STAYING ONE STEP AHEAD OF THE LAW WHILE WINNING THE ARMS RACE!

Greetings again, most honored reader!

An age-old battle has raged on across the universe and throughout the eons: the age-old see-saw between order and chaos, good and evil, justice and injustice. The Cognescentii have observed this battle in many galaxies on many worlds throughout the ages.

Moreover, this war spreads over into the area of technology and magic. Hopefully, it is usually the good guys that have the upper hand, the ones that develop the technology or magic to maintain that upper hand of law and order over crime and chaos. But even on your world the bad guys have often acquired the same technology as your law enforcers to keep the scales more in their favor.

Look at the example s of the gunfighters of the Old West who used the recent innovation of the single-action and double-action revolver, more famously known as the “six-shooter,” and their own deadly aim, to keep the law of their day (the late 19th Century) at bay. Or consider as well the examples of Al Capone and “Machine Gun” Kelly, who made use of the machine gun to not only do away with their competition, but to beat back the long arm of the law in the 20th Century of your timeline. Both of these criminals had gotten a hold of the same technology as your law enforcement to try to get an advantage in the old see-saw battle of good vs. evil.

Both your gunfighters and your gangsters only used what your law enforcement had already developed. Now imagine a situation where the bad guys are the innovators and the ones with the upper hand. That’s what we have now in the Borderlands where Lich has just invented the equivalent of a six-shooter hand-crossbow. With no formal schooling, barely literate, Lich has used his talent and experience at designing, smithing, and (most importantly!) cracking lock mechanisms, safes, and traps to engineer a new weapon. Indeed, Lich’s comrade, Dr. Phantom, pegged his comrade quite accurately in noting, “You’re a genius, you idiot!” Or, as we say in the Hallowed Halls of the Cognescentii, “Even a broken chronometer is right twice a day.”
Until next time,
With Cognescentii blessings,

~THE TRAVELLER