Editing Hunter: The Vigil (section)

===Conspiracies===
It would be god tier, if they weren't so god-awful about so much. Conspiracies aren't just the largest groups in Hunter. They're controlling governments, churches, and have access to endowments. What's an endowment? Do you want to shoot werewolves with plasma weapons? Kill a golem with God's holy power? Wolverine claws? Take your pick of quasi-supernatural abilities and fancy doodads. But remember that the conspiracies don't give a shit about you unless you get results, and more than a few have their own dirty little secrets which the Hunters working for them aren't supposed to know about. At the end of the day, very few Hunters in a Conspiracy are irreplaceable. Plus, even they don't know everything about the supernatural- the gaps in their knowledge can be disastrous for a Hunter. 
[[File:Aegis Kai Dante.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The example character of the Aegis Kai Doru. People immediately recognized this as a shitty photoshop that snuck by the editing team. And yes, this does mean that Hunter: The Vigil is [[meme|featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series]].]]

'''Aegis Kai Doru:''' Definitely not a front for an Arisen/Guardians of the Veil hunting down their old magical toys. Nope, not at all. In all seriousness, they've got a ton of fancy relics and match the [[Blood Ravens]] in their interest for more, and they really hate mages and werewolves. Their name is Greek for ''shield and spear'', and two of their most powerful Relics are the Aegis and Doru talismans. Often clash with the [[Mummy: The Curse|Arisen]] because... well, they're basically a massive network of tomb robbers.

'''Ascending Ones:''' Every Conspiracy has its divisions, but it's most pronounced among these guys, who are the three geographically-separate divisions of the same ancient Egyptian cult of alchemists that grew in radically different directions over the millennia.  You've got the Knives of Paradise, the ones who handle the actual monster-hunting and are made up of devout members of the three Abrahamic faiths.  There's the Order of the Southern Temple, the pasty, stubbornly Pagan and Hermetic nerds who handle manufacturing and R&D for their Endowment, Elixir.  And as for the Jagged Crescent... What do you need, man? Heroin from Afghanistan? Crack from Colombia? Weed from Mexico? Mysterious alchemical mixtures whose formula was first perfected in ancient Egypt? Pay up, you'll be helping them wage war on evil. Just as long as you're okay with rampant drug addiction and street crime where they take control, those reagents are expensive. 

'''Aves Minervae:''' The Birds of Minerva were worshipers of the eponymous goddess who protected [[Roman Empire|Rome]] from vampires and other supernatural beings. Their Red Rituals would go on to become the Rites of Denial that the Cainites below would use.

'''The Cainite Heresy:''' Crazy fuckers who use blood magic and are obsessed with killing all vampires RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. It kicks ass against actual vampires, but is so useless against ''everything'' else that the game-makers actually had to come up with optional rules for how to let it affect other monsters.  They are descended from an organization of rebellious ghouls in the Roman Empire that turned against their vampiric masters... <s>allegedly</s> <span style="color:red"> '''Snk!''' "Who. Is. <b>Caine?</b>"</span>

'''The Council of Bones''': An ancient and reclusive Conspiracy of undead fighters that uses a collection of secret spiritual techniques called Perispiritism to see and interact with ghosts. Its members are marked with a strange tattoo that is believed to be the source of their power, but they have been reluctant to reveal what they know of it to outsiders. The mark also grants its holders the ability to read and write messages that only a mark-bearer can understand, and it only appears on living hosts to act as a safeguard against infiltration by the undead.

'''The Cheiron Group:''' They're better than Umbrella, if only because they haven't accidentally triggered a zombie apocalypse yet. On the surface they appear as a respectable pharmaceutical conglomerate known for its affordable yet effective products and philanthropic efforts. Needless to say, the truth isn't half so squeaky clean. Their "Field Projects Division" don't just get powers, they get powers from ''monster body parts'', which are strongly implied to be the secret ingredient in their products. Vampire limbs, serial killer brain implants, hands "volunteered" from the Lucifuge, and much stranger bits are some of the things that you can jam into your body, and they most likely won't have too many dangerous side effects...probably. The pay is superb but you won't be retiring anytime soon- and keep in mind that there's a good chance you might end up becoming the test subject for an implant that they haven't quite worked the kinks out of. Are actually lead by lovecraftian horror/aliens who use the Cheiron Group for some mysterious reason; atypically they might ''actually'' be trying to help for purely altruistic reasons, in a terrifyingly inhuman way, though that same write-up also presents just taking humanity for all they're worth as a second option. Our Benefactors indeed...

