If any of them have been to Riuhiu recently they might have seen a sign letting them know that representatives of the imperial government are renting space in the same building as Valanda has his office. It's where they'd go for copies of the law or Hari is the Language of the Empire.

If any of them have been watching soap operas about caralendri they might have seen a scene of someone escaping an assault, grimly crawling out of the illusions over the property where it happened, then desperately reporting the crime to the open sky. Whether this works outside of soap operas is unclear.

Katherine the botanist - the one of the engineers most going spare, now that the food supply is secure, and trying to do more organizational sorts of work - goes to the imperial government office and tells the front desk worker, "I want to report a crime."

"Sure, you want to go through that door and tell Girar about it. I don't think he's busy right now."

"Thank you." She nods and goes through and asks, "Girar?"

A belul is curled up on top of a desk. He seems to be Girar.

"Welcome. Did someone hurt you?"

"No. I'm reporting a crime on behalf of a citizen of New Dover, actually. We've never interacted with - well, Har's law enforcement before. There were procedures and processes and forms and the like in our original world. What's the process here?"

Girar gets some paper out of a drawer and sits poised to take notes. "First I need to know what you saw that made you think there'd been a crime. Did you see it happen? Did you see something else that seemed suspicious?"

"I was not the original witness, but there are at least six who saw it directly and a few more who heard it. So. Harold Falkner owns the bar - a business which sells alcoholic drinks and food - and he allows people to have 'tabs', to get things without paying immediately and owe the payment later. The story I heard from six witnesses who I imagine you'll want to interview yourself but did not have the free time to come here, was that another man, Danny Champ, owes several hundred rings to the bar. Harold refused to serve him any more alcohol until he paid some of it. Danny asked for one more anyway. Harold said no. Danny asked some of his friends to pay for a drink for him. Harold told him to get out of his property, and that he won't sell Danny's friends a drink that's intended for Danny, either. Danny got upset and argued some more. Harold physically grabbed Danny to try and move him to the door - Danny punched Harold in the face. They fought, shouting, for a few seconds until other bar patrons separated them and shoved Danny out the door."

Write write write.

"Is Harold willing to talk about this?"

"Yes. Right now I imagine he's cleaning up the mess they made, spilled drinks and so on."

"How would someone recognize Harold's bar while pastwatching? And when did this happen?"

"It happened yesterday evening at nine-thirty." She gives the address. The bar area isn't warded, even though much of the rest of the place is. "I'm also not sure how our rules should apply - we agreed to some town-level rules when we came here, but of course it isn't official until the governor says so, and we haven't addressed at all how to handle, mm, collisions. It would be terribly unfair to punish a man twice for one crime. And if we consider the behavior of some random belul a crime by town rules but Ira Sani doesn't, that's a potential conflict too. Perhaps we should have addressed this sooner, but we were busy not starving and building businesses."

"New Dover is private property, right? Of course you can enforce your rules on your own property, I suggest you post signs at your borders if you want visitors to follow them. How do you expect that to complicate this case?"

"Yes, it's all private property - the 'public' areas of pooled into a collective ownership contract that transfers to the office of the Mayor, and the Mayor administrates the whole thing and will appoint a sherrif and a tax collector and so on... That's a bodge, though. And it might not complicate this case, but say, what if we decided the penalty for this crime was repaying the damage and a fine of fifty rings and a ban from entering any bars for a year. Would the state and imperial law just - let us handle it, or would you further punish the offender, or what?"

"If Harold, as the wronged party and the property owner, asks us to let you handle it we will. If he doesn't, we won't. Your bars can refuse service to anyone for any amount of time for any reason."

"What about someone who wants imperial law to handle it but New Dover would prefer to punish the offender ourselves and not involve imperial law? Wait- Let's pretend the mayor - the controller of the communal property by our group land-ownership contract - decides to post signs everywhere saying that land beyond this point belongs to New Dover and is considered private property of the New Dover Council and the following list of crimes will be judged and punished by the New Dover Council and will not be punishable under imperial law... I can't imagine that will be acceptable on the face of it. But most of New Dover's landowners have strong objections to some aspects of imperial law, you see, and would like to be under different ones at least at home."

"You can make entrance to New Dover conditional on agreeing to waive the right to imperial justice and specify a penalty for breach of contract but we won't refuse to punish a criminal over the victim's objections. If you didn't want to be under Hari law you should have thought of that before coming here."

"Yes, we understand that. It wouldn't be a problem for most of us except for institutional slavery. Would crimes where both the victim and criminal are in New Dover and have agreed to that waiver be pursued by imperial law?"

"If the victim doesn't change their mind, then you'll be left alone."

"So they can reverse their agreement to that waiver and seek imperial justice anyway? And that's what the contract penalty is for, they'll just get bit by that?"

"Yes, exactly."

So they can make the penalty for pursuing imperial justice over New Dover justice fairly steep and all proceeds get devoted to a charitable fund of some kind or another, and probably drive out some of the profitable visitors but be safer for things on the level of bar fights or petty shoplifting in New Dover itself in the future. She's already predicting stores whose counters stride the property line, so shoppers need not sign the waiver. But that's not her problem yet. One thing at a time. 

She makes a 'hmm' noise and searches her memory for how imperial and Ira Sani law interacts with contracts and failure to pay them, etc. They can't very well make New Dover justice the penalty for failing to submit to New Dover justice. Failure to pay the contract fine generally means enslavement - but the New Dover government can't very well go be having slaves for years - maybe if they call them prisoners - and can't release them without some liability under the law, and can't morally execute them unless the original crime was appropriately severe.

She sighs and mutters, "Maybe I should've stayed in Milliways." Louder, she says, "Well, we'll think about that later. What should I do for Harold now?"

"Oh, he has you handling this for him? You can tell him I'd like to see him. He can come here or I can visit New Dover."

"I think he'll want me there when you talk to him. We can probably travel here for that. I'll ask what's best and get back to you."

"I'd like it if you'd do that. I don't think I need anything else from you right now."