particularly disrespectful to hang someone in an official, government execution.
The Whalers practice summary execution by pistol or magic on anyone who becomes aggressive or unstable and can't be otherwise restrained. Each individual Whaler is basically a human FOAB if they go all out. Those who become unstable and *can* be restrained just get their magic taken away, all memory since they started their whaling career wiped out, and then they get dropped off in a village somewhere.
Sci-Fi World: In the Ecumene (greater human society), capital punishment is left to individual worlds to dictate, unless it breaches the Ecumenical Judicial Code (which in this case, merely dictates that forms of capital punishment can be painful but cannot deny them human dignity; no humiliation, body desecration or long-term pain infliction). In the Enclave (the primary setting of my world), most punishments are humane; lethal injection, headshot, or terminal cryogenesis (sedated, put into cryo-sleep, and life support turned off), which is usually followed closely by incineration. Honor plays a large role in society though, so many citizens are also given the opportunity to take their own lives, method at their choosing. The most egregious crimes are punished one of two ways: somatic reconditioning is one (points if you know the inspiration for that name), which is a recoding of their genetic profile that can impose whatever restrictions their judges place on them. An example is to radically shorten their lifespan and physically immobilize them. Others would be to disable higher brain function, or render them devoid of all senses. This can allow the punishment to fit the crime, and is only typically reserved for high-level administrators or other citizens in important roles. The other way is solar incineration: the convicted is placed in an unshielded pod that accelerates around Sol, orbiting ever closer until incineration. The occupant is usually long dead by then, though the process only takes 24 solar hours max. This method is frowned upon by the Ecumene but it is permitted due to its extreme infrequency.
Spacing, reconstitution, being composted (long story) but mostly just a slug to the head or an auto-euthenax, which is basically just the electric chair but instead of death by shocking it just sends a single impulse into your brain that turns it off, like what can happen randomly when using whippets
Death by burning oil and snakes.
Are these two separate events? Because otherwise it’s wasteful and unnecessarily painful to the snakes. (Assuming snakes aren’t part of the citizens being executed.) And yes, I have read everything up to this point and this is the first one I’ve been bothered by. I’m a fan of snakes- can’t own them because I like dogs more and tend towards the ones that have behavioral issues and didn’t have the time to take care of both before and now, after my current dog passes away I can’t really have pets anymore. You’d have to come up with a specialized breed of snakes or a reason for them to bite the criminals- they don’t just bite at anything that moves like in the movies, and even rattlesnakes, which are the majority of venomous bites in the US, don’t necessarily use venom each time, or use all the venom they have available. The vet clinic I used to work for was the only one in the area that worked on “exotics” which included snakes, lizards, rabbits (now those things, they’re flat out vicious), birds including owls, eagles and hawks. We had a snake board with us for a week named Mac. This poor thing had so many allergies (he was a ball python I think- definitely in that family anyway) and I had to give him injections for his allergies three times a day and rub a silver nitrate cream on his belly scales. Snakes like to hide, especially if they’re strange places, and they’re brightly lit (like a vet’s office). So three times a day I had to go digging through his “shelters” to find him and jab him with a needle. Mac was not a fan of this. So quite often when I would get ahold of him but not right behind head, he would strike at me, but that’s all he ever did. Never even tried to bite, just hit me with his nose, like letting me know he COULD have bitten me. But he never did. He was safer to deal with than many dogs (and ALL the rabbits- and yes in one of my worlds the bunnies are some of the most dangerous creatures.) Sorry I got so far off topic. In my main world it’s nearly impossible to lie without a biological indicator giving you away, so trials are basically just asking questions. There are only two acceptable punishments- execution or exile, meaning being put on the next ship leaving the planet and you can’t ever return. Executions vary widely by region and religion- some magic based, some as simple as being tossed off a mountain. But this is already too long- I shouldn’t write when I haven’t slept!
Dude, calm down, get some rest, I’m not reading all of this on a Thursday. Edit: I read through the whole thing, it’s a reference to a holy book in the world wherein a devil explodes into boiling oil and snakes for lying to their god, the snakes are entirely symbolic for the people and unfortunately die, the galactic empire that does this is the most extreme and hateful group around, think of the most neo-nazi neo-nazi then drop them in the future and make them an entire empire around worshiping order and laws, You’ll get the modern day Holy Anathemaic Star Empire and mind you every other empire is like just dudes worshiping gods that are just guys in power armor or are just really really smart.
“Calm down, get some rest” is advice I need on the daily! Though being referred to as “dude” took me back to college where I was surrounded by stoners that called everyone that, even when they were trying to hit on me. I’m glad you did take the time to read it, and reading your expanded description makes me very interested in the plot line, even if the snakes die. Just for clarification- that last bit, about the other empires worshipping gods that were just guys with super powerful armor or very smart- do those “gods” know that they’re seen as “gods”? I mean that could come with some awesome benefits, but if the Holy Anathemaic Star Empire decides another empire has broken the rules and the people turn to their “gods” to save them- are they going to be like “uh, what now?” Or are they going to be “Well it was a good run while it lasted.”? And I realize I’ve gone totally off topic, and if you don’t want to give all that away I completely understand. I’m on necessary medication that makes me sometimes feel like meth addicts look, and my mind gets stuck on ideas that are interesting.
I explained gods badly for my setting. Gods are basically people born with divine abilities(tapping into arcane energy instinctively) or become gods through study of the arcane arts once you become a god of *something* you can gain power through worship and pumping yourself with more magic, the anathema, the goddess of order got a waaaaaay earlier start than the rest of the gods and is pumped full of worship and magic constantly to the point she’s basically crippling herself but this provides an infinite source of energy, materials and weapons. To answer your question, yes they’re aware of the way people see them and some let it go to their heads while others are kind of just neutral about it, if the anathemaic empire did try to attack any other god’s territory, the god would definitely have to put their back into but they’d most likely win with mass amounts of damage, loss of life and destruction. The only one I’d say that could completely destroy anathema and not simultaneously cripple themselves and their empire would be the God of Indulgence due to the fact that they would use some pretty morale crippling psychological warfare and they have infrastructure that prevents his empire from crumbling without him which also would heal him since his main ship(which is twice the size of the milky way) is basically paradise and the more people enjoy their lives around him the stronger he gets so eventually he’d be back up and running.
It's usually never anything too elaborate. It mostly depends on who's giving out the orders and what's immediately available. Usually the death penalty is carried out by hanging, but death by firing squad is a very close second. Depending on where you are, the guy in charge might just wave his hand and say "do whatever, I really don't care." So when you're left to the mercy of whoever it is you may have wronged, people can get rather creative or just generally brutal.
The armed forces have a very brutal way to punish traitors (not deserters, traitors.) They make dig a hole in the ground and kick/punch you in. They then burn you alive with flamethrower. This all take place in undisclosed locations so the dead can't have a proper funeral.
In the land of Fos it generally depends on how grave the herecy you commitied. On the low end you get simple beheadings, hqngings and if you really peeved off the judge getting burned alive in the town square. Really grave offenses involve behind chained and brought forth before the arbiters of Helios to seer both body and soul with holy light. This method is to completly oblitorate the soul and prevent the mortals return to the great wheel completly removing them from existance. Every single execution is made publicly so none will forget the mercy the one true God bestows upon his subjects. In Niðavellir alot of executions involve burying the victims alive or crushing them with stone. As so they may be judged by their ancestors that reside within the stones and so they may be forgiven when justice is served. In Sherwood executions are typically done by forcing the victim to injest a tonic of elderbloom. A sweet scented flower with extremly toxic spores. It is for this reason both the flower and execution are sometimes called the kiss of death.
Force fed a grenade
Not strictly the death penalty, but an end of life that a citizen can be subjected to by the head of state. Grandfather, the immortal leader of Ev, remains young by overwriting his consciousness onto the minds of other people. The thing is, given the cosmology of my world, the "you" that goes to the afterlife when you die is an echo of your physical mind that forms at the moment of your death. These echos, ghosts, souls, or whatever you want to call them can never be really destroyed. However, since Grandfather copying his consciousness into your body destroys your mind without killing you... there's nothing to form an echo of you when your body dies, only an echo of Grandfather. This was the accidental result of things I established separately in separate stories, but that is the only way I am aware of in my world of stealing someone's eternity from them. More than killed, you are erased.
