Bounty Hunting, Murder by Commison

A murder is a sin, a murder in the name of god is holy, murder in the name of a king is patrotic, and murder for pay makes one a hunter. However unlike assassins, some people prefer to get paid and still stand about in the sun rather than skulk in dingey caves and shadows. Enter the Bounty Hunter, professional killers who service with a smile. While town guard may ussually try to put on tough faces, prove to the people that they are in charge, in truth there is ussually just too many problems happening at once to effectively handle at the same time. What is one to do in such a situation? Call on Adventuerers? That could work, but those can easily spiral into whirlwinds of death and blood. No, sometimes someone needs something more than a thug with a stick, they need a professional. Someone who can handle a criminal or adventuer turned bandit with grace, curtesy, dignity, and above all effciency.
Maybe some are more "graceful" than others but the point stands that where an adventuerer is a thug, bounty hunters seek to display a degree of professional atittude to clients. There is overlap between adventuers and bounty hunters, but they are diffrent in their temperment and self proclaimed titles. While adventuerers tend to take up odd jobs, bounty hunters (obviously) only do jobs that require either to locate and retrieve a lost or stolen item, or to find a criminal or a foolish debt dodger and either bring them in alive or kill them on the spot. There are many diffrent types of bounties a hunter can partake in

• Bright Bounties: These reffer to completly legal and accepted bounties, typically posted by local law enforcment or lawful noblility, maybe even a king sometimes. These bounties are some of the most common, and the ones most people know bounty hunters for.
• Dark Bounties: Dark Bounties reffer to bounties not posted by wholly legitamte groups or clients, and typically can be on the more "shady" side of the law. While Bounty Hunting is legal, this only really goes for publicly registerted and acknowledged criminals, a man running away from a gambling debt is, unforunatley, not a hardened criminal. However, someone needs to bring their head back to the client, and so that is where Dark Bounties come.
• Private Bounties: Private Bounties are a more catch all term for bounties posted not by groups but by individuals. So long as the client has paid the fee for "solo posting" and provided proof of means to deliever payment of contract they are allowed to issue marks. While these can also be of dubious legality, more often than note the targets are people who have commited some crime. Typical private bounties are lovers quarrals gone wrong, or poor billy is sure that old man robert actually killed his father. While numerous, the payout ussually stinks, and is seen as more just independent work.
• Black Book Contractrs: Most well established bounty hunter guilds have a book, a very well guarded book, that contains bounties for the most wanted. These bounties aren't given to any smuck though, and are reserved for the most senior and elite hunters a guild could have available. The clients of Black Book bounties are typically lords and even kings, and so they expect the best.

As well as types of bounties, there are generally two types of hunters: Guilded and Freelance. Guilded hunters have joined a guild, who have their own rules, regulations, membership fees, and basic training, but enjoy more resources and higher chances of survival. Instead of just asking for contracts, guilded hunters are assigned a contractor who quite literally gives them bounties they think are good fits for the hunter. Couldn't be any easier than that, granted there is a service fee for the guild and the contractor, but it shaves alot of worry and confusion for the independents. Speaking of, the other type of bounty hunter is the Freelancer. These hunters decide that working for a guild is too much for them, or some insane notion of "personal freedom". Most of these suckers end up dead on their first job, and laws surronding freelance hunters is sketchy at best. However its true that all the money on the bounty is yours to keep, if you make it alive, and if your client doesnt double cross you. In the end, both require a certain mindset for someone to take up the job, mainly a willingess to capture or kill another living, speaking, breathing being because someone promised you rewards for your services. Good money for those types of people for sure, even if the priests and pastors decry most as no better than psychotic greed fueled killers.

