Page 22 - Hunter - The Vigil

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coven possessed by the devil. One Thule researcher
created an entire thesis that claims the Aegis was
so anxious to get its hands on Bathory’s magic relic
(which he claims may never even have existed)
that they were willing to imprison, torture and
eventually kill another hunter.
Journals from within the Ascending Ones point
to a perhaps familiar tale: in the mid-1700s, a cell of
Ascending Ones traveled to south-central France on
the trail of what locals called “the Beast of Gevau-
dan,” a reported giant wolf-monster that had savagely
mauled and killed dozens. The hunter cell hoped to
harvest the creature’s teeth, blood, saliva and bones
to fulfill the creation of a number of its more illicit

Elixirs. The group spent most of two years tracking
the creature, attempting to stay one step ahead of
others who had been assigned by the king of France
to try to kill the beast (which continued its rampage
despite the cell’s best efforts to hunt it down). In
1765, the king’s chief wolf hunter, François Antoine,
brought down a grey wolf of great size that many be-
lieved to be the Beast. The Ascending Ones bribed
Antoine for samples from the slain creature’s body,
but the materials proved ineffective, leading them to
believe that perhaps the great hunter had killed the
wrong animal. Less than three months later, the crea-
ture killed two more children, proving the Ascending
Ones correct; the king’s man had missed or faked his
intended quarry. Hunts continued, but none managed
to bring down the Beast. In 1767, a devoutly religious
local farmer set out to do what hundreds before him
had failed to do. Jean Chastel went to a location the
Beast was known to frequent, bearing nothing but
his Bible and a rifle loaded with bullets made from

a silver icon of the Virgin Mary. He began reading
scripture aloud, and when the Beast approached, wit-

nesses say it waited patiently for him to finish the
text before attacking, at which time Chastel shot it
dead. Unlike earlier “successes,” this time the Beast’s
predations ceased and the body was shipped to the
king as a trophy, much to the denied Ascending
Ones’ frustration. The story suggests that Chastel
was later recruited by the Malleus Malefi carum.
History books claim that the mysterious serial
killer known as Jack the Ripper held the streets of
London hostage for a number of years, killing more
than a dozen English prostitutes in the late 1880s.
Jack was never apprehended by the police and, ac-
cording to popular knowledge, simply stopped his
rampage of slaughter without ever paying the price
for his deeds. Members of the Ashwood Abbey know
differently, however. In August and September of
1888, five women of loose moral stature were killed

on the streets of London and the surrounding neigh-
borhood of Whitechapel. When “Saucy Jack” (as the
killer sometimes referred to himself in the smug letters
he posted to the police) made it clear that murder was
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