Most people who glimpse the darkness look away. It's the sensible thing to do. They tell themselves they imagined it, pour another drink, and don't walk down that street again.
But a rare few find it impossible to look away.
The Hunters are those who have seen too much to pretend otherwise - men and women who have lost something to the night, or stumbled onto a truth the supernatural world would prefer they hadn't, or simply decided that someone has to stand between the darkness and the people who don't know it's there. They have no church backing them, no organization with centuries of resources behind them. They have what they can carry, who they can trust, and whatever they've managed to learn about things that don't want to be learned about. It's rarely enough, but that doesn't stop them.
To play a Hunter is to play someone who knows the odds and chooses the fight regardless. They are not warriors blessed by God or soldiers in a holy army - they are a sheriff who saw something in the desert that couldn't be explained, a widow who knows what really happened to her husband, a Pinkerton agent whose case file stopped making sense three towns ago. Driven by grief, fury, duty, or sheer stubborn refusal to look away, Hunters embody the most dangerous thing in the World of Darkness: a mortal who is no longer afraid.
Occult Knowledge & Beliefs
Below is a summary of what Hunters believe about other supernatural factions:
Changeling
Some believe them demons masquerading as pagan gods and some believe they are God's creations for a purpose not yet known. Others still don't believe they exist.
Legends of the Fair Folk are as varied with some stories telling of leaving gifts out for these Fair Folk in exchange for favors or wishes. Other stories tell of avoiding certain places and/or at certain times lest you incur the wrath of the Fair Folk. Still others tell the stories to admonish children into behaving well, lest the strange folk come to take the naughty children away!
While such stories may merely be stories to entertain or frighten young children, the possibility that folks may be unwittingly strengthening some nightmarish creature from the depths of hell by their tales and offerings cannot be ignored.
Faeries are NOT harmless. Stories of Fair Folk include just as many tales of flesh-eating creatures and terrible but beautiful enchantresses that steal away young men.
None know for certain what they are capable of. Tales abound of a faerie's powers of deception and illusion. One must keep their wits about them should they suspect the presence of the Fair Folk. Pray for the wisdom and strength to not be seduced.
Unfortunately, these creatures have gone to great lengths to hide their weaknesses. Some claim that they can be driven off by the sound of church bells, throwing salt and bread at them, reciting biblical verses or Latin, an iron blade, or any one of a hundred other remedies.
Kinain & Enchanted
Don't mistake the company someone keeps for weakness. Those who walk alongside supernatural creatures - willingly or otherwise - are rarely ignorant of what they serve, and a hunter who underestimates them doesn't get a second chance to learn better. Some can easily be dismissed; others are the thread that unravels the secrets of true evil.
Fera
This section is still being written. Check back soon!
Fera Kinfolk
This section is still being written. Check back soon!
Fomori
This term is unknown to Hunters. However, if one crosses paths with a Fomor, such creatures will likely be viewed as either demon-possessed or a demonic entity themselves, depending on the level of corruption visible. In either instance, they are to be treated with great vengeance and furious anger, like those who would attempt to poison and destroy other humans.
Wraiths & Risen
Maybe phantoms are restless spirits of people unable to move on, but they probably take the form of known people to trick the Hunters.
They haunt places where death is strong, such as leper colonies and cemeteries, battlefields, hospitals, and asylums - all of which boast stories of ghosts.
Ghosts may exhibit any number of strange powers. In living people, they induce madness and fever; anyone able to see them is driven mad.
Some say they can inhabit bodies. Others know they cannot become solid, much less inhabit bodies. No, those sorts of beings are demons possessing the body, given how quickly they respond to exorcism.
True ghosts are powerless, mere reflections of themselves in life. Refusal to pass on to the hereafter is perhaps the greatest sin that the dead can commit.
Mediums
Don't mistake the company someone keeps for weakness. Those who walk alongside supernatural creatures - willingly or otherwise - are rarely ignorant of what they serve, and a hunter who underestimates them doesn't get a second chance to learn better. Some can easily be dismissed; others are the thread that unravels the secrets of true evil.
Vampires
The Undead; some eat flesh, but the most human looking ones drink blood like leeches.
Those that survive being fed from, for some reason Hunters can't figure out, either have no memory of what happened to them or they remember the experience as nothing but a sense euphoria, yearning for that feeling again.
Vampires are unnaturally fast and tough; horses can't catch them and standard weapons don't seem to seriously injure them.
Their powers are as different as the individual vampires.
They seem to feed more often the more power they use, maybe they starve with too little blood consumed, but who knows?
Only bodies of people who die rise as undead - no burned, dismembered, or otherwise ruined bodies. At first, they look as they did in life; the heart still beats, and their need for blood is minimal. Often these newly undead serve demon or witch masters.
The longer they exist, the more dead they appear, and the more they need blood as they stop being able to eat normal food and drink normal drink. They grow more powerful, able to call upon wolves and bats for aid, and eventually the oldest ones become the most hideous, grotesque, and deformed creatures.
Fire frightens them, sunlight burns them to cinders, and stakes paralyze them, though Hunters know not why.
Ghouls
Victims of vampires who have been enchanted and crave the pleasure the bite somehow brings for reasons the Hunters haven't figured out. If the spell upon them cannot be broken, best to put them out of their misery.
Werewolves
Most have heard stories of shapeshifting wolfmen, but only a rare few have ever actually seen one. The stories consistently peg them as hellishly fast and strong. They travel in packs, and can disappear and reappear stronger than before.
Werewolves can breed with humans, and no one knows what sort of offspring results from such a union.
Regardless of form, they have almond shaped eyes, a unibrow, and the second and third fingers are the same length.
They will pant when presented with fresh meat, regardless of form, and pentagrams appear in blood on their palms during the full moon.
People bitten by werewolves are overcome with bestial urges, mostly lust and wrath, which can only be treated by a poultice with wolfsbane mixed in.
Fire, the great purifier, drives them off, and silver blessed by a priest will render pain and crippling.
Kinfolk
Don't mistake the company someone keeps for weakness. Those who walk alongside supernatural creatures - willingly or otherwise - are rarely ignorant of what they serve, and a hunter who underestimates them doesn't get a second chance to learn better. Some can easily be dismissed; others are the thread that unravels the secrets of true evil.