Career

Qualifications

Most guilds maintain a semi-high level of qualification. Its actually practice for guilds to instruct hunters that if anyone apporaches them and asks if they can be a hunter...to tell the bastards to piss off. While this may seem bizzare, and it is to some degree, its because anyone who would make a good hunter wont go running home crying from just one mean insult. If you are dead set on being a hunter, you can apply for membership either by yourself, or having a guild member sponsor and vouch for you. Its far more likely to be accepted if one has a friend in the guild or at least a sponsor, but some loners have made it in regardless. Next of course is the fee to join, typically around 10 gold (most farmers make maybe around 57 gold a year not facroting in the insane list of expenses and daily life purchases they have to make), and finally begins the initiation ritual. Some are certinely more difficult than others, but if someone survives, they can expect a pat on the back and a boot to the back to shove them into a crash training course meant to be as beirf but informative as possible. After maybe a few months, out comes a brand new hunter, starry eyed and ready to murder by commison.

Payment & Reimbursement

Payment is typically in the form of coin, but it can be agreeed upon for alternative means of payment such as land grants, rights of loot, precious goods, or other items worth something. Even some tales of noble titles being offered as payment from more desperate clients.

Perception

Purpose

To locate either wanted people or locate stolen property (which someties is also people) and either bring it back to the client or to terminate and provide proof of death.

Operations

Tools

Whatever the hunter can get their hands on, for anything goes in this trade. However, guilded hunters know that the one thing they keep on them above all as their bounty permit. This permit prooves that they are a signed member of a guild, and have full legal juraisdiction to pursue targets lawfully posted and requested by law enforcement. Granted the Dark Contracts can be a bit fuzzy with jurasdiction but if someones working a Dark Contract, its better if they don't get caught in the first place. Freelance bounty hunters also require a permit, written by a offical insurer inside the local guard station, with written acknolwedgment from the guard officer stationed there. There is a small fee for having a permit, but freelancers pay the permit in full, while guilded hunters the fee is facotred in to their fee to enter the guild.

Dangers & Hazards

Most of their targets are criminals, and many try to run away to places considered a bit too hazerdous for polite company. So there is a degree of risk as with any job, though one can suppose most jobs don't require you to kill or injury for a living.

Creed of the Bounty Hunter

Most guilds uphold a creed for ever bounty hunter from the novice to the master to swear by and honor. Serious fines, prison, or death are the result of any who willingly break these creeds. While they can differ from guild to guild, all of them generally include:

1.  People do not have bounties, only Aqquisitons do.
2. Capture by design, kill be necessity.
3. No Hunter shall slay another Hunter.
4. A Hunter must not knowingly interfere with another hunters mark.
5. One captures or kills, never both, and never "killed while captured".
6. A hunter can't refuse aid to another hunter.

Demand

High

Common Misconceptions of Bounty Hunters

• Do Bounty Hunters kill for money?  Yes, but not indiscriminatly
• Are Bounty Hunters Assassins? No, assassins kill for either political or religous reasons, and some aren't even paid for it. While some do accept payment, a hunter does not give a rats ass who the aquisiton is, only that the client has a problem and they have to fix it
• Are Bounty Hunters Murderers? No. Despite fun slang, murderers kill unlawfully, a hunter does not.
• Does the law apply to a Bounty Hunter? Yes, a hunter is expected to work within and fully according to local law
• Are all Bounty Hunters a member of a Guild? No, as some suckers think its better to work freelance. They rarely last long.
• Do Bounty Hunters compete with one another? If they are gilded, no. Unless both parties and the guild can agree to some type of "honor game" competition between guild members is best avoided before things get bloody. If they are freelance however, expect other hunters to try to kill you if you go after a mark. Its alot easier killing an injured but successful hunter than killing the mark themselves.
• Do Bounty Hunters kill Innocent "people"?: Never intentionally, and never without swift and sever punishment on the guilty hunter.
• Is a Bounty Hunter the same as a Sellsword or Mercenary? No, a Sellsword is someone who fights in the name of an army, or expected to contribute in some grand campaign.
• Is a Bounty Hunter an Adventuerer? No, an Adventuer is an amateur who is little better than a wandering bandit. A Bounty Hunter is a professional contract worker.