Worldbuilding Wednesday: Bounty Hunters (Patreon)

While there are certainly state police forces in several pockets of Flora, there is still a general sense of lawlessness across the world, where grievances are settled primarily via the bounty system.

 The Bounty Office was established roughly 1,500 years before Poppy begins by Handsome George, a tortoise who is currently living out his retirement from hunting by forcing students to punch trees and counting down the days until he kills himself.

 While there are many types of bounties that can be placed, such as a call for resources, or for testimony, when people refer to the Bounty Office, they're referring to criminal bounty hunters and the culture that's built up around them. As criminal bounty hunters are publicly ranked based on the number and notoriety of their claims, the industry has developed a sports-like fanbase over time. After Handsome George himself, the most infamous Bounty Hunter in the organization's history was one of his proteges, Steel Heeled Ofélia. A short-tailed opossum, Ofélia had one eye and an uncanny knack for surviving extreme circumstances, and made a name for herself by systematically exterminating the Jackdaw Family and other crime organizations that plagued her hometown. 

To enact a criminal bounty, a client must provide the bounty itself, which is determined by the nature of the job, and a burden of proof to be verified by a company investigator. Depending on the severity of the dispute, this investigation can be streamlined or waived altogether. While the vast majority of bounties placed are for private disputes, the Bounty Hunting office also works closely with local governments to provide mercenary manpower, and extremely high and "Dead Or Alive" bounties can only be placed with the blessing of the state. 

Furthermore, there are specialist division hunters for ongoing jobs directly funded by the Canine Empire. In the comic, Valente has a specialist license to hunt dragons, meaning he's automatically forwarded job details in the event of a dragon attack, but there are also ongoing jobs that don't require specialist licenses, such as the long-tailed opossum bounty still in effect in most regions, which can be claimed by any type of hunter. There is a lot of controversy over the modern use of bounty hunting as a means of opossum "pest control," particularly in the Fenneclands, where they're considered citizens.

Next month's Worldbuilding Wednesday, I'm going to do some character spotlights. $10 patrons, please leave a comment or send me a message for your favorite minor character, and I'll talk more in-depth about them.