Bounty Hunter

Choose 4 from the List:

* Athletics
* Brawl
* Perception
* Piloting (Planetary)
* Piloting (Space)
* Ranged (Heavy)
* Streetwise
* Vigilance

Based on the 4 chosen, you gain one rank in them without spending experience and receive a discount when purchasing ranks in any of these skills.

**A Bounty Hunter's Role**

The name says it all: this is a hunter who seeks to collect bounties for his/her work. Bounty Hunters tend to be feared, reviled, looked down upon—and in great demand throughout the galaxy. They are expert trackers, brutal combatants, and effective investigators. They tend to prefer skulduggery, stealth, and traps over frontal assaults, but the most respected Bounty Hunters will do whatever it takes to catch their quarries an collect their fees.

Bounty Hunters generally fall within three categories:

* Imperial Bounty Hunters
* Guild Bounty Hunters
* Independents

Imperial Bounty Hunters are essentially on permanent contract to the Imperial Security Bureau (or a similar arm of Imperial law), and they never take assignments from corporations, smaller governments, or individuals. They are highly-trusted members of the extended law-enforcement community of the Empire, usually ex-military personnel that prefer a less-regimented (if possibly dangerous) way to serve.

Those Bounty Hunters who join a guild enjoy many excellent benefits: room and board wherever the guild has a presence, exceptional training and access to high-end equipment as needed for specific assignments, and a steady stream of jobs given to them by the guild brokers acting on their behalf. The downside to all of this is the fact that Guild Bounty Hunters have little-to-no say in what jobs they get, and failure to accept an assignment is grounds for immediate termination of a guild contract.

The greatest freedom comes with being an Independent Bounty Hunter; it also comes with the greatest challenges and dangers. Although Independents often take Imperial contracts, which are usually the most readily available and lucrative, they enjoy knowing they are not exactly a port of the Empire. Not being a part of a guild also serves an Independent Bounty Hunter's sensibilities; he can pick and choose his contracts as he likes, and has only himself to credit for success or failure.

**Player Characters are almost certainly going to be either Guild or Independent Hunters.** However, regardless of what type of Bounty Hunter is played, *the character will need to have a current and legitimate Imperial Peace-Keeping Certificate (IPKC)*. This is the specific license that all Bounty Hunters are required to have on file with the Empire in order to operate as professionals. Without such documentation and status, a Bounty Hunter is little more than a kidnapper and, possibly, a murderer. *Any character with the Bounty Hunter career automatically gains an IPKC—unless the player would prefer his character not start with one.* Although this may seem like an odd choice, it could make for a particularly compelling story or character background.

**Bounty Hunter Specializations**

* Assassin—Instrument of Policy
* Gadgeteer—Connoisseur of Tech
* Survivalist—Master of the Wild

**Bounty Hunter Stories**

The average, sane person does not become a Bounty Hunter? Each Bounty Hunter has his own reason to embark on his chosen career, and these reasons may have rich story potential. Here are just a few ideas:

* **Revenge:** Many Bounty Hunters get into the business as a means to achieving revenge against someone (or a group) that has otherwise escaped justice. Their initial motives are very personal, usually due to the loss of something or someone precious to them. Once justice is achieved, however, a person who has trained and practiced such skills and talents will often discover this is now his path.
* **Disgrace:** Utter failure or a terrible tragedy might well drive him to seek a career that takes him away from his former life. Tracking criminals across the galaxy, he can build a completely different life and reputation for. himself, hopefully leaving his past behind him. However, he may not be so lucky.
* **Honor:** Some people find that the law they serve is being trod upon by the very people for whom they work. Others watch corruption and tyranny crush everyone around them, and they come to decide they've had enough. Such a Bounty Hunter may have been a law enforcement agent, or perhaps just someone who decided enough was enough. He's decided to defend justice and the law in his own way, perhaps even against those he once served.
* **Aggression:** There are those in the galaxy who just need to hit people, or do something both active and dangerous. Marching in ranks and following orders doesn't suit them,but beating someone into unconsciousness before handing them over for a paycheck certainly does. Such a Hunter may have washed out of military service, or decided to run from assault charges (or worse) and this seemed like a good fallback plan.
* **Legacy:** Perhaps his father—and his father's father—was a Bounty Hunter, and he's chosen to follow the family tradition. It could be that he is from a culture that reveres those who track transgressors, or that an honored friend wanted to pass his skills along to someone. Whatever the source, such a Bounty Hunter tends to view the traditions of the trade with great reverence and respect.

**The Bounty Hunter's Creed**

Although Bounty Hunters are often perceived as honorless scum, this is generally not true. Most Bounty Hunters simply follow a very different set of rules from the average citizen, known as the Bounty Hunter's Creed. In broad strokes, its tenets include:

* **People Don't Have Bounties; Only Acquisitions Have Bounties:** Anyone with a bounty on his head isn't a person anymore; he's an "acquisition."
* **Capture by Design; Kill by Necessity!** A Bounty Hunter should at least try to bring his target in alive.
* **No Hunter Shall Slay Another Hunter:** This rule, and the next, may be "creatively interpreted," and sometimes the cause of death ca be hard to prove.
* **No Hunter Shall Interfere With Another's Hunt:** In general, Hunters leave one another alone.
* **In the Hunt, One Capture or Kills; Never Both:** Once an acquisition has been captured alive, the Bounty Hunter is obligated to keep him that way until the bounty is claimed.
* **No Hunter Shall Refuse Aid to Another Hunter:** Bounty Hunters take care of their own. But there's nothing wrong with negotiating a fee...