Slang: Bounty Hunters
Not surprisingly, professional hunters maintain a sense of remoteness from the average Imperial citizen -- one can never tell just who might become tomorrow's meal ticket! One way in which this purposeful distancing is maintained is through the hunter's adoption of a professional patois that can be used to communicate with other hunters without fear their conversations can be understood by the average "civilian." The following are known examples of professional hunter slang, although it should be noted that regional and planetary variations often apply.
Acquisition: Any individual who is the subject of a bounty.
Blood Money: Any form of fee paid to Imperial authorities deducted from the value of a bounty. Typically, a term applied to the cost of various permit fees charged by Imperial administrators.
Bloodsuckers: Collectors of Imperial permit fees.
Enforcer: A bounty hunter's personal expeditor.
Gotcha: Any determent placed on a bounty that could conceivably limit the revenues that may be collected from the fulfillment of that contract.
Grubs: Derogatory term for average Imperial citizens.
Hundred Club: Those acquisitions currently worth a 100,000 or more credits.
Hunt: Any tracking and retrieval operation conducted against a bounty acquisition.
Hunter: The traditional term used by bounty hunters to refer to any other holder of an IPKC (Imperial Peace-Keeping Certificate). In specific, the term is often used to refer to a bounty hunter who has made at least one successful capture.
Master Hunter: Any hunter who has successfully completed a minimum of 100 hunts.
Most Wanted: Those individuals who represent the most serious threat to the peace and the stability of the New Order. These acquisitions also generally have the highest bounties on them.
Pay Check: Slang term for a warrant that needs be "cashed" by Imperial officials off-world.
Petty Cash: Synonym for pin-money.
Pin-Money: Any small-time criminal who, despite widespread criminal activities, has only a relatively small bounty value posted against him or her, which discourages most professional hunters from wasting their time.
Pull Leather: To support a fellow hunter. Traditionally from the phrase "to pull leather," meaning to be willing to take up arms in the defense of another.
Sluice: Fees paid to a hunter's expeditor.
Squeaks: Information obtained by the overt use of intimidation.
Squeaker: An informant who yields valuable information as a direct result of intimidation.
Two-timer: An acquisition with two separate bounties presently posted against him or her.
Source[edit]
This first appeared in Galaxy Guide 10: Bounty Hunters by Rick D. Stuart, published by West End Games in 1993.
