I do define that as death. They flow upon the river of souls and end up in the afterlife. It doesn't matter that said afterlife would be manufactured by us, it's still an afterlife/pickup stop for Imperial Gods to send envoys to ferry the souls to their afterlives.
The goals of our short term are to avoid immortals dominating everything and to make people feel like society is still fair in the face of the ability to buy youth.
To solve the first we can extend the income and ownership laws we already need for cooperations. For the second what we need is a mix of vectors to legitimately make the situation more equitable and to convince people of that fact.
If becoming an imperial outsider is effectively getting a brand new super body that can go back to interact with your family when off duty the meaning of being dead changes. Other components could be reincarnation for imperial service, conditional on moving to an expansion region on the frontier(or similar).
The key point is people need to feel like they have a shot at earning this brand new potion of youth or we'll have unrest regardless of what else we do.
I would say it's a pretty minor change compared to our major changes in both power structure and religion.
A little extra that helps a few people and hurts nobody.
As of now the concept of producing heirs to secure a legacy is not bound to a man/woman combination at all anymore. Accordingly the whole practical base to be against gay marriage is gone.
Granted it's easier to legislate that when most of the people alive live in a world where this is just common fact and not at all unusual, rather than try to rationalize it as an invasive and disruptive change of the status quo that was forced on them by a single person they can fit name and face to, rather than just the fact that thousands of people are simply benefiting from resources that are now available to them and hold no compunctions about using them because it benefits them personally to do so.
Does that imply that the stigma being sourced from religion tends to result in more violent responses compared to shame-based "you have a duty" rationales?
I honestly don't know, I think that people who pursue an agenda of violence tend to have some kind of more selfish reasoning, hence in ASoIaF the Andals invading and seizing the lands of the "heathens" is their 'holy duty' but it almost entirely benefits the warlord at the top of the dog pile to preach that shit and justify their reprisal killings.
I would not necessarily call it less violent when the opportunity arises (and the profit is good for the abuser) but it is less systematic. An organized religion is an institution and institutions protect the source of their power far better than disparate individuals could hope to.
Granted it's easier to legislate that when most of the people alive live in a world where this is just common fact and not at all unusual, rather than try to rationalize is as an invasive and disruptive change of the status quo that was forced on them by a single person they can fit name and face to, rather than just the fact that thousands of people are simply benefiting from resources that are now available to them and hold no compunctions about using them because it benefits them personally to do so.
The status quo of the world is being, and often already has been, utterly borken by the returning of magic.
That's not Viserys fault, he can just try to make these changes be for the better as much as possible.
I would say it's a pretty minor change compared to our major changes in both power structure and religion.
A little extra that helps a few people and hurts nobody.
As of now the concept of producing heirs to secure a legacy is not bound to a man/woman combination at all anymore. Accordingly the whole practical base to be against gay marriage is gone.
There is no duty to marry a woman/man to continue the lineage anymore, it can be done with any being.
I agree with this. There could be some raised eyebrows, but I think homosexual and inter-species marriages will be a relatively minor issue compared to things like the reorganization of Westeros, the abolishment of slavery in Essos, the inevitable collapse of gold and silver as international currency, etc.
Honestly, as long as both parties in the marriage are recognized as adults by the Imperium and are consenting, what else do we really need to worry about?
In an effort to avoid thread salt, I'm going to spoiler my longer inheritance posts so people who want to skip the debate don't need to scroll past the whole thing
If we're going to get into the inheritance stuff again, I think it might do us some good to re-evaluate what exactly we have available; otherwise we'll likely just go in circles again.
I'd specifically like to point out that an afterlife run by mortals changes the equation on death enough that we should consider how it might be leveraged to make people want to stay dead after a reasonable period of years.
Most afterlives work as much as a forge for outsiders as they serve a karmic fate for the people who go there. We're already planning for imperial outsiders, but what if we put more effort into figuring out how to maintain a personality through such a transition?
For most people, death would be a flat upgrade in base condition, and we could position them to move towards important afterlife/imperial affairs on the other side.
One simple mechanism for controlling wealth would be to allow people to "advance" their position in the afterlife by donating to charities. So long as we keep it reasonable, allow other actions to weigh more than money, and actually keep our word, it would incentivize the movement of property out of a single person's hands.
