White Wolf Online

Hunter Preview: Sample Endowments for TFV
Where do they get those wonderful toys?
Posted: 2008-07-28

Advanced Armory

The elite agents of Task Force: VALKYRIE don't trust their lives to bizarre magical rites, weird relics, or freakish biological modification. As befits the best of the best, Task Force: VALKYRIE relies on cutting edge technology and advanced warfare systems to eliminate their targets and keep humanity safe from the monsters. From bullets that rip through ghosts as easily as human flesh to rifles that spit lightning, the Advanced Armory of VALKYRIE agents gives them an edge over the creatures they hunt.

Etheric Goggles (•• or ••••)
Ghosts, demons, and witches all have the ability to pass unseen by mortal senses. Even vampires, according to some stories, have the ability to send their minds out of their cold, dead bodies and explore the world in secret. With etheric goggles, Task Force: VALKYRIE can bring the fight to them.

Etheric goggles operate on the same principle as the etheric tracker (see p. XX), utilizing chemically-treated lenses to detect entities in Twilight. Until recently, they were standard kit for field agents, but since a rash of psychosis among agents who used them extensively in the early 2000s, top brass has restricted their use.

Function: Etheric goggles look like slightly bulkier, more complicated versions of the night-vision goggles employed by the United States Armed Forces. In fact, etheric goggles serve as perfectly functional night vision goggles, allowing the wearer to see perfectly—albeit in monochrome—in pitch darkness (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 140). Their primary use comes into play when the hunter flips a pair of oddly purplish lenses down over the infrared light source on the goggles' brow, allowing the wearer to see objects in Twilight as clearly as if they were manifested physically. The process required to treat the lenses to render Twilight visible creates weird distortions of the physical world. While the hunter is using the goggles to see Twilight objects, he suffers a -2 penalty to Perception checks made to notice anything in the physical world.

For four dots, a VALKYRIE agent may requisition a more advanced model which can pick up trace etheric disturbances left behind by incorporeal creatures after they pass. These traces appear as a softly luminescent purple cloud that trails behind a spirit or ghost, enabling it to be tracked. The trail fades after ten minutes per point of Power the spirit entity possesses. (In the case of beings that use the full nine Attribute spread, such as a Twilight-walking witch, use the highest of Strength, Intelligence, or Presence.)

Etheric goggles have a battery life of 6 hours as a night vision device, or three hours when used to see Twilight objects.

Gungnir Multi-Function Targeting System (•••-••••)
The Gungnir System, named for Odin's never-missing spear, is the boon and the curse of many Task Force: VALKYRIE field teams. Integrated directly into the latest generation of standard armament (the three-dot version described here includes an integrated submachine gun; a four-dot version comes with an assault rifle), the Gungnir System is VALKYRIE top brass's new initiative for the future of the agency, in one fell swoop improving target identification and all but eliminating collateral damage.

The truth, according to cynical agents who have field tested the device, is that target identification and guy who's about to kill me identification aren't necessarily the same thing, and the only way the Gungnir System is going to prevent collateral damage is by ensuring that bystanders are only accidentally killed by the bad guys.

Function: The integrated scope built into a weapon outfitted with the Gungnir System is a marvelous thing. A combination night vision scope, thermal imager, and Kirlian camera, it allows a soldier to engage targets in pitch blackness and easily distinguishes most monsters from humans: vampires, of course, are well below human body temperature, while werewolves and their ilk run hot as a byproduct of their increased metabolism. Witches, psychics, and the possessed demonstrate an unusual Kirlian aura that identifies them as extranormal. For an additional Merit dot, the scope can even have etheric goggle functionality built into it, allowing the agent to target ghosts and spirits. An LED overlay tags any known supernatural entity with its Task Force: VALKYRIE designation.

In addition to its target identification features, the scope is a top-of-the-line sighting system. Penalties for medium range fire are negated entirely, and long range penalties are halved. The hunter also ignores any penalty for fighting blind when using the Gungnir System.

The scope is tied directly into a fire control computer programmed to recognize the unique signatures (thermal, etheric, or Kirlian) of every supernatural creature of which Task Force: VALKYRIE has records. If the gun is pointed at a target that does not fit any target profile, the safety is automatically engaged and the gun will not fire.

In theory, this means that it is impossible for a VALKYRIE soldier to accidentally shoot a bystander during an engagement. In practice, it means that the weapon tends to refuse to fire at a monster's mortal servants, cultists, slashers, and even the odd inanimate object. A cell operating under the cover of the Gulf War was wiped out by a nest of ghûls because the desert sun baked the stone walls of the creatures' lair to a temperature close to 98.6, causing the computers to assume the hunters were surrounded by human onlookers and refuse to fire.

Special: The majority of agents issued a Gungnir System weapon quickly learn of a field modification that strips out the safety controls while leaving the scope and target recognition software intact. This hack requires an extended Dexterity + Computers roll, with each roll representing an hour's worth of careful soldering and re-wiring. The hunter must achieve 10 successes to complete the modification. Task Force: VALKYRIE comes down hard on agents discovered to have modified their weapons in this manner, with court martial the least severe reprimand.