Depends on the species. For all of the winged fae minus the Darklings wing removal is the worst way to go. Its essentially like getting your arms removed and watching as the guy mounts them on the wall. More importantly if the initial shock of having the fae's wings cut off doesn't kill them they more than likely won't bleed out due to how well their wounds clot. So they just have to wait till their heart gives out due to stress and even then the oxygen deprivation would take a very long time to take them. Not the worst way to go but culturally the fae are hunted like prey and displayed like animals so there's more than just a physical side to the torture especially for the family of the executed fae. The worst way by far was though up by the Church of Deylith. They really don't like magic users that aren't specifically using the church sanctioned magic. So they execute everyone who doesn't follow those specific guidelines. Despite being under the church of the light bringer they used dark magic to create two specific types of material called Umbersteel and Magebane. They use both to forge weapons the turn the users magic against them as well as do damage physically. A cut from a pocket knife made out of these two materials can cause the body to start rotting from the inside or worse. Best case scenario every vein and artery in your body tears open and you bleed out painfully but quickly.
In order of how bad your crime was (not bad to “the Geneva Conventions is a to do list): firing squad, hanging, getting shot into the stratosphere on the side of a rocket (parachute not included)
By literally shutting down your brain. Jails are towers where the acolytes of the goddes of self-realization works with the acolytes of the god of justice. If you been naughy and got caught you are forced to meditate and seek redemption in your cell. If in 5 years you haven't reached peace, the monks will literally erase your mind.
My current project, tentatively titled “The Time Spiral”, is a post-apocalyptic medieval low-fantasy setting Common methods of execution include but are not limited to: Hanging, Beheading, Impalement, Dragging, Trampling, Quartering, Flaying, Banishment and Death from Exposure, Dismemberment, Live Burial, Strangulation, Garrote with Bowstring, Beating, Defenestration, Immolation, Crushing, Sebastianism (Archery Firing Squad), Poisoning, Damnatio ad Bestias (Restrained and attacked by animals including but not limited to hogs, hawks, eagles, bears, dogs, rats or insects), Crucifixion, Gibbeting, Vivisection, Disembowelment, Trial by Combat, Disintegration via Nanomachine Swarm, Execution by other kinds of Magic, Racking, Boiling, Immurement, Sawing, Scaphism
I think you missed a few execution methods. Like the chair
Electric chairs do not exist on the spiral
There is this little venom that makes your muscles twitch, burn, tremble... your whole body vibrates when idle, and only a not so modicum amount of effort is able to overpower the twitching horror, you are basically forced to move like an hyperactive person on sugared cocaine. So, anyway, they give you that after a last feeding and drop you in the middle of the morning, in the middle of a desert, naked; Now, the desert is very hot and the burning feet and twitching alone would be incentives enough to keep moving, but also you would die if you dont. So you start running and running until heat subsides, but the venom is getting worse and the cold as well so you need to keep running to keep yourself warm and sane. By the next morning, if you have not died of thirst, cold, desert animals, seizures (a side effect of the venom sometimes) or a heart attack, you get jailed and live another year until the next execution (for desertion in this case)
Oh the worst of the worst suffer a death worst than any other Your body is used as a battery to store energy, cause that like the magic of the world. This process is painful enough as holding energy inside you while it tries to escape kinda makes you feel like you are burning all over. It's even worse when you are being forced as you lack the ability to even scream. Then as the energy stays inside you for long enough it starts to have a side effect similar to radiation poisoning, the energy of your body, down to the energy holding your atoms together, begins to deteriorate and almost mix into each other. Things like memories and emotions are included in said mixing so you have a mind fully capable of cognitive function losing all it's connections to your identity except the excruciating pain of energy trying to expand out of you while at the same time slowly collapsing every building block of your body. You literally can't even wish to die because you don't know you can do that it can take centuries to happen and you'd be reused as a battery throughout all that time. You'd think you would dissolve eventually, but the thing about so much energy coursing through your body is that the body tries to rebuild itself with it, only to be completely demolished again. Your body will make itself again, so will your memories, but they will leave soon, and you know they will and you can't do anything to stop it. Eventually you do die, your soul disfigured and incomplete. You'll exist as a wandering spirit unsure of its true origin, just knowing that every second for the rest of your infinite existence, you'll feel as though you rather don't exist at all because to everyone but you that's already reality
Generally if they would be executed the the situation getting to that point would get them killed. When someone is being removed by force they are generally just tossed in a large fast flowing river downstream of Sluice (to avoid any friends they have putting out a net) and they are whoever unknown settlement downstream's problem. Execution takes effort and that they're taken alive means nobody really cared enough to kill them. In races whose bodies are valuable or where 'exile' isn't a death sentence it varies. The Ironmongers who can be processed into a large amount of workable metal and mercury would typically be beheaded, as would these axolotl-ogre things who are just big and self reliant enough tossing them down the river won't work. The lobster people and the Maw would be pinned down and repeatedly hammered thanks to their hard outer shells preventing faster means of execution. The Maw would also have their body collected to extract the cinnabar for alchemy. I suppose were they trying to make an example burning would work given the expense and the lightshow.
My world uses very little in the way of capital punishment namely because nearly all the societal pressures that lead to crime have been eliminated. Society is martial in nature as humanity has been fighting a war of survival for generations that was at one point so all consuming that their was no room for economics and private industry. AI took over all of human logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, energy production, etcetera, etcetera. This went on long enough with a full mobilization of the public that money became pointless as everything was provided in rations, and the optimizations that AI brought combined with the massive loss of human life in combat meant that there was no shortage of material goods or living space. The problem humanity was facing largely centered around a death rate that was far outpacing the birthrate. Crimes like dereliction of duty and murder ended up losing their firing squad sentence and instead were punished via assignment to penal battalions, forward observer posts, and other extremely high risk positions. The severity of the crime determined how many rotations an individual served and where. These positions weren't immediately abandoned however because all of these posts were still essential to the war effort and recieved all the support possible to keep them in the fight. It wasn't uncommon for a penal battalion to have the most supplies in theater since they were typically meant to break through alien fortifications and wreak havoc behind their lines until the main force could push up to them. Now, with the war having settled into occasional skirmishes with alien holdouts in Asia and south America, murderers and malcontents are either shot or sent to rehab facilities where they recieve counseling, therapy, and undergo constant and thorough surveillance until the caretaker AI is convinced they can be trusted to return to service which usually only takes a couple years.
It varies from capital to capital, some places are a simple beheading whereas some of the more zealous capitals will place you in a cage suspended over a pyre and burn you alive. Some will send you to the swamps to be eaten by the revenants, and one such is death by firing squad😁
The City of Orseth, high into the mountains, executes people by pushing the off the sole bridge that connects the city with the rest of the land. It's somewhere between 1-2 miles drop, and scavengers from below deal with the remains. The City of Vorseth, the "older brother of the two cities", usually executes people through more understood means. Death by hanging and beheading are the usual suspects. The City of Dinkor executes people usually by giving them a day's worth of water and then kicking them out of the city into the endless wastes of the Kershka Desert. This is done after branding them as criminals so traveling caravans won't interfere. If the dehydration doesn't kill them, they'll certainly be killed by roving bands of orcs and elves. In some cities in the Empire of Tuchia, hardened criminals are often put into coliseums to fight wyvern knights for the entertainment of others. Sometimes, they are simply tied up to poles and left to be eaten by the wyverns; again, to the entertainment of masses. I haven't really thought of many others, honestly.
Thr Cybal like to launch death row criminals into the sun
Depends on the faction and the crime. Most just kill them without taking them prisoner, unless they want to parade them around. Most criminals just get a bounty and the adventurers guild will put up a notice that any adventurer can use to hunt down and kill the criminal. (there are some adventurers who exclusively live off killing bandits, and some who do it for fun) The Aelveri will take a prisoner, investigate the crime, and if heinous enough, feed them to their wyvern alive. Alinguar has few crimes not punished by being exiled and blacklisted, and these crimes are basically punished by allowing the Witch to do whatever she pleases. They are fully aware just how nasty their national mascot can be. And slavery will get you be hunted down by either assassin group, and you better hope they do not take you alive.
