Page 18 - Hunter - The Vigil

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THE CANDLE LIT
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ily now. And they knock her down and steal the child. She

buys a rifle and a pair of bloodhounds. Two nights later, she
sets off after her stolen boy.
Sure, some can remain ignorant. But for others, it’s like
a hangnail or a raw tooth: they can’t leave it alone, pick-
ing at it no matter the pain. They rise to the challenge and
seek to protect those who are unaware or unable to protect
themselves. Or delve deeper, hoping to glean information,
wealth, experience or power from sources others are not
brave enough to tap. They may be driven to exterminate the
source of their hatred or protect those they love, or to re-
deem the souls (or what passes for them) of those who have
been tainted by diabolic powers beyond their ken. They may
be spurred by bravery, curiosity, greed, lust, hope or anger.
They seek, in one way or another, to turn the tables on the
monsters of the world.
Armed with weapons or wits, using whatever means
is at their avail, they make the choice to cross the bound-
aries between the false light of ignorance and the dark
depths of knowledge. They choose to learn, to seek, to
explore and to hunt.
They choose the Vigil.

The Candle, Lit
Hunters slip, step or leap into the Vigil. For each hunt-
er, the Vigil begins with a single and unique moment, when
he realizes not only the truth, but also what he must do in
response to it.
For some it is a conscious choice to make a stand against
evil. A man realizes that something has marked his neighbor-
hood as its territory, stalking his neighbors and his family. The
police do nothing, and he turns to his local pawnshop’s rifl e
case to protect those he knows and loves from something no
one else will stand up against. He lays his money on the coun-
ter, hefts the rifle in his hands, and the hunt has begun. He may

not know that anyone else in the world fights the same battle
he does, but he has just joined a brotherhood that spans the
globe and stretches back to the beginnings of humanity.
For others, a heartbeat’s worth of reaction time is all it
takes for the Vigil to begin. Something reaches for her from
the depths of an alley, and rather than allow her purse (and
possibly her life) to be taken, she fi ghts back with tooth
and nail and pepper spray. And, even after she discovers
that the creature she is fi ghting has eyes that blaze like fi re
and clicking chelicerae where his mouth should be, she
keeps on fi ghting. When this attacker is vanquished, she
fi nds that instead of slinking back to her apartment, shak-
ing in fear, she’s fl ushed with adrenalin and read to look in
the shadows of each alley she passes for the next depraved
soul foolish enough to think someone walking alone is an
easy target or a fast meal.
One hunter stumbles upon the truth in blood-spattered
tomes encrypted in blasphemous languages, another in a

tangle of tunnels populated by shadowy figures who gain
power from a mysterious stone. Both are pulled into the
enigma, tempted into seeking out secrets that humanity was
not meant to know. They may continue their search purely
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