Executive Summary of the Preservation Proclamation

Preservation Proclamation Exploitation

Executive Summary

Prepared on Behalf of Penguin

The preservation proclamation is a massive document thousand of pages long. Indeed, it is possible the most convoluted document this team has seen in several centuries. As such we have prepared a brief summation of the major terms and conditions below. At the request of the Duke this summary has been written with the assumption that the reader has no background in celestial law whatsoever.

In essence, the primary terms of the treaty are these:

• Gods and their armies are not allowed to directly engage in conflict with one another, unless they do so by means of mortals. This is intended to prevent archangels, archdemons, archfiends, and the like from destroying the planes in the course of warfare. Admittedly mortals can still cause as much destruction as they like, but the risk of mortals causing irreparable destruction is considerably lower than that of higher beings.

• Even through mortal proxies, gods cannot engage in warfare without casus belli, or just cause. The document spends several hundred pages defining just cause, however ultimately The Bronze Prince has veto power in deciding whether or not a cause is just.

• Even with just cause, however, the gods are required to provide advance notice of the engagement. Notably they do NOT need to specify where, when, or how they will strike; they merely most provide notice that they will take some form of hostile action at least 48 hours in advance of it actually happening. It also provides no requirement to specify the scope of the engagement

• In the event of an apocalyptic scenario the gods are required to form a joint committee to deal with the threat. Strangely, such a scenario does not override other clauses in the contract. Specifically there is no provision that explicitly states there is just cause to go to war with an entity that will destroy The multiverse. This seems now to be a glaring omission, but recall that at the time this contract was writing it was assumed the only beings capable of causing an apocalypse would be gods, and therefore the only possible source of apocalypse would be environmental disaster.

• Gods cannot interfere in the domains of other gods. This clause, which is vaguely worded but received strong bipartisan support during negotiations, is seen as the most important and holds power over the other four. Most importantly this means gods cannot go to war with each other over domain-related matters. For example, no god may go to war with The Raven Queen just because they did not agree with where a soul was assigned. Similarly, no god can go to war with The Bronze Prince due to a disagreement with one of his rulings. The sole exception is in the case of overlapping domains gods CAN interfere with each other where those domains overlap. For example a god of water could interfere with divine rainstorms but not divine sandstorms.

Terminology

As with any large legal document, certain terminology is defined very explicitly. As point out by His Magnificence, this is a common attack vector when searching for loopholes. The following are summaries of some of the more important terms

• Conflict: covers any action, intentional or otherwise, that results in damage of a god's person, property, or followers. The original document differentiates between many different types of conflict, in general providing much harsher protections for a god than for their followers. One interesting quirk of this is that, under very specific circumstances, a god's slave is more highly protected than their followers. Many clauses related to discipline and enforcement also distinguish between intentional and unintentional conflict.
• Enforcement and Arbitration: enforcement of the Preservation Proclamation, negotiation and debate of contract wording, and arbitration of related legal disputes are all delegated to The Bronze Prince. In fact, The Bronze Prince himself was created purely to enforce the Preservation Proclamation. He is considered the utmost authority on the Preservation Proclamation, meaning that if you can convince The Bronze Prince to interpret something in your favor then that ruling would be respected by all. Unfortunately, The Bronze Prince is exceptionally neutral and is difficult to dissuade with emotional arguments about right and wrong.
• Just Cause: The full document spends several hundred pages defining what is and is not a "just" cause, however in general it permits fighting over philosophical differences, if those differences can be framed as causing "measurable harm" to the aggressors followers. It also permits planned warfare, in which both sides consent to engagement. The rules are loose enough that the gods can usually find excuses to go to war fairly easily.
• Gods: The term god is defined very loosely. A god is any being recognized by a super-majority of the other gods to be a god, or a being that wields supreme power over a primordial element, or a being that wields supreme control over fundamental aspects of reality such as life, death, time, fate, or gravity. If there is ever disagreement among the gods regarding whether or not a creature is a god then a vote must be taken within 24 hours to resolve it.
• Apocalypse: An apocalypse is defined as any event that significantly threatens at least 43% of mortal life in the Prime Material Plane, at least 55% of immortal life in any outer plane, the existence of one or more gods, or the existence of any individual plane. As with many terms of the Preservation Proclamation, ultimate veto power for what is a "significant" threat goes to The Bronze Prince.