Crime in Psi-Wars

I’ve been quietly working at criminal elements in Psi-Wars, including the release of the Security Agent Template and the Outcast background.  But what sorts of crimes are we actually committing that the cops need to stop us? While not a strictly necessary thing (crime isn’t so different in Psi-Wars from the ordinary world), thinking about it helped me sort out my thoughts.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive exploration, just a meandering musing on the sorts of crime we might see in the Psi-Wars universe, especially those organized criminals might focus on.  I’m not exactly a law enforcement expert, but if we approach this with a little thought and a focus on the cinematic, I think we’ll make some headway.

Most crimes in Psi-Wars will be familiar to anyone familiar with the 20th century, as that’s the core inspiration for pulp works which, in turn, inspire Psi-Wars. Nonetheless, the “space” part of “space opera” implies some sci-fi considerations, and thus some sci-fi crimes!

I will also note that crime, especially in action films like the Fast and the Furious and various heist films tend to be depicted in a glamorous light.  That glamour quickly fades when you look very close at criminality.  Psi-Wars is, while decidedly salacious, family friendly, so I’ve tried to elide certain realities and not discuss some of the more squeamish aspects of crime, but the implications of certain criminal elements are inescapable.

The Least Crimes

A lot of crimes, like “Jay-Walking” may not seem to matter much and certainly aren’t a major focus for any criminal organization, but they are worth mentioning.  In particular, minor crimes matter more in the Empire, as it is a totalitarian society.  The Imperial legal code is sufficiently complex that most people violate at least a minor law a day.  These might include minor traffic violations, failing to keep something up to code, accidentally touching a security agent, failing to have highly specific credentials on your person, violating some obscure curfew, etc. In most cases, the GM is justified in allowing security agents to harass and issue fines to any character essentially at will, the a Minister of Justice will frown on this being done to an Imperial Citizen.  

If the GM wants mechanics to cover this, a character can roll Law (Imperial Criminal) +4 when confronted by an Imperial Security Agent to prove that they meticulously avoided violation of any minor law, with a +1 if the character has Honesty or Citizen (Imperial). Characters may also take a perk, Fastidiously Law-Abiding, which means they always obey the law precisely.  The GM might require at least one point in Law (Imperial Criminal) and some level of Honesty; characters with this perk may ignore this rule, and can never be harassed by security agents (and if they are, they can always answer each charge perfectly).  This is effectively an “opt-out” of harassment by security agents, though it does not protect one from intentional crime violations (might it does protect against additional minor infractions; for example, a character might commit murder, but it’ll never be with an unlicensed blaster carried across planetary lines, as it will be technically licensed somewhere and it will have been brought in legitimately).  All of this is, of course, highly optional.

One special case of “minor crimes” worth covering are those of free speech. The Empire, of course, does not acknowledge free speech, and so certain forms of protest or activism will be considered sedition, treason or insurrection.  In particular, the Empire will not tolerate anti-imperial sentiments, peace protests, pro-robot-rights movements, pro-aristocracy sentiments, or pro-alien rights.  

The Alliance is much freer with its speech, but it will might prosecute pro-Imperial activism as treason.  Most Aristocratic worlds have lese-majeste laws in place that make it illegal to insult an aristocrat.  However, this is usually either isolated to just the ruling noble and their extended family and tends to result in fines rather than imprisonment or it is legally considered “fighting words” that allows the insulted party to react with violence; this is typical of Caliban, for example, where there is no explicit punishment for insulting members of House Kain, but doing so allows members of House Kain to take action against you to protect their honor: that is, the penalty for insulting a member of House Kain is that you take your life into your own hands. If you can fend off reprisal, then perhaps your fighting words had merit!

Vice: Prostitution, Gambling and Drugs

The criminal world has an alluring glamour, and much of that comes from the world of vice: the implication that the criminal world is filled with beautiful women, quick money and tattooed alpha males.  Of course, the reality is that vice is a business. The criminal world provides a service that legitimate businesses cannot.

Most of these walk a blurry line of acceptability. The people involved willingly undertake these actions: they willingly take drugs, risk their money, or engage in monetary, sexual transactions. Why, then, should they be illegal? The authorities tend to justify their illegality either on moral grounds (these are “wicked” acts) or to undercut the sorts of organizations that profit from vice, and who use those profits to do far worse.

