Justice

In the Enlightenment Era, capital punishment is outlawed everywhere on the bridge. In earlier times, especially before the emergence of the Exalted Order of Solus in the Tribal Era, mob justice was commonplace. Due to sheer convenience, return was the most common form of capital punishment.

Return

‘Return’ is the practice of throwing people off the bridge as a form of capital punishment. Although this was practised widely and haphazardly during the Tribal Era, it was not known as ‘return’ until after its reinstatement as a method of punishment authorised by the Exalted Order of Solus, who — having previously banned the practice — reintroduced it in an attempt to regain control over an increasingly dissatisfied populace. The Order would “return citizens to Nebura”, a reference to the goddess of the clouds below the bridge in the mythology of the Order.

Serious disputes between neighbouring enclaves sometimes result in a blockade, where one or both enclaves physically obstruct the Street to prevent outsiders passing. It is a drastic form of protest similar to a general strike.

This is considered a very radical, short-sighted action, and is very strongly frowned upon since it obstructs unrelated citizens getting where they need to go, and prevents the delivery of important necessary resources to enclaves further along the bridge. Because the downstream effects are very serious, a blockade has not happened in a very long time, and they have usually been swiftly dealt with by a coalition of other affected enclaves showing up to have a “tool-assisted discussion” about it. Even bitterly warring enclaves will try to resolve disputes by almost any means necessary before resorting to a blockade, as it will not win them any allies.

Exile is a social practice used as a method of last resort in solving domestic disharmony in commonhouse living, where residents can be expelled by majority vote. If a unanimous agreement is reached among those of the affected party, the offending party is expected to pack their things and leave immediately.

Failure to comply is a serious social transgression that publicly marks the offending party as an antisocial troublemaker, and they will find their life considerably harder afterwards. For this reason, it is not unknown for citizens to maintain at least two circles of friends such that they will not be left without a place to stay if they find themselves on the losing end of an exile vote.

Those with no other place to go can stay for a short time at the Assembly of Veil and Sky, but are expected to either join, or move on to another arrangement within a few days.

Promise stamps are unique to each person and hard to forge without considerable experience. It is however, much easier to steal them.

Once in possession of someone else’s stamp, it is essentially possible to spend their money, but only with people who don’t know them personally. Because of the local nature of promissaries, it’s often quite hard to get away with using a stolen stamp. Fraudulent transactions are usually detected by the local promissary, at which point they will inform the stamp owner and notify other locations. If a fraudulent transaction goes undetected, and gets approved, it may be detected by The Mint, and can be reversed before being stamped. However, if a transaction (or the ledger it’s recorded in) makes it into The Mint’s permanent records, it’s more-or-less set in stone. This gives most victims of stamp theft 2 or 3 days to do damage control before suffering actual monetary loss.