World Creation 7: In The Nick of Crime

So far, we’ve established society pretty well. The culture, politics, and resource distribution is all sketched out. Now, let’s look at some of the elements that are peripheral to society, that feed on it. We’re looking at the parasites that feed off the animal that is civilization: criminals.

Obviously, there’s going to be a range of criminals, from brutish thugs that mug people in alleyways to organized, nonviolent syndicates that shave off bits of money wherever they can. We’re going to look at all levels of crime, from the petty to the grandiose.

Small, street-level crime is usually motivated by conditions in urban environments. Something inspires contempt for society in a person, usually poverty or social injustice, and that person fails to see the benefits of operating within society versus operating without. These people are motivated to break the law for a living.

Since urban, factory-style cities are common in the Great Machine, there will be no shortage of poor and miserable people. It follows that there will be no shortage of criminals. Warders can only do so much to keep order on the streets. They can’t be in every burg and slum, and there will probably be areas they will actively avoid.

In these areas, lots of small criminals will appear, mostly muggers—people there keep too close an eye on whatever possessions they have to allow for pickpockets, and it’s likely that burglars risk death or worse if they’re caught robbing somebody who already has little to spare. Catching someone unawares and robbing them would be the safest strategy.

Our history has shown that when areas go through Industrialism, pubs become extremely common. Workers will spend every free penny they can trying to forget exactly how bleak their lives are, and tavern owners stand to make a substantial profit. However, the Great Machine is all about efficient workers, and chances are good that they’d have a partial limit on the amount of alcohol that can legally be purchased, trying to ensure they don’t have nonproductive alcoholics cluttering the streets. In the face of this, illegal you’ve-got-money, we’ve-got-booze establishments would crop up all over, some offering an even wider selection of tawdry wares.

Organized crime would not be as common on the street level. Lower class shop owners are too poor to squeeze much money out of in protection rackets, and alcohol is available through smuggling rings, not really requiring an organized distribution network. Drugs have not really caught on—it’s difficult to grow the crops to produce plant-based narcotics because the Great Machine owns, monitors, and assigns most of the remaining arable land. Brothels are typically individually run.

However, not all crime exists in the urban centers. There is a large amount of money to be made transporting or stealing resources such as coal, copper, and spice. These resources are usually distributed by the Great Machine’s airship delivery system. Once an airship is in the air, there really aren’t any good ways to board or rob it. Civilian airship are extremely rare, and the airships travel at such heights that they are difficult to board by grappling hook or other device. Indeed, much of resource theft is done by workers or stowaways on the airships, thefts ranging from a pocketful of coal to light the furnace back home to cleverly hidden sacks of spice to be sold to a guy in a pub.

When these materials are stolen directly from the production centers, they must be smuggled, usually by ground instead of air. How this is done is a matter for next week’s post, Transportation.