Page 102 - Hunter - The Vigil

The odds, they’re not good. Oh, they should be—humanity’s herd has
all the numbers it needs to take the war to the monsters. Mortal beings could
swarm them, casting light into the shadows, illuminating the darkest cor-

ners with a blanket of cleansing fire. If the herd were to stampede, it
would crush all the creatures beneath its thundering feet.
Sadly, it doesn’t work like that. Humans remain ignorant. Some
do it by choice (it’s the same ignorance that informs a blindness to war,
poverty, and all the pain of the world). Others are kept in the dark by
the dominant monsters, those creatures representing a distinct minority
with control over the blind, deaf and dumb majority.
Hunters are different. They can no longer abide the ignorance, even
if they’d like to. The scales have fallen from their eyes, and the truth stands
revealed. They can’t just turn it off. They can’t pretend not to see what’s
happening to the neighbor girl or that poor homeless dude with the one
atrophied leg. Hunters cannot be blind, not to the pain, not to the power.
But standing alone against the night, reaching into the dark to grab
hold of justice or revenge, that’s a sure way to lose a hand. So, hunters
gather. They support one another in disparate cells, but even that’s not

enough. Five guys holding back the encroaching shades are five guys
who hopefully put some money down on a casket and a good estate

lawyer. But what if those five guys find five others? Men and women com-

mitted to the cause, determined against all sanity to uphold the Vigil?
Soon, they form compacts, smaller sects of hunters with decentralized di-
rection but pooled resources. Particularly old compacts change, shift, often grow.
They fade deeper into the fog, becoming true conspiracies—from beyond the
prying eyes of both human and monster they work at a ceaseless and often
deranged Vigil that has played out over centuries, if not millennia.
Below, you’ll find several of the compacts and conspiracies that

conquer, connive and compete within the World of Darkness.
The list of second-tier compacts are:
Ashwood Abbey, pp. 102-105
Long Night, pp. 106-109
Loyalists of Thule, pp. 110-113
Network Zero, pp. 114-117
Null Mysteriis, pp. 118-121
The Union, pp. 122-125
The list of third-tier conspiracies are:
Aegis Kai Doru, pp. 126-129
Ascending Ones, pp. 130-133
Cheiron Group, pp. 134-137
Lucifuge, pp. 138-141
Malleus Malefi carum, pp. 143-145
Task Force: VALKYRIE, pp. 146-149
In addition, you’ll find information on the strange (and by many defi nitions

supernatural) Endowments offered to those hunters of the various third-tier con-
spiracies. These Endowments are, for many, both blessing and curse. Yes, they If only there were evil
If only there were evil
often provide a critical and often life-saving edge to those hunters that possess people somewhere insidiously
people somewhere insidiously
them, but many of the Endowments come with steep and irrevocable costs. Are
committing evil deeds, and
committing evil deeds, and
you willing to lose an eye for such power? Will you channel the Devil’s blood
it were necessary only to
within? Or feel divine shame cast upon you by God’s great and judging eye? it were necessary only to
Will you assume an enervating madness after using a rusted Roman gladius, or separate them from the rest
separate them from the rest
willingly inject a toxic cocktail into your femoral artery? At what point does of us and destroy them. But
of us and destroy them. But
a hunter feel he’s gone too far, that he’s no longer amongst the humans he
the line dividing good and
protects? If a hunter’s truly willing to sacrifi ce, he can endeavor to engage in a the line dividing good and
evil cuts through the heart
little research and development for new Endowments… evil cuts through the heart
Finally, you’ll find some guidelines for creating your own hunter of every human being.

of every human being.
organizations. The organizations listed in this chapter are by no means — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
exhaustive—you may want to only use one or two in your game, or may
“Gulag Archipelago”
instead prefer to come up with your own mysterious compacts and con- “Gulag Archipelago”
spiracies, using the ones in this book as nothing more than examples.