Page 40 - Hunter - The Vigil

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enthralled and addicted to the rush of sweet vampire blood Ghosts abound. They remain both a problem and oppor-
on their lips. And it is addictive. tunity for most hunters. They’re a problem because they rep-

Accepted truth about vampires is that sunlight and fire resent a cruel unknown and an invisible threat. They’re hard
make short work of them. Beheading, too. Everything else is as hell to deal with — they’re hard to even fi nd — and it seems

up for debate. Stakes definitely do something, but different cells that few certain ways of dealing with them exist. An exorcist?
tell different stories: some say it paralyzes them, others claim Works sometimes, not others. Resolve the ghost’s restless is-
they shrivel like dead roaches as soon as it happens. Crosses? sues? Great, if you can actually dig down and do the research
Maybe. Garlic? Probably not. Other weirder anathemas exist, to uncover just what those issues are (alternatively, maybe the
too: kill them at a crossroads, pierce their chest with a holy hunter finds a way to communicate with the thing). Burn the

sword, trap them in an open grave, or “bottle” their souls us- whole haunted house to the ground? Some say this is the best
ing a Malaysian sorcerer. solution, whereas others claim the ghost’ll just move on, fol-
lowing a person or only growing angrier with loss.
Ghosts But ghosts represent an opportunity, as well. They are a
A man pulls his boat up to the village dock, and he hears the sign of what comes after. They represent a seemingly examin-
women wailing and the dogs howling. He sees the shape of mist able scientific reality, or are a fascinating source of answers

standing on the dock in front of him: his brother, dead from drown- about all manner of unperceived mysteries. Some cells learn
ing, still wet and smelling of river water. new ways of communicating with specters (the Ouija board
A woman uses a Ouija board alone to speak to her husband’s always seems to work, even when it’s a cheap knock-off — but
ghost. It is not his ghost at all, but the lying specter of a man who they say to never, ever use one alone: it gives the wraith pow-
was bad in his life and is now worse in death. He tells her how er). Some hunters have even learned how to enslave ghosts,
much change she has in her pocket. He tells her he loves her. sending them to haunt their enemies.
A child hunkers down in his bedroom, and he squeezes his (More information on ghosts is found in the World of
eyes shut and opens them again, but it does not stop him from see- Darkness Rulebook, pp. 209–216.)
ing the bleeding walls, the carpet of crickets, the marionette in the
corner dancing a slow waltz. Zombies

Trauma in death begets trauma after death. This is true He sits on the curb, trying to find human words, and he looks
in a physical, mundane and corporeal sense: a man murdered at his slowly rotting hands and the picture in it of his lost wife and
leaves turmoil in his wake. His wife can’t move past it. The kids and he tries to cry but unfortunately, his tear ducts have gone
cops are burdened by another unsolved case. Even the mur- to rot, too.
derer can barely stomach his own nightmares. But it’s true She claws her way from the grave, once-manicured nails
in a spiritual, metaphysical sense, too: the victim’s soul is in snapping as she surfaces, driven by a sorcerer’s voice inside her
turmoil and it clings to this world with an unholy grip, staying head that tells her to kill, kill and kill some more.
behind when it should have long moved past. They are a swarming mass, a teeming throng of moans and meat-
Ghosts are the souls of the dead, remaining in this life specked teeth and pounding fists, and they come upon the hunters board-

because, for want of a better term, they are unable to let go ed up in that old hunting cabin, driven not by intelligent thought but only
of it. Perhaps after the intense trauma of a rape and murder, by the hunger for brains wrenched from bashed skulls.
the spirit of a young woman can’t accept the unfairness and The dead walk. Some of them run. And we’re talking the

injustice of her death, and finds herself lingering as a specter really dead, the rotting dead, the up-out-of-the-grave dead.
in the alley where her life was so brutally stolen. Animated (or Reanimated) corpses run the gamut from

Ghosts don’t choose to become what they are. They are mindless, shuffling zombies to people who seem normal un-
bound to that fate, and there is something still undeniably hu- til you look closely and see the tinge of rot around the ear.
man within them. They are likely to feel sorrow and loss with Some hunger for flesh, some for brains. Some don’t eat at all,

a keenness any mortal can empathize with. But time changes and just want to experience life again or hope to right some
all things. wrong. Others still seem utterly unrelated to the body they
Some ghosts are powerful entities, little resembling the wear, poisoning the ground around them with the same cor-
people they were in life. In some cases, this manifests as an rosive effect that plagues their decaying or ill-stitched skin.
obsession in the ghost — the creature endlessly repeats the Ultimately, the result is the same: the dead walk, and
same action (something meaningful before its death, or tied they are harmful to life. It is undeath without the graceful pre-
into the way the person died) and grows enraged or confused dation and eroticism of the vampire, and without the tragic
if its ritual is interrupted. In other cases, a ghost might have half-presence of a touchless ghost.
changed through bitterness and hatred to the point where it’s Hunters know a zombie might be forever alone: a sad
insane because of the stress and torment of the alien situation lout who might be able to talk (even though his words are
it’s in. This madness is an emotional, soulful insanity, far re- slurred) and think and resist his strange urges, eventually
moved from the biochemical disorders of life. That can make decaying so much he cannot stand. Hunters also know that
the ghost infinitely more hateful and unpredictable than any other zombies can beget their own by bite or by some other

living person. Others aren’t hateful at all, but their sorrow is form of contagion, and that the infection vector is swift and
so pervasive its effect is just as negative. cruel, and before you know it, you damn near have a goddamn

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