Junkman
Reviled or revered, describe a profession that causes strong reactions in a culture.
The Junkmen (Officially the New Caliber Sanitation and Disposal workers) are the people who collect and maintain all of the trash, sewage, and refuse the city of New Caliber produces. The sewer systems run through a labyrinthian system under the city, to a plant maintained by the NCSD to purify the waters before they flow back into Calibre Bay. The trash is taken to a massive landfill to the southwest of the city, on the border of The Sledges, imaginatively named Landfill.
Career
Qualifications
There's only one real qualification to be a Junkman: to be willing to take on an incredibly risky, low status, and often disgusting job for low wages. Few people aspire to be junkmen, it's usually a job for the lower class. The risks aren't the best known, as the junkmen's culture of silence is maintained, and few people take notice of the junkmen enough to note that turnover is very high.
Career Progression
Starting junkmen are Cleaners, sent out to deal with the regular drudgery on the streets.
From there they can move up to guarding the landfill or the processing center. Those who show leadership, or more commonly just are there long enough, become Crew Leads, responsible for cleaner teams or guard watches. Eventually from there they can move up through the bureaucracy to higher paying (and safer) desk jobs.
Those who show actual combat skill, nerve, talent, or are just really hated by their managers, can be assigned to the Irregular Circumstances Response Team.
Payment & Reimbursement
The job pays better than a factory dredge, has more benefits, and guarantees a steady check.
Other Benefits
Junkmen receive health benefits from the City of New Caliber. These can fluctuate depending on the city council however. Most benefits come from the NCSD Workers, Children, and Orphans Fund. This fund is maintained by the Junkers Guild, and guarantees that anyone injured on the job is taken care of, as are their children if tragedy happens. The Junkers Guild are a tight knit group, knowing that they share secrets they can never speak of with others, and have seen things few others understand. Any Junker can find sympathetic fellows in times of crisis.
Perception
Purpose
The Junkmen's purpose sounds simple enough. Nothing could be more wrong. All of the magical refuse produced by the most industrial city in the world ends up the Junkmen's business. Expended temporary magical items bleed off spent energy. Alchemical mixtures splash out of containment and end in the sewers. Bleed off from industrial magic projects infests the trash. In short, chaotic magical energy that should only be absorbed back into the world in small amounts ends up piled high, mixing and swimming together, into an unpredictable cauldron. Wild magic surges do everything from spawn elementals, to spewing out a mist that turns everything it touches yellow, to opening gateways to other realms, to animating the pipes themselves with an unhappy intelligence. The weird mix in both the sewers and the landfill produce new aberrations seemingly every month. In ancient days, a city would hire out groups of "adventurers" to deal with these problems. Now, it's the NCSDs job to ensure that the people of New Calber aren't threatened and, for the most part, remain unaware of the danger.
Social Status
There are likely know professional, guilded jobs of less prestige than the Junkmen. They are looked down on as necessary but disgusting servants by the higher class, and as unstable and disgusting characters by the lower class. The middle class hardly notices them at all. Their outcast status is another reason the Junkers' Guild is so strong.
Demographics
Nearly every Junkman comes from the lower classes of New Caliber. In recent years there's been an influx of immigrants who couldn't find other work. The main species found within the Junkmen is human and dwarf, with halflings, orcs, and goblins all making up significant amounts. Lesser known species that end up shunned and outcast by regular society can find an easy home with the Junkers.
History
The need for the junkmen was found in the early urban sprawl of New Caliber when dwarven immigrants began to carve out an undercity. The trickle down of arcane refuse began causing odd effects, including spawning the first of the new breed of Otyughs. A group including the dwarven leaders, enchanters from Draiden Cully University, and city watchmen realized the danger. They worked out solutions and presented them to the city council. What was proposed as an elite heroic unit of trained professionals incorporating the best of arcane and industrial techniques to defend the city from magical threats got whittled down in debate, corruption, grift, and budget cuts to the disparate group of low status and ill-equipped workers it is today.
Operations
Dangers & Hazards
Too many to list.
Alternative Names
Junkers, NCRD, garbagemen, stinkers
Type
Sanitation
Demand
The service of the Junkmen is vital to the continuation and survival of New Caliber.
Legality
Only duly authorized agents of the NCRD can carry out the Junkmen's duties. Plans to privatize the work were scrapped when it was realized how dangerous the things contained could be in the wrong hands.
Comments