Trope Pantheons/Court of the Gods

The Court of the Gods

Often called The Court or The High Court, the Court of the Gods is easily one of the most intimidating buildings in the entire multiverse. A recent construction, The Court was created for one specific purpose: the trial of gods. Whether it be the stripping of a title and banishment to The Fallen or Disgraces, ascension into the Main House, or some other large movement, The Court is where that decision is made. (Publicly, anyway. The Council of Shadows probably debated and planned it weeks ago.)

The Court as a whole cares not about alignment, but about what you did. Hence, being Evil is not considered a legal offense in and of itself. The highest penalty awarded is to declare a god to be Disgraced, and banished from the main hall of the Pantheon. Other punishments range from being added to the ranks of The Fallen, to an alignment change or drop in influence, to fines and favors owed.

A trial in The High Court functions much like one would expect, except the decision passes or fails based on the majority votes from a jury composed of four peers of the defendant and one representative of each of the five Alignment Houses.

Please note that, unlike the Justice House, this is a court.

There are many gods serving in many positions in the court; among the best defense attorneys, four names come up regularly: Phoenix Wright, Matthew Murdock, Jennifer Walters, and Atticus Finch.

Johnson of the Big Five, God of Judgment
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: A hammer
 * Alignment: Lawful Evil
 * Portfolio: Frivolous Lawsuits, Judgment, Joker Juries, Obstructive Bureaucracy
 * Domains: Evil, Knowledge, Law, Retribution
 * Johnson gravitates towards punishments, and almost always tries to make them far harsher than warranted by the crime. The God of Justice tends to modify the sentence before passing it, but now and again lets it through.
 * In the Court of the Gods, Johnson acts as Judge.
 * Likes to boast about having once gotten someone who was afraid of water convicted of stealing a boat.
 * Speaks entirely in legal metaphors, regardless of the situation at hand, whether it be an actual trial or something like, say, a children's card game.

Phoenix Wright, God of Objections (Nick, Trite)
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: Pointing Finger, an Attorney's Badge
 * Alignment: Lawful Good
 * Portfolio: Bunny Ears Lawyers, Those Too Dumb to Live, Dogged Nice Guys, Perry Mason Methods, Courtroom Antics, Finger Pointing, Magnificent Bastards
 * Domains: Intelligence, Determination, Perception, Law
 * His mortal successor, Apollo Justice, helped him ascend to Godhood.
 * Two of his colleagues and fellow extremely quirky defense attorneys, the blind Matthew Murdock and the medium-aware gamma powered Jennifer Walters, share his firm. They've been around for quite a bit longer than he has, and are quite skilled, but also constantly run out on "missions" and after suspects, while Phoenix is always available for nearly any court date.
 * Defends the accused, often able to find the true culprit. Occasionally requests Jean Valjean's advice to determine who is truly innocent.
 * Phoenix Wright is usually the representative of the Defense when the Court of the Gods is in session. On occasions, one of his colleagues fills in for him.
 * Despite his Lawful Good alignment, it has been noticed that valuable evidence from crime scenes has a tendency to 'mysteriously' enter his pockets. In his defense, he needs the advantage in court given that all judges everywhere seem to have something against him personally.

Jack McCoy, God of Prosecution (The Junkyard Dog)
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: McCoy has no Symbol, just a sound (Donk-Donk).
 * Alignment: Lawful Good
 * Portfolio: Courtroom Antics, Amoral Attorney, Courtroom Antics, Magnificent Bastards, Schiff One-Liner (learned from the namer himself).
 * Domains: Intelligence, Determination, Perception
 * There is a prophecy stating one day he will stand opposite Phoenix Wright in a courtroom. It's a little fuzzy on which of the two wins, most assume that it cannot be solved. However in preparation the Las Vegas Crime Lab and Jeffersonian Institute are aiding McCoy's efforts. For his part, Wright seems clueless, but it's hard to say.
 * Won his godly title from Manfred Von Karma, the former God of Prosecutors, in an epic struggle within the (old) Courthouse of the Gods (here in the Justice House), which ended when McCoy shot Von Karma in the shoulder despite being repeatedly tasered. Rumors say that Von Karma's daughter is currently plotting "revenge".
 * He functions as the representative of the Prosecution, Plaintiff, or the Council's puppet central authority of the Pantheon when the Court of the Gods is in session.

Harvey Dent, Divine District Attorney (Two-Face, Big Bad Harv)
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: The head facing of a U.S. silver dollar with deep scratches running through it
 * Alignment: Lawful Good / Lawful Evil
 * Portfolio: Insanity Defense, Joker Jury, Justice by Other Legal Means
 * Domains: Evil and/or Good, Law, Luck
 * After dying for his own sins, Harvey Dent was rewarded for his unyielding commitment to the proper administration of law with ascension to the divine court. Nominally a servant of councilor McCoy, Dent only serves in that role half the time. However, whereas McCoy is more prone to using The Perry Mason Method and the Chewbacca Defense, Dent is more traditional in using Plan B and other courtroom trickery.
 * Half the time, Dent serves as the Divine District Attorney, appointed by the God of Prosecution and serving at his pleasure. The other half, he serves on the defense, a scarred alter ego defending costumed madmen.

