Mercenaries are expensive to hire and maintain in organised groups. Despots and Dictators will hire Mercenaries because they do not want a large well trained indiginous force capable of toppling them on their doorstep. So they will augment well trained para-military police and Elite army units with compliments of mercenaries. This of course is a justifiable expense and hence many mercenaries will find employment with despots/dictators.

Corperations are also large employers hiring mercenaries to guard installations on sensitive or unstable worlds. They may also hire mercenaries to train puppet governments troops, guard precious transports and key personal. Modern day examples can be found on the African Ivory coast where multi -national companies hire mercenaries and train and arm local police to protect their mineral and oil interests, this type of investment also keeps governments in power and allows corperations a free hand.

To a lesser extent rebels and revolutionaries will also employ mercenaries. This type of hiring will usually be on a small scale and only to provide leadership and training to recruits. The opposite is also true, rebels may hire themselves out as mercenaries to raise money for their cause. An good basis to introduce characters to interesting people and give the game some deapth. (Modern day example: Tamul Tigers hired to invade the secheles Islands by a disgruntaled business man. Invasion was succesful until the intervention of India).

It is worth noting that many of the larger mercenary organisations have strong links with certain world governments. This allows the sale of weapons by governments to friendly worlds with the personal on hand to provide training without the risk of involvement in the local politics. It also provides lucrative contracts to ex-forces personal with government links and hence keeps influential military personal occupied after they retire. These close links allow mercenary organisations to be used to destabilise rivals governments.

Bare in mind that mercenaries are rarely used to gain all out victory on the battle field but rather to bring the opposition to the negioating table where the employer will have a stronger hand to play.

DogStar Free Companies

Bounty hunters rarely act alone and will more often than not rely on a Bounty hunting agency for backup or information. Bounty Hunting Organisations licence bounty hunters to operate on many different worlds by issueing umbrella licences to members, who are vetted. They can only operate with the blessing of worlds who agree to allow cross frontier persuit of criminals. This assumes that one world will not grant political asylm to anothers criminals.

Although codes of practice are necessary for the operation of these agencies that does not preclude them from turning a blind eye to snatch operations and activities that transgress the laws of worlds immediatly outside their legal zone of operation.

Free lance bounty hunters are common and frequently used by the organisations to augment their licenced agents for particularly lucrative contracts. The organisations main function however is to provide information on wanted individuals to Hunters and pay out the bounty once the criminal has been captured/persuaded to stop breathing. Typically the fee the hunter recieves will be 50 percent or less of the government payment. Government use the organisation to avoid sanctioning murder on other worlds or unintention massacres by psychopaths working as hunters. ( its happened before and PCs are usually responsible ).

Horoon
Omega Agency

Assasians are an evil bunch and contrary to popular mythology they are not nice people. Few of the organisations in this area are dedicated soley to assination. Instead these organisation also cover kidknapping and extortion. At the most basic are of course the basic assasain groups but steadily these increase in size and scope. Organisation will be able to provide travel papers, false id and accurate information to their operatives. At the highest level some organisations do not actaully have any direct involvement with murder but rather hire outsiders that they guide using their agents and spies to the target. The assasian in these cases are usually completely ignorant as to the real identity of his/her employer.

If players come up against these organisations they cannot expect a streight fight, rather they can expect to face nerve toxins, taylored viri, car bombs, poisen gas, contact poisens, snipers or worse. Anyway they strike the victem even if he/she survives will not see who attacked them, if they even knew they were attacked.

The Classic Scarface scenario of dozens of rushing heavily armed drug fiends is not typically the way to efficiently get rid of somebody and belong to the thug rather than the assasian. That siad theres nothing for a player like a gorefest or going out in a blaze of glory ( if having all your organs shredded can be seen as "Glorious" ).

For the purposes of game play the assasian may be from a phycopathic organisation hell bent on their targets death. Teams of Zealots or imply inept assasians can provide a dramatic session of play with characters on the back heal. The professional will use a booby trap bomb, poisen or some other form of reeliable killing to dispose of a target, so their use against players should be restricted. If you do decide to use them in you campaign, then the massage to the PCs must be "Get out of town!" and they must be allowed time, discression is the better part of valour after all.

Defazrok Priesthood