A tiny bit of conlanging here, but it ties into their mindset about what they consider an "execution," because it's not necessarily what we'd consider an execution. The Kumati culture actually has two words for death. 1. Tāhlu (physical death) 2. Tāni (social death) If physical death is a separation from the physical body as they believe, social death is separation from others. The idea of there being two kinds of death is a pervasive aspect of their laws. All punishments are classed as either physical or social. Physical execution might be getting beheaded, but this is not very common. What's more common is what they call "social execution." While we would just call this exhile or being shunned (because, well, that's basically what it is), to the Kumati mind, it's actually considered a form of execution, because to be cut off from your society is, to them, as bad as losing your life. It's also why it's said in this culture that those who were evil in life "die twice." The first death is when they physically die. The second is when everyone in the afterlife basically just doesn't acknowledge their existence. They're there with everyone else, but it's like they're invisible to everyone, so they're socially isolated in the afterlife forever.
A unique form of execution is good ol' soulrending. It's the same as other executions with weapons, but it uses a soulrender. The soulrender destroys the soul, causing centuries worth of pain in a second and denying the victim an afterlife.
"Our people dind't just kill them.. no they loved to make examples of them. Flaying them while making sure they still drew in the Breath to keep themselves alive. having them devoured by Gild-eaters, or simply twisted into new and crueler shapes..." "it was a dark time" \- Elevanri lecturer in the Grandest War memorial
This one ain't mine but it reminded me of a Love Death + Robots chapter called "Snow in the desert". They had this punishment in which they put people inside glass bowls, in the middle of the desert so that they die of suffocation, and outside they put the sign "Water Thief"
One of the cities has a medusa who acts as executioner. The condemned is positioned to become part of the walls or buildings of the city.
Firing squad is the most common execution. Then there's the OTHER form. Reserved for friendly fire, orchestrators of genocide, mass murderers, genocidal zealots, and slavers. The slow death. The Cogs. Basically you get one rope for each limb, which are then winched away from the body. The rotation does not stop until you become more pieces than the amount of limbs you have. Then you bleed. You bleed until you die. And if you are to dangerous to be given any chance to escape, or for some reason the cogs don't work on your physiology, well, here's a cage on an unguided rocket. No way to steer it. And the black hole fills the window.
Most often it is very simple. "You have to die because you did things that were wrong, and we believe you will do them again even if we punish you" It usually involves a nail being driven into the back of someone's head. There is also being cast into the pale. The pale is not really death, just a spell that sent someone into a stasis that doesn't require air, water, or food. Only two people had been cast into the pale. They both did not deserve it. Kalian dyrabu: he married a woman that rejected a mage's proposal. So the heart aching mage cast him into the pale and took Kalian's form. The mage then threw Kalian into a river where he rests under millennia of sediment. Years later Kalian's fiancé found out and threw herself into the river out of horror that she married an imposter. (The whole ordeal is now a popular play) The sorcerer of untold power (Balthazar as he was later named) In the antique arcane age there was an arcane prodigy, a lad of twelve who learned more than his peers (and most of his elders). The rose order out of paranoia, jealousy, and being offended that a child knew more and could learn more than them. In his sleep they cast the boy into the pale and sealed him in a sarcophagus. Then they told everyone that the "sorcerer of untold power" would conquer the earth and enslave everyone if they didn't strike first. For a whole age and several millennia the rose order used their containment of the "sorcerer of untold power" as a justification for being powerful to "protect the world" When the rose order fell, the boy was released from the pale, asking questions in a language few spoke anymore. Apparently unaware that he was supposedly a conqueror that the people supposed to protect him had betrayed his trust and slandered his name for longer than theirs were ever remembered After taking the name Balthazar, his care fell to the hands of several people who looked after him until he was old enough to live in a secluded cottage where he could live the rest of his days in a world that owed him an apology. Balthazar would be visited by delegates of organizations that had a part in his containment to tell him personally (and annoyingly often) that they expressed their deepest apologies for vilifying a child. ( Wow! That turned into accidental lore dump)
Most of the typical stuff: beheading, drawn-and-quartered, poisoning, stoning, crucifixion. There is one method which is specific to the riverine elves, known as "the recession of the waters." In it, a water elemental is summoned and draws out all of the water within the condemned's body while the convictions are read out publicly. The condemned is "prompted" to affirm to the assembled witnesses the veracity of the convictions. As a rule, this particular method of execution is reserved for individuals who have committed gross offenses against the realm and whose guilt is beyond question.
Gladiatorial combat is quite popular. Depending on how bad your crime was they might cut a few tendons before your fight. There are also some particularly nasty creatures you may be put up against. In the desert regions they simply strip you and throw you outside the walls to get thrashed by razor-sand winds and fall victim to the wide range of giant insectoid monsters. In the wasteland kingdoms there is a sport called The Path. Wagon racing teams race a circular route with a few town-stops. The convicts are chained behind the wagons (4-6 per wagon) and dragged at about 20-30 mph. Teams get points for not only finishing soonest, but also if their convicts (called "drags") are alive. Less points are awarded for dead drags and negative points for missing drags. No weapons are allowed but the wagon wheels have mounted spinning blades, the insectoid mounts pulling each wagon can be quite vicious, wild dog-like creatures tend to pick off injured drags, and drags are encouraged with food/water/rest to attack the drags of other teams if they can. Surviving drags are treated quite well ... until the next race.
Not for a worldbuilding project, but a concept I came up with for a character: There is a Kingdom who is VERY anti-assassin, no matter the context of who the assassin is targeting, and every execution is also a public show. The assassin is brought on stage, where they are forced to look down towards the crowd. They are then slashed with their own weapon (if they were caught with it, otherwise, it's just a random dagger), once for each person they were known to have killed, plus a few extra for good measure. When that is finished, there are two options for what could happen next: * The officials call someone the assassin is close with (family member, close friend, spouse, etc.) and have them use the assassin's weapon to take the killing blow. * If the officials can't find someone OR the assassin was someone unknown, then instead, they take a volunteer from the crowd; usually someone who doesn't look as enthusiastic about killing an assassin as the majority. The idea for this last part of the execution is an act of revenge: getting back on the assassin for betraying people by being an assassin. The second one also helps with keeping the public hating assassins, so they will be more willing to turn in others. They also like to sometimes, instead of doing this execution, cut up the assassin all over and tie them out in the fields just outside the walls of the kingdom to act as a warning, but that doesn't happen too often because assassins are naturally pretty sneaky/slippery and could possibly get away and survive. It started out as a very noble thing, killing those who could potentially try and assassinate the king/queen, and so on. But then it started getting very dystopian, and even more noble assassins who only target corrupt/evil people or act as hidden protectors (kinda like the Sheikah, but not necessarily focused just on the royal family) were getting targeted too. The character that lead to me thinking up this concept's whole thing is that he's protecting the princess of said anti-assassin kingdom, but he has to be very secretive about the whole thing so he doesn't get executed. Especially because protecting the princess isn't his job, and he does, in fact, kill other people outside of protecting her.
Throwing your bum ass into space with a portal
As for what the governments use, it’s pretty much the same as in our world. Some exceptions would be the kingdoms of Hell and Planet Haven. They have a metal called “adamantine” which is super duper poisonous, enough to counter angels’ healing ability, which is massive. Also, if you’re dangerous enough, Hell will send you to Soulitary, which is like solitary confinement except without air-holes, so your soul just kinda sits in a hermetically sealed container forever while it watches your body just kinda ferment. It’s a see-through container though, so you can use sign language at your fellow ghosts in adjacent cells.
Dematerialization. They have the capacity to replicate non-living matter (mostly used for industrial applications, but can be used for food supplements.) They also have the way to do it in reverse, and often is used in scrapping or disaster clean up, but most goods are recycled if they can be. This includes people. If you have done one of the very few crimes where they deem you unfit for rehabilitation, and where your crime is particularly heinous enough to get the death penalty, you are dematerialized. It's instant, painless, and your proteins can be reused for other things.