Honestly, whatever our solution is, I feel that maintaining the concept of inheritance in a society of immortals is silly. It's like maintaining the concept of money in a post scarcity society, or how we currently arrange school schedules around agrarian timetables most people don't live by anymore.
If our goal is to stop private actors from controlling everything we should put a regulatory body in place to enforce ownership caps on each industry and trade.
We're going to need to do something like that anyway since the obvious loophole to our inheritance law is to just not have kids,Unless we're planning to obligate people to have children or take almost everything someone owns every 60 years. That would be both screwed up and pointless since it'd still allow dynastic monopoly.
In the near term, the people most likely to take issue with a "delayed" inheritance are also among the people most likely to get access to life extension. If they're too stupid or impatient to use their extra lifespan for something while they wait we're not missing out on much when they get shot down doing something stupid.
I realize that stuff like buy in afterlife upgrades aren't necessarily the best idea, but what I'm mostly trying to get at here is that trying to preserve a lifestyle after the fundamental forces that created it change is a bad idea.
It will cause resentment eventually because it functionally will be pointless for its purpose as stated. Generations that didn't grow up with the understanding that they would inevitably die will resent it because it will be a tradition grounded in something that they won't feel applies to them, enforced by old people that don't get that the world has changed.
We should be looking for new mechanisms to manage a society in the world as it stands, instead of trying to enforce rules to make it emulate the conditions we are used to.
[X] Look over the marriage and inheritance laws of the Empire.
I'm not up to thinking through all of this atm, sorry.
Rather fucked time I'm having, end of Semester and all.
But on the matter of Imperial Dream...
The baseline condition for souls there so far had been as follows:
[] A person does acts of "worship" towards Imperial Deity
-[] Paying taxes
-[] Doing legal/paperwork
-[] Enforcing/obeying Imperial Laws
-[] Travelling around Imperial road-network (including the planar terminals)
-[] etc.
⬇
[] The soul ends up in Imperial Dream. From the get-go the choices are offered:
-[] Be transported to the afterlife of one of the Empire-Affiliated Gods (and the following death-cycle of a soul as it goes regularly in their respective Realms).
-[] Remain in Imperial Dream and generate the energy for Imperial Dream by remaining in ID.
--[] Affiliated Gods get a slow trickle of power from Imperial Dream, guaranteeing their existence and slow power-up, without fear of being changed by worship. In return, they guarantee the safety and independence of Imperial Dream.
--[] Eventually, those souls remaining can become an Imperial Outsider if they so desire - full information is given on what that entails, but we are quite likely to have a super-steady trickle of people wishing to help/serve the Empire even after their deaths.
--[] Living Imperial Citizens can further interact with the dead, with a measure of ease - I'm sure it would be far, far easier to draw a soul out of ID than out of any other Deific realm, for temporary communication at least.
Points currently undecided:
[] What do we do with those bound for Pit/Hells? And if they want to go there?
[] What do we do with those bound for realms of Unaffiliated (i.e., likely either unsupported or prohibited in the Empire) Deities? Do we jsut kick them in the generaldirection of their afterlives? And the Deities we (unlikely as it is) just don't know of?
Hoarding souls unwilling to remain in ID is... less than a stellar idea.
But few, if any, would want to go to Hell/Axis/Astral Plane, surely?
We'll have an extremely strong claim on everyone's souls if the "worship" to Imperial Deity works out as we hope, so more than likely we'd be drawing in even the souls of cultists unless they go the way of "suicide in the name of Evil God #45"
Adding to the above people have coincidences, that thing that arises from empathy and the capacity to place ourselves in another's place, that instinct to stop others from hurting that can get codified in a thousand different ways. Institutions however have checks and balances, formal or informal, and institution defaults to protecting and expanding its power until a group of people within or without set some limits upon it, if those people also become a formalized institution of some sort then they too will need to be balanced against something. That is what checks and balances are a means of containing and counterbalancing institutional abuse.
Declare them completely fucking insane if they actually want to go to the Abyss, Hell, or Abaddon, and forcibly send them somewhere else, assuming they didn't do something to deserve such a fate.
The status quo of the world is being, and often already has been, utterly borken by the returning of magic.
That's not Viserys fault, he can just try to make these changes be for the better as much as possible.
I don't see why we need to make a point about it. We could just write the laws very generally "to account for various intelligent magical species" and wait for some gay people to notice that it doesn't prohibit them from getting married.
