Non-human people suddenly appearing in the modern world. What the heck do I do now?

[Sam Baughn]

In my game, my players have surprised me by being rather more competent that I predicted. Long story short; in a modern-day campaign one of them just arrested two relict hominids.

The player in question is a cop in Washington state. The hominids have both committed crimes (or what would be crimes if they were human), so he tracked them down, used his influence with the local force to get adequate backup and managed to subdue them.

The cop has Law (American Police) and a good relationship with local judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials. The rest of the party add Law (International Criminal and International Contract), contacts from two major international organizations (the WHO and the Vatican) and enough science credentials to establish that the Hominids are not Homo Sapiens fairly easily.

I guess there is going to be some kind of hearing to determine if the hominids can be brought to trial as people, if they are fit to stand trial and whether they are US citizens. I have no idea how long this is likely to take or who they need to be presented to and a quick web-search isn't making it clear what kind of procedure there is to determine these kind of questions (I'm guessing the question of 'are they people' gets dumped on whoever decides if they are fit to stand trial and then gets appealed all the way up to the supreme court eventually).

As soon as the news gets out, shadowy corporate and government groups are going to get involved and I'm pretty sure that it makes sense for one organization I have in the background to make an attempt to abduct the hominids, ideally before anyone else is certain what they are. The group in question is a large biotech company who have plenty of contacts in the local medical, scientific and education communities, so they might be able to get an operation together within a few days. Is this realistically fast enough that the US government wouldn't have secured the exciting new discovery? I guess the corp could swing some level of political leverage to confuse the issue.

Most of all, I'm just glad I was using GURPS. Because when your campaign starts of a scientific mystery, suddenly changes into a police action game, then to a courtroom drama and then into a technothriller conspiracy it's good to have a system which handles pretty much everything you can throw at it.

[Phantasm]

Are these hominids considered Sasquatch, Neanderthals, or an earlier branch?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

In my game, my players have surprised me by being rather more competent that I predicted. Long story short; in a modern-day campaign one of them just arrested two relict hominids.

The player in question is a cop in Washington state. The hominids have both committed crimes (or what would be crimes if they were human), so he tracked them down, used his influence with the local force to get adequate backup and managed to subdue them.

The cop has Law (American Police) and a good relationship with local judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials. The rest of the party add Law (International Criminal and International Contract), contacts from two major international organizations (the WHO and the Vatican) and enough science credentials to establish that the Hominids are not Homo Sapiens fairly easily.

I guess there is going to be some kind of hearing to determine if the hominids can be brought to trial as people, if they are fit to stand trial and whether they are US citizens.

Probably, although the US courts are capable of charging even inanimate objects in some cases. There's going to be a jurisdiction fight, but it's not the arresting PCs problem, or something the authorities now responsible will be happy to have him meddle in. Even having somebody already this involved to testify in the prove these are hominids and not humans phase is something they'd really, really want to avoid, just to dodge the conflict of interest issues.
Of course that's boring for a game.

Note that people with severe mental problems can be imprisoned for months before the legal system gets around to sorting out whether they are competent to stand trial. This isn't going to go any faster.

As soon as the news gets out, shadowy corporate and government groups are going to get involved and I'm pretty sure that it makes sense for one organization I have in the background to make an attempt to abduct the hominids, ideally before anyone else is certain what they are. The group in question is a large biotech company who have plenty of contacts in the local medical, scientific and education communities, so they might be able to get an operation together within a few days.

A prison break is a potentially pretty difficult and very illegal undertaking. Comic book super-villain companies might be willing to attempt this. People enough in touch with sanity to run successful businesses in the real world will not be, and certainly shouldn't be dumb enough to start approaching outsiders about engaging in a felony conspiracy.

[ericthered]

I know the state hospital in my state has a forensics unit that assists the courts with matters of mental competence. I could easily see this being treated as or at least modelled after the procedure to handle mental competence.

this site is dedicated to a step by step description of the process.