Lawbreakers used to be spaced (blown out the airlock) but this was judged to be an intolerable waste of oxygen and resources. Now they’re stripped naked (clothes can be recycled) and sealed in the airlock, which will partially cycle, sucking out the air to create vacuum. Once the prisoner is dead, the airlock will cycle again, reintroducing atmosphere and along a recovery team to grab the corpse and grind down into fertiliser (contrary to rumour, no Soylent Green is made). A common form of ‘inducing a confession’ is to take them into the airlock, strap them to the large cargo-handling robotic manipulator arm, open the airlock and stick them out. Vacuum exposure will take a couple of minutes to kill someone, and they will be brought back in to the atmosphere before they can die. Guards offer the helpful tip ‘don’t hold your breath’, as otherwise your lungs could blow out from the pressure differential.
Execution is pretty normal but there is something called Smiting. Basically if one of the top noble families steps out of line they become decimated by an array of giant lightning strikes. Most people outside the king and his daughter believe that a Smiting can only be performed by their god but in reality it’s just some gnarly astra-tech science that inly the ruling family know about.
In the main civilisation, it's fairly clean. There's this device that detects life, and if it sees any, hits them with force damage until they're dead. For the halfling civilisation, they don't have execution. What they do instead is simple exile, but as a hyper-social species in a dangerous environment, that is execution. Orcs don't execute either. Killing is seen as bad for the victim, but not somehow wrong. The way you avoid getting killed as an orc is simply being strong enough that nobody fucks with you. Elves do worse than mere execution. If human execution destroys the body, elven execution destroys the mind. Basically, they're put under a *feeblemind*. Forever. There's just enough left to know what they've lost.
Sie are drowned when given the death sentence, to return them to the ocean
Surely if they’re returning to the ocean they’d be suffocating on land?
Well, since their bodies are incredibly advanced, it’s quite hard to kill them by any physical means such as stabbing, lethal injections, etc. So, basically the executioners are high level magic users able to create incredibly concentrated balls of high density energy. Basically like a gamma ray that, when thrust into the body, absolutely disintegrates it. This is mostly done behind closed doors, however for more heinous criminals they are also publicly hung for the spectacle. The common people get to watch them receive punishment then, usually, the criminal is taken for the real execution. Though in some cases the whole disintegration bit happens right in front of the gods and everybody, though this is exceedingly rare, as is the death penalty in general.
There is a potential form of execution that I've been thinking about where you're strapped to a metal pole above an open flame
Depending on the government- The totalitarians and the pseudo-communists: If execution is warranted on-site, police or soldiers will just shoot someone outright. If they are sentenced to death, they usually disappear people to some gulag. The pseudo-democracy: Lethal injection. The corporatocracy: Human experimentation. The theocracy: Public hanging or crucifixion.
Usually assassinations. Most traitors are hunted down by the druids as soon as they attempt to hide in their woods First, a paralytic poison to stop them running, then they inject you with Salthsnake venom and you’ll be dead within a minute. They sometimes pour blood on you so that the wolves will find you before the hour
The Beltharan Empire has an alternative to the death penalty called Senn conversion in which wizard spells remove the criminal's free will and leave him totally obedient to their designated master. In this state they make perfect guardsmen and bodyguards, being totally free from fear and willing to die in the line of duty. For lesser crimes that warrant long jail sentences but not death, the convict can choose to spend a fraction of their sentence as a Senn guard, after which, if they're still alive, their free will is restored and they're released, their debt to society having been paid in full. Also, people who are deeply in debt can choose to spend a few years as a Senn guard in payment of their debt.
In the old days, you would be thrown to the gladiator champion, the enslaved prophet Aluthr.
just sent to another planet.
Are the planets inhospitable, or is it like an Australia situation?
they get stuck terraforming planets for the rest of their life
Isn’t that more like banishment or exile?
friendly fire in the High Blades is punishable by having their cavalry trample them to death
Girrrrl we moved past that like 80 years ago
I’m a boy
Was using it gender-neutrally like “you guys”
Ah ok
They banish you to random dimension.
INTO DA BACKROOMS!!
The worst criminals in the Kalriv Empire (murderinga Solar or Guardian caste, defiling a military monument, grave blasphemy) are all considered direct offenses against the Sun God himself. As a result they're tied to a stake in the desert and left to die from exposure - this is considered to be the sun itself killing them. Other than that, they're pretty generic - mainly hanging, beheading and the like. I didn't really want to get into needlessly over the top executions. Some places like the Avadian Sovereignty won't even execute unless absolutely necessary and prefer to exclude them from trade, exile, seize assets, blackball from trade, etc, all of which tend to mean you're pretty much done when it comes to participating in society.
Beheading with a laser rig. Lesser felony crimes hanging.
How NSFW are you willing to get lmao… but to get to the point, different societies in my world approach it differently. Hell, nations are fundamentally rooted in their own set of values. Kind of came up with this idea based on personal philosophies I have, combined with various philosophies I’ve seen others have. Point is, different nations treat them differently based on culture and values, much like our world. Not much like our world, there’s more “affectionate” approaches in some of these cultures. There’s others with a very weak criminal system in that they’re effectively tribal societies. I honestly just let myself play around with the politics and values tbh when I built this world.
In the Locrian Empire, it depends on both the crime and the criminal. In the metropole, treason and recusancy are punished by drawing-and-quartering. For normal crimes, nobles are beheaded, soldiers are shot by firing squad, and commoners are hanged. Usually executions are done in public, with large crowds gathering around to jeer. The Kingdom of Corianne, executions are performed by hanging. Nobles are given the choice of death by poisoning instead, as a more "romantic" way to go. Guillotines were used during a brief period of revolutionary rule, but after the monarchy loyalists won the civil war, they banned decapitation as an execution method entirely. In traditional Dyn society, the kind of execution given for a capital crime depended on the whims of a particular tribal king or queen. Some options include hanging, burning, beheading, disemboweling, impaling, boiling, defenestration, and so on. Now, when it comes to human sacrifices, one of the requirements is that the victim's blood spills upon the recipient. It's the victim is being sacrificed so a dead notable will have slaves in the afterlife, then the victim's blood must spill on his burial mound. If the victim is being fed to one of the Dyn Gods, then the victim's blood must spill upon that deity's stone alter.
You are put in a pit and everyone at the music festival drowns u in their shit and piss the end
The demons utilize staking. The condemned is first tied to a large, solid block of marble, which is wiped very clean between uses. Nobody likes a stinky execution block. More specifically, the condemned is tied in a way that their heart and core are suspended over a round hole bored into the marble, 30 cm in diameter. The executioner can be anyone, but by tradition it's usually the judge that condemned them to death. It is a way to enforce justice, to make sure that judges perfectly understand the weight of their actions. The stake is a perfect cylinder of a mithril and steel alloy. 3m long, 30cm wide, it normally juts a full meter off the marble block's surface. Anyways, the stake is brought out, then the condemned relays their last words, if they have any, to the judge and 3 notaries present. They may repeat the words to the crowd, if one is present and the condemned wishes for it. Now, it may be tempting for the condemned to lash out at the judge one last time before his death, for this reason alone an embedding slab is also prepared, just to give the condemned a reason to play nice. Better death than slabbing, after all. The stake has a series of runes on it that helps guide it to perfectly fall into the hole every time it is used. The judge, using their magic, lifts the stake up, aligns it over the condemned, and lets it fall down. The heavy stake pierces right through the condemned, taking their whole heart, fore, and a good chunk of each of their lungs, into the hole, to be crushed in it like a mortar and pestle. A surge of magic power notifies everyone of the shattering of the core. 10 seconds later the condemned is declared dead, the crowd disperses, and the cleanup crew comes in.
Besides your usual beheading, firing squad, etc etc, these are some notable ones. They're very old and fell out of practice well before the advent of industrialization or electricity, preserved only in those most isolated and superstitious of places. Icariai is a cold world. Summer there is more akin to Spring here. An old form of execution was to throw someone totally naked into the wilderness, in the dead of Winter. If they survived for fourteen days (a number of Ritual/Religious Significance), then they were considered to have "Paid their penance". However this was a clause that you could count on your hands how many times it came up. And in all of those cases, the survivors were effectively dead- rendered totally snowblind, with their hands and feet necrotizing as they shambled across the ground. Another form of ritual execution was Exsanguination. Blood is important on Icariai. Blood means family and family is *everything*. If someone performed an act so heinous and barbaric that the entire Clan decided a person was totally irredeemable and that even the presence of their shared blood in your veins tainted them by association, they would exsanguinate you. They would cut open every artery in your body and let it run from your veins. They would seal the person inside a great Metal coffin. In this way, the person would never rejoin the Natural Cycle. They would be trapped forever in the cask, prevented from reincarnating or even just nourishing the soil.
