- This is a player faction. For the affiliated NPC faction, see Bounty Hunters
| Bounty Hunters Guild
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| Origin
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Bounty Hunters
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| Affiliation
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Bounty Hunters
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| Alignment
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Lawful
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| Profile
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| Date of founding
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Unknown A.S.
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| Founder(s)
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| Current leader(s)
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C. 'Cracker' Jack (Dashiell)
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| Base of operations
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Sheffield Station
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| Primary role
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| Paid security services, hunting and eliminating bountied criminals
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The Bounty Hunters Guild is the main extra governmental provider of armed services, whether in hunting criminals, escorting vulnerable transports or providing private security forces. It has good relations with all House governments besides Kusari and Gallia, and operates in all borderworld regions.
Guild History
The Bounty Hunters Guild as an organisation began on Planet Houston, the exact date is unknown due to the fact that when founded, it was no more than a handful of bounty hunters who sought to band together to take on bigger gangs and split the profits. From these humble beginnings, the Guild slowly grew, eventually becoming a major part of Houston's law enforcement system. The greatest jump, however, came with the advent of high speed trade lanes, which vastly increased the flow of interplanetary, and interstellar travel. This though gave a few enterprising pirate gangs the opportunity to make immense profits very easily, which in turn meant the Guild now turned to space to seek out greater profits.
The first Guild spacecraft were little more than a single wing of retired Liberty Navy fighters, but it soon became clear that hunting pirates in space was infinitely more profitable than hunting them planet-side, as Guild profits sky-rocketed. This enabled the Guild to expand at a furious pace, soon having ships stationed on every station and space-port in Liberty, bringing in vast amounts of money. Of course this could not last forever, and pirates began to wise up to Guild tactics, learning to avoid ambushes and escape from the lanes before they had a chance of being caught. The Guild began losing more and more ships, and more and more pirates were slipping through their traps, leading to a fall in profits, and the feeling throughout the Guild that they should look to expanding into the other houses, all of which were facing their own crime problems.
The Guild quickly decided that Bretonia, which was undergoing a period of unrest, would be the best place to set up shop in, and before long, Guild ships were to be found throughout Bretonia, yet again turning a huge profit, capitalising on unprepared pirates who were unfamiliar with the tactics the Guild employed. Subsequent attempts to expand into Rheinland and Kusari were met with mixed results, as both houses were much more suspicious of outsiders than Bretonia had been, especially Kusari. However, with the influx of credits from the new Bretonian bounty markets, the Guild was able to expand yet again, moving wings into the deep Omegas, as well as purchasing large parts of both Sheffield and Deshima stations, in order to control localised operations.
Eventually, more and more of the distant systems were explored and charted, right out into newly discovered Omicron systems, and the further from House space the Guild went, the more pirates there seemed to be, especially Outcast and Corsair pirates. As both groups, but particularly the Corsairs, began increased attacks on house shipping, larger and larger bounties began accumulating on their heads, which the Guild jumped at the chance of claiming. The Guild soon found out, at a high price, that Corsair ships and pilots were vastly superior to their own, and to anything they had ever encountered before. As such, a new elite wing was created, the Guild Core, tasked with hunting down the most valuable targets.
During the events known as the 'Nomad War', the Guild played a rather minor part, as it did not wish to get involved in inter-House conflicts, instead, it focused on increasing it's presence in the Edge Worlds, culminating in the establishment of Guild operations within the Omega 56 system. Since then, the Guild has continued to expand, and with the recent changes within the Core, the Guild has increased it's efforts in hunting down pirates, to fund Core operations.
Recent Leadership Changes
After some time, it became obvious that the Guild Council could not respond fast enough to changes in diplomacy.
The seperate house Guildmasters were spread out and could not meet up as often as needed. They were also unable to keep their colleagues up to date
due to the quick changes that have occured lately in Sirius. Another issue was that Guildmasters were unable to come to agreement when it came to a clash in interests.
A different approach was needed. This became painfully obvious when the Bretonian Guildmaster Stoat disappeared. It left the Bretonian branch of the guild without a leader and it soon started to fal apart.
The Kusari Guildmaster had also disappeared and something needed to be done. Someone had to take the reigns and unite the branches and lead all Bounty Hunter operations from a central point.
An unknown hunter was put forward. He was a low profile, old school hunter from the Strontium Dogs. Being of Corsair decent, some Guild members were anxious
to put him in such a high position. But he was given the job none the less. He never asked for it, which was part of the reason why other people doubted whether he could really be a spy of sorts.
Plus he was well respected among the senior members of the Guild. C. 'Cracker' Jack took charge of all house operations as Guildmaster of the Houses and based out of Sheffield Station, in a small, dusty, old office where he had worked with
Raya Remnant and Silas Stix back in the days.
Only answering to Max DeVirgo, C. Jack leads the Guild in a laid back fashion. This is probably because he doesn't like to do paperwork and his diplomatic skills are quite crude.
He is quite the money grabber and doesn't like it when clients don't pay up. More than once, clients, including high ranking executives from trading corporations, have been threatened by Jack and his trusty baseball bat to pay up.
Being an ex Corsair, he believes in the principle of ´pacta sunt servanda´ and won´t stand for people not paying their due.
His secretary, Laura Lovelace, does most of the paperwork behind the scenes.
Ranks
Th Bounty Hunters Guild is somewhat unique among factions in Sirius in that it does not possess a rank structure. Besides the Guildmaster, everyone is treated as equal, and with many members having dubious backgrounds, this often works effectively at quelling unrest and dissent.
On the other hand, it can lead to come disorganisation, but in general, given the number of ex-criminals, deserters and general undesirables that help make up Guild ranks, organisation would be difficult to maintain and spark more conflict than it would resolve.
Diplomacy
