I guess I should put something here, so I will.

I'm an avid fan of Harry Potter, Star Wars, and other franchises. I especially like deep universes of a sci-fi flair, which is why I chose to make my first story a crossover between Harry Potter and Star Wars - two universes with which I am highly familiar.

Apart from writing fanfiction, I breathe, drink, eat, sleep. And I do some other things which you need not be privy to.

Here's a list of essays on meta-aspects of the universes I write, addressing common concerns/complaints/tropes and coming to what is hopefully a reasonable interpretation that I use when writing.

Why Doesn't Harry Just Steal Credits in the Penumbral-verse?

Money is almost fully computerized, or at least in this universe it is, and just like you can cancel a credit card transaction that you didn't perform, you can also cancel transactions or theft: even though they stole physical manifestations, what we are dealing with here is actually something liquid and therefore something with such checks built in. Day to day cash is still solid, so Harry could go around stealing people's wallets all day, but that's not exactly efficient, and would become suspicious if he's making anywhere near what a bounty hunter would make.

Otherwise the great bounty hunters would just rob rich people all day... and they don't. Whatever a badass team of slicers and bounty hunters cannot do together, Harry cannot - well, he can, but not without the powers that be getting suspicious.

On Educational Theory as Related to Silent and Verbal Casting.

The mantra, for me, is “do things which make sense.” This isn’t just on the surface level - it must hold up to some level of scrutiny.

I believe any sufficiently powerful wizard should be capable of silently casting spells. At the same time, I also believe that such a thing as “training scars” exists. So, since young wizards are schooled in verbal spells for most of their lives, and are only introduced to the idea of silent casting much later, even if they can use silent spells, when there is a choice they will be more likely to enunciate their casting, simply because that is what they have always done.

This is by no means a criticism of the way wizards learn magic: for most wizards, who will never need much silent casting, if at all, it is perfectly adequate. They just need to know it exists. This system has educated witches and wizards enough to contribute to society for a thousand years.

But for the top one percent - you can use math education in [insert country of choice] as an example -, this is horribly constricting. Instead of teaching them “what they need to know,” this model actually stops them from achieving farther. If you will, the quadratic formula is drilled into their brains with little understanding of why it works, and this makes it harder to understand something more advanced down the line, because they’ve been conditioned a certain way. (Something similar happens with the five paragraph essay, memorizing historical facts, and the way evolution is taught in middle school science classes, and it’s universally frustrating for people who want to learn things in more depth.)

In the Penumbral-verse, this translates into Harry often enunciating spells that he learned at Hogwarts, but using nonverbal actions to weave more complicated pieces of magic. Compare this to the theoretical physicist who, in their work, does a bunch of advanced symbolic manipulation, but when presented with a quadratic to solve, will just mindlessly apply the formula they learned twenty years prior. (Not that being able to solve quadratics isn’t useful, but sometimes there’s something deeper or more useful to do, if only you step back and think about the bigger picture.)

This view is also very convenient from an authorial perspective, because it allows more fluidity in how Harry casts spells, while also removing the age-old pseudo-Latin problem, wherein Google Translate is used to find appropriate synonyms of “slash” or “crush,” since any spell not used in canon can simply be packaged into a nonverbal action.

This philosophy will be approximately followed in Penumbral.

Essay: On Bounty Hunter Prices in the Star Wars Universe/Penumbral-verse.

The criminal aspects in any extended universe, especially Star Wars, are either glorified or portrayed as distasteful, and certainly both aspects have been touched upon in canon and the fandom. The most notable characters who frequent the underworld are the smugglers like Han Solo - noble, dashing, brave... and also drugrunners. In a close second are the bounty hunters like Boba and Jango Fett - badass, badass, and more badass. And also not-entirely-government-sponsored assassins/kidnappers/whatever. As if government sponsorship would make that any less sketch. And they do it for money, too!

Then come the bounty hunters like Greedo. They’re just evil, but the laughable sort of evil because Han shot first and killed him. Then there are the slavers. Nobody questions their innate depravity and inner evil - everyone respects the Sith for their art and cunning, but everyone hates Jabba and the rest of the slaver scum. They just pretend to like him for the money.

And thus we get to the topic of this short essay. Money. How much are bounty hunters paid?

A solution to this question is never satisfactorily given in the Star Wars universe. Of course, monetary amounts introduce all sorts of problems like consistency and the dollar/credit rate and all that - this question, along with the pound/galleon rate, is often the most vexing question in the fandom when we want to take about stealing sums of money or buying fancy starships. Or, when we’re talking to Friendly Goblins.

Ideally, a solution to this question will satisfy at least three conditions.

First, the money should be limited. We can’t have bounty hunters running around with enough money to buy a whole system - only large cartels have that power. Nor should there be a way to get that much money.

