Hunters and Bystanders

There's a moment in everyone's life when you got to stand for something, sometimes people decide to take action, safe the day and be the hero, other times they just watch and let action flow. That's the difference between Hunters and Bystanders and of course decision have consequences.

At some point you realized that a supernatural creature is hurting you or someone you love, may be even someone you hate but right there in front of your eyes there is a human endangered by something is not. A True Hunter hears the Calling of a Herald urging to take action, doing what he can but empowered by a divine force, a Bystander looks for help or takes notes or lacks the balls to stop the monster but either way he knows and he has forever changed.

There are many ways in which a Hunter can solve that hypothetical situation, direct action doesn't mean violence, it can be exposing a pedophile monster to be seek and destroy by the police, or just taking a broom stick to smash the head of a deformed burglar, or even protecting an innocent taking her place as a victim. Everything goes when saving someone else from the monsters.

That action is deeply wired into that one's psyque, the Calling shows you what you really are, revealing an aspect of your personality that you might have ignored or overlooked. A surmise housewife could burst into violence to protect her daughter or a police officer would rather put himself in danger between a victim and the monster. In that moment of truth, the mortal's true natural is revealed.

Virtues are moral standards for a Hunter to lives by, one above all three defines the Hunter:

Jesus expelling the merchants from the temple.
• Zeal: When Dante and Virgil enter the fourth ring of the winding path up Purgatory Mountain, they meet a band of souls weeping and racing at once, "galloping for good will and righteous love." Before they can ask a single question, they hear these heartening words:
  
  
  "Come on, come on, don't let time slip away
  for lukewarm love!" cried those who ran nearby.
  "Zeal in well-doing makes grace green again!"
  
  A Zeal Guided Hunter is like a horse galloping through hell itself, despite fear or sadness, against sloth and unwillingness, they move forward and look for a better tomorrow. Zeal Hunters are the chain breakers, the holy warriors of this feud.
  
  There are three stereotypes of Zealots: Avengers, Defenders and Judges.
  
  
  
  
  
• Vision: Many of the moral principles we subscribe to seem reasonable to us only because they are embedded within a vision or worldview we hold to be true even though we might not think very often about it. In the same way, a moral transformation is often accompanied by a transformation of vision. Many ordinary people describe their moral improvement as the result of seeing things in a different fight or seeing them for the first time. "I was blind but now I see" is more than a line from an old hymn; it is the way a great many people explain their moral growth.
  
  If we can agree that morality is intimately bound up with vision, then we can see why stories are so important for our moral development, and why neglecting them is a serious mistake. This is because stories are one of the chief ways by which visions are conveyed (a vision, in turn, may be defined as a story about the way things are or the way the world works). Just as vision and morality are intimately connected, so are story and morality.
  
  Visionaries are suddenly awaken into a World of Darkness, beyond the Second Sight that allows them to see through the veil of deception that conceals the true nature of monsters, they truly see the world as it is and they want to share that with the rest of humanity. They're deeply bounded with the idea that ultimately revealing the truth to everyone will definitely end the threat of the inhuman over humanity.
  
  Hunters that follow Vision are: Waywards and Hermits
  
  
  
  
  
• Mercy: Forgiveness does not forbid punishment, what it forbids is punishment out of hatred. Mercy differs from clemency and amnesty. Clemency and amnesty renounce punishment while taking no stance on hatred. Mercy renounces hatred while taking no stance on punishment.
  
  Mercy differs from compassion. Compassion works to relieve suffering, and suffering is usually innocent. Mercy forgives wrongdoing, which is rarely innocent. Mercy is more difficult than compassion; it is easier to regret the suffering of another, especially when you can feel their pain, than it is to reflect on the futility of hatred, especially when you have been maliciously harmed.
  
  A Merciful person can punish out of Mercy, showing no compassion and without amnesty with no quarrel for the wicked. When Mercy is the based virtue of a Hunter acts without malice, the objective may be even to destroy the monster if that's a suitable punishment or the best way to stop it from spreading and will do so with relentless will and focus.
  
  These are the Merciful Hunters: Innocents, Redeemers, and Martyrs.

The Calling occurs once in a life time, many Bystander regret to have stepped back in that moment but there's nothing to regret, it is in each human being's nature what they're going to do in the moment of Truth. However, accepting our deepest flaws is often hard to do.

Most of the Bystanders accept their own nature and don't envy the Hunter's luck to put their life on the line in each fight against the monsters. They act as advisers, muscle, informants and support when they find a Hunter worth of their time and lives at stake, when they not then engage in their own agendas, sometimes against the supernatural but without the help of supernatural powers.