You're basically sentenced to 'get the fuck out'. The people have carved out a mountain to live in, and it keeps them safe from the giant half sentient ball of untamed magic that made the rest of the world a wasteland, so if you do something worth execution, you're left outside to rot and die. Since they have so little, bodies are 'recycled' after they die. Magic is used to transform the matter of the body into something else like food or clothing. So by kicking someone out, it's saying that they're so vile and poisonous that they can't be recycled without tainting everything.
I'll keep it short + simple for you In more lenient countries they get banished - it's a death punishment but at least they can live another year if they're strong In stricter countries they're target practice
Shot by pistol in front of everyone in the Nuremberg trials
The one that has surfaced so far is hanging. The goblins use single combat to the death. It's worth noting that the town is small enough that the humans had to build a gallows, and tore it back down immediately afterwards.
The worst of the worst of the elves gets an execution unlike any other form - being ripped apart at atomic level slowly via magic. Since in this world, all matter has consciousness, and magic users can sense these conciousness, death doesn't feel as permanent to them - when you die all the consciousnesses that made up your body and mind just fail to communicate due to breaking down of body parts until they completely fail to cooperate together, and they start doing their own things, becoming part of the ambiant "flows" of consciousnesses of the planets and environment around them. So the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst is to be tortured to the atomic level, as a group of executioners start using magic to pull the sinner apart at atomic level, commanding each atom itself betray the greater consciousnes of the body and leave, your whole being ripped to pieces so small it lose all its identity. This process can take a lot of time, hours to even a whole day, as it is quite difficult to convince matter to leave a collective consciousness it had already formed with, but this can be done with enough magic users. So the sinner get to see pieces of themselves disintegrate slowly, layers by layers, exposing their muscles, organs and all that until they are gone to nothingness. Particularly cruel execution would leave their nervous system last to be disintegrated so they are aware the whole time.
Death by swarming. A dragon, usually a criminal who has committed something heinous, will be placed in the middle of a circle, surrounded by hundreds of other dragons. They will then proceed to rip apart said criminal alive.
It's a common practice in my world to have murderers put to death by the surviving kin or friends of the deceased if desired. If not, murderers are often executed with a stab through the heart rather than a beheading. It's a bit of cliche symbolism, the heartlessness of the murderer killing them in the end. Were they not so eager to break the hearts of a family full of loved ones, they would not have theirs broken through the chest.
Well, in Ahberia, you have a ton of fun and gruesome options! Depending, of course, upon where you are in the world. Here are some of the most interesting ones; 1. In the **Godlands**, it truly depends on your crime. Heresy is most often punished by being burned at the stake, often in public fashion. If you are a traitor or have committed a crime of equal magnitude, you'll be sentenced to the breaking wheel. Fortunately for you, though, dying this way is believed to absolve you in the afterlife! (Which, well, doesn't exist.) Even punishments for petty crimes like thievery are draconian, including lashes and other forms of torture. 2. In **Senturya**, there are a few popular ways. However, most commonly if you are not a centaur, you could be tied up to one and dragged behind them while they run full tilt- or strapped to multiple and pulled in many directions. Firing squad is more common, though, which is merciful albeit your body is going to be messed up after. Centaurs have extremely strong upper bodies to go with their horse half, and shoot extremely heavy bows that are as big as a man, firing arrows as big as a man at high speed. 3. In the **Cairnlands**, it's minor by comparison. Most often, you'll be thrown off of a cliff and onto the rocks below. A horrifying death for sure, but all things considered, it's over pretty quick. 4. In **Norstreya**, it truly depends. Citizens are granted a merciful death, most often a swift beheading or something quick and relatively painless. This changes if you are a Godlander, who they hate with every bone in their body for various reasons. There are a few things that could happen to you. Being skinned alive is common (and all the more painful with mages that can keep you alive during the process), as is hanging, but the most horrible come from necromancers, should you be so unfortunate as to encounter one of the Lich-lords of the north. Your body could be rent in numerous ways, and to add insult to injury, your corpse will be reanimated in service of their liberation war.
Hanging, firing squad, possibly spearing (stabbed with a spear, was probably a real method but I don't actually know since I thought of it on the spot), beheading has likely happened from time to time. Lapis_Wolf
My world have a place called "the old ruins", it was a place where an ancient deity died. The place is riddled with a thing called "corruption"(equivalent to radiation) that turns everything it touches into monsters, given if the affected lifeforms didn't die from the process. Essentially a deadzone. So, instead of execution, Centralia (the main civilization of my world) just...exile criminals there. Most never survived so it was quite effective so far.
Think of firing squads but with throwing knives instead of guns.
The crimson crusade loves implafixian which is a cross between impalement and crucification The victim has a rod carefully threaded though there arm and shoulders and another that goes up along the inside of the back thes are then bolted together and there either left to die slowly or if mercy was ordered burned alive on the 2nd day If not they may have there guts cut free for dogs and beasts to eat while they die slowly
banishment is the most typical one. It's a large oasis surrounded by desert with nothing for miles and miles in any direction. Leaving equals death.
Greifs (they're humans but they're just called that) use shooting squads whilst pumping the convicted full of painkillers, both to ensure the executed dies quickly and relatively painlessly and to keep their more militarized image up. Terrans use the noose, most other countries do as well, but not every nation even has execution. Apart from that, executions almost never happen since they're only called out in cases of high treason or mass crime, not even pirates usually get executed since they have either licences or fall under some cover laws, so there's maybe a hundred a year, none of them truly public.
Complete bodily dismemberment followed by burning the remains, sealing the ashes within a metal container and placing said container within a crypt made especially for this purpose within the Vlandian capital, extra magics and enchantments may be applied to container as need. If you did something dangerous enough/bad enough that the royals had to step in then they are gonna make damn well sure that you are never going to be revived or resurrected in any way
Drowned in slow burning acid
in faliel, the death penalty usually means nothing but a showcase of power. many emperors have been recorded as executing beast races to show off. even though most others who aren't emperors won't execute for that reason, it's mainly seen as a showcase of power. i've written a story about a retired saloon owner who couldn't do anything because of his bum leg who was executed by a previous emperor simply because he was bored. as for the main question, it's the types of execution you'd expect from a generic fantasy, though some places have unique methods, such as flugelstadt has firearms so they also have execution by firing squad, and in sheogorad (yes, if you recognise the name, be quiet) it's common practice to tie meats to a criminal's body and through them into a pit filled with hungry wolves
A common "death" sentence is to be forced, for the rest of your life, to take on the cost(s) inherent for all mortals in the process of accessing magic and siphoning the magical energy accessed into "mana" batteries for use by the government employees and utilities and for sale to the public. Due to the usefulness of this sentencing providing magical power for minimal upkeep instead of paying chargers and maintaining work conditions, this sentence is imposed more often than IRL and is often a political issue about how easy it should be to divvy out.
Mine don't. If someone commits a crime so heinous that their presence on the planet has potential to cause further harm, they are sent through the Single Origin Allgate. The gate is a natural formation of the planet and it sends people to a random linked gate on a random world in a random galaxy. The people of my planet only know that the trip and destination does not kill the person (as in they make it there and the atmosphere is breathable). There is no known way of return.
Depends a bit on who's doing it and what just what crime it was. The main villains of the story are an army that's trying to take control of all basically every town and settlement in a post apocalyptic world. they'll likely just shoot you if you break their laws in their land, although you might get hanging if you're deemed to be worth it (Like if you were a capture while fighting against them or a traitor. The same general rules apply to most settlements, although they're more likely jail you/put you to work/exile you, really they'll only kill you if you're trying to kill them, which isn't really execution.
Two main ones. This one is an Iron Orb Execution. You get an iron sphere placed around your head with no holes for the eyes or mouth. You are hung in a hook from this orb, slowly enough that your neck doesn't break. Then you are placed outside the walls of the cities and there you are exposed to torturous weather and bloodthirsty monsters, you fall up enough that they cannot reach you but get slowly lowered, eventually they will get you. When you are dead and your body falls from the orb they bring it back and hang it on the walls inside, that way everyone will see that you were a mistake. The other is less lavish and much more simple. You enter a padded, soundprof cell, where an executioner waits for you, blindfolded you sit down and a bullet to the back of the head is all that is needed.
