Desoleum Sanctionaries

Given Hive Desoleum’s impossibly strict canon of oaths and codes, it is hardly surprising that the city should employ an especially uncompromising law enforcement body. The Sanctionary Bondsmen of the Oaths Involute, more often referred to as the Sanctionaries, act to maintain order in the hive, but this is in practise the lesser part of their duties. Rather, the Sanctionaries are ever vigilant for lapses in the rituals of the oath-binding. Should a Sanctionary witness a Desoline act in any way counter to the strictures of his oath, the offender is summarily censured, often brutally. Those offenders occupying the lower rungs of the hives’ society are punished by the immediate application of a highly ritualised beating, while those further up the scale are more likely to suffer other fates, such as a ritualised dismissal from their post. Those at the upper echelons of society are just as likely to be punished for their transgression as those at the bottom, but the punishment must be administered by a Sanctionary of sufficiently senior rank. The Sanctionaries themselves wear large and ornate oath-cogs that act as badges of office, but also as brutal melee weapons, a visible reminder to any would-be oathbreakers.