**The Lost Boys are a secretive pirate/burglar organization of mostly young boys (typically ages 8–20) who steal from Traction Cities in Philip Reeve’s *Mortal Engines* quartet.** Their core activity is stealth theft, carried out as a highly organized, hierarchical criminal enterprise based in the sunken wreck of Grimsby. ### Primary Activities and Methods They specialize in parasitic burglary of mobile cities: - **Attachment and infiltration**: Small teams travel in specialized submarine craft called **Limpets**. These clamp onto the underside of a host Traction City (or raft city), remaining hidden while the city moves. From there the boys board stealthily, often at night or when activity is low. - **Theft**: They systematically take people’s possessions, valuables, and sometimes information or documents. Stolen goods are stowed in the limpet’s hold. Missions usually involve teams of two or three for ordinary targets; larger groups handle bigger or higher-value jobs. - **Extraction**: Once the hold is full or a set time has passed, they detach the limpet and return underwater to their base at Grimsby. - **Surveillance first**: Before (and during) operations they deploy **Crab-Cams**—small, remote-controlled, legged cameras—to spy on the target city’s layout, routines, and security so they know when it is safe to move. They also use **Message-Fish** (mechanical fish fitted with Stalker brains) for long-distance communication between limpets and Grimsby. City-dwellers are often referred to as “drys.” The boys train for these skills in a facility at Grimsby called the **Burglarium**. New recruits are typically kidnapped as children from the lower decks or underdecks of various Traction Cities and raised/trained in the organization. ### Hierarchy and Daily Life The group is strictly hierarchical. Older, more experienced boys hold higher status, better living quarters, and preferential access to limpets and missions. Trainees and those who break rules rank lowest. The entire operation is overseen by their leader, **Uncle** (Stilton Kael), who maintains constant surveillance and enforces secrecy and obedience. Information-gathering is as important as material theft; Uncle’s personal history of betrayal made him obsessive about ensuring no one could keep secrets from him. ### Evolution and Broader Role Across the Books - In *Predator’s Gold* their main depicted activity is the quiet, ongoing robbery of the nearly deserted city of Anchorage (mistaken by residents for ghostly hauntings), followed by involvement in a larger, more ambitious raid on the Green Storm base at Rogue’s Roost. - By *Infernal Devices* the organization has changed somewhat (including the recruitment of some girls) and becomes entangled in the pursuit of a valuable artifact (the Tin Book). Their secrecy has been compromised by published accounts of their existence, leading cities such as Brighton to hunt and capture limpets, sell boys into slavery, and eventually bomb Grimsby. - Later remnants fracture into warring factions (notably on the damaged city of Brighton in *A Darkling Plain*), turning from organized stealth theft toward more open territorial control, robbery of visitors, and internal conflict. In short, the Lost Boys function as underwater parasites on the larger system of Municipal Darwinism: they do not hunt or devour cities the way predator Traction Cities do, but instead silently siphon resources and intelligence from them while remaining hidden. Their activities combine skilled burglary, surveillance, kidnapping/recruitment of children, and strict internal control under Uncle’s rule, until exposure, internal fractures, and external attacks largely destroy the organized group. **Uncle** (real name **Stilton Kael**) is the founder, ruler, and absolute leader of the Lost Boys and their underwater base in the sunken wreck of Grimsby in Philip Reeve’s *Mortal Engines* quartet. He appears primarily in *Predator’s Gold* and *Infernal Devices*. ### Background and What He Does Stilton Kael came from the wealthy and powerful Kael family on the Traction City of Arkangel, which controlled engines, salvage yards, agriculture, and related enterprises. As a young man he was given charge of a salvage yard and its slave workers. He fell in love with one of the slaves, Anna Fang, treating her preferentially (better food, lighter work, gifts) and intending to marry her. Anna secretly used the materials and opportunities he provided to build an airship (the *Jenny Haniver*), sold his gifts for fuel and gas, and escaped. Kael was blamed for aiding a slave’s escape, arrested, and banished to the ice wastes with nothing. In exile he joined a band of scavengers looting the wreck of Grimsby (a once-fierce North Atlantic raft/predator city sunk by the Anti-Traction League). He killed them, claimed the wreck and their large cargo submarine (the *Naglfar*), made parts of the sunken city habitable, and began systematically robbing passing cities while stealing information. This was the origin of the Lost Boys: he kidnapped young boys from Traction Cities, trained them as burglars in the Burglarium, and built a hierarchical pirate organization under his total control. As leader he directs all major operations, assigns missions (including limpet attachments, thefts, and larger raids such as the one on Rogue’s Roost), maintains constant surveillance over the boys (even speaking to them in their sleep via technology), gathers and hoards secrets, and enforces strict obedience. He is driven by a personal vow that no one will ever keep a secret from him again after Anna Fang’s betrayal. This includes an intense interest in information and control; he later seeks to retrieve and reprogram the Stalker version of Anna Fang for his own purposes. In *Predator’s Gold* he uses Tom Natsworthy as a disposable diversion in a raid. By *Infernal Devices* he is elderly and the organization has begun to change under rising figures such as Gargle, but he still attempts to reassert control. He dies when, in a confrontation, he shoots one of his own surveillance screens (mistaking an image for Freya Rasmussen); the resulting collapse of equipment crushes him. ### Physical Description - **As a young man**: Wan, bony face; limp red hair; dressed in fur-lined silk with rings on his fingers. - **As an old man** (the form most readers encounter): A small man who wears a dressing gown, bunny-rabbit slippers (the insides capped with steel, undercutting any innocent appearance), half-moon spectacles, and a five-cornered hat. The eccentric, almost harmless outer look contrasts sharply with his ruthlessness. ### Personality and Character Uncle is **paranoid, controlling, obsessive, and vengeful**. His defining trauma is Anna Fang’s deception and escape; this fuels lifelong distrust of women (he long forbade girls in the Lost Boys) and an extreme need for total information and surveillance. He rules through hierarchy, fear, technological monitoring, and psychological dominance rather than pure physical force. He can present a somewhat eccentric or even grandfatherly surface, but he is calculating, willing to sacrifice boys or outsiders for his plans, and capable of slow, cruel punishments (such as condemning Caul to a lingering death by hanging). He is also deeply attached to the idea of Grimsby and the secret world he built, refusing to accept its decline even when it is bombed and waterlogged. Intelligence-gathering and the accumulation of secrets are as important to him as material theft. His love of poetry is noted as coming from his mother. In short, Uncle is the secretive, authoritarian architect of the Lost Boys’ parasitic underworld: a man shaped by personal betrayal into a controller of children, information, and a hidden underwater domain, whose outer eccentricity masks long-held grudges and ruthless pragmatism.