Al2rnian Law

## Signclades and Titles

Every troll has at least one ancestor and, formally or informally, every ancestor takes on a title. Jades are the dividing point in terms of hemostrata: if you're colder blooded than jade (teal, cerulean, indigo, purple, violet, fuchsia) there are legal procedures dealing with your inheritance, if you have one, a holdover from feudal times.

### Unofficial Titles

However, a bronze troll still has an ancestor, and that ancestor still has an (informal) title. The bronze Dreone signclade, to which Halian Dreone belongs, is informally the lineage of The Custodian. It has an associated lusus (a miniature pony) an associated surname (Dreone) and an associated sigil, though it's considered fussy and archaic to display it outside of Formal or Business Situations.

### Official Titles

On the other hand, someone like Litves, a cerulean enlisted officer in the navy with Vinbre, is of the Hansin signclade, the lineage of The Architect. If he had been the inheriting member of that signclade, he would have been appointed to a specific position under a specific fuchsia's umbrella corp. It would have been somewhere in middle management, a cushily-paid Troll OSHA inspector or a factory floor supervisor or a workflow engineer or in his case, a warehouse designer. He also would have inherited his ancestor's property (a nice apartment in Newport Agneju, a closet full of gowns, and a few thousand caegars in a bank account).

Like many trolls enlisted rather than commissioned into the navy, Litves wasn't chosen to inherit his ancestral holdings. The title went to a younger Hansin with better schoolfeeding scores and a slightly more cutthroat attitude, and he enlisted to avoid being assassinated, clearing the way for her to inherit and adopt the title of The Architect. She let him keep one of the gowns, though.

#### Civic Titles

Civic titles are given through civic duty and are not specific to a signclade. Multiple trolls can have the same civic titles, typically ones that are warmer than indigo. These titles are technically official, but they tend to be seen less important than signclade-specific titles.

#### Other Official Titles

There are some special titles that are given through various other means such as winning the aptly named Title Match in troll WWE.

### The Nature of Inheriting

Sometimes inheriting is a desirable thing; sometimes it isn't. There's an entire cottage industry in caretaking for older, titled coldbloods, keeping them alive for as long as possible so their descendants can avoid having to take on their position and can continue either Posting On Troll Instagram or whatever entrepreneurship they might have gotten into on their own.

So it's complicated! A pair of burgundies fortuitously sharing a signclade might talk fondly about their common ancestor, who they know as The Stewardess, but there's *also* an actual, formally recognized, inherited position as The Stewardess, and it's uniquely associated with an Indigo signclade.

## Crime & Punishment

Al2rnia is not a murder-heavy planet in the same way Alternia is. While the coldest castes can kill competitors within the caste and get away with it under certain circumstances, murdering a warmblood is met with harsh legal consequences – as they are a needed physical labor force,

There are two settings under which murder is legally sanctioned among Al2rnia’s general population, one of which is direct employment. If you are an employer, you can kill your warmer-blooded subordinates with impunity – unless the quality of your company’s output suffers as a result of these murders, in which case you will suffer consequences from *your* superior. Even fuchsias are bound to certain rules, though far fewer than the rest – notably, a fuchsia cannot kill more than two of another fuchsia’s titled violets per sweep.

If you kill or harm a subteal laborer, typically a warmblood, outside of these conditions, the act is met with punishment. Prison does not exist in the conventional sense. You have a job, and this job owns your labor until you die or someone else buys your labor. If you kill someone, you’re responsible for their labor too; if you commit a property offense, you’re responsible for additional labor equal to or exceeding the damage. If you harm or injure another troll such that their capacity to work is limited, whether physically or psychologically, you’re responsible for making up the lost labor-hours.

Coldbloods, particularly indigo and over, can kill each other and get away with it, but not in every setting – the only place in which you can commit a murder and then brag about it to your friends is at institutional galas, hosted by violets. In these galas, titles and hemostrata determine parameters – a titled violet can kill anyone, an untitled violet can kill anyone except for a titled violet, a purple can kill an indigo but not a violet, etc. When a coldblood – teal or higher – commits a murder or other grave offense against a colder-blooded party, their death is expected by coldblood society, since they’re likely to do a far more replaceable job.

