The Laws and Punishment throughout Avalon are severe.
The things that were illegal in Avalon were:
Innocent Murder - Punish
Paedophilia - Torture then punish
Child Murder - Torture then punish
Stealing - Punsih (Most likely whipping)
Breaking and entering - Punsih (Most likely whipping)
Robbery - Punsih (Most likely whipping)
To test if a person was guilty in Avalon, the accused would go through one of these ordeals. These were:
Ordeal by Fire: Ordeal of fire typically required that the accused walk a certain distance, usually nine feet, over red-hot rocks or holding a red-hot iron. Innocence was sometimes established by a complete lack of injury, but it was more common for the wound to be bandaged and re-examined three days later by a priest, who would pronounce that Preservation had intervened to heal it, or that it was merely festering—in which case the suspect would be exiled or executed.
Another form of the ordeal required that an accused remove a stone from a pot of boiling water, oil, or lead. The assessment of the injury and the consequences of a miracle or lack of one, followed a similar procedure to that described above.
Ordeal by Boiling Water: This ordeal of hot water requires the accused to dip his or her hand in a kettle of boiling water and retrieve a stone. Afterwards, the hand was bound and examined after three days to see whether it was healing or festering
Ordeal by Cold Water: The ordeal of cold water was when the accused was to be submerged in a stream and acquitted if he survived.
Ordeal by Combat: The accused and the accuser would fight in an arena to the death. The winner would be proven innocent and the loser, well, dead.
Ordeal by The Cross: The accuser had to undergo the ordeal together with the accused. They stood on either side of a cross and stretched out their hands horizontally. The one to first lower his arms lost.
Ordeal by Ingestion: The accused was to be given dry bread and cheese blessed by a priest. If he choked on the food, he was considered guilty.
Ordeal by Posion: The accused would swallow the poisonous calabar bean in an attempt to detect guilt. A defendant who vomits up the bean is innocent. A defendant who becomes ill or dies is considered guilty
Ordeal by Boiling Oil: There are two main alternatives of this trial. In one version, the accused is ordered to retrieve an item from a container of boiling oil, with those who refuse the task being found guilty. In the other version of the trial, both the accused and the accuser have to retrieve an item from boiling oil, with the person or persons whose hand remains unscathed being declared innocent.
Punishments - Punishments were severe in Avalon. Such punishments were
Hanging - The guilty would have a noose tied around his or her neck and dropped off a platform.
Beheading - The guilty would sit their head against a hard object and an executioner would drive an axe into their neck, cutting off the guilty persons head.
Whipping (Flagellation) - Whipping was a common practice in Medieval times. It was also the fastest way of administering justice to criminals. The type of whip would depend on the type of crime or misdemeanor committed. While most whips were made up of a single strand of leather attached to a handle, there have been records of three tail whips, or chain whips too.
Bastinado: Bastinado was the practice of hitting the soles of the feet with either a whip or a cane. Also, some victims were forced to walk with weights attached to their bodies, after the beating.
There are also other types of punishments which are self explanitory:
Blinding
Boiling
Starvation
Tongue removal
Drowning
Roasting
Choking
Finger(s) removal
Mutilation of the genitals
Quartering
The more severe punishments - torture - were kept for people such as mass murderers and paedophiles
.
These were:
The Rack - The Rack was a rectangular frame with rollers, either at only one end or both. The victim's hands and legs would be tied to the ends of the rack, with a handle being moved to gradually increase the pressure on the victim's body, thus excruciatingly dislocating the joints in the body
Manacles - Possibly the most basic of all torture devices, these were a set of handcuffs by which the victim would be hung for hours on end. Needless to say, this would put all the pressure on the wrists, thereby resulting in excruciating pain to the victim
The Iron Maiden - The Iron Maiden is a human-shaped box with sharp spikes inside. The victim would be placed in it and the spikes would slowly move towards the victim.
The Water Wheel - The Water Wheel was simply a big enough wheel set in a pool of water. The victim would be tied on the rim of the water wheel, and the wheel would be moved. This would force the victims to be dunked in water, as well as having their muscles and joints stretched. This caused heavy asphyxia and disjointed bones at irregular intervals by the spinning of the wheel. Other methods of water damage included tying a prisoner with ropes to a hard stone bed and pouring water through a funnel on his mouth which was covered with a thin sheet of cloth. The torturers would then proceed to make the prisoner swallow large amounts of water whilst consistently clubbing his bloated body with heavy blows.
The Street Sweepers Daughter - This was a circular metal contraption in which the victim was forced to kneel down with his chest touching his knees in a crouching position inside the machine, and the grip would be tightened by compressing the bones, causing a heavy flow of blood from the nose and ears. All this done in public view with spectators hurling stones at the victim, would eventually result in the victim suffering from paranoia and madness.
Flaying - One of the most brutal tortures used which many are against. It involves the prisoners skin being removed whilst he is still living.
Slow Slicing - This is where as the name suggests the prisoner is sliced very slowly. The idea of this punishment is to humiliate the prisoner in front of the whole village by slicing individual body parts off one by one including genitalia.
The Head Crusher - The Head Crusher. A horrific and largely feared device, the Head Crusher was a steel dome, sized enough to fit the human head, and was supported with two vertical steel bars on either sides, with a T-shaped screw bar at the top and another flat bar at the base. The prisoner's chin would be placed strategically on the lower base bar, and the dome would descend, wrapping itself firmly around the prisoner's head. The torturer would then start to turn the screw from the top which would compress the head, resulting firstly in smashing the jawbone whilst cracking the teeth out, and forcing the eye sockets out of place, accompanied eventually with parts of the brain squeezing out of the ears.