Atticus Finch, Paragon of Lawful Good
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: A pair of spectacles, one lens much thicker than the other
 * Alignment: The Lawful Good that all other Lawful Good gods are measured by.
 * Portfolio: Retired Awesomeness, Awesome Lover of Literature, Awesomeness In Age, Appealing To Emotion, Dropping The Right Anvil At The Right Time
 * Domains: Good, Law, Respect
 * The oldest prominent lawyer in the Pantheon, Atticus Finch represents the moral ideal of both a lawyer and a human being: he is brutally honest, highly moral, a tireless crusader for good causes (even hopeless ones), and a virtual pacifist. He has the most dignity of any god in the courtroom, and other gods respond by settling down a bit while in his presence. Unlike other lawyer gods, he doesn't see the courtroom as a battle between himself and the prosecution, and has never so much as raised his voice. "Never ask a witness a question whose answer you don't know," he's said before.
 * His two children run about and cause minor mischief in the rest of the Pantheon, but most gods are rather reluctant to do much about it other than tell Atticus and let him decide what to do. It's hard to say why they do this; even as a god, he is just a detached, quiet middle-aged man who happens to be a good but reluctant shot. It might have something to do with half of the Good or Lawful gods looking up to him, it might be because his kids sometimes play with Adam Young and Haruhi Suzumiya.

Daredevil, God Of Heroes with Disability Superpowers (The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, Matt Murdock, Hornhead)
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: Two red Ds
 * Allignment: Lawful Good
 * Portfolio: Disability Superpowers, Badass Normals, Blessed with Suck, Doomed Love Interests
 * Domains: Law, Protection
 * Matt has a fair amount of dignity and restraint, but he can still get carried away during an exciting case. While Wright takes quirky cases, Walters takes cases where she sometimes has to beat up her client, and Finch takes serious, outwardly boring cases, Matt can cover all three. He does have a dual identity, but at least half of the gods know that this blind lawyer also dresses in tight red and beats up evildoers.
 * Due to fairly similar last names, he and Jeff Murdoch have been confused. Being a sensible man, Matt tries to take care of it by explaining, but Jeff's flailing and red face tend to balance that out.
 * He's good friends with Spider-Man. Several times various gods have tried to introduce him to Toph Bei Fong, but they keep missing each other somehow.
 * Member of the Blind Trinity: Those who are blinded.

Jennifer Walters, Goddess of the Emergency Transformation. (She-Hulk, Jen, Shulkie)
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: A muscular green arm
 * Alignment: Neutral Good. She's strayed away from Lawful recently, much to the consternation of the bar exam.
 * Portfolio: Hot Amazon, Amazonian Beauty, The Benefits of Gamma Radiation, Steel Boobs, Fistfights, Boisterous Bruiser, Nigh Invulnerability, Conscientious Clothing, being Cursed with Awesome and loving it.
 * Domains: Law, Protection
 * She got to be the way she is via a blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner.
 * Most of her clients are actually guilty, and since they usually get unruly, she often beats them up. She doesn't think in terms of winning or losing a case. Justice was served! Time to go by the House of Defense and fight evil!
 * Gets along well with Power Girl. They share a number of portfolios.

Shikieiki Yamaxanadu, Highest Judge Of The Court Of Paradise
 * Overdeity
 * Symbol: A par of scales. One bowl is black, the other white.
 * Alignment: Lawful Good (but when she is on the job, she must judge as Lawful Neutral)
 * Portfolio: Judgement, Nagging, Workaholisim
 * Domains: Law, Inquisition, Death, Repose
 * Allies: Komachi Onozuka (Direct subordinate) King Yama and Koenma (Fellow Yamas after finding out how he was )
 * The Yama of the Paradise land of Gensokyo, and the representative of Yamas within the Pantheon. Her job is to judge the dead to be "White" or "Black". That is, good or evil. As the Yama, she has the singular power to unerringly judge any person or deed to be "White" or "Black". Once a soul has been judged by the Yama, there can be no appeal; no tournabout. The judgement is final.
 * However, despite her professionalism when she is on the job, she spends her time off lecturing the still-living on how to correct their lives. It his her opinion that Hell exists so that no-one sins, not to punish sinners, so she does what she can to make sure as many souls as possible can be judged "White" when the time comes.
 * The authority of the Yama is absolute. Everyone, from the lowest insect to the highest of gods, are judged by the Yama when their time comes. No life is truly eternal; no person can avoid their destined appointment with the Yama.
 * Despite this, she has immense trouble keeping her own ferryman Shinigami in line.
 * While she carries the title of "Highest Judge", she only judges dead souls. Her power to see the true nature of any soul means that no prosecution of defense is necessary in her cases. Her only job is to judge a soul's nature and usher them to their final destination.
 * There have been rumors of the Yama making unjust judgements on a whim, out of jealousy. There is however no evidence of this whatsoever, and those rumors have never been confirmed.

Jean-Luc Picard, God of Exasperation
 * Lesser God
 * Symbol: The Starfleet Symbol
 * Alignment: Lawful Good
 * Portfolio: Face Palms, Bald of Awesome, Captains, Cool Ships, Prime Directives, Patrick Stewart Speech
 * Domains: Suffering, Law, Good
 * Allies: Kyon.
 * Followers: Everyone at one point or another.
 * Whenever something stupid happens, Picard is usually on the bridge of the Enterprise, available for a hand-to-forehead shot.
 * Earned a space in the Court of the Gods for the profound legal career he's had between facepalms: saved Data from slavery, served as Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon Empire, and successfully stood on trial for all humanity.