Final Authority

((Inspired by BTGF Messiah branch in Sexual Privilege))

Final Authority

How it works: Codes of conduct differentiate groups of people one from another. Sometimes these rules are indexed in painful legalistic detail. Sometimes these rules go unspoken, existing only in the backs of the minds of those that follow them. For the faithful adherents of one of these codes, even the simplest rules serve as bedrock foundations for lives, nations, and entire civilizations.

To one such group of people, you are the Final Authority on the rules that bind them together. You are the ultimate architect and author of their code. You are lawmaker and judge, and you may add or take away commandments as you see fit.

Limitations: Your decrees apply only to members of the given group, and only in proportion to how firmly they fit within that group. Those who only partly see themselves as belonging to the coded group might only half-heartedly follow the rules established for that group.

For example, if you were the Final Authority over a specific company, your edicts would apply only to employees, and only to the degree to which each individual is dedicated to the company. Contractors, interns, or temp workers could also follow the company's code of conduct, but only to a more limited degree.

Variants

(Group): You must select a group to which your Final Authority applies.

Codex: Your laws must be written onto a special object (such as a book, scroll, or stone tablet) to take effect.

Word of Mouth: Your laws take effect merely by speaking them aloud.

Slow Dissemination: Followers of your Code must find out about changes to the Code by legitimate means, such as being informed by yourself, by another follower of the Code, or through a trusted publication or broadcast. Changes to the Code do not take simultaneous effect across all followers.

Conversion: Others can be converted to followers of your Code by performing a special ritual. This ritual can be gated by requiring certain prerequisites, such as giving consent or offering an outward profession of faith, or it can be an absolute rite that takes effect regardless of the target's will.

Excommunication: You may remove individual followers from the group, releasing them from their obligations to follow the Code. Such individuals will no longer be able to consider themselves members of the group they have been removed from.

Malleable Boundaries: To whom your Code applies can be altered just as easily as you can alter the Code itself.

Manifold Authority: You are the Final Authority for 2 or more distinct groups of people simultaneously.

Universal Authority: Your Final Authority is not limited to a specific group of people, but rather applies to everyone, everywhere.

No Kingdom: To begin with, your Final Authority applies to no one. You must convince others to follow your Code or convert them through some other means.

Blank Slate: Your Code starts empty. You inherit no rules or pre-existing structure.

High Law: Your Code governs not only the behavior or outward actions of its followers, but also their inner thoughts, feelings, and psychology.

Supreme Law: Your Code is above even mundane physical laws. If you decree that followers of your Code are able to fly, then they can fly. If you mandate that any new follower of your Code will transform to match a certain standard of health or physique, then it will be so.

Retroactive Authority: Any change you make to the Code will take effect as if the Code has always been that way. No one will remember reality being any different besides yourself.

Tolerance: Whatever your Code decrees, your followers will always be tolerated by society as a whole, even if their actions are frowned upon.

Degree of Separation: Your Final Authority applies not only to adherents of your Code but also those adjacent to it. For example, you may also govern the interactions between your followers and those not of the Code, or make rules which apply to friends and family of your followers, regardless of whether they follow the Code themselves.

Casual Adherence: Followers of the Code never deviate from their regular feelings toward the Code, regardless of its contents or your changes to it. Even requirements will be thought of as 'just another thing' a follower has to do.

Zeal: All followers of your Code obey all rules at all times, to the best of their ability and understanding. Every follower obeys all principles zealously.

Sheeple: No follower of the Code will recognize that the Code is any different than it used to be, whatever change you make to it.

Leading the Blind: For whatever reason, you cannot perceive the changes your edicts cause. Unless someone points out that the rules used to be different than they currently are, you won't put two and two together to get four.

Historicity: Your Final Authority is a matter of public record, with some kind of factual justification (however outlandish) existing in the past.

Matter of Faith: Followers of your Code consider their adherence a matter of faith or a deeply personal life philosophy. If others are aware of your Code and its adherents, they will likely identify it as a religious movement (or cult, if its values differ significantly from society’s). If your Code has enough followers, resources, or specifically promotes community building, there may even be an organized church that preaches its tenets.

Chosen One: Special abilities come with your Final Authority, granting you (and only you) a set of miscellaneous powers upon your ascension.