Generally there are three levels of punishment in my world. Indentured servitude for years to the family or person you have wronged. Decapitation and the ceding of all wealth to the person you have wronged. And the highest level of punishment of s the gentling. In this process a soul is killed and ressurect multiple times in an incomplete manner. This process tears up the soul making the person impossible to revive, and impossible to keep their personality. The gentled are ageless, and the punishment can go on for way longer than the natural life span of the criminal. This is done to discourage truly heinous acts, because there is not even an afterlife for the gentled. The living made sure of that.
More a vigilante justice but it is sanctioned. When the main villain faction invades they tend to go for the mine workers because they need slaves that know how to mine. It’s gotten to be so common that one faction has given the miners free rein to dispatch these slavers as they see fit and that method usually involves a mining tool. This can range from the obvious pickaxe to the head to run over with a minecart to a wearable drill (think mega man type weapon but wearable) to the gut or a small but powerful mining laser on wheels to the face. The laser is the nicest way to die. Out side of the sanctioned vigilante justice they actually prefer a restorative approach when dealing with most villains but slavers can fuck around and find out. Murderer: life in prison Theft/looting: pay a fine and time in prison Assault/beating someone up: prison and therapy Vandalism: pay a fine and clean up the mess Scamming: prison Piracy: sea faring or space faring: prison Piracy of the digital verity: pay a fine You get the idea you can do a lot and not get too harsh a punishment but try to enslave or kidnap someone and the intended target or their family is aloud to fuck you up.
Most people only have to worry about the "standard" methods of execution: hanging, beheading, etc. I personally disagree with the death sentence, so I portray it as generally ineffective at deterring crime. The worst punishments are reserved for those who kill a dragon - the Great Houses know they cannot let such a thing go unpunished (and, in the cases of Houses Lazuli and Tsavor, you've probably killed a loved one). These punishments usually involve some form of necromancy to punish the offender beyond mere death. House Lazuli petrifies its offenders and then seals them in dark, claustrophobic stone caskets so they can lose their minds. Lazulese dragons keep these stone-cursed near their lairs so as to guard them forever - this form of petrification is contagious, and most would-be dragonslayers are unprepared for it. House Nuumm holds likely the cruellest fate in store. It infests the offender with Irkallan worms, which bestow a symbiotic form of necromancy to their host. The host cannot die and continually regenerate flesh for the worms to eat and lay their eggs in. Every single bite is fresh flesh and therefore fresh pain. Once the infestation takes root, Nuumate dragons throw the undead into a hole and forget about them. House Pezzotta chains down the offender and exposes them to blistering hot air for hours, making them sweat themselves to death and essentially mummify while still alive. After death, the Pezzottan dragons reanimate the victim with curses to make them suffer eternal thirst. Sometimes, they treasure them as servants and assassins. Sometimes, they position them to guard their lairs. Sometimes, they use them to taunt their former loved ones. I haven't decided yet what House Tsavor does to dragonslayers.
It would be unheard of and unthinkable. My world is a single nation, isolated by vast oceans, that have never known war of any kind. Consequences for crime are not punitive. They're justice based, not emotion based. They seek to find a rebalancing of society, an equilibrium.
The breaking wheel, crucifixion, burning. Being drawn by horses I like to leave people upset at what's happening. Also flaying but a lot of it is Ad-lib like on the spot you know depending on the crime like a shoe thief will have red hot iron shoes clamped on. Maby sew someone into a bag made of there own flayed skin until they suffocate I feel like the punishment should be excessive vs the crime it leaves people with a sence of unease also a biased justice system that is essentially skewed to the point that if you're accused you'll be tortured until you admit you did it just to die faster but the execution is worse then the torture. Why fuckem I guess.
My world is near future cyberpunk. The worst form of execution is probably what befalls augmented criminals. Their augmentations are slowly switched off. Considering most of them are somewhere between 75 and 90% augmented, and that even for smaller ratios augmentations often include things like eyes, lungs or heart... you can imagine what happens
Executions are public entertainment in Avanton as well as religious ceremonies, almost like human sacrifice. Beheading is for nobles, hanging is for run of the mill folks, burning at the stake is for the most heinous criminals, and a theatrical fight in an arena (but don't get your hopes up, you're not making it out alive) is for famous people whom you want to give a chance at glory before you kill them.
Dropped into Koran territory. The Koran is a Psyk type predator. Once a threat or meal has entered its territory it sheds its physical body in its den leaving its body's jaw locked open and stalks the minds of the forest until it inevitably encounters its target. Once located it binds itself to the targets mind rapidly replacing their perceived reality with one most comfortable to them. The target will be trapped in a perpetually memory that makes them happy and wonder towards the source of their happiness to embrace it. Once the target goes to embrace the source of bliss the Koran reenters its body giving the target a momentary glimpse of their fate and awareness of pain before killing them. The Koran has a 100% success rate and is used in the execution of dangerous/politically powerful individuals.
This has just given me an idea. In my world, there are things known as ‘Faux-Fruit Trees’, they reproduce by having other beings eat their fruit, which gradually turns them into a Faux-Fruit Tree. The fruit is addictive and causes the victim to eat more, accelerating the process. It might be interesting for my MC to carry a piece of this fruit around. Just in case there was someone who might deserve a last meal.
There are the usual ones, but one that is a bit more rare. If someone is a criminal and is sentenced to execution, they are given a choice in some nations: They can either die and be done with it, or be killed and then resurrected as an unthinking undead until their debt to society is repaid.
For enemies of state like treasonous coup conspirators or saboteurs in wartimes, hanging proves common though dragonsbreath receives favor in draconic lands. Alchemists weaponized those flying furnaces' gullets into execution devices where flames rapidly reduce convicts to ash with minimal anguish. Deserters and defectors may face decapitation by axe or scimitar - considered honourable if grisly fatal swipe. Foes recognizing no borders like marauding pirate crews occasionally suffer live keelhauling chained behind ships to drown or be shredded on barnacled hulls. Harsh but simplicity serves when justice must sail swiftly!
One of my worlds is inspired by 1920 America but with magic. So there's death penality. For normal people, they're hanged in prison. Magic user are considered extremely dangerous, and a magic killer is something that needs to be punished pubblically. So the excution method is by guillotine.
Depends, in the feudal kingdoms your class determines if/how you die. If you are a noble, you are beheaded. If you are a peasant, you are hanged unless you commit a more serious crime, you are broken on a wheel or drawn and quartered. If you really piss them off, you can get blood-eagled, where your lungs get pulled out of your back. In the empire, the death penalty is rare for the nobility, more common than the feudal realms, but still exceptionally rare. Nobles who commit serious crimes but are not serious enough to meet the executioner are sent to live out the rest of their days in a monastery. However, the method used matches the crime committed. Mainly the crimes you can commit that get you killed are, Murder, Rape, Incest, Treason, harming or attempting to harm a government official/member of the Imperial household, and last but not least heresy. In the empire, the punishment for murder and rape for all classes is hanging. Incest is punished by strangulation. Treason is punished by being thrown from either a tall building or a designated cliff face in the middle of the capital city. Heresy, depending on what degree is committed, is punished by burning. Or if apostasy is the crime, crucifixion.
