Page 29 - Hunter - The Vigil

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C CHAPTER ONE: SHADOWS CAST BY FIRELIGHT
among humankind for thousands of years, and are past mas- Strengths and Weaknesses
ters at concealing their activities from casual observation. It The primary strength of a hunter cell is its size — with
takes a horrific encounter or a terrible loss to pry the scales only a handful of members, the team is stealthy and agile,

from a person’s eyes and inspire them to take up the Vigil. able to react to changing situations quickly, take action, then
Hunter cells tend to grow organically, beginning with one or
more core members who have suffered at the hands of the mon- blend back into the crowd. If they are careful and keep their
numbers small, cells can operate invisibly for a very long time,
sters, then growing to include friends, family or co-workers who avoiding notice until they are ready to strike. By drawing on
are persuaded to join the hunt. The founder of a cell might turn the individual skills and resources of their members and us-
to his best friend for backup and support, then his friend suggests ing their wits, the cell is self-contained, self-reliant and, with

bringing his cousin, a retired police officer, into the group. Over experience, can become extremely effective.
time, the cell might incorporate other victims of the monster A cell’s limited size is also its primary drawback. Its op-
it’s hunting, or family members who insist on taking part for no erations are limited to the availability, resources and skills of
other reason than to keep their loved ones from completely los- its members, and it’s difficult to replace losses quickly. The

ing themselves to the hunt. Whatever their initial motivations, members of the cell have no one to turn to in a crisis ex-

by the time they have had their first encounter with a supernatu- cept one another, and no safety net in the event things go
ral being, they have become fellow hunters and members of the catastrophically wrong. These shortcomings are the primary
Vigil. One cannot look into the face of a demon or feel the wrath factor in driving hunters to band together when possible and
of an angry spirit and come away unaffected by the experience. form larger organizations.
No two hunter cells operate in the same way. Their
methods vary depending on the personalities, resources and
motivations of the people involved. Some cells may be highly Hunter Compacts
organized and tightly focused, led by former military or law Hunter cells that survive long enough will eventually
enforcement personnel; others may be a collection of aca- stumble across the existence of others like them, each going
demics who plot strategy at the university library, or a group about the Vigil the best way they know how. After weeks or
of used car salesmen who plan their next move at their weekly months fighting a solitary struggle against the unknown, most

poker game. Everyone is making things up as they go along, cells are eager to share what they’ve experienced and offer
incorporating the techniques that work and trying to survive help in return for the same. As more cells pool their knowl-
the ones that don’t. edge and resources to pursue a common goal, their network of
A typical hunter cell is composed of three to fi ve people, communication becomes more elaborate and better organized.
but can be as small as two people or as large as 20. In prac- Greater numbers and more resources lead to greater success
tice, the size of a cell fluctuates over time. Hunters still have out on the streets, and before long, the efforts of multiple cells

to keep a roof over their heads and pay tuition to keep their are being organized to deal with threats across an entire city.
kids in school, so members sometimes have to drop out and This is how many hunter compacts take shape, starting out as
return to their normal lives to keep things on an even keel. a collection of isolated groups that come together to pursue
Other members become too injured — mentally or physically the Vigil on a much larger scale.
— to continue, and have to put the Vigil aside while they piece In other cases, hunter compacts began as mundane enti-
themselves back together. Still others run afoul of the law, or ties that changed their focus upon learning of the existence
are killed during the course of the hunt. Their absence leaves of the supernatural. The aristocratic debauchees of the Ash-
a hole that the cell must try to fill, so most cells are always on wood Abbey, for example, were little more than a collec-

the lookout for other likely recruits. The only practical lim- tion of very wealthy libertines until the group was nearly
its to the size of a hunter cell are its resources and its ability wiped out by a werewolf attack many years ago. Since then,
to organize, and its need for secrecy. A hunter cell devoted to they have devoted their collective wealth and infl uence to
confronting malevolent spirits could set itself up as professional seeking out and confronting the supernatural for their own
paranormal investigators and operate more or less in full view hedonistic ends.
of the public. A group of inner-city kids who are burning down While a hunter cell typically focuses on the threats that di-
abandoned tenement buildings to wipe out nests of fl esh-eating rectly impact the homes and loved ones of its members, hunter
ghouls have to worry about the police and property owners in compacts can cover an entire city or a region — or, in some cases,
addition to the monsters they’re fighting, so the fewer people setting up chapters all across the world. Compacts like the Union

who are aware of their activities, the better. use Internet forums and traveling delegations to organize chapters
While larger hunter compacts and conspiracies have in North America and Europe, for example, while the fraternity
been known to assign individual hunters to cells on an ad hoc of pseudoscience occult scholars known as Null Mysteriis takes

basis to perform specific tasks, most prefer to recruit existing advantage of the cliquish nature of academics to extend its infl u-
hunter cells and employ them according to their needs. Other ence into universities and libraries across the globe.
conspiracies, such as the government’s Task Force: VALKY- Any given city can be home to any number of hunter
RIE or the Cheiron Group (see the Hunter Conspiracies sec- compacts, usually operating as a satellite group or chapter of
tion for more details) will recruit individuals and form them the larger collective, and interaction between compacts is
into permanent cells for future operations. common. Alliances, rivalries, turf wars and, in rare cases, bit-
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