Crime in Neo-Europa is not merely a breakdown of law—it is a language, an economy, and a form of resistance. From hacked implants in the Smart Slums to neural corruption in the Gilded Core, lawlessness manifests across physical, psychological, and digital planes.
Street Crime
The lower levels of the city suffer from endemic street violence, shaped by:
- Factional warfare between groups like the Royalists and Republicans
- The proliferation of illegal implants from Butcher Shops
- Weapons and synth-narcotics from underground suppliers such as Dustblossom Syndicate and Fathom Brew
Petty theft is rare—everyone’s identity is tracked. But smartgun duels, memory extortion, and implant jackings are common.
Cybercrime
Cypherspace is a battleground of its own:
- Spacers crack ICE to steal, clone, or erase neural blueprints
- Nulls erase their own identity to live outside the law
- Depth Witches are accused of resurrecting memories to blackmail or manipulate
- Chapel Node hijacking for cult activity is on the rise
Special taskforces monitor public Veil behavior for “unpatterned anomalies”—triggers for memory drift or emotional disruption.
Echo Crimes
A new category of high-tech offense:
- Identity Nesting – The act of storing multiple behavioral routines inside one mind
- Dream Parasiting – Syncing into another user’s Chapel session
- Neural Sim Abuse – Using ghosted personalities or replicas in unauthorized simulations
- Emotional Sabotage – Triggering psychochemical breakdowns through hacked implants
These crimes are difficult to detect, harder to prosecute, and frequently ignored—unless they affect Noble infrastructure.
Law Enforcement: The City Protection Authority (CPA)
The CPA is Neo-Europa’s main law enforcement agency. Formed by the Council but corporately subsidized, it blends automation and human judgment in a stratified security approach.
CPA Structure
- Drone Patrol Division – Autonomous bots monitor slum sectors and transit zones. Programs include riot suppression, facial tracking, and biometrics.
- Echo Units – Mixed human/digital response teams. Officers wear emotion-buffered visors. Common in the Middle Ring.
- Grid Crimes Bureau – Investigates deep tech crimes, echo anomalies, Chapel Node breaches
- Memory Stability Taskforce – Handles cases of Memory Drift, mass dream bleed, or Veil-linked identity collapse
- Cyber Integrity Office – Rarely seen. Allegedly operates directly under Noble oversight.
Detectives and Officers
Despite the drone-heavy system, the CPA maintains a core of human investigators known as:
- Grey Coats (slang)
- Threadpullers (Spacer term)
- Often implanted with auto-redaction modules—"to forget what they learn"
- Especially active in the slums, Chapel-infected zones, and neural cold cases
Commissioner Saïd Marek
The top of the CPA is occupied by Commissioner Marek, a grizzled, neural-braced former soldier with one belief left: that justice must at least try to mean something.
He is under constant pressure from Noble Houses and rarely sleeps without surveillance jamming. His loyalties remain unclear.
Justice and Sentencing
- Minor offenses are punished with neural echo looping—reliving the crime from the victim’s POV
- Mid-tier crimes earn identity restrictions (limited memory access, Veil suspension)
- Capital crimes lead to cerebral forking or total mind-erase—leaving behind a body, but no self
Slum criminals often disappear before arrest. Some are found. Others are remembered in dreams.