Post by Annabelle Devonshire on May 18, 2020 1:17:10 GMT -5
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As seeming new players in the World of Darkness stage, hunters might attract the attention of various supernatural creatures. You’d think that a sudden newcomer would make quite a splash in a world populated for millennia by the same kinds of entities. This has not yet been the case, though. The emergence of the Imbued on the scene has largely been received more with a whimper than a bang.
The emergence and existence of the imbued has essentially slipped under the radar of most supernatural creatures. Each general type of being has its own reasons why word of hunters has not become widespread. For the most part, however, monsters don’t give the human masses a lot of thought. People are an ignorant, oblivious herd. If anything, humans should worry about the existence of monsters, but the “cattle” are too stupid or preoccupied to even know that such beings exist. Furthermore, the ratio of hunters to regular people in the world is infinitesimal. The imbued are the veritable needle in the haystack, but in this case monsters don’t even know to look for them. The imbued largely pass by unseen and unrecognised.
You would think that hunters’ marked difference from the rest of humanity would make them stand out like a sore thumb. The imbued know monsters exist and take action against them. Hunters arise from the masses, and arguably still fit right in as everyday folks such as farmers, plumbers and mechanics, but the fact that they see and act against the supernatural should make them obtrusive. Hunters’ very awareness and inexplicable capabilities should attract the attention of all inhuman beings. And yet they don’t. The imbued continue to go largely unnoticed for various subtle reasons.
Vampires
Bloodsuckers were once human - once. They were killed and rose again as the undead, feeding upon humanity to survive. When you die and come back to life, you tend to forget what it means to be human over time. Emotions fade. Ceaseless existence becomes tedious. Ages pass, times change, but you don’t. before long, you’re an outsider to the society to which you used to belong. The brief life span of the average person is a pittance to you. Humans no longer matter. They’re just food. No more a threat than cows in a field.
So when young vampires - ones who have been embraced relatively recently and who don’t have the wisdom of the ages that you do - report about people with strange powers and inexplicable sight, you take it all with a large grain of salt. Those kinds of humans don’t exist. They never have. Why would they now? The notion is pathetic, like cows that have learned to swing swords. More likely, you lessers have encountered mages, spirits or shapeshifters and misunderstand what they’ve met. There’s nothing to worry about, so no more need be said of the matter.
Of all vampires, the “young” ones, the undead who still interact with and understand people, the ones still on the streets and in the public eye, encounter hunters. These are the “small fry” that the imbued spot and confront. As elders rightly believe, newly created vampires don’t understand all the denizens of the world. Mages, spirits, shape changers, goblins and hunters are all strange and confusing entities. So these “children” don’t always understand who or what they encounter and don’t know how to identify such beings or raise an alarm about them.
Indeed, the truly cunning vampire who senses the imbued as something apart from humanity says nothing of them to other night crawlers. The existence of these people is a potential weapon at the vampire’s disposal. He can leak information about rivals to these people and let them destroy other leaches without tipping his hand. The wise vampire can use hunters as pawns who may or may not know for whom they work or why. Keeping the existence of the chosen a secret is advantageous, and thus word of the imbued does not spread far.
Spirits
How long have people existed? Millenia? And how long have people been dying? Millennia? So how many sprits can exist in this world or the next when people have been dying for millennia and each restless soul is immortal?
Spirits are innumerable, the products of countless generations of humanity. Even if many have done to their final rewards, many, many others remain behind to pursue objectives that were important to them in life, and that consume their unloving existence. So now compare to those vast numbers of obsessed ghosts an extremely new phenomenon of very few people who can see sprits in the living world. The math is simple. Most spirits don’t even acknowledge the existence of hunters. The imbued are just more people (spirits in the making, really), and they probably have nothing to do with the very personal goals or objects over which ghosts obsess. Hunters just don’t matter.
Sure, some spirits encounter ghosts (or more likely the other way around), but that doesn’t matter, either. If one ghost meets people who can see him and who might help or hinder him fulfil an agenda in the world, that simply doesn’t matter to the rest. That one or even handful of ghosts is also infinitesimal compared to the swarms that exist. Word of hunters’ existence simply can’t spread from so few spirits to so many. And even if it did, other ghosts wouldn’t listen because they’re wrapped up in their own causes or their causes don’t lend themselves to the involvement of some smattering of living people.
