Steven Williams is a user on hunter-net known as Soldier91. Throughout his posts he references a military career.
He believed that the Messengers are aliens, and that the hunt is a kind of interplanetary conflict. Additionally, he believed that the walking dead are caused by humans' negative emotions and pollution.
Overview[]
Steven Williams was a young infantryman stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. He was working his way through a four-year stint when the Messengers spoke to him. On leave in nearby Kileen, he and several friends were drinking beer in a neighborhood bar when Williams spied a very pale, middle-aged man talking to an attractive young girl. Williams watched the girl's eyes become unfocused and her expression go flat. The man stood to leave, and the girl followed. Over their heads, a neon beer sign flared red: "MURDERER." Williams shook his head, disbelieving. When he looked again, the sign was normal once more.
Not sure what to think, Willams gathered his friends and headed into the parking lot. Back in the shadows, they saw the man bent over the girl. Williams shouted and the man looked up. Blood ran down his chin and fangs gleamed faintly in the moonlight. The "man" was a monster.
Williams and his friends attacked the creature. It tossed them around like rag dolls, laughing coldly, and then disappeared into the darkness. When the soldiers recovered, the girl's body was gone, whisked away by the creature. Questioning his buddies, Williams learned that no one else had seen the man for what he really was, but they certainly knew that something bad had happened. And with no body, there was nothing to take to the police.
Undaunted, Williams went back into the bar and asked questions. The man was a local and well known, an oil tycoon who lived on a ranch with a bunch of servants. He had a reputation for coming in and leaving with the ladies from time to time. Going to the police wouldn't help. The man owned the police. The smartest thing he and his friends could do would be to head back to base and forget the whole thing.
Williams took half the advice. He and his friends went back to base - and returned shortly after dawn, ready for war.
The vampire's servants were well prepared, but not for a squad of soldiers armed with automatic weapons. The intruders fought their way into the monster's lair and dragged the creature out into the sunlight. Afterward, Williams' buddied wanted nothing more than to get back to their everyday lives and forget about the whole horrible incident, but Steven couldn't let go. That moment in the parking lor had transformed him, and he learned all he could about stories and rumored sightings across Texas. Eventually, he found his way onto hunter-net.
It was on the net that Williams heard about a vampire in Mexico. Supposedly a powerful creature, it resided just across the border in a walled hacienda surrounded by guards, and it had its fingers in everything from drug-trafficking to guns to sweatshop slavery. Williams announced to the net that he was going after the thing. A few other hunters, including a salesman who called himself Traveler72, agreed to go along.
Williams approached the guys, his buddies in the squad. They wanted no part in any other freakish episode, but Williams was adamant. They had been shown the vampire for a reason, he declared, and he meant to see things through to the end. Finally, he talked his friends into accompanying him armed to the teeth across the border. They were going to play it smart this time. No more confronting the creature in its lair. They brought enough charges to blow the building straight to Hell.
This time was different - they walked into a trap. The team was ambushed outside the hacienda by a horde of puppets and brought inside. Williams was forced to watch as his friends were tortured for information.
The only thing that saved him was a hunter Williams had never even met, a lurker who had seen Williams' plans on the net and decided to cover their backs in his own way. A bullet shattered one of the hacienda's windows, letting in the burning desert sunlight. The monsters shrieked in pain and surprise, and Williams made his break. In the chaos, he got himself free and stumbled in terror through the darkened hacienda. Screams of the dead and dying filled the air. When he finally found the explosives they'd brought, he set the fuses and prepared to die with his buddies. But something changed his mind. In retrospect, he believes that the ghosts of his friends told him to run. He stumbled from the house moments before it blew to bits. Later, he learned that Traveler72 was the only other to escape.
Torn by guilt and haunted by the deaths of the guys, Williams went AWOL and began to travel the country to unravel the mystery of the Messengers and his imbuing. Only when he has fulfilled the task that the Messengers have set him, he feels, can he atone for the deaths of his friends.
References[]
- HTR: The Walking Dead, p. 23, 30, 34-35, 39, 59
- HTR: Hunter Book: Avenger, p. 2, 27, 29, 30, 40, 45, 49, 57, 61, 95-96
- HTR: Hunter Survival Guide, p. 105-106
- HTR: Hunter Book: Visionary, p. 25, 92
- HTR: Hunter Book: Hermit, p. 47, 49, 50, 71
- HTR: Hunter Book: Martyr, p. 38
- HTR: Hunter Book: Redeemer, p. 27, 33
- HTR: Hunter Book: Wayward, p. 33, 36, 38, 51, 53, 56
- HTR: The Spellbound, p. 30-37, 65-73
- HTR: Hunter: First Contact, p. 132-133, 138
- HTR: Fall From Grace, p. 9, 64
- WOD: World of Darkness: Time of Judgment, p. 109