Bounties, Licenses & Guild Careers

The contract layer runs on two file types — Bounty and Guild License — and one rule: rank gates what a member may sign. Build contracts and careers on the ladder; don't build parallel systems.

The Bounty type

A bounty is a posted contract: target, terms, proof, price, and the Guild's assessment of the danger.

• Target references a character, creature, or boss file when one exists. When the Guild has no file on a target, leave the reference empty and carry the description in the posting text — the Guild only knows what reports and bail records say. Stale descriptions are the craft of the bounty, not a bug.
• Terms are the four capture shapes: alive (jail-wing booking, non-lethal loadout, kill-proof pays nothing), dead-or-alive, proof-of-death (trophy, tag, or verified remains), retrieval. Live-recovery rates beat kill rates on most postings — price mercy on purpose.
• Threat band uses the same Street → Cosmic ladder as creatures, bosses, and delves; it is what the desk priced the contract against, not what the target is secretly capable of.
• Last seen is deliberately stale — the posting is a report, not a tracker.
• captureNotes carries the handling rules and heat implications; guildReputation is the promotion feed.

The Guild License type

One license per ranked character: rank, reputation, completed contracts, certifications, standing. It is the mechanical home for career progression — update it after every closed contract. Certifications are the license's permissions made explicit (Alive-Capture Authority, Delve Clearance, Bounty Posting Rights); grant them at the rank thresholds so a sheet reads as a career, not a number.

The ladder

Nine rungs — Copper, Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Mithril, Orichalcum, Omega — and the rankRequired enum on Quests, Bounties, and Delves is exactly those nine values. Keep it that way: the enum is shared across three types, and a tenth rung means editing all three schemas plus every file that names its rank.

Promotion runs on two counters: contracts closed at the current rank and reputation. Publish the thresholds (the Guild posts its ladder in-world); keep discipline — probation, suspension, revocation — as standing, not demotion, so reputation and rank stay two clean axes.

Adapting the career to another world

The mechanics are setting-free: one ladder, rank-gated contracts, two-counter promotion, below-rank ride-along. A fantasy world runs the same system as an Explorers' Charter with different rank names — but keep nine rungs so the shared enum holds, and keep the desks (Central, bounty, and the rest) because the desk split is what separates posting from turn-in, which is what separates bounty hunting from murder with paperwork.

What not to store

Don't duplicate the ladder as per-character fields, don't model rank as stats, don't add computed pay multipliers to the license — the desk prices contracts, and rankRequired plus the published ladder already carry the gating. The license is a credential, not a calculator.

Ties into the rest

Bounties on characters hit the Grudge and Law Enforcement systems; alive captures run through the jail wing and Capture rules; delve contracts feed the Deep Delve System; reputation feeds faction standing like any other faction's does. The Guild is a faction that sells access to danger — wire it into the living world the same way as every other faction.