1: How come you can pay fine for murders? What kind of justice system is that 1000 Septims for someone life? Maybe 1 Septim is worth more than a real life dollar but still...

2: How come after you go to prison, when you're released you're given your weapons back? And then you can go to a weapon shop and buy more weapons? How is that tolerated? How come criminals don't have to get their weapons illegally like in real life?

3:How come prison sentences aren't that long? Why aren't people locked up for years? In fact I think Valen Dreth was a rapist who went to jail for years, wherea you can go to jal for murder for just 10 days!

4: Why doesn't Cyrodill have a death warrant?

5: Is there a death penalty?

6: Are there any laws in any parts of Tamriel banning all weapons or certain types of weapons from civilians? Or anywhere you can't carry a weapon? Or any law that doesn't allow you to carry weapons openly?

1. Game Mechanic.

2. Game Mechanic

3. Game Mechanic

4. There was one in Morrowind once you got up to 5000 in bounty, but not anymor.

5. No.

6. No (at least not in-game. I'm sure in the palace they don't want people running around brandishing huge battleaxes)

They're all gameplay, the lore on the legal system is limited.

Paying for people killed has been done before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weregild

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyya

Hmm well those real life laws seem somewhat barbaric, opposed to places like Cyrodiil, I mean I did read a book where this one lady was saying how all the jail cells are empty because the gaurds take bribes rather than put people in jail.

Well, here's the alternatives:

Barbaric: Someone kills someone else. In return, they must pay a hefty fine.

Civilized. Someone kills someone else. In return society will have to pay so they can be housed, fed, clothed, given health care, and guarded, potentially for the rest of their lives, providing nothing in exchange.

I'll take the barbaric way, you'll have to be a billionaire to be a serial killer

Would that have been the phantom tollbooth perhaps? I might be way off, but I remember something similar with the Which/Witch.

Yes, most all are game mechanics, definately. I know of a mod that fixes this, but that is irrelevant to lore. I think I read that you can be put to death by being put against opponents in the arena if you did something bad enough, but I can't locate the source. And there are no written records of laws, so I assume every guard memorizes them or acts by personal decisions ^_^

In the current justice system, you can pay a fine to be released, bail money, but you still face trial. But, no judiciary trials that I can recall in Tamriell, so I believe it would work in a way befitting the time period, whatever that really is.


EDIT: Well I'll be...Thanks turns-the-page, I never played Daggerfall and had never seen anything of that nature in oblivion, so I assumed. Sorry ^_^

http://www.imperial-library.info/dfbooks/b025_legalbasic.shtml


Generally the only crimes that carry a death penalty are Smuggling, High Treason and in Cyrodiil, grave robbery.


And as for buying weapons: Do you think they do background checks? They don't know who you are, and probably don't really care.

Tamriel does have a justice system, There is mention of Lawyers in Cyrodiil, and Magistrates are mentioned in an Ordinator notice in Morrowind. You don't just get sentences handed down by a guard like in Judge Dredd.

Haha al are gulty until proven innocent!

Its perfectly reasonable and civilised, apparently.

1. Personally, I will always take Daggerfall's criminal system as the true system for Tamriel. Where you get arrested and sent to court instead of paying blood money (Which doesn't make sense at all).
So, a rich mass murderer manages to slay an entire family and gets arrested. He pays the fine and stops by the tavern to have a beer and a good chat with the guards. Doesn't make much sense.
So, changed game mechanics for Morrowind and Oblivion.

2. Good question.

3. Game mechanics again, I assume. In Daggerfall, being a murderer would get you around 150 days in jail. Sometimes, even 2 or 3 years.

4. In Daggerfall's legal system, death warrant existed but was never implemented in the game. I'm sure that the Empire has death warrants.

5. If you take Morrowind and Oblivion's "excellent" criminal system, you get a death "penalty" after you reach around 15 000 septims on your head.

6. I'm afraid I can't answer that question.

I'd wager that Morrowind and Cyrodiil have different legal systems to the rest of the Empire. In Morrowind, Imperial law exists alongside the laws of the Great Houses and the Tribunal Temple, and in Cyrodiil it seems as if the legal system, while it is efficient, is more concerned with getting money rather than hiring assassins...

It's true. The Temple apparently has the right to arrest people who it deems heretics without having to deal with any Imperial influence.

TES Criminal System is very flawed first of all 10 days for murder? 10 days in real life is a slap on the wrist. Second of all there should be a death penalty if you can go on a killing spree killing 50 people and you have the gold to back that up should you be able to get off that easy? I like Morrowinds system more but thats flawed to. You should get life sentances to in which case the only way to get out is to break out it you wouldnt be able to just serve your time like usual. I hope in TES V they fix this.

Maybe, I'd like to see weeks for smal crimes, months for regular crimes, and years for murder, and exile for mass murder.

I really liked Daggerfall's criminal system.

I remember when I first played Daggerfall (when I didn't yet have levitation and wasn't originally good at climbing) being terrified of being found guilty and then being released outside the town's closed gates late at night.

I often was truly on edge at night, really creepy, and would often get to the nearest tavern as soon as possible.

In morrowind i murdered an entire town and all teh guards said was "May teh gods have mercy on your soul" and attacked me. And executions would be interesting. If it wasnt you that is. Go to the arena and look at the guy getting his head lopped off.

Perhaps it just make the game easier...

The legal system for the Cyrodiilic Empire is derived from Roman law. In Roman law only crimes against the state were decided by a court you could say, thats public law. Private law was anything that was affected individual families. In a case, lets say, where a member of family A killed a member from family B the two families would be brought together and family B was asked what would be acceptable to them as payment for the loss of the family member. This was to prevent an outbreak of violence in the cities. In most cases a monetary value was decided. The game mechanics simplifies it and sets a value for you to pay as reparations.