Page 191 - Hunter - The Vigil

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C CHAPTER THREE: HUNTER ORGANIZATIONS
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The Banality Worm is one such creature, crawled through
a rift in the wall between this world and another. As near as
anyone can tell, the realm this pale, greasy little creature came
from is the very antithesis of this one, a realm of pure, absolute
nothing. And in this world, it hates the supernatural even more
than the most fanatic of hunters. Hatred of magic seems to be
embedded into its very being; sorceries of all sorts tend to dis-
solve when directed at the Worm. It didn’t take long to realize
that if you stitch the Banality Worm into someone’s chest cav-
ity, magic directed at the host would unravel, too.
A Banality Worm is implanted in an extremely risky pro-
cedure directly under the host’s heart. Once implanted, the
creature nestles up to the warm, pulsating organ and suckles
on it, feeding off the host’s blood supply. Every so often, it
curls around the heart and squeezes.
Benefi t: The host of a Banality Worm gains an extraordi-
nary resistance to supernatural effects. Any time a supernatu-
ral effect targets him (including the Relic, Benediction and
Castigation Endowments), the effect’s originator subtracts
the host’s Resolve from her dice pool. If the power is already
resisted by Resolve, she subtracts double the host’s Resolve.
Special: Something about having a cold, alien parasite
from a realm of pure nihilism cozied up to his heart skews the
host’s moral perceptions a bit. Whenever he makes a degen-
eration roll, the host rolls one less die.
Hand of Glory (•••••)
Limb transplant technology has come a long way in the
last 40 years. It used to be the best you could hope for was a
plastic model, like a mannequin’s hand. Nowadays, provided
you’re willing to go on a cocktail of immunosuppressants for the
rest of your life, they can actually hack the hand off a cadaver
and attach it to you almost as good as new. The Cheiron Group
has been at the forefront of limb-replacement research for two
decades, and with the aid of Thaumatechnology had recorded
successes fi ve years before mainstream medical technology.
Then the boys in the back room got hold of a peculiar
little relic a field team brought back from a raid on a demon-

worshiping cult in southern France: a pickled human hand,
severed at the wrist, with each finger a tiny candle. When the

candle was lit, anyone who saw its light was transfixed, unable

to move or speak. In one of those serendipitous moments that
make the world go round, the scientists of the Cheiron Group
saw a way to kill two birds with one proverbial stone.

A Hand of Glory must be affixed to the stump of a hu-
man being’s arm. Occult tradition dictates that it must be a left
hand specifically, but Cheiron Group surgeons have had equal

success in transplanting either hand. What is important is that
the hand come from a hanged man or woman and be at least
partially pickled in a solution of bizarre alchemical reagents.
By all rights, it should be impossible to graft such thoroughly

necrotized flesh onto a living being without massive infection
and death, but something in the nature of the Thaumatechnol-
ogy allows the grafted limb to function normally. It’s always a
few degrees cooler than the rest of the body, and the skin is
perpetually wrinkled as though it has soaked in a bath, but it is
otherwise indistinguishable from a normal hand.
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