The Knox County Court: charges, the AI judge, the county's vote and Rosewood prison
ZA-Z is a free-for-all, and it stays one: PvP, looting and taking what lies about are not crimes. Burning towns down, sabotaging the power grid, stealing a car someone holds the key to, shooting another survivor's cattle, running people down and walling off a road are. The Knox County Court lets the community punish them, with the server's own records as the only evidence.
#How a case works
- Charge. On the ZA-Z Discord, press Open a case on the pinned post in #the-judge, under Court (or type
/charge). Type who did it, tick everything they did, and say where and roughly when, then pick the right survivor from the closest names. Your survivor must be linked first (the button in #verification). Nobody is told who filed a charge. - The Recorder. The court's judge is The Recorder, the county mainframe that still runs in the Knox County courtroom and prints its findings on paper tape. It forgets nothing. Every case gets its own post in #the-judge, and The Recorder starts at once. It reads the server's own records of the last 90 game days (about 11 real days): what was placed and taken apart, where fires started and who stood nearest, which substation generators stopped and who was at the yard, who drove which car and who held its key, which animals died by whose hand, who beat on the prison doors, and where every player was. It rules only on the crimes charged and never reads chat or the charge's wording. A second judge checks every count before the ruling goes up in the case's post, guilty or not guilty on each count with the records it used.
- The sentence. The judge never picks it. Every crime has a fixed price (below), doubled for anyone convicted in the last 14 days, 24 hours at most. Time only counts while the convict is online.
- The vote. For 24 hours the county votes in the case's post: Wanted alive, Wanted dead or No warrant. One vote per player, faction or not; the accused cannot vote. At least 5 votes, or the case lapses.
- Wanted. The convict is told at once. He is barred from Rosewood, trading and shops until his sentence is served, and his wanted poster hangs on the bulletin board every survivor sees on joining, until the time is served.
#The charges
| Charge | What it covers | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Arson | Each fire device set inside a town, lit or not, and any fire started there | 1 h |
| Arson of a dwelling or vehicle | Burning another survivor's base or car, anywhere | 2 h |
| Terrorism | Setting off an explosive inside a town | 3 h |
| Sabotage of a power substation | Darkening a town at its substation, per town | 3 h |
| Theft of substation equipment | Stealing or wrecking a substation generator or its fuel | 2 h |
| Destruction of street lighting | Shooting out town lights, per 10 lamps | 1 h |
| Damage to the Rosewood wall | Its wall, gates or checkpoints | 1 h |
| Criminal damage | Wrecking another survivor's build, per 10 pieces | 1 h |
| Motor vehicle theft | Driving off in another survivor's car (their key, or parked in their safehouse claim), hotwired or not, per car | 2 h |
| Stripping a motor vehicle | Parts or fuel off another survivor's car (their key, or parked in their safehouse claim), per car | 1 h |
| Killing another's livestock | An animal inside another survivor's safehouse, per head | 30 min |
| Vehicular manslaughter | Running a survivor down with a car, per death | 1 h |
| Murder of a newcomer | Killing the same survivor twice in a day during their first hour in the county, per victim | 1 h |
| Obstruction of a public road | Building across a road, a Rosewood checkpoint or the prison gate, or leaving a car across one, per place | 1 h |
| Aiding an escape | Breaking a door of Rosewood prison from outside, per door | 2 h |
Whose is it? Anything inside your safehouse claim is yours: a car parked in it, an animal in it, the build. A car is also yours while its key is on you or in your safehouse: the county knows who carries every car key. A car nobody holds a key for, standing in no claim, is anyone's; an animal in the wild is fair game.
You can file one charge a week (tick every crime they did in that one charge).
#Wanted alive: arrest and Rosewood prison
A man wanted alive cannot die. His PvP is forced on, so anyone can hurt him, but nothing takes him under 20% health: not a .50 cal, not the Noisy Cricket, not zombies. At 20% he is knocked down and cannot get back up.
Anyone can bring him in. Get him down, stand next to him with rope, sheet rope or duct tape in your hand, right-click him and choose Arrest. Hold still for five seconds. If nobody comes for him within one in-game hour, the court takes him in itself.
He wakes up in a locked cell in Rosewood prison. Everything he carries and wears goes to the evidence locker, and he wears an orange prison jumpsuit; anything that burns or explodes is destroyed. The cell is not quite escape-proof, but the prison outside it is full of inmates who never left, and there is no way out of the prison itself. When his time is served, he is released at the gate in his own clothes, with what the locker still holds. A warrant never expires: it ends only when the time is served.
#Wanted dead
Kill on sight. A dead convict respawns as usual, but his sentence is served being hunted, and the warrant does not end with one death.