The Bounty System | Vesselborn Codex

Overview

The bounty system operates through the same relay infrastructure as the Solarn Contractor Registry, meaning any bounty posted anywhere on the planet is visible from any relay-connected board or personal transmitter. For the broader legal framework within which the bounty system operates, see Geban Law.

It does not share the registry's qualification structure. The contractor registry has tiers, visibility restrictions, and requirement gates that prevent unqualified operators from accepting dangerous contracts. The bounty system has none of this. Anyone can view any bounty. Anyone can accept any bounty. There is no evaluation, no minimum tier, no screening of any kind. A Tier 2 Master Contractor and a civilian farmer who has never held a weapon see the same board and have the same legal authority to pursue the same target.

Posting Requirements

A bounty can be posted by any entity with access to the relay system: clearing legal systems, territorial governments, capitals, manufactories, and in the case of syndicate ledgers, criminal organizations operating on private relays. The only requirement for posting is a detailed physical description and at least one clear photograph of the offender. On a planet of seventy-one billion people, visual confirmation is the only mechanism that prevents mistaken captures. Without the photograph, the bounty cannot be posted. This single requirement is the closest thing the system has to a safeguard.

Who Takes Bounties

Bounty hunters are not a separate profession with their own classification. Most bounty work is done by contractors who are between active contracts and choose to pursue bounties to maintain income or fill gaps between assignments. But the system does not require a person to be a registered contractor. Civilians who have never entered the contractor registry can accept and pursue bounties with the same legal authority as a Tier 3 Elite.

Some people are professional bounty hunters who have made it their primary occupation but might be Tier 8 or Tier 9 on the contractor registry because they never entered that type of work. They may be extremely effective at tracking and capturing people while having no formal combat record in the registry at all. The contractor registry is a reflection of professional contracting history. The bounty system has no equivalent reflection for the people who use it, which means there is no way to know whether the person pursuing a bounty has done it a thousand times or is attempting it for the first time.

Risk Designations

Bounties carry risk designations based on the severity of the original offense and the assessed danger of pursuing the target. These designations do not restrict who can accept the bounty. They exist as information only.

Low

Minor offenses where the target is not considered physically dangerous. Property crimes, minor fraud, failure to appear before a clearing's legal authority. The target is unlikely to resist with lethal force. Most Low bounties are resolved within days by local operators who know the area.

Standard

Offenses where the target may resist or has fled the original jurisdiction. Assault, theft of significant value, smuggling, repeated violations. The target may be armed and may have relocated to a different continent. Standard bounties make up the majority of active postings on any given board.

High

Serious offenses involving violence, organized crime, or targets who have demonstrated the ability to evade capture across multiple jurisdictions over extended periods. Syndicate operators, experienced criminals, former contractors who have gone rogue. Pursuing a High bounty without combat experience and regional knowledge is how most unqualified bounty hunters die.

Extreme

Reserved for targets whose capture has been attempted multiple times by qualified operators and failed. The target has killed or evaded experienced hunters. The payout reflects the accumulated difficulty. Many Extreme bounties have been active for years or decades. The original offense may have been serious or it may have been minor, but the duration of evasion and the body count of failed attempts have elevated the risk designation far beyond what the original crime would suggest.

Absolute

The highest designation. Reserved for targets considered existential threats to regional stability. War criminals from the Warlord Eras. Individuals wanted by multiple governments and syndicates simultaneously. Targets who have evaded planetary-scale search efforts for decades. Some Absolute bounties are worth up to five million Auren, an amount that most people on the planet cannot meaningfully comprehend. These bounties are posted not because the system expects a bounty hunter to succeed but because every other method of capture has already failed.

Offense Classification

The following represents the general baseline for how offenses are classified when a bounty is initially posted. The risk designation at posting reflects the severity of the original crime. Escalation occurs when time, evasion, and failed capture attempts push the designation upward regardless of what the original offense was.

Low

Petty theft, livestock theft, minor property damage, trespassing, failure to appear before a clearing's legal authority, minor fraud, contract disputes that escalated to physical confrontation without serious injury. These offenses are capped and do not escalate significantly over time.

