Hunter: The Vigil
| Hunter: The Vigil | ||
|---|---|---|
| RPG published by White Wolf / CCP |
||
| Rule System | Storytelling System | |
| Authors | Justin Achilli et al | |
| First Publication | 2008 | |
Two words: Fuck monsters.
Fine, I'll give you a longer explanation, but I've got to be quick, the bastard MIBs are probably already tracking this. Hunter the Vigil is a World of Darkness game line, back when White Wolf was still a thing. See, some people didn't want to play as an undead rapist or a lunatic witch. But they didn't want to just sit around and act like they could just ignore the terror in the world as a plain ol' mortal. White Wolf already tried hunters once. Time to try it again.
See, these hunters don't all get powers. Hell, a lot of them don't even know what they're fighting. You want to be a hard working sonuvabitch that's got his buddies and baseball bats to beat down and drug dealer or monster around your kids' school? Do it. Want to be part of an organization of basement dwelling fuckups who use cameras to film demon summoning ceremonies to upload on Youtube? Done. A descendant of Hell itself? Do you want to throw fireballs or get the ability to summon demons?
I don't think I need to say it, but since you don't know anything about how the world really is, I'll tell you. Hunter doesn't get along too well with the characters of the other New World of Darkness game lines. You're supposed to be staking vampires that kill people, or cutting up fairies with iron daggers, why the fuck should there be any playing nice?
Morality? Here's your damn morality: Monsters don't count. Any "hunter" who says there should be exceptions might not be a real hunter. Nevermind those fucks who think they know the right way to handle monsters, and collateral damage is irrelevant as long as you can justify it.
Yeah, you don't understand because you haven't been doing it too long. Give it time. Pretty soon you'll realize that you can't trust anyone anymore.
...Of course, by that point it might be wise to remember what Nietzche said- "He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster". And sure enough, an alarming amount of Hunters tend to devolve into Slashers- lunatics whose obsession with killing for its own sake grants them limited supernatural abilities which make them the perfect serial killers.
Hunter: the Vigil is another New World of Darkness attempt at adapting part of the Old, in this case, Hunter: The Reckoning. However, it is in many ways a superior game, with less broken magical powers and ill-thought-out ideas, and more being a squishy human surrounded by terrible threats that will tear away at your sanity, soul, and flesh. If that sounds grimdark as shit, that's only because it is. It literally has a spin-off game, Slashers, devoted to playing as one of the above-mentioned Slashers so you too can play a murderous psycho who wouldn't be out of place in...well, a slasher movie.
Still, despite all that, Hunter is, or can be, an oddly hopeful game. Sure, you're probably going to die, but in a world like this one, it is a good and noble thing for ordinary people to stand up and refuse to be victimized. One candle blows out, but lights two more as it passes. The hunter dies, but the vigil goes on forever. World without end, amen.
Hunter Organization
Hunters are organized into groups at three levels; Cell, Compact, and Conspiracy.
Cell
At least the Imperial Guard get some backup. Cell level hunters only get a few people in them, maybe five or six if you're lucky. They have no support base, no guiding ideology, and no way of telling if the tentacle monster is really going to rape and eat them (Spoiler: It will, and not in that order). So what do they have to help? They're not being told what to do by people who have no idea what's going on either, but act like they do.
Compact
When a bunch of cells met up and decide they have more in common than being killed by werewolves on a monthly basis, they sometimes form into a compact, a collection of cells that go from citywide to nationwide. The cells have some things in common, but there's no real bosses, so they make things up as they go along still, but now they have some help to call. Provided said help doesn't decide it's not worth it or that they have the right idea on what to do.
Ahl al-Jabal: A Middle Eastern compact founded in the Middle Ages after a leader of the Hashshashin (the Islamic sect that lent its name to the term "assassin") discovered that vampires had infiltrated much of the Muslim world. They're notable for having very strict rules about collateral damage, for reasons which should be very obvious when you take recent events in the world into account.
Ashwood Abbey: A bunch of bored, jaded rich assholes who want to hunt the most dangerous game of all in a world where that isn't "man." Sick fucks to the core, even when other books try to tell you they're in it "for the thrill". To them, hunting's a game, and they want to play without any rules. Also, they have money. Lots and lots of money. Which is why they think they can afford to hunt monsters with swords and arrows.
The Barett Commission: Politicians who have found out that vampires (and other monsters, but mostly vampires) like to meddle with politics, so they decided to band together in order to keep them out.
The Bear Lodge: Big Game Hunters who have decided that werewolves are the ultimate trophies to hunt. They can't actually keep any pelts or anything, but the hunt is still dangerous enough they keep at it.