Both the Alliance and the Empire seek to control vice. In practice, the officials in charge of enforcing vice laws tend to create gray areas in the law, either intentionally or via corruption, where vice is allowed to continue but only under circumstances the state or corrupt officials allow.  In the Empire, when vice is punished, those who offer the vice (the casino, the prostitute or the drug-dealer) tends to suffer heavier punishment, often prison time, than the client, who often suffers mostly a fine.  The Alliance is a touch more lenient in both cases, and often the only punishment for either is a minor fine and making the arrest a matter of public record, which is often more than enough punishment for aristocrats to avoid engaging in the crime!

The precise enforcement varies from world to world in the Alliance (prostitution and gambling are outright legal on Denjuku and in the Orochi Belt, though often confined to certain locations and may require a license), but Maradonian worlds often have laws regarding eugenic transactions.  While what goes on between two peasants is a private matter, the liasons of aristocrats bearing eugenic DNA is not; it is generally illegal to trade money for the right to breed with a particularly well-bred noble and bear a bastard child outside of the confines of a noble house.  These “blood laws” contend that the genetics of its members belong to the House, and those who “trade” those genetics are violating the law.  Such violations are generally dealt with in the house, though, with security forces mostly just investigating and uncovering conspiracies to engage in such transactions, and then turning over the evidence and the perpetrators to the House.

The legality of drugs varies, but generally, any incapacitating or highly addictive drug is illegal or controlled, and one cannot access them without a doctor’s prescription, if at all. Combat enhancement drugs or psychic enhancement drugs tend to be treated as weapons, and generally have even stricter laws which affect not just their dealers, but those that take them. The Empire takes both of these sorts of drugs more strictly than the Alliance.  The Alliance tends to frown strongly on combat enhancements, but psychic enhancement drugs tend to be less strictly controlled, and the aristocracy may well have full access to them.

Trafficking: Slavery and Human Smuggling

One of the stated reasons to oppose vice is that the organizations that engage in vice often engage in even worse crimes.  Trafficking is one such crime.  The most common example, cited primarily by the Empire, is the kidnapping of attractive youths and transporting them into the Umbral Rim as pleasure slaves by nefarious slavers.  Organizations that perform this sort of action often do it behind the guise of vice: they’ll persuade someone to enter into the “grey” trade of vice, and then once they’re in, slip them over to a slaver who will smuggle them into the Umbral Rim.  Of course, the reality is that not all, or even most, trafficked victims end up in the Umbral Rim: dens of vice all across the Empire and the Alliance might potentially have unwilling participants in them, especially on the Rim, far from the watchful eyes of security agents.

Not all forms of trafficking is so traumatizing to the trafficked, though.  The Alliance and the Empire both have superior economies to other parts of the galaxy, and often, aliens will seek to immigrate to these more prosperous regions of the Galaxy.  Aliens, aristocrats and pro-Alliance dissidents often seek to escape the totalitarian confines of the Empire for the freedoms of the Alliance and need to slip past Imperial blockades.  Often, Aliens from the Umbral Rim or the Sylvan Spiral who seek to get to the Alliance must run a gauntlet of not just slipping into the Alliance undetected, but slipping through the Empire as well! To these hopeful immigrants, human traffickers aren’t sources of dread, but of hope.  Of course, many smugglers promise access to the freedom of the Alliance, but they might be a cover for some other form of trafficking.

Theft

The most obvious crime, the one I think most people think of is theft. Do criminals in Psi-Wars steal? Of course they do!  But what do they steal?

What about currency? Well, in the Empire and the Alliance, most of your currency is digital.  Thus, the theft of currency would involve some sort of hacking.  However, some currencies (especially in the Umbral Rim) do involve a physical currency, and thieves can steal a “cred chip” or credentials used to access currency, or used to access certain doors.  Of course, in the Alliance, this is more difficult as these tend to use biometrics.  Thus, pickpockets can steal your credits in the Empire, but have more difficulty doing so in the Alliance.

What other valuables might people steal? Consumer electronics, of course, though most computers in psi-wars tend to be either large or built into structures or ships, but entertainment consoles and datapads will go for a decent price.  One can also steal cars or spaceships, which is covered in the Action Conversion document.  Finally, works of art and, especially, antiquities can be stolen. Interesting, antiquities are likely to be a major source of criminal attention, not just because they’re valuable, but because they often have psychic potential or might unlock the secrets of the ancient past.