Standard

Assault, theft of significant value, smuggling, substance trafficking in regions where it is criminal, unauthorized weapons possession, repeated minor violations that accumulated into a pattern, desertion from labor or service contracts without violence. The majority of active postings on any board sit at this level.

High

Armed robbery, serious assault with lasting injury, organized crime involvement, trafficking of persons at the regional level, arson, relay sabotage, piracy without confirmed kills, syndicate operations, repeated violent offenses across jurisdictions. At this level the target is considered physically dangerous and local authorities globally will cooperate with hunters regardless of whether they recognize the original offense.

Extreme

Murder of multiple individuals, mass trafficking, destruction of major relay infrastructure, piracy with confirmed kills, syndicate leadership, military desertion that led others to abandon their posts, vigilantism at a scale that disrupts planetary systems. The Red Raptor's charge sheet lands here: no kills, but the volume and planetary scale of the offenses, combined with the impossibility of identifying or capturing the operators, place it at this level.

Absolute

War crimes from the Warlord Eras, mass murder, possession or deployment of weapons capable of mass destruction, trafficking at continental scale, and targets who have resisted planetary-scale search efforts for decades. Ash Kota's syndicate bounty sits here: 750,000 Auren for his body, reflecting the cumulative damage he has done to every major inland criminal operation over years of sustained action. The ceiling of what the system can assign.

What Causes Escalation

A bounty does not stay at its original designation forever if the target remains uncaptured. Escalation is driven by a combination of factors, and the more of these factors that accumulate, the faster the designation climbs.

Duration

The longer a target evades, the higher the designation climbs. A Standard bounty active for a decade with no successful capture will eventually reach High regardless of the original offense. Duration alone does not push a Low bounty past its cap, but it accelerates escalation at every level above Low.

Failed Attempts

Every failed capture attempt raises the designation. The target learns from each attempt. Hunters who fail and survive report what happened, which informs the next attempt but also confirms the target's capability. Hunters who fail and do not survive confirm something worse.

Hunter Casualties

A target who has killed hunters during pursuit escalates faster than one who simply evades. A body count among professional bounty hunters is the clearest signal that the target has crossed from someone who runs to someone who fights, and the designation adjusts to reflect the danger to whoever accepts the bounty next.

Jurisdictional Flight

A target who crosses into a new continent or moves between multiple jurisdictions escalates because the logistical complexity of pursuit increases with every border crossed. A person wanted on the Geba continent who relocates to Inland Thazvaar is now in a region where conventional pursuit is difficult and the local power structures may not cooperate or may actively protect them.

Multiple Posting Entities

When a target is wanted by more than one government, or by both a government and a syndicate, the designation escalates because the scope of the threat has expanded beyond a single jurisdiction's problem. Ash Kota carrying an Empire bounty and a syndicate bounty simultaneously is the clearest example. The two bounties exist independently, were posted for different reasons, and pay different amounts, but their coexistence signals that the target is operating at a level that concerns multiple power structures at once.

Collateral Damage

A target whose evasion or resistance causes damage to civilian infrastructure, relay systems, or bystanders escalates because the threat is no longer limited to the individual offense. A smuggler who destroys a relay outpost during pursuit has added relay sabotage to a smuggling charge, and the designation reflects the combined weight.

Bounty payouts increase over time when a target is not captured, but the rate of increase depends on the severity of the original offense. Minor offenses are capped. A bounty posted for livestock theft or petty fraud may increase slightly over the years but it will never run away from the crime that created it. The system is designed to prevent a forty-year-old property crime from outpacing a recent murder bounty. Serious offenses, particularly those classified at High or above, escalate without limit for as long as the target remains uncaptured. The longer a dangerous person evades capture, the more the system rewards whoever can bring them in. At the Extreme and Absolute levels, payouts can reach amounts that are disconnected from anything the original crime would suggest, reflecting not the severity of what the target did but the accumulated cost of failing to catch them.