Division Six: A secret government agency hunting down "reality deviants" before they can cause the total collapse of reality. Really, they're the unwitting dupes of the Seers of the Throne being used to hunt down the Awakened, but they don't know that.
The Hunt Club: Sick fucks who make the Ashwood Abbey look like saints by comparison, this is only a "hunter" compact in that it's pretty common for burnt-out hunters to end up in it. This is basically a social network for serial killers and Slashers who haven't completely lost their ability to relate to people, based on covering up each other's messes and scoring "points" by their kills.
The Illuminated Brotherhood: Wigged out druggies whose experiments in psychedelics have clued them in to the existence of ghosts and spirits and who continue to poke at the supernatural despite their lack of any training in what to do when they get noticed.
The Keepers of the Source: A bunch of hippies and eco-nuts who have the sucky ability to sense those carrying Essence by feeling pain, so they think werewolves and mages are "parasites of the Earth Mother". Used to use typical peacenik tactics to try and convince the werewolves and mages to stop channelling Essence; when this kept getting them killed, they upgraded to terrorist acts instead.
The Long Night: The Westboro Baptist Church on one end, the Triple Rock Baptist Church on the other, and tent-healers in the middle, the Long Night believe it's the end of the world, and a lot of them do not feel very fucking fine. The belief that Jesus will arrive if all the monsters are dead is about the only thing most of them can agree on.
The Loyalists of Thule: Ex-Nazis and people they've essentially blackmailed into being hunters, the Loyalists were originally the Thule-Gesellschaft. Knowing they fucked up, they think they have to atone for what they've done by hunting down monsters. Note that they're running low on people who were actually Nazis, and the younger members are asking why they need to be so hung up on WWII.
Maiden's Blood Sisterhood: A sorority of vampire-hunting college chicks. Like Buffy, only no superpowers, basically.
Network 0: Making shows like Ghost Adventures and Finding Bigfoot look professional, Network 0 are all obsessed with finding footage and evidence of the monsters and dark parts of the world, and either shoving them in people's faces or hiding it and waiting to shove it in people's faces.
Night Watch: Ghetto toughs, petty hoods, gangbangers and other street trash who've decided they aren't going to stand for being the go-to munchies for vampires anymore.
Null Mysteriis: When scientists find out the truth, they don't go mystical. They break out their gear and start researching, bitch. They analyze vampire blood, study things from other dimensions, and look for theories to explain why witches can break reality. And this is a damn hobby to them.
Promethean Brotherhood: Jealous pricks who perform human sacrifices on mages, monsters, even Conspiracy-tier hunters to try and steal their magic for a time.
The Talbot Group: Well-meaning healers hoping to try and "cure" werewolfism and spirit possessions.
The Union: The compact of the common men and women who don't know or care about what the monsters are as long as they stay out of their neighborhood. Unlike most Hunters, they prefer to react to monster predations rather than go out looking for trouble themselves.
Conspiracies
It would be god tier, it 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, just remember that the conspiracies don't give a good Goddamn about you unless you get results.
Aegis Kai Doru: Definitely not a front for the witches hunting down their old magical toys. Nope, not at all.
Ascending Ones: What do you need man? Heroin from Afghanistan? Crack from Columbia? Weed from Mexico? Mysterious alchemical mixtures whose formulas were first perfected in ancient Egypt? Pay up, and 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.
The Cainite Heresy: Crazy fuckers who use blood magic and are obsessed with killing all vampires RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. They are descended from an organization of rebellious ghouls in the Roman Empire that turned against their vampiric masters.
The Cheiron Group: They're better than Umbrella, if only because they haven't accidentally triggered a zombie apocalypse yet. They don't just get powers, they get powers from monster body parts. Vampire lips, serial killer brain implants, hands "volunteered" from the Lucifuge. Just don't expect a decent retirement package, 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.
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, and in doing so 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.
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 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.
Les Mysteres: They think they're helping the innocent, oppressed spirits fight against their tyrannical werewolf masters. Anyone who has ever played Werewolf: The Forsaken will realized that they're being manipulated and are too dumb to realize that "freeing" the spirits will result in the destruction and/or enslavement of humanity.
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.
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.)
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 a bureaucratic clusterfuck that can barely keep track of which monsters they're supposed to be killing, but at least they get to carry around the laser cannon and ghost-killing bullets when they want 'em.
Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit (VASCU): FBI agents with telepathic powers who use their abilities to hunt down supernatural serial killers, namely Slashers. The subject of much hilarious interdepartmental in-fighting and dick-measuring with VALKYRIE. VALKYRIE's got neater stuff and a better idea of what's goint on, but VASCU isn't nearly as much of an organizational fuck-fest and its agents are often actually good at their jobs.