If this becomes at all public, a notable lawyer or and up and coming glory hound is likely to attach themselves as the defender of the hominids -- its a high profile case, and there is no shortage of folks hoping to make history.

Laws meant to protect the rights enable citizenship for native americans are likely to apply, or at least be brought up. There may be some discussion of the hominids native laws. Endangered species acts may also be invoked.

[jason taylor]

If they are sophant, treat them as resident foreigners. If not treat them as stray animals. If that hasn't been figured out, that is one of the questions.

[Bruno]

They must be pretty significantly archaic if that much work was put into establishing their species - many hominids with the skin and muscles on would easily mistaken for modern humans with deformities and intellectual delays caused by developmental disorders.

Humans are pretty dang variable - my cousin the anthropologist loves to point out how my dad's jawbone was "inhumanly" proportioned in a few interesting ways, and our entire family has funny shaped heads. But my dad didn't look particularly weird to the lay person, and you only notice the weird head shape if you shave our heads or try to fit us for helmets. She also would find it pretty laughable to suggest that my Dad's robust jawbone and slightly wonky skull means he was secretly a Neandertal; he would just be one of those annoying skulls that an archaeologist would note some abnormal features of, write a paper hypothesizing that this was some evidence of their pet theory about human migration, and then stuff in a box with a little tag on it.

Even a chromosome count doesn't mean much, as there's several different ways to get an adult with a wonky number of chromosomes - but first you have to be curious enough to even try that.

If they're naked, they're just crazy ugly people, instead of ugly people. If they're dressed in hand-made animal skins and wielding stone tools and speaking an unrecognizable language, they're still likely to be considered pretty crazy people.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If they're naked, they're just crazy ugly people, instead of ugly people. If they're dressed in hand-made animal skins and wielding stone tools and speaking an unrecognizable language, they're still likely to be considered pretty crazy people.

Even in Portland?

[Sam Baughn]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Are these hominids considered Sasquatch, Neanderthals, or an earlier branch?

Slightly on the wrong side of Neanderthal. They can pass for a funny-looking human to anyone who doesn't know what to look for and are capable of speech and some degree of abstract thinking (average racial IQ of about 8 and no Bestial disadvantage in GURPS terms). They would be able to interbreed with humans, have the same number of chromosomes, etc.

Originally Posted by malloyd

Probably, although the US courts are capable of charging even inanimate objects in some cases. There's going to be a jurisdiction fight, but it's not the arresting PCs problem, or something the authorities now responsible will be happy to have him meddle in. Even having somebody already this involved to testify in the prove these are hominids and not humans phase is something they'd really, really want to avoid, just to dodge the conflict of interest issues.
Of course that's boring for a game.

Yeah, I think I'm going to take the 'cinematic' approach and play fast-and-loose with the legal proceedings for the sake of gameplay.

Originally Posted by malloyd

A prison break is a potentially pretty difficult and very illegal undertaking. Comic book super-villain companies might be willing to attempt this. People enough in touch with sanity to run successful businesses in the real world will not be, and certainly shouldn't be dumb enough to start approaching outsiders about engaging in a felony conspiracy.

Again, I may need to get cinematic here. The company in question does have good motivation to get the relicts out of government custody ASAP because they 'created' these creatures and they are in the process of developing products based on their biology. Bad publicity, lawsuits and possibly losing rights to their most promising future products worry them a lot, so they are pretty desperate.

They also have some fairly serious connections to organised crime already and have the advantage that they knew the relicts existed and they would probably want to launch an operation to grab them as soon as they showed up 'on the radar'. They will have had months to get a team assembled and equipped and can probably make a move in a matter of days once they know where their targets are.

[The Colonel]

How dystopic do you like? If you like it black, get them packed off to America's equivalent of Porton Down and dissected. Grey they get put in zoo (hell, we were putting humans in zoos and similar things within a little more than a century). White they get a citizenship inquiry.

[Anders]

I think you can easily argue that the law applies only to Homo Sapiens. This could go to the SCOTUS for a judgment.

I wonder how they Young Earth Creationists would react? They've never let facts get in the way of their creeds before.