Escalation Example

Warlord Era War Criminal, Decades Active

Original offense: mass atrocities during the Warlord Eras, a designation that constitutes one of the most extreme accusations a person can face on this planet. The bounty was already substantial when posted. After decades of failed capture attempts, multiple dead hunters, and jurisdictional complications across several continents, the payout has escalated into the millions of Auren. At the Absolute level, some of these bounties are worth up to five million Auren, an amount that most people on the planet cannot meaningfully comprehend.

Capture Rules by Risk Level

At Low and Standard designations, hunters are encouraged to bring targets back alive, and the payout for a live return is significantly higher than for a dead one. The system at these levels is designed to prioritize retrieval over elimination because the offenses involved do not warrant death and the posting jurisdictions generally want the person returned for proceedings rather than removed permanently. Most professional bounty hunters working at these levels build their reputation on live captures because the varens are better and the work is sustainable.

At High and above, the bounty becomes dead or alive as a literal standard. The payout is the same regardless of the target's condition upon return unless the posting entity has specifically designated the bounty as alive-only, which occurs when the target's crimes were severe enough that the jurisdiction demands a public trial, when the target possesses information that cannot be recovered from a body, or when the posting entity needs the target for purposes not stated on the bounty. Alive-only bounties at these levels pay significantly more than the standard dead-or-alive version, and the payout is forfeited entirely if the target is returned dead.

Once a bounty reaches the High designation, a practical shift occurs in how local authorities across the planet respond to hunters operating in their jurisdiction. Regardless of whether the local clearing recognizes the original offense as a crime, authorities will generally allow the hunter to take the target so long as there is no collateral damage and none of the local clearing's own laws are broken in the process. This is not codified anywhere. It is a pragmatic understanding that a person carrying a High or above designation is dangerous enough that no clearing wants them present any longer than necessary, regardless of whether the specific thing they did would be considered criminal locally. The jurisdiction problem that makes Low and Standard bounties so complicated largely disappears at the higher risk levels because the people involved are dangerous enough that cooperation becomes the path of least resistance for everyone.

The Wanted Ledger

The active ledger at any given time is extremely diverse. The range of people wanted on this planet spans from petty thieves who stole from a farmstead clearing and fled to the next territory, to individuals whose actions during the Warlord Eras constitute one of the most extreme accusations a person can face on Geba. Airship thieves, financial fraudsters, smugglers, poachers, substance traffickers, deserters, vigilantes, syndicate operators, and war criminals all occupy the same system, visible on the same boards, accessible to the same unfiltered pool of hunters.

Some individuals carry multiple bounties at different values in different regions for different offenses. Some are wanted by governments and syndicates simultaneously at payouts that tell entirely different stories about what each entity actually wants.

Absolute Designation: Dual Bounty

Ash Kota

Assault-Class Engineered warlord operating in Inland Thazvaar. The Empire lists 5,000 Auren for his live return. It formally demands his recovery but exerts no visible effort to enforce the order, and it is alleged the Empire has known the location of his base for decades without intervention. The bounty is small enough to confirm what most people already suspect: the Empire does not actually want him back. The syndicates list a separate bounty of 750,000 Auren for his body. The contrast tells the entire story. Ash Kota liberates trafficked laborers, destroys supply caches, and disables syndicate-controlled relay infrastructure, directly reducing the income, mobility, and leverage of every major inland group. The syndicates want him dead. The Empire does not care enough to collect him. No one with the capability to reach him has sufficient motivation from both sides to try.

Extreme Designation: Planetary Vigilante

The Red Raptor

Wanted in every major city on the planet simultaneously. The charge sheet includes destruction of property, disruption of manufactory operations, possession of weapons of mass destruction, possession of experimental weapon systems, impersonation of enforcement personnel, destruction of illegal stockpiles without reporting them, vigilantism, and judgment of individuals before legal proceedings. Zero confirmed kills. The bounty is complicated by the fact that multiple operators of different body types use the same identity, meaning the bounty technically applies to several individuals none of whom have been identified. The Unbound want the Raptor captured for disrupting their operations while publicly celebrating the Raptor as the ultimate expression of their own theology.

