Editing Degenesis (section)

===Judges===
The Judges started with a single man called, as you might expect, the Judge. Before his arrival, Europe was a mess, filled with criminals that did what they want and took what they want. The Judge changed that. He was first seen when he caught a Clanner that was responsible for raiding a village and took him back to his victims. In front of them, he recited the raider's crimes, borrowed a sledgehammer because the village had no axe to offer him and smashed the raider's head wide open.

He offered to return the sledgehammer but for some reason, the villagers didn't want it back.

He went from village to village, enforcing law and order where there was previously none. He drew enemies but he also drew those that sought to emulate him, wielding sledgehammers and donning his signature cowhide coat and broad-rimmed hat. It quickly became a cult of personality, with so many Judges dotting the land that the passing of the very first Judge went unnoticed.

After being given the travel log of the founder by a Chronicler, the Judges gathered and made senses of his writings together, piecing together some basic system of justice and law that would come to be known as the Codex, creating a code for all Judges to operate according to. The Chroniclers even offered the Judges a home to call their own, in the ruins that surrounded their Central Cluster, as an effort to ward away gangs and raiders.

The Judges took this idea and ran away with it. These ruins quickly became a town, which became a city, which became the hub of all civilization in Europe: Justitian, the heart of the Protectorate. In less than a century and with the aid of the Chroniclers, the Judges had successfully created the first nation-state in Europe since the apocalypse.

In short, a man in a funny coat and a silly hat who used a sledgehammer to execute a man because he had nothing else at hand was accidentally responsible for building the first post-apocalyptic nation-state in Europe.