Let's Talk About Star Wars. This Episode: Bounty Hunting

[The Noble Scoundrel]

"The bounty hunters assembled on the bridge of the Executor in The Empire Strikes Back emanated palpable menace, even in the presence of Darth Vader. Imperial officers on the bridge voiced their disdain, but their eyes betrayed their wariness: beneath the ragged appearances of the hunters for hire lurked a deadly edge. These professionals were all clearly heavily armed, well-trained and ruthless; sparking the countless imaginations and offering tantalizing hints about the deadly nature of the Galactic Empire's seedy underbelly."​

​

---Star Wars, Edge of the Empire: No Disintegrations​

​

Introduction​

​

Hello, everyone. My name is Ryan and, today, I want to talk to you and help you better understand what it means to be a bounty hunter in Star Wars (especially how it pertains to SWRP Chaos).

In the underworld, bounties are common. They could be as simple as making that schutta, Dana, pay for slicing up my face or as complex as a son who secretly wants his father assassinated, so he sends him to the aquarium to see these cool fish, but the plot twist is that the aquarium is actually Manaan and the fish are all assassins and the son makes a show of saving his father so that he's accepted back into the will---you get the idea.

Bounty hunters are (typically) lonely. Few people seek the companionship of someone who may decide to collect on a bounty made against them at a later date. Any fellow professional, no matter how friendly, is and shall always be a rival first and foremost unless you're dumb enough to be outsmarted and kept from making a living. With the role of bounty hunting comes a degree of detachment: anyone could be your next target, so why risk making friends to begin with?

Day in and day out, a bounty hunter may have to interact with and observe any level of society...but, mostly the dregs of it. Dividing the half truths and blatant lies from the facts has to be one of your core proficiencies if you want to be successful. You must never take anything at face value (like my man, Afro Blackurai, whom never takes anyone seriously. ) if you want to catch your prey, for the bounty will always be desperate to evade capture and will resort to extreme measures when their back is against the wall.

Despite the grim reputation attributed to them, bounty hunters are integral to the maintenance of law and order amidst the vast entirety of the galaxy proper. Just like Commander Shephard's quest to take down Saren, most, if not all, governments and organizations do not have the resources, time, expertise and/or capability to send forces after a particular criminal who's decided to take the next shuttle to the other side of the galaxy. But there is someone who does have all of that and is ready to hoof it to that distant sector: you, the bounty hunter.

"Professional Courtesy"​

​

Bounty hunters who routinely take bounties from government entities tend to treat their peers more fairly. After all, a bounty hunter known for collateral damage and for killing off competition will quickly find it harder to tackle bigger, well paying jobs that require more teamwork and coordination from others. Yet, the saying still goes: "Dead men tell no tales". Despite an employer or bounty hunter organization's desire to forbid certain methods, a lack of witnesses gives a bounty hunter the ability to "adjust" the rules without jeopardizing his livelihood.

In the days of the Empire, bounty hunters legitimized their work by purchasing an Imperial Peace-Keeping Certificate. 850 years past that, in the present day setting of Chaos, there is no such catch-all certificate. Therefore, the act of ensuring legitimacy lies dependent on the approval of individual planetary governments and galactic major factions.

Self-policing is a very loose, yet very important element in Chaos' galaxy. In some corners of the galaxy, you'll find bounty hunter organizations as powerful and rigid as the Continental Hotel in John Wick, where violating a single rule of the Continental results in your death. In some remote places, you'll find it's an absolute free-for-all. The rest of the galaxy varies between those two extremes. For an institutionalized bounty hunter, the do's and don'ts of the practice are memorized. For those independent operators, their list of do's and don'ts might change on a whim based on their own directives and the environment they find themselves in. As they once said in John Wick Chapter 2, "The rules are what separate us from the animals."

Specializations​

(containing, yet not limited to the following)​

Assassins

The most classic of bounty hunters. Whether they're aiming down sniper sights or closing in for the kill, these physically oriented dealers of death embody the fulfillment of the omen, "There Will Be Blood".

