White Wolf Online

The Union, Part Two
June 23rd Preview of Hunter
Posted: 2008-06-23

The Enemy

The Union is so widely spread, so heterogeneous that it's impossible to really generalize about its members' approach to the Vigil. Still, from a glance at the forums (assuming you've passed all the checks and got a password) it's fairly easy to conclude that the one thing most of them have in common is that they're mainly concerned with protection of themselves, their families and their communities. It's not about ideology at all: if there is a threat, they band together and deal with it, posting in code on the bulletin board that they're going to war before they get cracking on the job at hand.

They don't really care what the monster is: they're all monsters, pretty much. Vampires, witches, beasts, demons, ghosts, they're all the same. Sometimes Union members take their vigilantism a bit further, dealing with human threats, ranging from slashers and cult members right down to muggers and drug dealers. What matters is if they pose a threat.

Until they actually harm someone, most of the Union's opponents don't really come under the radar. Although some of its members would like to be a bit more proactive, the Union is essentially reactive. If a monster doesn't come onto a member's turf, if it doesn't appear to hurt anyone, it's not worth it. It's a bit of a narrow view, but when you're most likely balancing being a monster hunter with a day job and a family, it makes a lot of sense.

The Union's online forums have a wealth of information... if only a member can find it. A sub-forum on the bulletin board archives information on many different kinds of creature, but it's split up among several hundred conversation threads, which, of course, are cluttered with conversation and tangential information. Searching is only of limited utility, since a lot of the Union forums' accepted slang terms for the different kinds of monsters get used interchangeably across different kinds of monster. Much of the information is accurate, in as much as it gives a pretty accurate view of what each monster can do and how often, their weaknesses, and the things that can't hurt them. But finding out what monster the forums are talking about — there's the trick. Depending on the wrong information has killed dozens of hunters over the years.