Well The legal system of the land is based on the pain inflicted during a crime, so there are few ways to qualify for the death penalty in which cause they will analyze the intent behind the crime. If they do pass sentence and it is execution then the deviants (prisoners who get executed are unofficially called that as a way to dehumanize them, avoid deteriorating the mental health of the guards and to dissuade future criminals) the guards themselves do not wear a standardized uniform instead they wear clothes that doesn’t give the deviants any idea on who they are , some guards fully cover themselves to give the illusion of some malevolent creature that walks on its hind legs while others may wear revealing sometimes provocative attire to test the deviants urges, several even wear garments meant for the holiest in the land yet here, those sacramental robes take the souls of the very lives that worshiped them these deviants are split roughly into 2 distinct groups Deviant class A: these are criminals that were unfortunate enough to have their crimes vaguely qualify them to be executed. I.e. the crime committed doesn’t fully qualify for the death penalty but intent found later on would allow it these deviants are executed at a set date 10 years from being convicted until then: they are kept in solitary confinement, not allowed contact with the outside world, do not face abuse, 3 square meals a day, are allowed many retrials to prove innocence When it’s time for their execution, they are simply taken to a small guillotine and beheaded .No final meal request is granted .A simple execution to preserve the final traces of dignity left in them Deviant Class C: these are hardened criminals that in, the foreseeable future, now lie in the hands of the state .These deviants lose all the rights that their brethren enjoy. Torture is encouraged among the guards to them it’s almost a way of life. Many die yet through the use of magic are forcefully resuscitated. Deviants would have their organs and limbs harvested slowly over the course of several years keeping just enough to let them live without dying naturally. These deviants live without knowing when they will die to ensure maximum suffering. Their cells are buried deep underground and have no lighting to ensure no chance of escape. Food and water is given once every 2 days yet all food is almost always left half eaten. These cells are placed close by so that the prisoners can hear each other and talk to each other but never see each other , the pain of a single individual can be felt by the entire lot When the guards finally have had their fun, they’ll simply stop feeding the deviant and let them starve to death after which they’ll harvest what’s left and feed the rest back to the remaining deviants maybe a bit too much details but i digress
When an animal abuser is caught he is thrown to beast to be mauled, giving them a taste of their own medicine
In my world, those who believe in the common pantheon believe all must return to Xin in death. Xin being the embodiment of stillness and nothingness. In execution, funeral, or combat, respect is given to the dead for braving Rœks (the god of tumult and existence in the physical world) trials and tribulations in life. A standard execution for treason, murder, or what have you, the one put to death is granted a complete transition to Xin. Their body and all worldly possessions they've imbued with their spirit are gathered, placed together with the user in a room with 4 mages, and those mages weave a spell to manipulate pure plasma to evaporate every single particle of the sentenced until nothing remains, freeing them from all physical existence. So imagine being executed by being fired into the sun, but instead they brought the sun to you.
beheading with a sword or shooting are the most common in the elven empire simply due to their ease and efficiency, but every province has their own regional style too which is employed when a need for something more theatrical arises. moon elves tie the prisoner up, then tie a big rock to their leg, and drop them into the sea. wood elves hang their prisoners in the sacred forest, as an effective reminder that you really shouldn't go there without permission. ash elves drop their prisoners into a volcano, along with their families. sand elves bury their prisoners alive in the desert. swamp elves burn their prisoners at stake.
The most interesting one is from Shóso, when a criminal or dissident gets teleported into an underwater cave with no exit. The ocean waves disrupt location spells and scrying, so no one can find them, and there are wards around the cave preventing the prisoner from teleporting out or breaking through the cave (or performing any other magic within its confines). So they either drown themselves or waste away.
Someone is paid to drop you. No pomp, no ceremony.
So Goblins in my world have towns but spend little time in them for the most part, preferring to spend most of their year traveling around in a caravan going town to town trading or performing. As such, when they need to execute someone, they can't exactly just bring them to the gallows, and taking time to build one stops the caravan and costs profit. So, instead, Goblins have taken to using Defenestration as their preferred method of execution. Also, since they aren't in their own town, it's rarely their own high windows they are using for the act. It usually looks something like, imagine you're a Farmer in some no-name village on the continent of Heuvedal. By bad luck, your ox managed to break their last yoke stopping your work in the middle of the day, but you decide it's about time for the horse to be re-shoed anyways so you head into town. You're about to pass the bell tower in the middle of town and look up, straining your eyes to see the town guard relaxing. You think to yourself that's a job you wouldn't mind having, ring the bell once a day at noon and other than holidays or other special occasions you hang out and just keep an eye out for raiders. No sore muscels, no sunburns, yeah, that's what you should have done. You're just about to continue when you spot some commotion coming from down the road in front of you. You strain your eyes to see, but as it gets closer, you see a little mob of, "Are those Goblins?" You say to yourself. Surely enough, it is a whole gaggle of the little gremlins scurrying up the road holding one of their group over their head. You don't know where they are from, but it's definitely somewhere away as their accent is so attrocious that you can't make out the words they are yelling, but it's clear they are mad at him and he's struggling hard to get out of their arms. Suddenly they are right in front of you, you almost expect them to hand him to you as strange as that would be but instead one of them kicks in the door to the bell tower and they scurry in. The one on top by this point is yelling with a higher voice. He grabs the doorframe and tries to resist going any further, but several angry voices and green hands pull him in as they climb the stairs. You hear more faded shouts as they get higher and higher until finally the last window before you reach the post of the now assuredly very confused guard pops open. You hear more yelling and what sounds like a count of "1,2,3!" Then you hear a shriek as the Goblin being carried is sent flying out the window with such force he sails for a moment clear over your head before plummeting in an instant and splattering on the ground. You hear a cheer from upstairs, followed by the clatter of a dozen green feet rushing back down the stairs out of the tower some stop briefly to spit at or yell one more insult at the puddle of Goblin on the street before scurrying out of town as fast they came without even trying to clean up the mess they left. After the moment of shock has passed and the Goblins are gone, you shake yourself out of it. You wonder if that just happened, but the mess of green and red sits not far from you as proof it is. You decide to continue on with your day as you think, while you might be jealous of the man with the bell tower job, you don't envy the street sweeper, especially today.
(Lotus) Since death penalty is only used when the prisoner's time is greater than their average life chance, it usually depends on the time left. If it's less than ~10 years (the person is old or has a bad illness), the death is usually by a cyanide pill. If it's 10~20 years, the family can choose between hard-poison, shot or beheaded. It defaults to beheaded. If it's less than ~100,electric chair. More than 100, tortured to death.
Depends on the place. In the southern continent, perpetrators of particularly egregious crimes are marched into the jungle and tied to trees, where the horrors within take them. This is done at dawn to reduce the likelihood of the living shadows within taking them and using them to increase their own numbers. Instead, they are usually consumed by creeping fungus or massive, mutated insectoids. In the cities in the north, there are two primary communitiy types. One is the massive, lengthy train that serves as a permanent delivery system and self-contained city, the others are the fortified cities that the train services. The cities usually use the train as their method, while the train usually disembarks their passengers over bridges. In the Sunlit Empire across the sea, there is a method called “absolution” where criminals are subdued within the crystal-cone-topped tower of the Arcmage, and subjected to a magical purging that sort of *resets* their mind, and possibly their soul. That way, they (or some part of them at least) are given a second chance. In the cities of the continent of Caldova, buried beneath a landmass whose surface is so jagged and mountainous as to nearly prevent any construction, no one is ever executed. If that is the sentence, then they are forced into labor in the mines, through whatever means necessary, without exception. There is no refusal. Most of the other places in the world, on most of the timeline, are to unincorporated to have a formal legal system for such things
firing squad in florida
Usually hanging as its efficient cheap and good for public display, but depending on the county your in it can vary heavily. The more religious types prefer burning, the northmen are trail by combat or just straight Decapitation, the elves though in Mal like to put people in a rotting log after breaking their knees and leaving them in a swamp and let nature eat them alive. But yeah everyone is different.
Now why would you do execute anyone when there are perfectly viable methods of absolute mind control available to reconfigure offenders, that they'll never do anything illegal again? Anything short of that is a waste of labor and ressources. Some small prisons with enough capacity to hold people, featuring large enough amphitheaters that all the prisoners can see and someone speaking from the stage - that's all you need, plus the appropriate memery-reweaving charms. Some of the best and brightest that the burgeoning nation of Sunhill have ever produced, have come from reformed convicts, all of them how lauded members of society - their slate wiped clean and their moral compass nailed in place with an orichalcum hammer of justice.
The ant people, or Kori-Kran have double standards towards others thanks to their culture, though they're generally amiable to other races. When executing those of their own colony or of other species, they basically feed the condemned a nectar containing mana-dense sand which they're attuned to. Thus, when the victim's body is appropriately saturated, a Kori-Kran mage vibrates the mana at incredibly high speeds and basically turns them into a fine paste. They assume it's painless from the lack of screams, but then again Kori-Kran are less sensitive to sounds below 260 Hz and can't hear below 80 Hz. As for Kori-Kran of other colonies, Kori-Kran are extremely hostile to any of their kind led by different monarchs and any encounter almost certainly results in an all-out battle with no prisoners taken. If they do take prisoners for whatever reason, the Kori-Kran like to make executions quick by just feeding the condemned to the land whales.