Naturally, one must break in to get access to items to steal.  That’s already covered by the Action Conversion document, however.  Broadly speaking, characters need to be able to bypass electronic locks, sneak past cameras and other security systems, and get safes open.

Cybernetic theft would make for lucrative theft, and would likely replace organ theft as a crime, as it’s no longer necessary to steal a kidney when you can replace your kidney with superior cybernetic organs.  This sort of thing is fairly well-covered in cyberpunk works, and I expect it would be a relatively common, if ghoulish practice, on highly urbanized worlds like Denjuku or Kronos.  These would likely involve very literal “chop shops” where cyborgs are dismembered.  This is likely a major crime, though: while one can steal cybernetics without killing people, it’s much easier to commit murder and then strip the body for parts.

Piracy is a form of theft, of course: it’s a large-scale theft of all the cargo on a ship.  This can parallel with trafficking if the pirates in question also take slaves.  Generally, piracy lacks the finesse of more classic theft: it’s more “smash-and-grab” than slipping in unseen, but having a few hackers or safe crackers can help get the loot out quickly and cleanly and avoid unnecessary damage to the stolen goods.

Violence: Murder, Assault and Coercion

All organized crime involves violence.  The gentlest criminal organization must be able to at least have a credible threat of violence to prevent its rivals from removing it, and to enforce compliance from its victims.  The most common forms of criminal violence, then, are those that are meant to improve Intimidation; characters who use force to gain any bonus to their Intimidation roll are certainly committing a crime!  If coercion doesn’t work, more bloody violence can ensure, to ensure the compliance of the target, to torture for information, or to kill. Most criminal killings will be crimes of passion or (underworld) politics.  All effective criminal organizations will have some sort of enforcer whose job it is to eliminate a specified target.

This creates an additional market possibility for organized crime: not only can it remove its own rivals, it can also remove yours, for a fee.  Assassins often fulfill this role, but the most common hitman don’t rise to the lofty heights of the Assassin template: they’re often just a hired man with a blaster and nothing to lose!  But Bounty Hunters often double in this role: while they’re ostensibly there to maintain justice, most Bounty Hunters will take any job, dead or alive, and more than one crime-boss has exploited this, turning Bounty Hunters into their personal mercenaries.  Indeed, with some bounty hunter lodges, the line between law enforcement and criminal organization gets very blurry indeed!

Extortion, Racketeering and Blackmail

Of course, any criminal group that can threaten violence can offer to not commit violence, for a fee.   While “Rackteering” covers any sort of routine, repeatable crime, it often refers to protection rackets. In this case, a criminal organization threatens to commit violence (or simply does so) unless the target business offers to pay up (a “lunch money” scam writ large). In Psi-Wars, where entire space stations the size of cities might be far from help, a pirate fleet itself might engage in large scale extortion of this sort; they can also apply extortion to entire trade routes, forcing merchants to pay for “pirate insurance” to avoid their cargo being stolen.

Not all extortion is necessarily violent.  Criminals often help their clients engage in sinister activity, whether it be a hitman who accepted a contract to kill, or a courtesan who took a highly placed politician into her bed (a “honeypot”).  The danger of the crime hanging over the head of the client can, itself, become a lucrative source of revenue if the criminal can persuade the target to give up money and that the blackmail will legitimately go away.  Kidnapping, while a very different sort of crime, follows a similar sort of trajectory: in both cases, an implicit threat hangs over the target (to their business, to their reputation, or to their loved ones) and in exchange for a payment, the criminal swears to honor an oath not to bring that harm about.  This often requires careful negotiation and, ironically, trust building. Diplomacy is recommended!

Of course, criminal organizations that get good at extortion and blackmail soon learn that taking too much kills their flows of income, and allowing others to harm their clients also harms their income.  Protection rackets and piracy insurance can slowly but surely morph into proper security services as the criminal organization needs to ensure their targets business remains viable.  Arguably, quite a few legitimate governments of the Umbral Rim got their start via illegitimate means!

Financial Crimes: Loan Sharking, Laundering, Fencing and Smuggling

At some point, the criminal organization has a great deal of money and stolen goods.  What to do with it all?

For stolen goods, the criminals will need ways to offload the merchandise.  Fences are often “grey market contacts” that know clients that aren’t squeamish about accepting products of questionable origin. Connections and reputation are key here: a known criminal will find it difficult to transact with legitimate businesses, but intermediaries who cultivate just enough of a legitimate reputation might.  In fact, there’s often a thick swathe of intermediaries, from the shady fixer who sells to the less shady grey market, who shells to the somewhat shady customers, to can sell to the completely legitimate friends and coworkers, thus fully “cleaning” the good.