Second, it must also account for all of the costs associated with being a bounty hunter - weapons, armor, ships, technology, etc. This lifestyle should be sustainable, and not just for the best. Of course, the best will find it easier to survive and even prosper, but even they were once rookies. It has to be a viable occupation for someone with sufficient combat experience and/or stealth, tracking, or slicing experience.

Finally, it must be fluid. Bounty hunters - at least on the higher end of quality - have a lot of autonomy, so shouldn’t be limited to Craiglist-like postings on the dark HoloNet. Ideally, the better/more reputable a bounty hunter is, the more negotiating power he/she has. There is a nuanced dynamic between bounty hunter and employer.

Here is a rough explanation of what I believe happens, or at least will approximately happen in the Penumbral-verse. There are general postings to the HoloNet, which are mostly small-sum jobs that any low-rate bounty hunter can take. There are different tiers, so that there is some granularity in difficulty. At this level, how much security or how difficult, straight-up, a task will be is directly correlated with its cost. These amounts are relatively non-negotiable, and go up from a hundred to a thousand credits before stopping. Most of these will by necessity be localized: hunters will only take jobs closer to where they are, to avoid jumping around too much and also because fuel is not ridiculously cheap, though it is cheaper than one might expect due to relative abundance during peacetime.

(I imagine that a factory-worker will make around ten credits a day; considering that military-grade weapons and armor can be acquired for a hundred, it is not unreasonable to assume that food is much cheaper. Though the wider availability of armaments due to more arms smuggling and general production will depress the price, the general availability of food due to the existence of thousands of farming worlds will do the same, since food can be transported in bulk. I also assume that the credit has lower denominations that common folk use more often, and that the amounts used in games, etc. are more representative of the elites - Jedi, successful bounty hunters, and smugglers.)

I equate a civilian-class ship to ten thousand credits and a bounty-hunter level ship to a hundred thousand credits. I see Slave I as a hundred thousand base cost and up to another hundred thousand just for its unique augmentations.

A million credits, therefore, is something that a small cartel should have, and a billion credits should be owned by very few individuals/organizations. A trillion credits is even fewer, and closer to the order of magnitude of the net worth of the Hutt Cartel. I’ll keep that figure relatively ambiguous; nobody really knows anyways, except for Jabba and the Hutts. It’s probably also closer to the amount of revenue/expenditures that the Republic has.

The interesting thing is that professional bounty hunters - the ones that are good, but not ridiculously famous/feared - are paid more, but as much as one might expect. That is because there are just the right amount of them for there to be not only more fluidity between employer and hunter but also enough competition that prices get depressed. I envisage bidding wars organized by employers - no legitimately good hunter will go under a few thousand, but employers can usually get it down lower.

As a result, assassinations and the like - one-hit jobs which either go by quickly or end up as failures - often have lower than expected prices, because it’s a good deal in terms of credits per hour, as long as you make it out alive. And the good bounty hunters are risk-taking individuals to begin with.

Longer missions will be determined by negotiation involving credits per hour rates and the like. Also, more tricky things like live kidnappings will often require expertise, which factors in. On the upper end of the spectrum, jobs have multiple aspects which interact in complex ways to determine a price - usually based on the combined intuitions of the hunter and employer. At this level the hunter and employer usually are closer, seeing as employers spending a large amount of credits on a hunter generally prefer longer relationships, where they can almost come to depend on the hunter.

The most expensive bounty ever placed on a person’s head - dead or alive - thus was only a million credits.

The most expensive bounty - alive only -, by contrast, was a hundred million credits, but the Rodian died in the process and thus nobody claimed the bounty.

This, perhaps, explains why in the Penumbral-verse Harry is not ridiculously rich - he hasn’t quite broken into the market yet, having only been around for almost two years, spending a decent bit following extracurricular pursuits. He isn’t the most feared bounty hunter yet - that title is shared by Cad Bane and Jango Fett.

Similar analyses can be performed on different markets. Businesses have many associated organizational and legal costs, while underground criminal rackets and the like require organizational and loyalty costs. These are also hard to grow to critical mass, the point where it actually makes an impact and has sway with the big players. This is why Harry did not pursue any of these options. The only real feasible thing to do, other than become a bounty hunter, is to take over some government - not too small, not too large - with the Imperius, but that remains fairly localized and pins Harry in one place. Or, Harry could join a government organization willing to fund him - that is, the Jedi Order. However, that fails for many other reasons: it is restrictive, highly selective, would not accept an adult, even a highly talented one, is rigid in its moral code, and it requires many years to gain status, trust, and eventually autonomy. In the end, joining the Jedi Order will put one at the bidding of the Republic’s interests. Hence the start to Penumbral and the figures which are casually tossed around.