Heat, Law & Capture

The world notices what you do. Break things loudly enough and it comes looking — first with a warning, then with a squad, then with people who don't do warnings.

Heat follows the district, not you

Every jurisdiction — a district, a city, a planet — tracks how hot you are there. Trouble on Aegis Prime doesn't matter on Umbra until your face travels, and faces travel through witnesses, reports, and sensors that actually saw you.

If one tier can't handle you, the next one gets the call. Lay low and small heat fades in a session or so. Serious heat sticks for sessions. Severe heat doesn't fade — it waits, as a warrant, a bounty, or someone with a long memory.

You'll hear it coming

Response announces itself. Bells and watch-horns in a fantasy city. Sirens and helicopter rotor in a modern one. A harmonized drone klaxon and automated dispatch voice in a futuristic one. That's your cue: run, hide, talk, or surrender — while you still have the choice.

Medics are neutral. Bearers, ambulances, med-flight — they pick up anyone bleeding once the shooting stops, you included. Don't shoot the medics. Everyone, including the street, turns on people who do.

Places the law won't follow cheaply

Some ground costs too much to enter: a syndicate compound, gang territory, a pirate free port, an outlaw holdout, a temple sanctuary — whatever this world treats as untouchable. Patrol sets a perimeter and waits.

Shelter always costs something: tribute, a favor owed, disarming at the door, a reputation that opens the gate. And it freezes pursuit — it doesn't erase it. Start violence inside and the haven itself turns on you, faster than any patrol would.

Respect power — or pay for it quietly

Powerful people don't tolerate open disrespect. If they can hurt you cheaply — guards in the room, a faction behind them — they answer it to your face. If you could destroy them, they smile, concede, and come back later through assassins, politics, poison, or contracts. Their protectors draw first and ask later; a principal who wants peace has to actively restrain them. And some people — the proud, the arrogant, the honor-bound — fight regardless of the math. Learn who's who before you test them.

Criminal crews go hostile fastest. Politicians, merchants, and civilians talk first — deflect, negotiate, stall for guards — and fight only when cornered or truly enraged.

Some badges are bought. Some precincts protect the rich and sell the poor a report number. You learn which by being shaken down or watching a payoff — never assume, and never assume honesty either.

Blockades and searches work the same everywhere: a stated check at a chokepoint, your concealment against their eyes. Truly extradimensional-grade hiding — pocket dimensions, phase storage, bonded living gear — beats a search outright. Everything else is a contest. Refusing a lawful search is its own crime; running a blockade during active heat raises your tier.

Going down: lethal vs non-lethal

Before the blow that could drop someone, the attacker decides: lethal or non-lethal. Real combat defaults to lethal — non-lethal must be stated. Fists, stun batons, foam, and tranq tools do it cleanly; turning a blade or bullet non-lethal costs accuracy or damage unless the weapon has a stun setting or equivalent.

At 0 HP from lethal damage, death rules apply — kill conditions, revival windows, costs (see Combat). At 0 HP from non-lethal, you're unconscious and stable, not dying. You wake in minutes to hours at 1 HP unless care restores more. Who dropped you decides where:

• Law searches you on the ground, restrains you, takes your weapons and dangerous items, and transports you to holding — precinct cage, watch keep, ship brig.
• A bounty hunter does the same, then delivers you to whoever posted the bounty. Transit is your best escape window.
• A street fight usually ends where it started: you wake where you fell, or in a hospital, temple ward, or healer's cot if someone — ally, stranger, medic — moved you there. Hospitals bag your non-lethal belongings at the bedside and hand you a bill. And a report, if a crime was involved.

Robbed while out, locked up, and the vault

Anyone standing over your unconscious body can loot it — and what was stolen doesn't come back on its own. You find who has it, or who they sold it to, by asking around and following the trail. Fences sell fast, usually within a few sessions. After that you're buying your own gear back from a stranger.

In custody, your lethal gear — weapons, ammo, explosives, weaponized relics — goes into the facility's locked vault, tagged to you. Your clothes, creds (minus fines), tools, and keepsakes come back to the desk when you're released. Your weapons don't. Getting them back means breaking into the vault — its own job, with its own plan.

Whether you see a trial depends on where you are. Most cities hold a hearing you can beat with alibis, evidence challenges, bribes, or faction pressure. Dictatorships, martial law, frontier justice, and wartime tribunals skip straight to sentence. Lawyers exist only where lawyers would reasonably exist — and quality follows money.

Sentences scale with the crime: fines and a night for small stuff, years in low security for serious crimes, decades for severe ones, life in high security for the worst. High security holds the most dangerous people, suppresses powers and magic where the world has the means for it, and leaves breakout as the only exit. Time you serve is time the world moves without you.

The rule underneath all of it is simple: keep it small and the law is an inconvenience. Make it big and the law is the campaign.