If you can’t fence stolen goods, consider bringing them to another world.  Smugglers will often take stolen goods (or just forbidden goods, such as weapons, drugs or antiquities) and excels at bypassing customs to get these to their customers.  These customers tend to be fences, who help integrate the illicit goods into the rest of the market, but the off-world nature of the products often makes that easier: little chance of a business recognizing that you’re selling their stolen goods right back to them.

Just like goods can be “laundered” so too must money.  Bank robbers can’t immediately spend their stolen wealth, and few people want to accept the payment of a known drug dealer or pimp, so “dirty” money needs to become “clean” money that can be invested in legitimate enterprises (as most organized criminals have their fingers in legitimate businesses too!). This often involves a similar process of trickling the money through a variety of accounts, currencies and gray markets until stolen Lithian Blood-Gold turns, eventually, into Imperial Credits, with Imperial Security none-the-wiser about their origin!

Having all this money means that the criminals can then use it to invest.  The easiest investment is grey banking.  Many people are unable to access proper financial services, either because they have a criminal record, or they simply lack the proper facilities to access them, or they have been otherwise blacklisted (as is the case for many alien races in the Empire). Enter the gray bank, often bankrolled by organized crime, these tend to be flush with money, and willing to loan it out to whomever asks for it… for exorbitant interest rates, of course.  Often, if the debtor can pay back the staggering interest, that’s enough for the gray bank, but in some cases, the debt becomes leverage over the target, who is then blackmailed or pushed into some other crime, such as prostitution, or looking the other way during a smuggling operation.

Corruption: Bribery, Fraud, Embezzlement and other White Collar Crimes

Once the Organized Criminals have their tendrils in legitimate businesses, and they have people who owe them money, they can begin to push their way deeper into legitimate business, using it as a mask for their illicit practices. Their leverage, and the bribes they can afford to pay, begins to make officials look the other way.  While they have legitimate businesses in their pockets, they can afford to do some shady accounting and siphon funds away, directing them back to their own practices or their own money laundering rackets until the money simply vanishes as far as official institutions are concerned. Finally, if they understand the world of business and law well enough, they can begin to use the machinery of bureaucracy against them, creating front companies, false insurance claims and so on to slowly milk the system of its wealth until it collapses, or they’re caught, in which case they revert to other practices to cover everything up.  This is on the large scale what the Con-man is on the small scale, and indeed, Con-men often have a role in cartels and syndicates that pull of this sort of thing regularly.

This sort of thing isn’t generally tackled much in Psi-Wars, but Accounting should uncover embezzlement or track down money laundering, while Administration will often uncover fraud.

Forgery

Just as masters of violence and extortion begin to find themselves providing real value to their community, so too do masters of white collar crime.  Eventually, they begin to create items of value, though the value might be artificial: replicas of art, antiquities or even currencies.  This is generally handled with the Forgery skill, unless it’s money, in which case it’s Counterfeiting. Note that in Psi-Wars, many currencies are digital, and will also require Computer Hacking to properly insert into the system.  Fake IDs are also generally digital: the criminal will need to engage in Forgery to create believable credentials, and then Computer Hacking to insert those credentials into the system.

Many skilled forgers become legitimately great artists.  After all, to pass off a work as the work of a great artist, one must be a great artist.  This can often create frustration among the criminal world, for they may have true masters of their craft who can only “publish” under the name of other artists, and can never strike out on their own, as their own work will become too derivative.

Psychic Powers

The Empire expects all psychic powers to be registered with Imperial Security.  Possessing psychic powers without registration is, itself, a crime, and any use of an unregistered psychic power only compounds the crime.  The Empire has an entire division of security dedicated to combating psychic powers!  Characters who are registered as psychic have License (Psychic) [1] but this only applies to the Empire itself; such registration is generally not necessarily anywhere else.

