Transcript of the Council Speech
"The Execution of Due Justice"Delivered by Councilor Baryant Hale
Delivered at the Council Podium
Recorded by Watchman Grendshur, Year 88
Sanctuary has many laws unique to our twilight realm. We forbid magic cast in our streets for time and again it has attracted the prying eyes of our enemies. We quarantine the sick and impose curfews upon the frail to prevent the spread of crippling disease. We forbid slavery so that we can serve as a beacon of hope to those who were once slaves. These are the laws of our city, enacted as is our right to do so. Yet, they pale in comparison to natural law.
We are bound, as solidly as we are bound to the rock beneath our feet, to the eternal and unchanging force of natural law. As long as ordered society has existed, we have punished assault, murder, and treason as grave offenses. There have been none who would let a known murderer walk free, or permit the endangerment of the common whole. So serious and threatening are these offenses that they are punished only by death, through dutiful execution.
There are two modes of execution: the artifical and the natural. Let us first treat the artificial path, mortal man's deviation from natural law. Shall we slay our suspect criminals with swords of steel and serrated scimitars? Ought justice's due be paid in axes of hot iron, the rapier-point rending fickle flesh, or in the lurch of a rope caught tight around one's neck, or in the quartering of men by harnessed beasts, or in arcana unknown that would banish a being beyond the mortal realm? These are modes of murder made by men, instruments of injustice, harbingers of mechanical horrors, and deviations from true nature: against them we all must stand.
We are beings of our world, surrounded by environments beyond our powers, dependent upon nature's solemn beneficence for our every breath and nourishment. Our obligations to our fellow beings reflect our obligations to nature, and our gravest laws are those eternal natural laws to which all are bound. And so, as from nature we came, so to nature we must return. One who violates the stark edicts of natural law shall be brought to justice only by a natural mode of execution. The asper decrees of our unchanging existence permit no other path in accordance with respect for our very world.
As there are four elements, there are four natural forms of just execution. One may be deprived of air, deluged in water, consumed by fire, or buried in stone. The four natural forms of just execution are thus Asphyxiation, Drowning, Immolation, and Stoning. Of these, our grim realm permits each in turn. Noxious gases rise from sinister vents choking all who pass nearby. Sickly rapid waters flow through lightless caverns, all too eager to draw mortals down beneath the depths. Fires smoulder in darkness and flaming lava pours through heated shafts amidst forges that shimmer with obsidian majesty. And in every direction, undeniable, is a still sea of standing stone.
It is the character of our civil society which determines the mode of natural execution in which we partake. It is said that in the East, executions are done by asphyxiation, that the body may more readily pass to final judgement in the realm of the king-gods. Priests powerful in the divine see the corpses preserved in sandy vaults for ever and ever that the gods work may better be done in both worlds. For these lands, the Spirit is held beyond compare.
I have heard that in Water's Deep, and the isles of the great seas, the executed are marched off of planks and into the murky depths, to permit one last struggle of the individual yearning to break free. For these bold corsairs, it is the Challenge of the individual, the open struggle of free man against the cruelty of an uncaring world, that is held above all else.
Likewise, in the shadowed plateaus of the mordant realm of Thay, the criminals are burnt in great braziers at the centre of each city. The purifying flame is believed to burn away the imperfections of the traitorous mind, and all that is left is that which is pure and adheres to the highest ideal of Perfection.
And so, in our realm of Sanctuary, where our leaders are elected not by channeling the royal gods, nor by duels to the death admist the high seas, nor by unchecked prowess in the arcane arts, but by gradual accumulation of votes and popular support, we stone our criminals to death. There is no theosophic asphyxiation, nor singular submergance, nor purifying immolation, but rather an entire community gathered together to, as a unified whole, enact natural justice and return to the Earth what once emerged.
This is why we have executed our criminals by stoning for nearly a hundred years, and why I believe we shall continue to stone our criminals to death for a hundred more.