Alone in the Dark

Humans have known, on one level or another, that they are not alone in the world. Since the earliest days there have been monsters and nightmares that walking among us in human shape, hunting us for sport and food. In the thousands of years our species has existed, we have been preyed upon and hunted. It took time before humanity began to fight back and learned how to fight back, but fighting is something humanity does, shown by our ability to conquer the animal kingdom to become top predators and in the way we war with each other. So, we answered the monsters' predations with predations of our own.

What began as the fight of a few solitary humans against a world of hostile supernatural creatures has evolved over the years, but at its heart the struggle then remains the struggle now. A few brave souls take a stand against the darkness and those that live and work in the shadows and have said "No More". Hunters, regardless of type, are the heirs of this stance, and while motivations and overall goals vary, at the heart of every hunter is a voice that says "Never Again".

What Hunters Know

The Hunters have made it their life’s work to track, hunt, and eliminate the supernatural. For some this is because they believe that the supernatural has no place in the world. For others it is to gain vengeance or justice after being victimized by the supernatural. All Hunters, especially the traditional ones, place a great deal of emphasis on the old war adage: Know Thy Enemy. As a result, the Hunter tradition has generated, tested, and adapted Lore regarding the supernatural creatures so that they have a good idea on what kind of power they face and how best to eliminate their quarry.

For many thousands of years, mankind implicitly believed in the supernatural and created, or learned, the taboos which governed the supernatural world. Shamans reached out to spirits, and Druids invoked the blessings of Mother Earth. Gods were appeased with sacrifice, blood, and worship. Then technology came along, bringing with it the new god: Science and his servant "Progress". For the last two hundred years, mankind tried to remove all signs of the supernatural, displacing angels, demons, vampires, and werewolves with special FX, Mass Delusions, Hysteria, and Fear Mongering, only to learn too late that the supernatural is real. In the last fifty years alone, the progress made by the supernatural world in living openly has come further and faster than ever before, a fact disliked by some. Vampires are accepted with the same equanimity as cell phones. Magic, once easily dismissed, has gained a power in the world and psychics can ply their abilities in new and interesting ways. Not all Hunters enjoy this change, especially with supernatural creatures achieving legal status. Others are glad to have supernatural allies in a fight.

There are different kinds of Hunters with different areas of focus and different ways of acting.

Traditional Hunters

Traditional hunters are the legacy of those first humans which were compelled to stand against the things in the dark that were devouring their friends, families, and neighbors. Secretive and individualistic, they have a long standing habit of operating more or less independently, operating beneath the radar in order to avoid attracting attention and living violently. They typically do not have family, as loved ones could be a weakness exploited by their inhuman adversaries, and they typically remain relatively mobile. Operating in small groups at best, and as rugged individuals most often, these hunters exemplify the 'Do or Die' mindset and are tenacious and smart.

Read more about Traditional Hunters †.

Regional Preternatural Investigation Team

Once something of a farce, or a punishment duty assigned to cops and federal agents that wouldn't toe the line, RPIT is no longer these things and represents not only a significant threat to supernatural beings, but a consistent and predictable one. With some Hunters being folded into the US Marshals service, RPIT was beginning to lose what little ground it had managed to gain. Then Congress passed the RPITRA Act, and suddenly a laughingstock became nothing to laugh about. Brought under the auspices of the Department of Justice as a branch of the US Marshalls, RPIT is no longer a backwater unit, but a federal agency with powers that rival the FBI and the NSA where supernatural matters are concerned.

Read more about R.P.I.T †

Humans First & Friends of Humanity

The Friends of Humanity is a political action group, non-profit charity, and social advocacy group that seeks to remove the legal protections awarded to non-humans in the last several decades. Basing some of their rhetoric around the creation story featured in Genesis, they assert that the supernatural is an aberration, and that such beings are not human in any sense of the word, and thus the law should not be extended to them. There are extremes in this doctrine however, with gentler members who have concerns over supernatural influence over public institutions, government bodies seeking to have the supernatural forcibly relocated to another country. Other members take a hard line stance and argue that the non-humans represent a clear and present danger to the country and humanity itself and argue for their destruction and elimination. Despite this group’s advocacy, they never officially advocate for violence against supernatural beings and has "come down hard" on those advocating violence.

The organization that is known as Humans First has been designated by the Department of Justice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and various other NGO's as a hate group at best, and a domestic terrorist group at worst. It is known in law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and working groups as the paramilitary arm of the Friends of Humanity. Humans First recruits from the most ardent believers in the Friends of Humanity's political crusade and then subjects its recruits to a training program that leaves its graduates with skills equal to a brand new FBI agent fresh from Quantico.

Read more about Humans First †

Special Training

With the passing of the SHA Act (Read More Here), both private industries and the public sector was granted the opportunity to hire supernatural beings as employees, including vampires and lycanthropes. The results have been mixed. One the one hand, police forces and other law enforcement agencies have grown fond of utilizing teams of supernatural beings as part of SWAT groups, or as part of covert action units such as SEALs, and Force Recon. The CIA, NSA, and CSS have realized the potential benefits in agents that can read minds or interact mentally with computer systems to control them. As a result, in some sectors there is considerable approval for supernatural employees. In others, such as the fields of medicine and law, supernatural beings must tread carefully as their actions are watched with considerable suspicion.

Read More about Special Training †