Bounty hunter Jason Scarn with his signature eye patch and cigar.

“Why is it a bounty hunter can capture this traitor in two weeks, when our Enforcers have made excuses for two years? Give the man his bounty. Maybe we should consider hiring him to command the Arbites.”—Fabius Nemetorius, Great Elector of Morkai

 * * *

Internal Report
Grant Elector’s  Eyes Only
6 448 746.M41

Your Lordship,

Today I report that the Adeptus Arbites has taken into custody the rebel mastermind behind the audacious train robbery in the capital of Golgenna nearly three years ago.

After your blistering critique of our lack of progress in finding this individual, we took your advice and sent inquiries to the bounty hunter known as Jason Scarn, a rather loathsome adventurer who, I must admit, has been somewhat useful to Imperial authorities in the region.

Click on image for larger view.

Although the reward money he demanded was outrageous, the Administratum finally agreed to approve such payment, and Scarn arrived two weeks ago.

The man spent a single afternoon reviewing all our investigative reports and remarked: “I’ll be back for my payment.” He disappeared soon after, and there was no communications with him for 10 days—until last night when he appeared with the mutant traitor.

Suspicious with the ease of his success, Scarn was interrogated intensely—and his smug and impertinent responses required me to take over the questioning. I was afraid our original investigating officer was going to get out of his chair and attack the bounty hunter out of sheer rage.

If nothing else, Scarn is a cool one. He eventually pulled out a vid-recorder and announced he’d recorded the entire capture for our benefit.

What it showed was the mutant leader advancing along a darkened gantry in one of the deepest levels of the Underhive. He was accompanied by a bodyguard of mutant rebels.

A warband of mutant rebels in the underhive of Golgenna on the planet of Morkai. This pict was taken only moments before bounty hunter Jason Scarn launched his ambush.

Scarn ambushed the group. The cultists found themselves in a crossfire of a number of obviously hired mercenaries, and the mutant leader’s retreat was cut off by yet more mercenaries.

The cultists attempted to simply bull their way to safety, surrounding their leader and allowing themselves to be his flesh armor. Half the cultist party was killed, and it appeared for a moment that the mutant leader would escape.

At that point, a sniper—hiding in the piping about 15 meters above the fighting—got a clean shot of the target. The man’s leg was brutally hit (and subsequently had to be amputated), but the leader’s fall forced the cultists to slow down and drag their leader.

That allowed Scarn’s mercenaries to take them down.

The pict-vid made it impossible for the Administratum to quibble about whether the bounty hunter had earned his bounty. Payment was made, and Scarn immediately made his way to the spaceport and paid a hefty fee to get priority assignment on an outgoing vessel.

He was prescient. After word spread of the rebel leader’s capture, there were half dozen terrorist bombings across the city—and a 1,000-credit bounty put on Scarn—that made clear the outrage of the rebels.

It seems Scarn is as good as his reputation suggests.

+ + END REPORT + +

TheGM: This was a small skirmish scenario I ran at my local Games Workshop store. I created a vertical battlefield using GW Sector Mechanicus terrain and played a simple skirmish scenario.

As expected, the cultists lost a few causalities from the initial Scarn attack, but there was plenty of terrain for the cultists to use to cover their escape.

In the end, the sniper got lucky and hit the mutant leader. A kill would have been fine, but the wound was enough to stop him from getting off the battlefield.

I’m happy that Scarn got his bounty—and more so to showcase this interesting character’s latest adventure.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our hobby adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.