The Warrant & Franchise System

How the Syndicate handles crime, explained by Zev after Carl stabs the reporter Nihit: there are no long-term prisons. A conviction yields a sentence in “cycles” plus a monetary “warrant”: counter-intuitively, lighter crimes carry higher warrants and shorter time, capping around 20 cycles. The clock starts at sentencing, but a licensed government or mega-corporation can “buy out” a warrant and franchise the convict to labor on frontier colonies, paying the warrant, a franchise fee (~5× per cycle), the convict’s eventual wages, and a death tax (so they’re kept alive). It’s slavery with extra steps: Prince Maestro is franchised to a Skull Empire shell, and Odette had a warrant before marrying the president who bought her out. Carl’s pen-stabbing will be filed and shelved until he leaves the dungeon.

Related entries

• Nihit (Character)
• The Syndicate (Character)
• The Maestro (Character)
• Odette (Character)

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