Article 20: Pit Lords II
The Pit Lords are, as far as the Galactic ANarchists are concerned, the greatest and most centralized authorities within their galactic sphere of influence. Every free citizen there learns the names of all six in their early childhood, and some refer to them like a religious person might their saints or lesser deities. Unlike their Divine counterparts, however, the exact workings of their individual justice organizations are easy enough to see for anyone who cares to investigate.
First up is the organization of the lords themselves and their internal delegation. Each Pit Lord has a designated title, and while this gives one a general idea of the sorts of crimes they deal with, a little more individual elaboration might be needed. Gargoth, Lord of Murder deals primarily with unjustified killing or injury. In this sense, unjustified generally means that they were the initiators of force, but as one would expect, nuance is very important to understanding whether or not a crime was truly committed. Whereas a Golden Alliance private investigator might focus entirely on who committed a murder, a GAN one must always go beyond that, determining motivations to find out if it was justified or not before reporting to their leader. Malokh, Lord of Bondage, has a much easier job when it comes to finding out who is at fault, as their domain is chiefly that of finding kidnappers, slavers, and those who try to own slaves. This also includes indentured servitude and contracts that were forced under duress. Teranox, Lord of Greed, deals with the most common crimes committed in the GAN, property theft. Their investigators search out not only whoever had stolen it, but the item itself, regardless of how many times it has changed hands, as the return of the property to its rightful owner takes priority over any punishment for whoever took it. It's for this reason that many GAN citizens are wary to buy anything that they aren't certain of the origin of. Synaria, Lord of Lust, handles rape and sexual assault crimes. They also include in their domain investigating false claims of either of these, and the restitution for those who have had their reputations or businesses damaged through such false claims. For reasons that should be obvious, Synaria has the most agents trained in grief counseling. Dakarra, Lord of Lies, takes care of breach of contract, which is generally the least violent set of crimes but also has a lot of overlap with the other Pit Lords, especially when it comes to cases of false accusations or contracts that come close to instituting slavery. Finally, Lucifer, Lord of All, oversees all of the other Pit Lords to ensure that they and their agents are working on the side of good and handles anything that slips through the cracks of the other Pit Lords. Their underlings serve primarily as a sort of GAN internal affairs, and tend to be the most highly-trained and secretive of the various Pit Lord agents. Technically, there is a Seventh Pit Lord, but that one, Satan, Lord of Hell, is actually the host of a reality game show where captured diplomats from other galactic factions compete to win a majority vote for a ticket off the planet every year. So far, no diplomat has ever won their way off. In any case, it's nebulous as to whether Satan has genuine Pit Lord powers as he just sort of showed up one day.
You may have noticed during my listing of the Pit Lords and their duties that I described all of them with gender neutral pronouns. This is not out of any lack of knowledge or attempt to be polite, rather the name and title of each Pit Lord is static and passes down to the next Pit Lord upon one's death. The initial Pit Lords made the decision long ago that images of any one Pit Lord would not be regularly shown, instead making announcements through appropriately evil-themed hologram projections. This move was made to keep someone from seeking out the position for fame or legacy. As Pit Lords, like any other Devilings, are not immortal, the mantle must be passed to another upon the end of a Pit Lord's lifespan. Interestingly, Pit Lords are unable to reproduce in any way. Instead, the awesome powers that their position bestows pass to the nearest sentient being upon their death, ensuring that there can only be Six Pit Lords (not counting Satan) at any given time. Thanks to this quirk of the Pit Lords' power, there's been more than one occasion where an ill-informed self-proclaimed hero found their way into a Pit Lord's chambers and defeated them only to become the new Pit Lord, complete with a physical change to the otherwise unique Pit Lord race.
As previously mentioned, Pit Lords utilize agents to do most of the smaller-scale work involved in rooting out crime within the GAN. Most of these take one of two forms. First are the Reapers, who perform work on the criminal's side of things. This involves identifying and tracking down perpetrators, and if they're in the middle of committing such a crime, stopping them with an appropriate amount of force. They're best known for making their targets disappear, even if just for a while, and keeping their own identities hidden to help with infiltration. Reapers generally operate in small groups based out of freighter-class ships, but in an emergency they can be banded together to take on an organized crime group or help combat threats from outside their sector. They're regularly accused of helping to harbor pirates that operate outside of GAN, but most GAN citizens believe them to be morally above doing any such thing and the Pit Lords claim that their resources are focused on their home turf.
Next up, and just as important to the Pit Lords, are the Faustus. Many police organizations are predicated on the notion that the best a victim should expect is the capture and punishment of the one who wronged them, but GAN's justice system takes the approach that the primary goal of any criminal pursuit should be simply to stop them and the utmost priority should be placed on making restitution to the victims of crime. This is the job of the Faustus. Their job is twofold. First is the extraction of restitution from criminals. This often means seizure of property or resources, starting with those which were ill-gotten, but can be worked out depending on the severity of the crime to instead be almost like a loan that the criminal has to repay, especially in the case of repairs for damaged property or medical expenses for those who have been hurt. Faustus are allowed to be creative in how they do this, and while some prefer to simply steal back whatever they need to make things right, others are artists in the craft of finding ways that a criminal can not only make up for their misdeeds, but learn to better their behavior in the future. They also extract enough payment to pay for whatever work needed to be done to catch them, which is where the Pit Lords secure much of their funding. The second part of their duties is to make proper restitution to the victims of the crimes, and while this often means simply the return or replacing of stolen items or the repayment of whatever bills the criminal is responsible for, again the Faustus can get creative, especially when property has been destroyed or lives, businesses, or reputations have been lost. There are times when a Faustus's restitution can take the form of community enrichment or new opportunities suddenly appearing for the victims, and such repayments have become so commonplace within GAN territory that it's not a common phrase to ask "Who killed me yesterday?" when someone has a string of good luck.
