World Concept: "Bounty Hunters"

Transcribed from Vincent's lecture to the Courier Division.

[...]As you all know, I was once a Bounty Hunter. Back in the '90s, it was an honorable job, and it paid well. If you knew how to shoot - good. If you had a Relic - better. I had both. I was twenty-one when I first started, and at the time, Bounty Hunters were paid not to harm innocent people - but to bring death to those deemed deserving. Rapists, murderers, you name it. If anyone had a bounty on their head, there was always a good reason. Some drunk bastard using his Relic to keep his wife and kids in line, someone abducting people to sell them as sex slaves...we only got these types. Bounty Hunters acted as the judge and executioner on site. It was somewhat questionable, sometimes, but it was nowhere near today.

The skill of a Bounty Hunter lies in his ability to negate magic. Since the original Bounty Hunters were created to fight against ill-purposed Relic Users, it was inevitable some "techniques" were going to be developed to fare against them. Among the most famous ones, we have the ability to rip a Magical Relic from its User. A technique like that is messy by nature, so, in the hands of an inexperienced Hunter, it's bound to end in death. Bounty Hunters train with melee weapons to be as silent and clean as possible. It was not a job that required noise. Quite the opposite. Paper was hard to come by to those who could not use basic Hunter techniques without killing, so this narrowed the market down to a select few. This takes us to today's "Bounty Hunters".

Make no mistake - the original Hunters were professionals skilled in Dark Magic. Fought not only for coin - but for a sense of justice. Be it good or bad, they stood for something. Today's Hunters are cheap mercenaries. No restraint, no respect. They bring death for money, and occasionally, for fun. They are the sole reason our Couriers walk around armed and are trained to run across rooftops. When we devised the blockers, they didn't like it. Not one bit. Contracts started to vanish and Relic Users could walk among the people again. What did they do? They started targetting us. Many died, and some were lucky to live as the message. That's why the Courier Course is so unforgiving. I am not training you to deliver drugs. I am training you to survive. Out there, if they bring violence, you bring death.[...]