Execution

Execution is the state-sanctioned killing of someone convicted of a crime. A sentence ordering that someone be executed is referred to as a death sentence, and the person subject to such a sentence is often called condemned. Prisons meant to hold those slated for execution are colloquially referred to as "death row." The person who kills the condemned is known as an Executioner, and is not considered a murderer by societal standards due to the state's sanctioning of the killing.
Historically, hanging has been the most common method of execution. The Guillotine, invented in Voli in the early Y900s, saw relatively slow implementation due to the complexity of its construction and taboos in Elvish societies against beheading. It has been the standard in Dreibach since the Y1050s.
In Erdelan, the death penalty is typically carried out by ejecting a prisoner from the tunnels and tying them to a post on the top of a mountain. These prisoners often die from exposure or from attacks by rocs or other predators. Escape from this penalty is possible and not unheard of; however, most populated mountain tunnels have magical expulsion properties that repel condemned prisoners, and it is considered acceptable and proper in dwarven society to kill an escaped convict on sight.
Today, the death penalty is controversial and relatively rare. Arguments against the death penalty consider it not only cruel and unusual punishment, but also an ineffective barrier to crime, since Resurrection spells have become stronger and easier to use in the past few centuries. The Volian Republic was the first to outlaw the punishment, immediately after the end of the Volian Revolution. It is still practiced in the Dreibach Empire, Erdelan, the Prairie Clans, and some parts of the Aquatic Kingdoms.