If someone calls them on it and the case makes it to us, we can make a point about inspecting the laws on what defines an allowable condition for annulment. Then we "discover" that since the only ones on the book are for things like mind control, either party wanting out, and (I assume because medival) infertility, we can't technically find a reason to legally allow for a annulment since magic lets them have kids.
And that's the point where, I feel, half of the whole fucking existence will have a huge problem with us.
@DragonParadox, am I correct in assuming that fucking in such a way with the flow of souls is very much a "No-No" in every Deity's books, let alone the soul-hungry Hell's?
Yeah, good point. Sex/gender should be a complete non-issue for marriage in the Imperium, not only because it's completely unimportant what consenting adults do among themselves, but with magic one can swap their gender easier than some people change clothes.
Declare them completely fucking insane if they actually want to go to the Abyss, Hell, or Abaddon, and forcibly send them somewhere else, assuming they didn't do something to deserve such a fate.
And that's the point where, I feel, half of the whole fucking existence will have a huge problem with us.
@DragonParadox, am I correct in assuming that fucking in such a way with the flow of souls is very much a "No-No" in every Deity's books, let alone the soul-hungry Hell's?
Declare them completely fucking insane if they actually want to go to the Abyss, Hell, or Abaddon, and forcibly send them somewhere else, assuming they didn't do something to deserve such a fate.
And that's the point where, I feel, half of the whole fucking existence will have a huge problem with us.
@DragonParadox, am I correct in assuming that fucking in such a way with the flow of souls is very much a "No-No" in every Deity's books, let alone the soul-hungry Hell's?
@DragonParadox, am I correct in assuming that fucking in such a way with the flow of souls is very much a "No-No" in every Deity's books, let alone the soul-hungry Hell's?
OTOH allowing it to happen without it being specifically backed by appropriate legislation is, as stated, probably weirder and just grounds for people to declare the marriage null and void in the absence of it being recognized by the state, if we already have marriage laws specifically recognizing the legally binding obligations of both parties bound together, not legislating for same-sex marriage is just fertile grounds for the aforementioned abusers to, well, abuse those subjected to its absence.
A very good point, someone like a changeling literally does not have a set biological sex and yet they can play both roles. So what can you do literally force them into a single form when they want to get married? The Scholarum would rise a hue and cry over limiting natural magical abilities without due cause, the inquisition and the lawmen about extra pointless work. Obviously that's a no-go so then formally two people who might declare themselves of the same gender could be married.
What some people who are just vanilla humans used that opportunity to get married? Well we obviously can't discriminate against humans they are the majority
And that's the point where, I feel, half of the whole fucking existence will have a huge problem with us.
@DragonParadox, am I correct in assuming that fucking in such a way with the flow of souls is very much a "No-No" in every Deity's books, let alone the soul-hungry Hell's?
I'm perfectly fine with this. It's less directly "in your face".
Eventually there will be a sufficiently prominent example-case in our courts of course, but by then it's already in commonly practiced law after all.
A person is sacrificed to an Asshole Deity, or by a Hell's soul-flaying fiend.
As the things are, they are by default directed to shitty places... Like us sacrificing a Tiamat-empowered minion will not let her recover the power from them, sacrifice places DIBS.
Only now we grab them about half the time by default, simply because of how stonk Imperial Deity is.
Sure, the people didn't sign shit - but we are infringing upon some very, very primordial shit with this.
OTOH allowing it to happen without it being specifically backed by appropriate legislation is, as stated, probably weirder and just grounds for people to declare the marriage null and void in the absence of it being recognized by the state, if we already have marriage laws specifically recognizing the legally binding obligations of both parties bound together, not legislating for same-sex marriage is just fertile grounds for the aforementioned abusers to, well, abuse those subjected to its absence.
A person is sacrificed to an Asshole Deity, or by a Hell's soul-flaying fiend.
As the things are, they are by default directed to shitty places... Like us sacrificing a Tiamat-empowered minion will not let her recover the power from them, sacrifice places DIBS.
Only now we grab them about half the time by default, simply because of how stonk Imperial Deity is.
Sure, the people didn't sign shit - but we are infringing upon some very, very primordial shit with this.
I think we should wait a few years before making final decisions on this.
For example, if the current conflict with Asmodeus has escalated to the point of total war, he gets as few of those tasty little batteries we call souls as we can possibly manage.
If it has simmered down to some sort of cold war or uneasy peace, then it's propably not worth trying to break the First Pact over.