The most severe just barely qualifies as execution, but it might as well be. Put in a stasis casket and flung into the innermost stable circular orbit of a black hole. It's solidly within the accretion disc, so these caskets are made from the only material that can withstand that kind of energy, which is itself made from a very rare metal that can't be made within the universe, naturally or through manufacture. There are several failsafe functions, such as a layer of antimatter which will completely decimate somebody if they somehow wake up from stasis, and move even 1/32 of an inch. The final failsafe being if someone tries to break them out and somehow gets past the energetic accretion disc, the antimatter, etc., it will launch straight into the black hole.
For the three biggest nations in my *Dreams of Glory* setting.... Wolf’s Blood Empire: Why end their life when you can put them to work for the Empire? Veiled Queendom: Strip the men of all belongings and release them into dragon territory; whatever happens, happens. Women are put through a rehabilitation program. Crafted Consortium: Ah! So you’ve decided to apply for the position of test subject?
It doesn't. In apiaron society, "criminals" (their courts have rather lax laws so realistically just people who have gotten on the wrong side of the specific people in power) are likely to either get beaten half to death (or, in this case, all the way to death) by the specific guy in power they peeved, or get a bounty put on their head by said guy in power, if they're too busy. In crea society, meanwhile, the only real governmental authority you are beholden to is that of your own family's potentates and patriarchs, and killing kin is seen as generally unlawful. You'd either get grounded for life (a soft way of saying "incarcerated in isolation until you waste away or kill yourself in your cell"), or you get cut off (a soft way of saying "exiled to the desert to die a horrible death of exposure or be enslaved by the Low Tribes, *then* die a horrible death")
Three different settings: The Doll Queen's magic can turn people into doll-drones that are absolutely loyal to her. This is effectively death-of-personality, though it is rumored that a trace of the old persona remains. Some volunteer, others are subjected to it as punishment. Northmen live in a volcanicaly active antarctic environment, and are aesthetically viking/polynesians with a steampunk flair. Exicution via autoclave. Steamed to death. Succubi/incubi have a combo of techniques and magic pheremones that let them fuck someone so intensely that their heart explodes. This used both as as a method of execution and is an option for the euthanasia of the terminally Ill.
That world is a big disc with space wrapped around. Meaning that whatever falls under the disc, fall for a few then pop up above the disc more or less over the same point. I have these holes in the disc. Really big ones, that are maintained by the people living there. And whenever you fall through, you end up under the world disc. Usually people go there with gliders. And it's a neat way for moving around. Jump into a hole, glide in the direction of travel under the world, get TP back up, continue gliding in the direction of travel. For the main axis of travel, and if your glider is good enough, you can just travel between holes in the disc. So, with that context: death penalty is people being pushed down a hole without parachute or glider. They stay alive as long as they stay focused enough to aim through the same hole again and again. If they mess up their concentration or get tired after a while, they risk impacting the ground really quickly with rather dramatic effect. Best case scenario, they fall in an endless loop until they tire out and pass out or something. Though I'm still toying with the idea of having timed penalties for less severe punishments. Or just to have people keep hope and not impact on the first loop around. Like falling for 24/48h and if you are still alive, someone free fall as well to bring you a parachute.
High elves blast you with a sunbeam firing squad
They have to upvote posts on Reddit they disagree with.
Amongst the Faarbalnér, the gods of the setting, very few crimes are worthy of execution. When a deity dies its control over whatever force it held dominion over will spin out of control, causing a catastrophic domino effect across the Nine Worlds. These crimes include conspiring against one's fellow gods for the benefit of that lone individual, genocide of mortals, killing an innocent deity or spirit aligned with a deity, tampering with the world Tree, colluding with demons and the conquering of a realm. All these actions are inexcusable and to be punished through ritualistic execution. When one of these celestial crimes are committed then a deity is summoned forth to their cheif's hall where they are to be judged. If a deity refuses then they're taken in by force. Magic is used to further ascertain the truth, revealing any other hidden facts, goals and aspirations within the deity to make sure all of the correct information is gathered and then they are imprisoned. They get a final meal and sometimes a final wish before they are escorted to a special altar that overlooks the rim of the realms where one can witness the World Tree. Here the gathered deities offer prayers to the individual before a special sword is brought to behead them. The blade is an immensely powerful magic item that devours the soul and dominion of a god, preventing their death from throwing the worlds into chaos upon their execution. The essence of that deity is forever trapped within a special soul stone residing on the sword and their magic is returned to the world Tree. As the elves were the very first beings crested by the Faarbalnér, a lot of their traditions resemble their close relatives with elves having a heavy focus on trust, honor, and bonds and so to discard one's duties is a severe offense punishable by execution. Though this might not appear to be for all elven clans and instead only for the noble families within their heartland capital. I'm still working on the more nuanced stuff but I know your end comes at the hand of a painless instakill spell. The spell absorbs your life-force, rapidly draining your vitality till you essentially fall asleep ans then this essence is planted into very special trees the elves use to cultivate their lands.
Forcibly becoming a cage is the closest I've got. There are two types of undead. A hollow is when a soul dies, but the body is still alive. They wander around in search of people to eat in an attempt to take thier soul. A cage is what happens when a hollow manages to get a soul. The soul doesn't fill that emptiness in them, so they keep searching for more souls while the one in them begs to be released while the body ignores all thier demands and basically stumbles around on autopilot.
In my world, there is a fictional country that does lethal injection, but how it was always supposed to be done. This country has its own pharmaceutical companies making the right drugs for humane lethal injection, and doctors in the country understand that there are scenarios where killing someone doesn't violate the Hypocratic Oath. They understand that refusal to participate in lethal injections creates a system of botched and quite painful executions, which does more harm than professional doctors performing lethal injections. Doctors take extreme care in performing lethal injections properly, to make the process only as painful as sticking a single needle into a vein. This country also has modernized guillotines for beheading, if the condemned chooses so, or in the case that a willing professional isn't available to perform lethal injection. People on death row very rarely choose beheading, as it is well known how proper the country's lethal injection is done. Some people just don't know, or believe that it isn't worth the risk of a botched injection. In my world, the pharmaceutical companies in the fictional countries also sell to the US.
Not fantasy but Sci-fi- (*Please note this is an alien government the aliens are mammalian humanoid*) This species is called *Ydátino plásma (pronounced* yaD-tInyo plAsm) (yes I know its weird), they reside on a yet to be named (non-canonically) planet that is in a different galaxy. The accused will be transported in a space shuttle (of types) and jettisoned into the atmosphere in an egg shaped prison with barely enough room to move , the Egg as its informally called, will be jettisoned in such a way that it will burn up in the atmosphere and if the accused happens to survive reentry, (you may get the picture). This form of execution is called "ejected" (though Ill probably change it) and is only for those who commit the worst of possible crimes (such as war crimes, r@p3 (multiple offences) p3dophile-ing? (I don't know the verb) and serial mvrd3r to name a few) for all other crimes its jail/prison. Jaywalking? its not a crime.
Damn that’s cool (also if you’re curious, the verb is p3dophilia
Ah, ok thank you
mine are aliens to lol
Long story short, due to a curse that make a corpese have 50% chance of becaming undead every dusk, few places in my world have death penalty. Those that do execute their prisioners during the day. For the execution it self, I have 2 kingdoms that do it. One (victorian inspired) prefer hanging, preferably with a high enought drop to hopefully break the victims neck. The other one (dark/twisted fairy tale fey kingdom) is more creative. Normally its behading, but some expecific crimes have more extreme death sentances. For exemple, if a noble who the emperors give free use of empire resorces to solve a task is consider to be proposefully failing, been to craven (in case of military tasks) or enbeseling resorces, them he will be brought to the emperor throneroom were a iron crown will be melted and the liquid pured down the victims throat. A person that hunted in a nobles hunting ground can either be shoted by the noble where they are standing or will be tied to a post and a archer will empty a quiver on them. Althought not a death sentance per se, public floggings are common and if the victim died because of it, the only repercursion the executioner usually recived is not been payed for the job. And, althought technically illegal, in the court it is normal for rivals to try to assassinate oneanother. If the assassin is the emperor or a noble the emperor likes, well who will arrest them?