Ymirean laws tend to be simple and bloodthirsty.
Most of the punishments listed below may be avoided or lessened by those who can pay sufficient restitutions and amercements.The judge will usually be quite happy to fine rather than otherwise punish, as he receives a portion of the fine.
Prison sentences are rare, as keeping prisoners guarded and fed cost money. Hence, commoners may be imprisoned before a trial, but rarely after. People of status are more likely to face long-term incarceration. However, this is more often used as a form of leverage than as a punishment. For instance, a knight may be held prisoner until his ransom is paid, or a maiden may be held until she consents to take wedding vows.
A related punishment is being pilloried. This is the most common punishment for indecency, rowdiness and being drunk and disorderly. Any commoner who annoys a noble or an official risks being pilloried. Pilloried people are subject to much verbal abuse and risk being hit by spit, mud, shit and even rocks. Women (and sometimes men) left pilloried over night may also be raped with no chance to fight back or even identify the perpetrator. Being pilloried in cold weather may lead to death from exposure.
Whipping, caning, and the Clemencian practice of bastinado (caning under the feet) is used with misdemeanours too grave for a simple pillorying, for instance minor theft (up to $5-10), libel and insubordination to one's superiors. It is not uncommon for criminals to die from the whipping they receive.
Sometimes, felonies are also punished by mutilation, such as cutting of a hand on thieves, or cutting out the tongues of perjurors or blasphemers, or taking the ears and nose of the obnoxious. Felons spared of capital punisment are often branded, particularily those condemned to slavery, labour or made into outlaws.
In the North and the Free Kingdoms, people may be made into outlaws - their lives are spared, but they lose their property and all legal rights, in effect, they are like wild animals.
The nations further south (Clemenicans, Confederates, Cargans and Harmesh) favour slavery as an alternative to capital punishment. To be specific, mine slavery, which may be seen as a very slow death penalty.
In these lands, debitors may also be sold as slaves to pay for their debts, or directly enslaved to their creditors.
Capital punishment is administered for most felonies. This is a one-time expense, and discourages repeated offences.
In the Free Kingdoms, the most common form of execution is hanging.
Nobles are traditionally given the opportunity to commit suicide, usually by poison.
Decapitation is used to punish particularily grave crimes, such as killing a man of superior social station, treason, or corrupt sorcery. In these cases, death is often preceeded by as much torture as possible, and the dead body is decapitated and otherwise mutilated: A corrupting sorcerer is decapitated, quartered, burned and the ashes are buried in at least four different places. Less potent criminals' heads are tarred and put on spikes in public places.