The few other spirits that might listen to word of imbued existence can seek them out for hep or to harass the chosen, but news of these strange people just doesn’t spread throughout spirit-kind.
Pretty much all the same applies to the walking dead and their greater awareness of hunters. Zombies are the products of spirits, after all. Even if a walking corpse is smart enough to perceive the imbued as something new and noteworthy, what does that have to do with gaining revenge on your own murderer or making sure that your favourite nephew is safe? The walking dead just don’t care that hunters exist. The imbued are simply obstacles, like everything and everyone else who gets in a zombie’s way.
Shapechangers
Shapechangers are perhaps among the monsters who can best understand people. Werewolves and other shifters can assume human form, so they know what it means to walk like men. So you’d think shape changers of all creatures would collectively acknowledge the imbued. The problem is, a lot of were beasts hate humanity. To their minds, people are an abomination that has tarnished the earth. People aren’t worth understanding or sympathising with. They’re better off dead. Humans who can wield strange powers therefore merit no more consideration than people who poison water bodies or pave over forests.
More subtly, however, is the fact that many shape changer cultures such as that of werewolves honour courage, bravery and martial skill. These beings gain renown among their own for deeds and feasts. Defeating monstrous opponents grains them honour. What honour is there in killing weak, pitiful human beings?
“But this one could brandish a tire iron as if it were made of silver?”
“Sure, Tells-Tall-Tales, sure.”
Skinchanger society simply would not accept stories about hunters and their capabilities. Even if imbued are killed, few shape changers can tell the tale without bringing shame rather than glory upon themselves. Thus, little or nothing is said of hunters at man-beast gatherings. Individual shapechangers can even feel guilt or shame for fighting what must have in truth been a pitiful opponent.
Wizards
Like shape changers, sorcerers have the potential to recognise and understand hunters. Mages are ostensibly mortal people, folks who emerge from the masses as different or changed. And yet, wizard society at large overlooks or misunderstands the imbued. Novice mages are like newly embraced vampires. They’re learning about the world’s other inhabitants, so can confuse hunters with bloodsuckers, were beasts, nightmares or even other kinds of mages. Masters who influence and direct wizard efforts therefore dismiss stories of such “miraculous” human beings.
Alternatively, wizard encounters with chosen are misinterpreted as meetings with sorcerers or with other wizards in the making. Hunters arise from the human masses. Hunters can do some amazing things. Hunters don’t really understand what’s happening to them or why the world suddenly seems different. All these conditions apply equally to emerging and inexperienced wizards. If anything, hunters should be taken under experienced wizards’ wing because the neonates obviously have twisted interpretations of what they’ve become and what they’re suppose to do in the world. And though the initiation of more wizards is important for the preservation of magic in the world, the confusion of a handful of novices is unimportant to the greater whole. Indeed, it’s expected at that early stage, so nothing more need be said about it.
And then there are technological wizards, who use science to perform miracles. They want to squash the existence of the supernatural, much like many hunters do. Their desire for structure, stability and control over the world therefore gives them the potential for a unique take on hunters. It just doesn’t bear out. Yes, the imbued are believed to pose a threat when they’re recognised at all, but no more so than other supernatural beings that proliferate the shadows. Reports of hunters’ activities, marked file number KX34578-1827, are an extreme minority and are lost in the bureaucracy as the activities of “just more vampires or shape changers” - beings to be eradicated when the System gets around to it.
Low-ranking techno agents who stumble across the imbued and sense that their existence means something more can be frustrated with their superiors’ ambivalence. These agents can continue to investigate the imbued, but filing more paperwork does little to make the machine run faster. These agents can instead utilize hunters as pawns of their own to turn against other supernaturals. After all, that seems to be what these “changed people” are inclined to do, anyway. And why report to your bosses that a unique new being eliminated the threat that you were ordered to, when you can arrange to have it done for you and can claim all the prestige for yourself? Better to keep that fact a secret.
Nightmares
Goblin society is heavily divided between the haves and have-nots. The lower classes are the most likely to encounter hunters, yet the upper classes’ obsession with politicking and socialising leaves many of the commoners’ concerns - such as the imbued - unaddressed. Besides, hunters can seem largely like any other dispirited, uninspired beings that stamp out joy and creativity. How are they really any different from all the other beings that drain the glamour from the world? Whether they’re new or old, unique or more of the same isn’t really worth talking about. It’s too depressing.