Gadgeteers

Living on the cutting edge of technology, the gadgeteer always has the right tool for the job. Micro rocket launchers, hack modules and rocket boots are a fashionable must in the lives of the technologically minded bounty hunter. Although typically more expensive and more reliant on modern tech, it is a most difficult task to defeat a gadgeteer in his element.

Skip Tracer

This type of bounty hunter prefers to keep blasters holstered and settle things with words. Operating somewhere along the lines of being "Diplomats of the Underworld", Skip Tracers prefer to use their powers of negotiation, knowledge of the underworld and deduction to settle their problems, but know when, where and how to get a shot in.

Survivalists

The survivalist is the hardiest of bounty hunters. They can survive where few others dare to go and are a required breed to capture the strong-willed who take refuge in the wilds to evade capture. They can outlast an assassin's stamina, survive in far more environments than a gadgeteer with far less material and words only alert your prey when you're hunting.

Backgrounds​

​

In It For The Money

Bounty hunters are, at their core, exceedingly mercenary. While many bounty hunters may claim to adhere to some higher order or serve a greater good, at the end of the day, they all serve one master: money. Those individuals in the business who have embraced their love of credits may seem crass and avaricious to others, but they are, perhaps, the most honest about their trade.

Lawbringer

Law and order is not typically the first thing that comes to mind when considering the bounty hunting trade. Most galactic citizens, when they consider bounty hunters at all, imagine freewheeling loose cannons who skirt the edge of the law; useful only in desperate situations to capture difficult fugitives. While this is largely the case, there are some among the profession for whom the rule of law is sacrosanct. These hunters consider themselves extensions of legitimate law enforcement or, in some cases, agents of justice in an unjust galaxy.

Thrill of the Hunt

The hunting of sentient beings is said by some to be the most thrilling and treacherous challenge in the galaxy. Though some beasts are more powerful, faster or more savage than any sentient creature, few kinds of prey are more cunning. For most bounty hunters, the pursuit of targets from world to world and sector to sector is simply a means to an end. For some, however, the hunt is an end unto itself and the payout for collecting the bounty is simply an added bonus.

Playing a Bounty Hunter on SWRP Chaos​

​

A bounty hunter's life is not all action. You find work that you're willing to take or that you have to take, you do lots of investigation that can range from boring to intriguing, you face setbacks and obstacles from both the prey and the morally ambiguous people surrounding you with their own myriad of personal agendas and then you might just catch up to your mark. You lose things along the way and, if one of those things isn't your own life, you learn a lot along the way.

Take Jacen and Jaina Solo's childhood friend, Zekk, for instance. After regretting his betrayal of Jacen and Jaina and leaving the Dark Side, he decides to find work as a bounty hunter. Most of what I can remember reading about his bounty hunting adventures involved his investigation work and, of course, his occasional interaction with Boba Fett. It wasn't action packed, yet it was still just as engaging to read as a battle.

On SWRP, you must balance the OOC desires of both the bounty hunter(s) and the mark. The truth is that, if a writer does not want their character being caught at all, they will not role play with bounty hunters. If a writer wants to have their character taken by bounty hunters, then work together to make a cool, interesting story. Take it slow and prioritize quality character building and story making over a quick bag and tag.

Here comes the hotbed caveat: the competitive middle ground. This is the typical line of thought where the targeted character's writer will respond like, "I will give you a chance to get me, but I will fight you and nothing will be guaranteed". This is the mode where one or both sides wish to prove their proficiency and/or have the opponent prove them self before deciding the victor. Despite being common, this mutual competitive attitude can lead to frustration and head shaking disappointment if personal expectations or wish fulfillment, on either side, are broken.

There's no magic post of advice that can solve every situation, so here's some general lines of advice.

Take things slow and think things through. Do not be overpowered. Be willing to show your character's weakness during your writing. Be willing to fail. Understand that your Player Character opponent likely wants to win just the same as you do. The more thoughtful ground work that you lay to find your mark, the more the other writer will respect you. When you look back on your time here on the board, it will be the respect you cultivated between other writers and the cool stories that you made with them that will stick out far more prominently in your memories than how many times you won.


Edit: I finished making a lot of spell check and grammar corrections just now.