'''The Faithful of Shulpae:''' Weird cultists who ritually cannibalize their "gods" (read: any monster that can live a long time) as an act of worship in some kind of messed up version of the Eucharist, doing so to obtain some of their nifty powers. The fact that the "gods" they worship generally DON'T want to have their flesh devoured doesn't seem to bother them at all.

'''The Hototogisu:''' During the Edo period the Japanese merchant caste, the despised-but-wealthy bottom rung of the Confucian caste system, discovered the various supernatural critters that had infested Japanese society. One of them, a man named Inoue Akio, realized after a conversation with such a monter that he could write up a very predatory contract that literally bought some of the monster's supernatural powers off it, and did so in a way that didn't actually result in any kind of loss of resources to him. This is their Endowment: Setto (Japanese for theft). Several hundred years later they rule the roost in the Japanese supernatural community; immortal, rich, and with enough supernatural lackeys at their disposal that they can easily defend their business interests while conning their marks out of shit like immortality.

'''The Knights of Saint Adrian:''' Half biker gang, half paladin order, all bounty hunter, no real subtlety. They work for angels to capture or kill demons. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing really depends on how big an asshole a particular demon's being. And how much you've read about the God-Machine. To facilitate this they are given tattoos with angelic magic coded in. For example, one makes it so they can punch a demon so hard their stolen human face flies right off while another is basically an infinite ammo cheat code for the Knight's firearm of choice.

'''The Knights of Saint George:''' Ostensibly a branch of the Church of England, in reality, they hunt mages with their own magic-nullifying spells because they fear they'll wake up the Lovecraftian "Faceless Angels" if they aren't killed. Said angels may or may not be Mage-style Abyssal spirits.

'''Les Mysteres:''' They think they're helping the innocent, oppressed spirits fight against their tyrannical werewolf masters by siding with the underdog werewolves who agree with them. Anyone who has ever played [[Werewolf: The Forsaken]] will realize that they're being manipulated and are too dumb to know that "freeing" the spirits will result in the destruction and/or enslavement of humanity at the hands of said spirits and the Pure who ''actually'' outnumber regular werewolves two to one. Somewhere, a Uratha is trying to stave off the Death Rage after learning what this group is trying to do. Briefly mentioned in the 2E Kickstarter as being "defunct", which comes as no surprise considering that these dumbass hippies think that letting the poor ol' spirits hitch-a-ride on them cannot in anyway end badly, and that's assuming that the Pure didn't just eat them for a quick snack. Good riddance.

'''The Lucifuge:''' They've got Hell in their blood and they aren't happy about it. They view the destruction of supernatural beings as a way for them to redeem themselves in the eyes of God by ridding the world of Satan's creations. At least they get kickass powers from it. Fun fact: their founder has been alive since the 800s. Fun fact 2: they always have exactly 666 members. Don't ask too many questions about what happened to the guy you replaced.

'''The Malleus Maleficarum:''' Vampires, Witches, and Demons; that's the order of importance for the Catholic Inquisition. Don't question it and you won't be taken down to the church basement. Agree to help and you can call on God and his saints to give you awesome abilities to slay monsters. Please ignore the fact that their leader is a ghoul still addicted to vampire blood who uses "holy" magic. Here's some fun facts: the organization used to consist solely of monks, but now have their ranks open to any devoted catholic and they have a bitter rivalry with the Lancea et Sanctum.

'''The Merrick Institute:''' A shadowy government-linked research collective used nasty, damaging science to discover [[Beast: The Primordial|the Primordial Dream]], and started gathering "gifted" kids with a mixture of scholarship money and violence to try to weaponize it. In one of their labs, the test subjects were able to escape and kill their tormentors, save a few who were sympathetic to their plight, then commandeered their tech and training to try to make something good out of what they were put through. The end result is a mixture between ''A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors'' in the World of Darkness, (indeed they are referred to as such at one point) and one of those young adult novels where teenagers gain superpowers by experimentation that overthrew their captors, but kept the story going. Their Endowment is Dreamscape, allowing them to gain supernatural powers while inside of a dream, allowing them to hunt Beasts and similar monsters on their own turf. This makes them very powerful in the dream world, but useless outside of it (in no small part because the experiments performed on them left many of the kids crippled or even comatose). They're also thematically a bit like what the [[Deviant: The Renegades|the Renegades could be like in their upcoming game]], since the original collective is still active and hunting them down. As a result, the Merrick Institute is rather loosely organized for a Conspiracy and spends much of its time on the road lest they stay put long enough for their former captors to find them.

