Carcosa Ideas

[otiv]

Law, and Legality
Carcosans of lawful alignment in my interpretation of the setting must follow these laws:

I. Shun the Inhuman
    i. Shun the Great Old Ones
    ii. Shun all spawn of the Great Old Ones
    iii. Shun the aliens
    iv. Shun the undead
II. Shun the Degenerate
    i. Shun cultists
    ii. Shun mutants
    iii. Shun bone-men
    iv. Shun cannibals
III. Any man not shunned is not to be killed
IV. The shunned may be killed with impunity
V. All crimes are punishable by shunning
VI. All disputes may be resolved through trial by combat

Anyone may state a legal opinion and argue their interpretation as true by rolling a successful charisma check. Legal opinions must cite precedents. Legal opinions may not contradict the laws or previously established opinions, but they may amend. Men will only accept legal interpretations that are spoken or written in a language they can understand. 

Bone Men
Larger settlements will keep small groups of bone men around for unclean tasks, such as: tanning, butchery, chitining (the treatment of giant insect chitin for use as armor), the handling of human remains, the handling of human waste, poison making, execution, and assassination.

Bone men have a right to all treasures that fall into cesspools.

Bone men have a right to all dead animals that are not claimed by other men.

Bone men have a right to all belongings left on corpses that are not claimed by other men.
The rights of bone men are not explicitly guaranteed in the law, but they are accepted as unwritten and unspoken laws.

Masks
Every man must wear a mask.
When children are first born they are fitted with the mask of the larva and given their number.
When men turn eleven they shed the mask of the larva and are fitted with the mask of their tribe:
Mask of the barbarian
Mask of the nomad
Mask of the slaver
Mask of the tomb-robber
Mask of the cultist
Mask of the cannibal

Shunned men may be stripped of their masks or given new masks as appropriate.
Fighters and sorcerers may change their masks after an appropriate ceremony

   

[tkdco2]

Interesting! Are Bone Men automatically non-lawful in your campaign?

[otiv]

Naw, some men just follow a very loose interpretation of 'shun'.

Shunned characters may abide by the law by following certain loopholes.

Shunning
Shunning is defined as the deliberate and habitual avoidance of certain groups.
The laws state that certain groups are to be shunned, but they do not state how long or how habitual this shunning is meant to last nor do they specify the extent of the avoidance. Shunning need not be constant or permanent. There may be probationary periods of shunning, and there may be periods of parole or release. 
Bone-men may live among their own kind and remain lawful by shunning all contact with other bone-men for at least fifteen minutes per day.
For purposes of conducting business with bone-men in one's community it is usually sufficient to simply avoid touching their skin and avoid looking at them directly. When negotiating with bone-men it is customary to look at them through a mirror or from behind a curtain while wearing thick, specialized clothing.
Players are encouraged to work around the problem of shunning creatively.

[tkdco2]

Perhaps Bone Men may shun another race instead of their own kind?

Also, how do lawfuls interact with neutrals and chaotics who aren't any of the shunned groups?

[eaterofkittens]

Id like to better understand the arthropods in relation to the people. Chiton is stripped from what? Bred stock or indiginous hunting stock?
And larva heads for children?

[Malcadon]

In one of the Mutant Future bestiaries I made artwork for*, made note of mutants who must survive in the skins of other people. I thing they were called "Skin Stealers," or something else like it. They normally look like skinless people covered in blood and gore. They will capture a victim to skin him/her alive and will wear the skin until the skin starts to go bad. By then, they would have another victim lined up.

In Carcosa, this would mean a race who can appear in different colors, and with different faces — possibly a familiar face of a victim you knew. If they take the skin of a Bone-man, they would have translucent skin instead of translucent flesh.

In this case, they might be made into hermaphrodites, and possibly the ability to alter their basic shape to appear as any gender, but that is up to the Ref.

*ether one of Derek M. Holland's Creatures of the Wastelands books, or Tim "Sniderman" Snider's Deviant Database books.