Justice
Justice, Violence, The Property of Sword-Havingness, Accurate Weight Measurement
What is justice? Guess what, it’s violence! Look at the sword that Justice has. That’s not ornamental.
Deep inside your brain, in a dark place, there’s a part that’s been there for as long as people have existed: people who cheat or do wrong need to see consequences. Everything must be fair.
The mob have killed your family, or your dog: the only reasonable recourse is a roaring rampage of revenge. This is Justice in the Punisher sense: what has been taken from you is immeasurable so what must be taken in return is endless.
The thing is, the desire for vengeance is... outsized, hungry. We desire consequences that are way out of line with the original violation1. Of course, violence only begets more violence: lots of people are somebody’s whole world, so every John Wick creates ten more John Wicks in their Wick wake.
As a result of having to deal with the fallout from a few too many John Wick Scenarios, thousands of years ago, society as a whole2 decided that in order to keep every conflict from escalating wildly out of control, an impartial third party should step in and dole out a reasonable amount of vengeance. An eye for an eye. Reciprocal justice. State sanctioned violence.
Thus the scales: for every harm done to you, an equivalent amount of harm must be done in turn. It’s only fair.
Jurisprudence is supposed to sound clinical, boring, legal, but at it’s heart, it is a tall frosty Big Gulp full of violence.3
Friends & Foes
The Revenge Sworn is out to find the people who wronged them, and they won’t stop until they’ve wreaked a terrible vengeance.
The Inspector Javert is interested only and exclusively in enforcing the letter of the law. Authoritarian and stiff, they subscribe to a theory that the law has an unassailable moral mandate and devote themselves zealously to enforcing it.
The Honor Bound is from a society where maintaining one’s reputation is enormously important. They are very stringent about their own personal laws and codes, most of which have to do with maintaining the appearance of honesty and strength.
The Bounty Hunter is willing to hunt anybody, for any reason, so long as there’s a paycheque in it for them4. They just like their job.
The Blue & Orange Eternal is vast and ancient and ascribes fervently to moral codes that seem nearly incomprehensible.
The Loophole Hacker is brilliant at cleverly twisting codes, laws, and contracts to their own ends5.
Hooks
Your players have been pickpocketed of some small but important valuable or token amount of money, and word on the street will lead them right to the thief6.
Wrongfully accused of a crime, your players now need to avoid the long arm of the law while they find out what really happened.
A serial killer is out there... serially... killing.7 Can they be brought to justice?
Locations
The Lands of the McCoys and Hatfields are properties divided long ago by a bitter blood feud that has gone on for multiple generations.
The Prison-Industrial Complex requires a ready supply of criminals to turn a profit, which is why so many seemingly trivial things are punishable by long prison terms. Even a simple infraction could snowball into jail time8.
One of the reasons a Kangaroo Court is so terrifying is that they don’t even pretend to make objective, fair, or even logical decisions. All of their rulings are motivated by something else — greed, politics, even showmanship9.
The Transcendental Holding Cells are a prison as well, but what’s imprisoned there are much more abstract than simple prisoners: gods, concepts, otherworldly creatures, curses, and the number 4^23^7.
The Abandoned Police Station was responsible for protecting the people here, until something went awry.
Treasures
The Foreign Eye is a gem that makes its carrier more effective against entities that have harmed them in the past10.
Names
Valjean, Justin, Adalet, Eurydice, Nemesis, Regla, Tyr, Solomon