You're Not Alone
Let me back up a bit, to assure you that you're among friends. I know what you're going through. You can't look anywhere without seeing something that tears at your very soul - a grotesque walking corpse, a walking man-beast, a person you
know
to be dead, or some kind of spirit clinging to an unwitting person's body. They hide or stroll among us, unnoticed by everyone. They pick and choose who to kill and who to spare, who to save for later and who to devour now, and we have - or had - no idea it was ever happening. But now we see it all the time, and the people we see poised to become victims won't listen. They refuse to believe us. And then, there they go, off to their doom.
Let me guess: Your family wonders what's wrong with you; you're "agitated," "freaking out." Co-workers avoid you these days; you're "unstable," "acting weird." Maye you've already been fired; it's hard to keep your job when you attack a "colleague." Of course, no one believed you when you explained what she
really
was. But then she knew you were onto her…. Perhaps you've been arrested recently for assault, disturbing the peace or on weapons charges. Not even the police believe your stories, what your victims really were, or why you attacked them. They want you in a cell or committed, where they and
other things
have you within reach.
Sound familiar? Then here's probably the most relieving thing you've read in some time: You've been right all along. You're not insane. There are others like you. You've found us. The bad part is, being sane and right means everything you've witnessed, everything you've feared, is real. Monsters exist.
The Hunt
One of the prevailing questions that arises after you come to terms with what you've seen and what you've become is "Why?" "Why have I become this?" "What am I supposed to do?" Maybe the Heralds have a specific goal for us. Maybe the imbuing is completely random. Maybe we're supposed to decide our own fate.
If your feelings and ethics are anything like mine, there can be only one purpose for our change. We can't be made to witness what we do, to possess the abilities we do and to have the knowledge we have without reason. There's too much coincidence involved for the change to be purely random. When I walk on the street and see figures lurking in the shadows, picking people out like candy behind glass, my soul allows only one response: to fight back. I cannot sit idly by while innocent, unaware people are manipulated and slaughtered. I couldn't stand by the moment I was changed, and I can't do it now. Nor, probably, can you. You wouldn't have come in search of this site if you hadn't sensed some purpose. What you needed was reassurance that fulfilling that purpose was the right thing to do.
The members on this list call our perceived purpose "the hunt." We dedicate ourselves to learning
the truth
, and to stalking and perhaps destroying monsters. Of course, you don't have to be on some glorified mailing list to have made the same commitment. Before you arrived here, you might have accepted this imperitive, too. "The hunt" simply means knowing that monsters are inherently wrong. It means finding them, shadowing them, learning about them and ultimately confronting them. Some hunters believe that creatures' destruction is the only answer. Others express concern that monsters may be the products of people gone wrong, that killing them damns a soul. They hope (and fear) that some small glimmer of humanity lingers in these creatures and should be recovered if any good is to be accomplished. Your approach to the hunt is your own, something you have to rationalize according to your sensibilities. But however you approach it, you must do what you believe is right in your heart, or the things we have to do may one day turn you into one of
them.