Creating a evil aligned world

[edd]

In my world evil has won the day and now everything is trying to carry on running but it’s chaotic.

My question is what laws would help create a working world were creatures are basically evil, unmoral, lazy, greedy and ultra violent?

Based on a world that is kind of like LOTR scenario but ending with the other side winning many centuries ago.

please comment and ty

 

[shangrila]

I think you could go with a monetary based hierarchy, as in the more money one has, the higher their station (literally, not figuratively). This would allow the greedy ones to be in control and for them to then hire out to the ultra violent ones, while the poor get pressed down even further.

You could also go for extreme and public punishments for crimes. Such as, someone steals a loaf of bread, gets his nose cut off. Or publicly tortured. That would be over the top but...yeah, that would be evil.

 

[Kelise]

This sounds a lot like Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn. The world turned to ash, their evil leader was also their God, still alive (after one thousand years) and controlled everything.

The laws in his world were basically carried out by the minions of the leader. There was a slave class, slight middle class and then Lords under the leader, who were given their lordship by their ancestors originally supporting the leader.

So basically, the slaves (called Skaa) did all the work under very, very harsh rule, and everyone else just did what they hard to, or could, to survive.

 

[Hans]

Examples of societies like this might occur rather often when an enemy city was conquered. I heard a report about Venice conquered by Genoa in 1379, but there might be better examples.
The only law installed was "winner takes it all". The loser population was second class humanity if anything. Rape was common. Some soldiers made a point collecting ears (and other body parts) of resisting Venetians where the term resisting was applied very loosely.
You get the picture.

 

[Penpilot]

This reminds me of a Justice League comic story where the heroes travel to a universe where there are evil counterparts to themselves and evil always triumphing over good was the natural state. The only universally respected principle on their world is that of the "favor bank" (if someone does you a favor, you owe them a favor in return that must be repaid whenever the favor is called in)

 

[Caliburn]

In war-torn countries and gang violence (like the mafia), the primary "despot" is usually the one who is ruthless and/or fortunate enough to accumulate the most power. They then spend the rest of their time fearing for their life and trying to protect their power by whatever means necessary. For this reason they usually want to control as much of the resources (wealth) and means of production as possible--citizens in this instance being a just another 'means of production'.

So an Evil society might tend to be over-enforced, rather than chaotic. The chaotic element is introduced when there are multiple factions all vying for dominance. Typically the more competing factions there are, the more turbulent the situation is.

Eventually one of the factions always gains the upper hand, consolidating their advantage further and further by eliminating the rest of the competition, so the turbulence never lasts. Coming up with ways to perpetuate the conflict would be an interesting challenge for you. Scarcity of natural resources (water etc) are usually enough to promote violent conflict, but fantasy allows you to introduce magical things for the people of your world to lust after.

What if the primary antagonist attained god-like power and is now worshipped as an evil deity by the people below, with the ruthless leaders now competing for his/her favour? Kind of a Cain and Abel sort of thing.
The deity might wish to preserve their status as a god, so might actively involve themselves in making sure no one leader ever accumulates too much power, much like Western governments do with militant factions in third world countries (to artificially create demand for weapons, which are then sold to them by multinational arms-dealers). Maybe the faith that sustains their god-like status requires that the people worship him/her, and if someone were to ever gain enough power to challenge them...

Of course, you wouldn't need the main baddie to be a god for that sort of thing to work. Governments have used that tactic for a long time--manipulating the major criminal factions within their own country into fighting each other in order to control them.

 

[Queshire]

I think the best way to make an evil society is to take the accepted evils of today and bloat those to large proportions. I'm reminded of the world of the hunger games, while I don't like how the author did it, that was a good idea of an evil society with the elites having sufficiently advanced technology while the common citizens having third world country type tech levels.

 

[Amanita]

I think

you could go with a monetary based hierarchy, as in the more money one has, the higher their station

The way it's mostly done in the real world today? I wouldn't necessarily call this system completely evil even if such aspects definitely exist.