### Subdugation

Subdugation, also known as Enforcement, acts as the police of Al2rnia, of which the officers are called subdugators. Subdugation is what happens when you take the police and therapist professions and make them one and the same. Most of the time, subteal workers with very low workplace performance are assigned subdugators. If there's struggle, field subdugators are issued tranquilizers and are tasked with taking in subteal trolls non-lethally. Then, session subdugators (the ones more reminiscent of therapists) are tasked with the recovery of those people. This is because the growing subteal labor shortage of Al2rnia makes it so that every subteal troll is a valuable work asset, and it's in Al2rnia's best interest that stragglers get recovered.

However, due to the high demands of their job paired with the high demands of subteal labor, subdugators are only able to work with subteal clients for a short amount of time. This tends to conclude in a patched-on solution rather than a long-term one. These clients typically only get a handful of sessions over a 3-6 week time period and then prescribed with whatever medication a subdugator would see suit their psychological needs. Performance is then measured and if the troll is still not up to snuff, the process is repeated until either they meet performance or it's decided that the worker is chronically unfit to work and is more trouble than they're worth. In which case, they are executed by their subdugator. However, execution of a subteal laborer is a last resort and is, therefore, incredibly rare.

Coldbloods, on the other hand, usually have the means to seek actual therapists and psychologists, and would rather go to them for long-term care. However, there are some instances where coldbloods can fall into subdugator jurisdiction. For one, a company of coldblood workers may have a dedicated department of subdugators that allows them to take in the workers as patients. Unlike subteal labor, coldblood labor is more expendable, but due to higher heirarchy, coldbloods tend to get longer session times from 4 months to 1 sweep depending on the job position of the troll. For example, a teal office worker could get 4 months, a cerulean supervisor could get 6 months, etc. Unfortunately, due to their expendability, they don't get any repeats. Ironically, this makes death at the hands of a subdugator more likely for coldbloods than warmbloods.

Another instance for coldblood subdugation is criminal activity such as killing someone of a higher strata. Being sentenced to subdugation because of criminal activity could really apply to anyone, not just coldbloods, but this is one of the most common ways coldbloods get subdugators. Subdugation because of criminal activity has more demanding and looser criteria. Something like "complete mental wellbeing" rather than the more measurable "meeting workplace demands". In fact, the criteria is so loosely defined, that successful subdugation is basically up to interpretation, and if the crime is grevious enough, the person reviewing usually interprets failure. By that point, the therapy is more of a formality, a kind of death's row before the final execution.

## Quadrant Termination

If you’ve entered a legal quadrant that you’ve since chosen to terminate, it is necessary to update your records in light of this, in a procedure that has certain features in common with a human divorce. Quadranting falls under the category of ‘enforcement’ and is controlled by Untovy Arhinn, who goes to great lengths to discourage ‘casual quadranting’ and maintain the quadrant as a stable legal institution. This makes the quadrant termination process one of the more gruelling legal experiences on Al2rnia.

For every troll, ending a quadrant involves filling out a lengthy online petition to terminate your quadrant, and then waiting out a month-long processing period. After this is processed, the proceedings enter a negotiation stage. Among trolls colder than purple, this stage tends to involve declaring the end of the quadrant as mutual unless one party in the quadrant disputes this ruling, or was doing genuine harm. Among coldbloods, however, particularly violets, the end of a quadrant is a blow to a personal reputation. Ending a formal quadrant with a wealthy, influential violet is tantamount to accusing them of breach of contract, which means procedural representatives are likely to get involved, and settlements are sometimes used to protect reputations.

The end of a quadrant lands on a troll’s legal record, which is not hugely significant if they were in a quadrant terminated by mutual agreement. However, in certain cases a troll ends a quadrant by sueing for breach of contract. This means accusing the other party of violating the legal structures of a quadrant – excessive violence in a kismesitude, physical or psychological harm in any quadrant, the denial of exclusivity or compassion in a moraillegiance, etc. If such a case is successful, the accused party must deliver a report on their breach of contract in their own words, to be verified as true or denied as untrue by the accusing party. Once verified, this report is permanently attached to the troll’s legal record, acting as a warning – and often a dealbreaking deterrent – for all their future quadrantmates.