'''The Otodo:''' Named after the single most complex kanji consisting of no less than 84 brushstrokes (which roughly means "the appearance of a dragon in flight"), the Otodo are a family of cousins close and distant whose ancestors lived in a village [[Monstergirls|that engaged in sexual intercourse with a bunch of]] [[Oni]]. The blood of their spiritual ancestors created a race of half-Oni who use their powers to protect Japan and its people from the monsters hunting them. They also go after those Otodo who don't join in the fight against evil and consider Changelings to be just like them, explanations be damned. This means they're more or less the Shinto equivalent of the Christian Lucifuge. Their powers even work the same; the Otodo's Endowment of Seitokuken is more limited in scope (you can pick only five of the seven powers in total, while the Lucifuge has a much wider array) but it is no less potent: a well-buffed Otodo can take on a fair number of monsters head-on. Because of their limited numbers the Otodo see no problems with increasing their numbers by copious amounts of boning, and when they're not killing monsters or getting laid the Otodo keep meticulous records of their offspring to keep an eye on those who might develop their powers.

'''Task Force: VALKYRIE:''' MIBs, conspiracy creators, and America's last line of paranormal defense. Great story, but the execution isn't quite as neat as it sounds. They're composed of various government entities (i.e. military, law enforcement, and so on) and designed to prevent supernatural subversion, but in practice it's a bureaucratic clusterfuck that can barely keep track of which monsters they're supposed to be killing. Even worse, the organization has been compromised after several agents' identities were leaked online and its attempts at spreading disinformation to prevent further leaks may be backfiring as new recruits struggle to distinguish the truth from the lies. Oh, and only some of the top brass know that most of their budget secretly comes from vampires using the organization to deal with their rivals and that they can't do anything about it without toppling the organization and exposing themselves in the process. The only thing holding up this corrupt monolith from crashing down at this point is sheer inertia and the brutality of the blacker-than-black door kickin' and dog shooting constitutional violators they employ. Remember, they are not here to help you against supernatural threats, but to maintain the status quo, which includes the masquerade, all in the name of national security of course. In the end, do you really want to be a [[Meme|glow-in-the-dark waiting to be run over]] by everyone else? No one likes a fed, and not even the other feds like VALKYRIE.

'''Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit (VASCU):''' Originally FBI agents with telepathic powers who use their abilities to hunt down supernatural serial killers, mostly Slashers. The subject of much hilarious interdepartmental in-fighting and dick-measuring with VALKYRIE. VALKYRIE's got neater stuff, works outside the law, and has a better idea of what's going on. But VASCU isn't nearly as much of an organizational mess and its agents are often actually good at their jobs.  Often end up hunting other kinds of monster, since, well, while there are many ''mechanical'' differences between a crazed superhuman serial killer and a vampire who's given all the way into madness and degeneration, they aren't necessarily obvious to the outside observer. 

By 2E funding issues caused them to be let go from the FBI, but an unknown benefactor gave them the opportunity to act as freelancers using the bioengineering research group "Vanguard Institute" as a front. They now sell their services to international law enforcement worldwide, though some of their agents do have to wonder who exactly is paying their expenses now. 

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File:Conspiracy Aegis Kai Doru.jpg|Aegis Kai Doru
File:Conspiracy Ascending Ones.png|Ascending Ones
File:Conspiracy Cheiron Group.jpg|Cheiron Group
File:Conspiracy Faithful of Shulpae.png|The Faithful of Shulpae
File:Conspiracy Hototogisu.png|The Hototogisu
File:Conspiracy Knights of St Adrian.png|The Knights of Saint Adrian
File:Conspiracy Knights of St George.png|The Knights of Saint George
File:Conspiracy Les Mystères.png|Les Mystères
File:Conspiracy Lucifuge.jpg|The Lucifuge
File:Conspiracy Otodo.png|The Otodo
File:Conspiracy Task Force VALKYRIE.png|Task Force: VALKYRIE
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