Ethics of Seir

The Ethics of a demon lord are to be taken with a grain of salt (or prehaps a ring). Seir is a demon, an alien and non-human (or even meta-human) entity. Whatever he and his twisted followers have come up with are surely parodies and perversions of the ethics of other societies.

Ethics

Rules exist to ensure that you will have a safe haven to rest in while plotting your next endeavour. That said, a society that implicitly trusts its rules will become weak and defenceless. As a result the rules must be continually tested. It is through this testing that society will be become strong, healthy and vigorous. Weakness and being seen to be weak are dire sins. If you are weak then anybody could use you for anything (and probably will). With all that in mind graciousness and largesse is seen as a definite show of strength

Justice

To the seirite, being caught is often a worse sin than the transgression involved. Justice therefore contains room for the transgressor to learn from their mistakes but should leave no doubt as to failure and that the justicar is stronger. This is metered by the odd trend towards mercy. After all, kittens have to sharpen their claws somehow.

Examples:

Bob the Baker is a citizen of the city Rokar and a follower of Seir.

A) Jimmy, a street lad and known thief comes into the Bakery. Jimmy is expected to try and steal some food and Bob is expected to catch him in the act. Unlike other cities however both Jimmy and Bob are being virtuous Seirites. If Jimmy has successfully pilfered food he learns Bob to be an easy mark and will gain some measure with his fellow street rats and the local thieves. If Bob catches Jimmy he is expected to give him a sound thrashing. He has demonstrated why Jimmy should not steal (from Bob) because Bob is wilier and stronger than Jimmy. By Seir, both of these outcomes are 'good' and 'virtuous'.

B) Cob the Cooper comes into the bakery. A standard transaction of 1 cp for some loaves is a sinful act in Rokar. A much more virtuous act would be for Bob to try and sell a stale loaf as a fresh one and for Cob to try and spot it and claim a pastry as compensation.

C) Dramus, Lord Mayor of Rokar would probably be overcharged when buying his pastries. It would be within his bounds to dispense a gentle Agony as a reminder why you don't cheat a necromancer. However it is more virtuous to allow a certain amount of overcharging as largesse towards the society in general. But not too much lest his over generous nature makes him weak in turn.

These and other situational ethics that occur daily in Rokar and any other society with Sierites makes it an interesting, colourful and bloody dangerous place to visit.