High Designation: Trafficking Network

Kayen'Shetan Insan

Operates trafficking networks that move captives across continents. Wanted by multiple clearing governments and actively hunted by Ash Kota's operatives. The bounty has been active long enough and across enough jurisdictions that it is approaching the threshold where manufactories will absorb it into the contractor registry as a funded contract.

Low Designation: Jurisdictional Escape

Unnamed Poacher

Wanted in Yuvaar for poaching, a major crime tied to the Saodeh harmony code. Relocated to Ngorrhal where the same activity is legal and functions as an export industry. The bounty remains active on the board. Any hunter who pursues it in Ngorrhal is attempting to capture someone who is not committing a crime in the jurisdiction they are standing in. The bounty is capped and has not escalated because the original offense is classified as minor outside of Yuvaar.

Syndicate Ledgers

The syndicate ledgers are separate from the public bounty system and operate on private relays. They are more complex and more dangerous than anything on the public boards. The Jerhit Syndicate, the Teytan, and other criminal organizations post bounties on warlord strongmen, pirates, rival operators, and individuals who have caused damage significant enough that the syndicate itself could not handle the problem internally. If a syndicate posts a bounty on someone, it means the syndicate's own resources, which include contractors, operatives, and in some cases entire military structures, were not enough to capture or eliminate the target. That alone communicates the danger more clearly than any risk designation ever could.

The Jurisdiction Problem

Every clearing on Geba governs itself and there is no universal legal code. Most regions base their laws on what the Empire had in place before the Era of Fracture, meaning laws on murder, self-defense, and smuggling between the Geba continent and Jeyrha are broadly similar. The divergence after the Warlord Eras is extreme in some areas, and this is where the system fails.

A person wanted for a crime in one jurisdiction can walk into a clearing that does not recognize the offense, and the bounty hunter attempting to capture them is now using force against someone who is legally innocent where they are standing. The hunter becomes the criminal. The target has not escaped justice. They have walked into a place where what they did is not a crime.

Legal Divergence: Substance Use

Geba Continent and Jeyrha

Laws on violence and smuggling are broadly similar between these two continents, but the laws on substance use are completely different. One population regularly and publicly uses substances that the other prosecutes as a serious offense. A person wanted for substance distribution on the Geba continent can relocate to Jeyrha and operate openly.

Legal Divergence: Justifiable Revenge

Inland Thazvaar White Zones

In the white zones of Inland Thazvaar, crimes of justifiable revenge are not considered crimes. If there is proof that the act was retaliatory, it is dismissed. On most other continents, the same act is classified as murder regardless of provocation. A person who killed in retaliation and is wanted for murder on the Geba continent is a free citizen in the Inland white zones.

Legal Divergence: Poaching

Yuvaar, Geba, Kela, and Ngorrhal

In Yuvaar, poaching is a major crime tied to the Saodeh harmony code and the identity of the entire continent. On the Geba continent it is frowned upon but not aggressively prosecuted. In Kela and Ngorrhal it is normal and functions as an export industry. A person wanted for poaching in Yuvaar can relocate to Ngorrhal and operate legally in the same profession that made them a criminal.

Legal Divergence: Financial Fraud

Geba and Coastal Thazvaar

Financial fraud is a serious crime on the Geba continent and Coastal Thazvaar with severe consequences. In other regions the financial systems are too informal to produce a framework for prosecuting it, meaning the offense may not even be identified as distinct. In Berinu the wage gap is extreme with some workers earning almost nothing for sustained labor, while in Jeyrha this kind of disparity is considered structurally impossible because the economic systems do not allow it to develop.

Return and Punishment

There is no universal court system. When a target is returned, they face whatever legal system exists in the jurisdiction that posted the bounty. A major capital like Karesh has formal proceedings, legal representation, and structured sentencing. A small clearing in a grey zone may have a single authority figure who determines the outcome immediately upon return. The punishment for the same crime can range from incarceration for a very long time, to an extreme financial penalty, to immediate execution, to forced labor, to outcomes that no other jurisdiction would recognize as legal, depending entirely on where the bounty originated and who is making the decision when the target arrives.