© Copyright White Wolf Publishing, Inc.
What do other Species think of the Imbued?
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As seeming new players in the World of Darkness stage, hunters might attract the attention of various supernatural creatures. You’d think that a sudden newcomer would make quite a splash in a world populated for millennia by the same kinds of entities. This has not yet been the case, though. The emergence of the Imbued on the scene has largely been received more with a whimper than a bang.
The emergence and existence of the imbued has essentially slipped under the radar of most supernatural creatures. Each general type of being has its own reasons why word of hunters has not become widespread. For the most part, however, monsters don’t give the human masses a lot of thought. People are an ignorant, oblivious herd. If anything, humans should worry about the existence of monsters, but the “cattle” are too stupid or preoccupied to even know that such beings exist. Furthermore, the ratio of hunters to regular people in the world is infinitesimal. The imbued are the veritable needle in the haystack, but in this case monsters don’t even know to look for them. The imbued largely pass by unseen and unrecognised.
You would think that hunters’ marked difference from the rest of humanity would make them stand out like a sore thumb. The imbued know monsters exist and take action against them. Hunters arise from the masses, and arguably still fit right in as everyday folks such as farmers, plumbers and mechanics, but the fact that they see and act against the supernatural should make them obtrusive. Hunters’ very awareness and inexplicable capabilities should attract the attention of all inhuman beings. And yet they don’t. The imbued continue to go largely unnoticed for various subtle reasons.
Vampires
Bloodsuckers were once human - once. They were killed and rose again as the undead, feeding upon humanity to survive. When you die and come back to life, you tend to forget what it means to be human over time. Emotions fade. Ceaseless existence becomes tedious. Ages pass, times change, but you don’t. before long, you’re an outsider to the society to which you used to belong. The brief life span of the average person is a pittance to you. Humans no longer matter. They’re just food. No more a threat than cows in a field.
So when young vampires - ones who have been embraced relatively recently and who don’t have the wisdom of the ages that you do - report about people with strange powers and inexplicable sight, you take it all with a large grain of salt. Those kinds of humans don’t exist. They never have. Why would they now? The notion is pathetic, like cows that have learned to swing swords. More likely, you lessers have encountered mages, spirits or shapeshifters and misunderstand what they’ve met. There’s nothing to worry about, so no more need be said of the matter.
Of all vampires, the “young” ones, the undead who still interact with and understand people, the ones still on the streets and in the public eye, encounter hunters. These are the “small fry” that the imbued spot and confront. As elders rightly believe, newly created vampires don’t understand all the denizens of the world. Mages, spirits, shape changers, goblins and hunters are all strange and confusing entities. So these “children” don’t always understand who or what they encounter and don’t know how to identify such beings or raise an alarm about them.
Indeed, the truly cunning vampire who senses the imbued as something apart from humanity says nothing of them to other night crawlers. The existence of these people is a potential weapon at the vampire’s disposal. He can leak information about rivals to these people and let them destroy other leaches without tipping his hand. The wise vampire can use hunters as pawns who may or may not know for whom they work or why. Keeping the existence of the chosen a secret is advantageous, and thus word of the imbued does not spread far.
Spirits
How long have people existed? Millenia? And how long have people been dying? Millennia? So how many sprits can exist in this world or the next when people have been dying for millennia and each restless soul is immortal?
Spirits are innumerable, the products of countless generations of humanity. Even if many have done to their final rewards, many, many others remain behind to pursue objectives that were important to them in life, and that consume their unloving existence. So now compare to those vast numbers of obsessed ghosts an extremely new phenomenon of very few people who can see sprits in the living world. The math is simple. Most spirits don’t even acknowledge the existence of hunters. The imbued are just more people (spirits in the making, really), and they probably have nothing to do with the very personal goals or objects over which ghosts obsess. Hunters just don’t matter.
Sure, some spirits encounter ghosts (or more likely the other way around), but that doesn’t matter, either. If one ghost meets people who can see him and who might help or hinder him fulfil an agenda in the world, that simply doesn’t matter to the rest. That one or even handful of ghosts is also infinitesimal compared to the swarms that exist. Word of hunters’ existence simply can’t spread from so few spirits to so many. And even if it did, other ghosts wouldn’t listen because they’re wrapped up in their own causes or their causes don’t lend themselves to the involvement of some smattering of living people.
