Defenders
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"People say the world's going to Hell. They're wrong. Hell's come to the world and we're the thin red line."


Whatever you were before the world changed, you are now a soldier. Perhaps you always were, or perhaps a firefighter, or a member of the constabulary. On the schoolyard, you were the one who dragged bullies off the children too small to fight for themselves. If you kept your eyes open as you aged, you realized that the world was much like the schoolyard, except that the aggressors multiplied even as people like you seemed to vanish. Maybe watching others lose themselves and become part of that mob is what lets you see through the demon-people's disguises.

Caution and caring are all that separate hunters from mobs. Sometimes you must embody those qualities when your associates grow too… enthusiastic. They say we must carry the war to the ones who started it. Remind your fellows that those take up the burden of war find it difficult to set aside. Think of carrying your war home to the people you fight for. Think of what your dying does for them: it leaves their protection in the hands of persons with agendas different from your own. In this conflict, there can be no truer form of defeat. When battle is the only way, remember that even the bravest of your fellows need someone to guard the flanks. And remember that hunters sometimes need protection from their own foolhardiness. Any attack carried out with ease is probably a trap. And anyone who finds shame in a successful retreat probably wasn't part of it. Answer all who accuse you of cowardice, for losing the trust of your associates makes you less effective at protecting them and others.

There are no eager warriors among us. That kind dedicate themselves to revenge, it seems. Our kind are reluctant to fight, yet resolute. Let others chase the adversary back to its lair. Watch over them as you are able, but preserve hearth and home most fiercely. Lose your loved ones and you are almost sure to lose yourself to anger soon after. Do that and you risk becoming a threat yourself.

Weaknesses

Withdrawl into isolation is the most common problem that affects Defenders. Only a handful start out as so-called survivalists, but many gravitate to such lives in short order. Defenders with family go this route as their fears grow. It's a natural response: The more you see you there, the more inadequate simple bars and alarms seem. Home fortification itself is routine among hunters and hardly a problem. If you live in a fortress and won't leave it for fear of what you might come home to find, seek help.

More troublesome are loners, Defenders who typically lack family and transfer that protective urge to fellow hunters. Restraint at the wrong time can cost an advantage or even lives. Regret for such casualties eats at the hearts of these imbued.

A scarier form of transference occurs to a Defender who identifies or sympathizes so strongly with the enemy that he comes between hunters and prey. It's a rare turn of events, but a Defender who has some tie to a target (Surprise, your Uncle Jimmy's a creature of the night!) might give his life trying to save it. Scariest are the Defenders who claim it's not their place to judge. They see hunters and monsters as predators who all need to kept apart and leashed.

Apocrypha

Traditionalists interpret the world's dire circumstances as part of a test that must be undergone to guide the rest of humanity through as well. Some of you establish urban "missions" to simultaneously satisfy the urgings of faith and to install protectorates in cities. Everything from tutelary gods to angels turn up in your favorite explanations of the Messengers.

Noteworthy among non-traditionalists are the Conscience of Earth followers, who hold tent revivals and preach about the "awakening of the joint conscience of the world's peoples." Everything the group says sounds pretty innocuous, but cities that have hosted this bunch have also seen masked hunters interfere with local activities.

You "anti-traditionalist" Defenders reject religion as divisive or oppressive. You see abuse and corruption everywhere, and also did so before being imbued. Your ideas about the Messengers are creative to say the least: "Man, it's ESP caused by psychotropic drugs the CIA put in our LSD" or "The Earth Mother chose us to save her from mutant toxophagic polluters, these guys who, like, live off poisons…."

No matter how you interpret your hunter role, your greatest prize is the world itself. If you cannot claim a place for humanity to live safely, what point is there in living?

The Imbuing

Budding Defenders seem to confront the most single-minded of creatures, ones that appear to have a specific target and that ignore all others. Some of you speak of a first foe that seemed as unwilling to harm you as it was determined to kill its intended victim. Others describe sieges mounted against your own homes or workplaces, situations that required quelling the terror around you even as you fought off your attackers.

Starting Conviction

Starting Conviction: 3.

Sobriquets

A.K.A.: Protectors, Fences, Dead-eyes, the Cavalry; Verteidiger; Defenseurs.