Migration to the Contractor Registry

High-profile Extreme threats and nearly all Absolute threats eventually migrate from the bounty system to the Solarn Contractor Registry. The reason is straightforward. When a bounty has been active long enough at that level, the target has killed or evaded every unqualified person who attempted to collect it, and the bounty system's complete lack of qualification gates means unqualified people keep attempting it and keep dying. At a certain point, the target is no longer just a wanted individual. They are a regional stability threat, disrupting operations, damaging infrastructure, killing operators, and demonstrating through continued freedom that neither clearing governments nor the bounty system can handle them.

When a target reaches that threshold, manufactories and in some cases syndicates absorb the bounty into their contract system. It becomes a formal contract posted on the Solarn registry with all the tier restrictions, visibility gates, and requirement structures that the bounty system lacks. The target goes from being pursued by anyone with access to a relay board to being pursued by contractors at the appropriate tier with verified combat records, regional knowledge, and institutional backing. The bounty system proved it could not handle the target. The registry takes over because the people inside it can.

This is the point where the two systems intersect. The bounty system is open, unregulated, and available to anyone. The contractor registry is gated, classified, and restricted by capability. When a bounty escalates far enough that the open system becomes a liability rather than a solution, the target graduates into the closed system where the people assigned to find them are selected because they have already demonstrated they can survive the work. The payout at this level is funded by the manufactory or syndicate that absorbed the contract, and it often exceeds the original bounty because the entity posting it has its own operational reasons for wanting the target removed that go beyond whatever the original crime was.

The Result

The bounty system functions not because it is well designed but because the planet has no alternative that works across jurisdictions. It is open to anyone regardless of capability, pays roughly the same for a dead target as a live one except in specific cases, does not account for the legal divergence between the jurisdiction that posted the bounty and the jurisdiction where the target is found, and automatically escalates payouts over time until the reward for a decades-old property crime exceeds the reward for a recent killing. People die pursuing bounties they were never qualified to take. People are killed during capture for crimes that did not warrant lethal force. Bounty hunters become criminals in jurisdictions that do not recognize the offense they are enforcing. Professional bounty hunters who have done this work for decades carry no formal record of their capability. The system continues because the alternative is no system at all, and on a planet of seventy-one billion people governing themselves across eleven continents, no system at all is what existed before the boards went up.

Registry Crossover

High-profile Extreme threats and nearly all Absolute threats eventually leave the bounty system entirely and enter the Solarn Contractor Registry as formal contracts. The reason is practical. At these levels, the bounty system's open-access design becomes a liability. Unqualified hunters continue accepting the bounty and dying, which adds to the target's reputation and makes future capture attempts harder. The target learns from each failed attempt. The body count of dead hunters becomes its own deterrent. The bounty board, which has no mechanism for restricting who can accept, continues sending people into a situation that has already killed professionals.

When a target reaches this threshold, manufactories and in some cases syndicates recognize that the individual represents a large enough threat to their operations, infrastructure, or regional stability that elimination or capture becomes a business priority. The bounty is effectively absorbed into the contractor registry as a funded contract with tier restrictions, visibility gates, and qualification requirements. The same target that any civilian could pursue on the bounty board is now visible only to Tier 4 and above on the registry, where Tactician-Class Overseers coordinate operations, Assault-Class Elites are deployed for direct action, and the full resources of a manufactory's logistics and intelligence infrastructure support the operation.

Syndicates do the same through their own channels, primarily through Brena Propulsion Designs, which serves as the Jerhit Syndicate's point of entry into the Solarn system. The targets that reach this level are the ones the syndicates already tried to handle internally and failed, which is why they appear on the syndicate ledger in the first place. When even the syndicate's own resources are insufficient, the target enters the registry through Brena and becomes a funded contract with the same professional infrastructure behind it that any other high-tier manufactory contract would receive.

The bounty system identifies the threat. The contractor registry handles it. The two systems were never designed to work together, but at the highest levels of danger, the gap between them closes because the alternative is continuing to send unqualified people to die against someone who has already proven that unqualified people cannot catch them.