Mercenary, Mercenarier, Mercenariest.

I was reading the thread about Mercenaries, and some questions struck me.
Being a generally slow and lazy person, I have not managed to write anything
until now, but here it is:

1. Those darn repatriation bonds.
  The olde book 'Mercenary' talked about 'Repatriation Bonds'. This was made up
to be the saviour of every merc that was stranded on a (hostile?) world because
the employing government lost the war and ceased to exist. It was defined as
'money held in escrew by a third party' (probably Hortalez or Zirunkarish) that
was supposed to be spent upon mid-passage to some system of the merc's choise
(defined beforehand, supposedly).
  What I realized when my players decided to employ two squads of merc's was
that the amount of Cr's needed to even transport those two squads one jump,
was far larger than the total salary and bonus of the entire unit! And several
jumps was totally out of the question.
  There is not many countries in desperate need of a merc unit that can afford
to pay several times 8kCr per person in the merc unit. The fact that the money
is't lost weighs light when the country itself might  not be around to make use
of the refunded money. They would probably be better off buying weapons for the
money instead of letting them mould in a locked account at Hortalez et Cie's :-)

2. Who exacly can hire a merc unit?
  It is hard to imagine that the Imperium let's every Tom, Dick, and Norris hire
a band of armed soldiers for some mission that certainly will require that laws
is to be broken. If 'Union of Vranx' wants to invade it's neighbour on the
balcanized planet, the 'Uurk Federation', to capture their resources, they'll
probably going to break a whole lot of local laws in the 'Federation', yet, this
seems to be a perfectly ok use of mercs.
  What is the real differece between this and if Wild Bill Hicock wants to
knock over a bank and hires 4 commandos to help him.
  "Oh no, officer, We are just the Dalton brothers, and we're a Merc unit!
Look here: here is our mercenary ticket about OK Corral, and here is our
repatriation bonds."
(Reservations for lack of knowledge about the history of the west :-)

  One possible answer to this is that the Imperium don't bother with groundling
conflicts unless they break the 'Imperial Rules of War' that talks about
'Major economic damage to the region'and 'Excessive extraplanetary involvement'.

  By that line of reasoning, travelling to Regina to knock over a bank would be
out, (At least you wouldn't get away with calling it a merc ticket :-) on the
grounds of 'Extraplanetary involvement'. (Remember? *travel* to Regina :-)
Likewise would knocking over the Regina Gold Depository, (Because of 'Major
economic damage to the region'). But knocking over a local branch on your
home-planet *would* be ok by this reasoning, and since that usually don't
occur every two weeks on all planets, this line of reasoning is wrong.

  Second possible answer: Only governments and similar organizations is allowed
to hire mercs: Probably wrong for several reasons, foremost that several
MegaCorps have employed mercs repeatedly. It might lead to some amusing
scenarios, though.
  "Hi! We are the Splutifaxian Air Force and we're robbing this bank!"
  "Splutifax? Never heard of it! When was it founded?"
  "About seven minutes ago!"

  Third possible answer: Only governments and companies and similar
organizations is allowed to hire merc's:
  "Hi! We're from Harry's bar and grill and we're robbing..."
  Ok then, probably not.

  Fourth possible answer: Only if you have friends in high places (Hi Brzk!)
or if your opponent lacks such friends, are you allowed to hire mercs,
or rather:
  If you don't have those friends and hire some merc's to knock over the Bank
of Regina, you are going to get a early morning visit from your
14 (not-so-friendly) neighbourhood plasma-gun-armed marines.


  For some reason, I'd put my money on Answer #4, How about you, folks?

- -bertil-
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