Both the Empire and the Alliance have laws about the illegal use of psychic powers.  Generally, these mimic normal laws: using a psychic power to try to kill someone is attempted murder, reading their thoughts without permission is similar to hacking or other forms of privacy invasion, mind control is a form of coercion, etc.  Investigating these crimes can be very difficult, but the use of espers or anti-psis to detect their use after the fact is a form of proof, as is expert testimony from characters with Expert Skill (Psionics).  The Empire places harsher restrictions on these, treating the use of a psychic power as worse than the underlying crime (hacking with ergokinesis is worse than just hacking in the eyes of the Empire), but the Alliance does not.  The Alliance also has gentler laws when it comes to aristocratic excesses with psychic powers, which means they can often get away with a lot more than a non-aristocratic psychic.  The rest of the galaxy typically handles psychic laws this way too.

Communion generally isn’t covered by legal frameworks.  Neither the Empire nor the Alliance formally recognize that Communion even exists. Moreover, it’s very difficult to prove that an event was the result of someone using Communion or a completely random coincident: while the Divine nature of Communion leaves a signature that psychics can detect, it feels different and many psychics won’t know what they’re feeling, there’s nothing tying it to the person that the cause: they ask Communion to do something, and then something happens.  Broken Communion is a little easier to detect, thanks to its warping presence, but lacking the proper knowledge, it’s difficult to tie the effect to someone specific.

Lithian legal frameworks from the Umbral Rim do differ on this point.  They recognize the impact of Communion, and they have their own experts in the form of their priests and sorcerers who can determine if someone is using Communion in a particular way or not.  Even with this expert advice, it’s difficult to tie someone to a specific communion-related crime, and such trials often look more like “witch trials” than a more thorough legal proceeding.  The Lithian sphere also makes the use of Broken Communion strictly illegal, and treat it as something demonic, though how thoroughly this is enforced varies from world to world.

Robots and Slavery

Robots are property in the eyes of most of the galaxy.  For the most part, robots are happy with this arrangement, but some robots, and some people involved with them, are not.  Robots require a new legal framework.

Unlicensed ownership of robots is generally illegal in the Empire.  Having a robot requires a License (Robot) [1], though the empire will overlook particularly weak or low-intelligence robots: a robo-dog is fine, a robo-servant is questionable without a license, and a combat robot is right out. Note that the license puts a cost on owning a robot, but doesn’t make it impossible: wealthy and powerful corporations still employ quite a few robots!  Advocating for robot right is also illegal in the Empire; it is treated as sedition.  Trying to help a robot escape ownership is also illegal: the Empire considers it a combination of theft and sedition: you’re stealing someone’s property and also advocating for robotic rights at the same time! Unattended robots, or robots deemed too dangerous by the empire, may be either impounded or summarily destroyed.

The Alliance is much more tolerant of robots.  Anyone can own a robot, though some localities might treat combat robots the same way they treat weapons and require a license or may forbid ownership entirely.  A combat robot is allowed to exist though; it is not destroyed, but it might be impounded or requested to leave the planet. Robots even have some limited rights on some worlds: Denjuku in particular allows for the concept of free robots, but a self-owning robot must have a License  and has numerous legal restrictions placed on it.  The Alliance does allow for robot rights advocacy, but it’s unpopular: aggressive activists find they don’t often get invited to parties, and the authorities might find some other reason to arrest them, such as trespassing or disturbing the peace, etc.

Harm to robots, such as hacking them, or destroying one, etc, tends to fall under the same sorts of laws as the destruction of property or hacking.  They are legally viewed as property, not as people.  This creates something of a legal conundrum regarding the laws of self-ownership on Denjuku and other worlds that allow for self-ownership, but generally this is treated as the damage of the robot’s property, which means the robot gets compensation, but less than a person would.

Note that robots aren’t the only forms of “sapient property” in the galaxy.  The Clones of Xen tend to treated as valuable property, though they can attain self-ownership as well.  The Cybernetic Union has “cyber-slaves,” humans who have had slave implants installed on them by a robot: the Union tends to treat its cyberslaves (and organics in general) the way Denjuku treats its robots: as slaves that can achieve second-class citizenship via limited self-ownership.  The Umbral Rim, of course, also has slaves, which tend to have the worst lot in that one can do pretty much whatever they want to a slave, and damage to a slave counts as damage to property.  Legally, helping a slave escape is generally seen as a crime tantamount to theft, provided the state has the power to do anything: the combination of a weak state and some power of certain anti-slavery actors, like Domen Sefelina, the Saruthim, and the behind-the-scenes action of the shadowy Dark Vigil chapter of the Templars tends to mean that significant social pressures exist to prevent slave owners from being too rough with their slaves or pursuing escaped slaves too aggressively.