The few other spirits that might listen to word of imbued existence can seek them out for hep or to harass the chosen, but news of these strange people just doesn’t spread throughout spirit-kind.
Pretty much all the same applies to the walking dead and their greater awareness of hunters. Zombies are the products of spirits, after all. Even if a walking corpse is smart enough to perceive the imbued as something new and noteworthy, what does that have to do with gaining revenge on your own murderer or making sure that your favourite nephew is safe? The walking dead just don’t care that hunters exist. The imbued are simply obstacles, like everything and everyone else who gets in a zombie’s way.
Shapechangers
Shapechangers are perhaps among the monsters who can best understand people. Werewolves and other shifters can assume human form, so they know what it means to walk like men. So you’d think shape changers of all creatures would collectively acknowledge the imbued. The problem is, a lot of were beasts hate humanity. To their minds, people are an abomination that has tarnished the earth. People aren’t worth understanding or sympathising with. They’re better off dead. Humans who can wield strange powers therefore merit no more consideration than people who poison water bodies or pave over forests.
More subtly, however, is the fact that many shape changer cultures such as that of werewolves honour courage, bravery and martial skill. These beings gain renown among their own for deeds and feasts. Defeating monstrous opponents grains them honour. What honour is there in killing weak, pitiful human beings?
“But this one could brandish a tire iron as if it were made of silver?”
“Sure, Tells-Tall-Tales, sure.”
Skinchanger society simply would not accept stories about hunters and their capabilities. Even if imbued are killed, few shape changers can tell the tale without bringing shame rather than glory upon themselves. Thus, little or nothing is said of hunters at man-beast gatherings. Individual shapechangers can even feel guilt or shame for fighting what must have in truth been a pitiful opponent.
Wizards
Like shape changers, sorcerers have the potential to recognise and understand hunters. Mages are ostensibly mortal people, folks who emerge from the masses as different or changed. And yet, wizard society at large overlooks or misunderstands the imbued. Novice mages are like newly embraced vampires. They’re learning about the world’s other inhabitants, so can confuse hunters with bloodsuckers, were beasts, nightmares or even other kinds of mages. Masters who influence and direct wizard efforts therefore dismiss stories of such “miraculous” human beings.
Alternatively, wizard encounters with chosen are misinterpreted as meetings with sorcerers or with other wizards in the making. Hunters arise from the human masses. Hunters can do some amazing things. Hunters don’t really understand what’s happening to them or why the world suddenly seems different. All these conditions apply equally to emerging and inexperienced wizards. If anything, hunters should be taken under experienced wizards’ wing because the neonates obviously have twisted interpretations of what they’ve become and what they’re suppose to do in the world. And though the initiation of more wizards is important for the preservation of magic in the world, the confusion of a handful of novices is unimportant to the greater whole. Indeed, it’s expected at that early stage, so nothing more need be said about it.
And then there are technological wizards, who use science to perform miracles. They want to squash the existence of the supernatural, much like many hunters do. Their desire for structure, stability and control over the world therefore gives them the potential for a unique take on hunters. It just doesn’t bear out. Yes, the imbued are believed to pose a threat when they’re recognised at all, but no more so than other supernatural beings that proliferate the shadows. Reports of hunters’ activities, marked file number KX34578-1827, are an extreme minority and are lost in the bureaucracy as the activities of “just more vampires or shape changers” - beings to be eradicated when the System gets around to it.
Low-ranking techno agents who stumble across the imbued and sense that their existence means something more can be frustrated with their superiors’ ambivalence. These agents can continue to investigate the imbued, but filing more paperwork does little to make the machine run faster. These agents can instead utilize hunters as pawns of their own to turn against other supernaturals. After all, that seems to be what these “changed people” are inclined to do, anyway. And why report to your bosses that a unique new being eliminated the threat that you were ordered to, when you can arrange to have it done for you and can claim all the prestige for yourself? Better to keep that fact a secret.
Nightmares
Goblin society is heavily divided between the haves and have-nots. The lower classes are the most likely to encounter hunters, yet the upper classes’ obsession with politicking and socialising leaves many of the commoners’ concerns - such as the imbued - unaddressed. Besides, hunters can seem largely like any other dispirited, uninspired beings that stamp out joy and creativity. How are they really any different from all the other beings that drain the glamour from the world? Whether they’re new or old, unique or more of the same isn’t really worth talking about. It’s too depressing.
© Copyright White Wolf Publishing, Inc.