I also believe that the chaotic state of society existing after the "good guys" defeat wouldn't last for hundreds of years. Research in real world dictatoric regimes. Some of their defining futures have usually been a strong ideology being "force-fed" to de citizens and a high amount of paranoia from the ruler. Create an ideology for your leaders which might have aspects that sound good at least for the more powerful groups in the society and see to having if forced upon the people/creatures wherever possible, have celebrations on important days to your ruler, celebrate the "heros of the revolution" and have anyone who disagrees be called a traitor to the revolution. Don't forget to make the things that came before look horribly bad and make the people in charge seem like saviours. All of this doesn't work with a group that sees itself as evil of course, but personally, I don't think such a group makes any sense. Groups that think murder is good don't value evil but they might simply have other definitions of murder. It's your job as a writer to make the reader see that they're not right and if they don't because of other moral beliefs, you can't don anything about it either.

 

[Chekaman]

A world where only treason against the ruler and treason against the nation are illegal, and weapons are compulsary for all free peoples. The latter keeps crime from rising to plague proportions;most people will think twice about willy-nilly committing crime if it means their would be victims can and would kill them on the spot if they are caught in the act.

 

[Catherine]

Predators versus prey - you just need to work out what makes a good predator in your world. Someone who exhibits more control over others using a particular means - sex, money, and violence being the usual methods. A being that is more violent? More intelligent? More sly? Richer? Sexier? Perhaps use the seven deadly sins and build on these as your basis.

Of course the more powerful a being becomes, the more paranoid they will be about losing that station. They would then start to put plans in place to safeguard that power and station. For example, a master thief would probably have an excellent security system; a weapons dealer would have others searched for weapons before a meeting; a rich person would have a vault, and so on. A being with a specific strength would be worried about others with the same strength - this of course could give you the opportunity for other beings with other strengths to fight for dominance.

Laws are put in place by the most powerful, so you first have to decide what makes them so powerful in comparison to 'the little people'. Once you've established that, you should find it easier to conceive the laws that govern. Hope this helps somewhat

 

[Fnord]

I think
The way it's mostly done in the real world today? I wouldn't necessarily call this system completely evil even if such aspects definitely exist.

I wouldn't calling having a lot of money evil; it's usually just the means through which it's acquired (which in itself has lots of grey area)--if resources are just forcefully stolen from people (think Stalin, Pol Pot, or Kim Il Sung), then you have a pretty good example of "evil" (at least, in how many people would define it).

Actually, a good number of these "personality cults" and the countries they operate in could provide a framework for how life in an extractionist society tends to be. An evil society (to my mind) requires some degree of tyranny and a "doping" of the vast majority of the population either through these "personality cults" or through fear--or most likely--some combination of the two (despite the rampant suffering of people in North Korea, the leaders are revered as benevolent god-figures and most people are too afraid to point out that the "emperor is naked"). Lots of Latin American and African dictators have done just this sort of thing. It need not be just rampant slaughter--there are other insidious ways that "evil" occurs in a society. Anarchy in Somalia, for example. Or Robert Mugabe printing trillions upon trillions of currency bills to pay off debts while collapsing the Zimbabwe economy in the process.


If you want to do some research into these sorts of regimes, a "quick and dirty" approach would be to watch some of the Vice Guide videos, especially for Liberia and North Korea.

The VICE Guide to Travel | VICE

 

[Justme]

It really reminds me of the alternate world the original Star Trek went into, when the transporter malfunctioned. The only law would be to watch your back and be one step ahead of everybody else. If I were you, I'd look at the FBI under Hoover and The Mexican Cartels. What you are looking for is, I think, along those lines of thought.

The Diabolical would rule the evil and use the intelligent to do so. They would gather together those who are slavishly loyal to them as lieutenants and pit one against the other, in order to keep them from conspiring together. He would not care about trivial brutality, but if anyone became too independant they would soon become the victim of something unfortunate.