
The Underground creed is one of the five creeds practiced by mortal Hunters. Some Hunters start on the wrong side of societal custom — and that provides them with a unique perspective on how to take down the goddamned shaggy-ass night-haunts who are fucking with something they believe belongs to them. For these Hunters, conventional methods are either unavailable or, just as often, undesirable.
Overview[]
Hunters of the Underground creed oppose the occult through awareness of countercultures, proximity to the supernatural through criminal enterprise, or through subterfuge and sabotage. With a creed that’s part street justice, part rival outsider, Underground Hunters keep their ear to the ground among the segments of society where monsters often find easy, vulnerable prey, but where resistance can be stoked among those who know that official protection probably doesn’t include them.
As well, the Underground doesn’t just consist of urban areas. Underground Hunters might fund themselves with a bootleg booze operation in rural Appalachia, run with the anti-imperial resistance in Venezuela, or smuggle people to where they want to be across mountainous Balkan borders.
Hunters of the Underground creed might expect to organize a mob of vengeance-seeking dockworkers, improvise a flamethrower from chemicals that “fell off the back of a truck,” spy on a rival racket that’s obviously in bed with vampires, help protect a closed-lipped immigrant neighborhood, and liaise with the borough’s criminal “patron.”
Backgrounds[]
The ranks of the Underground creed house possibly the widest variety of Hunters, from those who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed something unnatural, to those who are, frankly, just fucking angry all the time, and burning down the lairs of monsters at least has some kind of positive outcome. Perhaps the sole common personality aspect among the Underground is that they’ve had enough — they’ve become Hunters to hunt.
Underground Hunters are often broadly skilled, taking a do-it-yourself attitude to everything they undertake in life. They may be optimistic dilettantes, the quickest learners at their offices, or shifty-eyed doomsday preppers, but they take great pride in being able to handle it themselves without calling in a specialist, no matter what “it” is (and often to varying degrees of success in the solution).
Some amount of the Underground personality is a cynical eye toward not just the orgs, but in prevailing social structures that comprise the status quo. Whether it’s a desire to tear down the socioeconomics that create the liminal spaces of poverty and desperation where monsters thrive, or a desire to use the system against itself with criminal (but not necessarily malign) intent, the Underground Hunter knows that nobody’s looking out for them and their kind except themselves and their cell.
Tactics[]
As befits the resourceful creed outlook, the collective tactics of the Underground are a grab-bag of what works. Despite its preference for immediate action, the Underground creed doesn’t see much value in hurling itself at enemies unknown — that’s a good way to get dead, fast, or, worse, end up in some monster’s unholy host.
But every lost night might have a cost in lives, so Underground Hunters tend to run lean, reconnoitering the bare minimum to offset their human frailty. Individuals bring a great deal of their personal experience to the Hunt, and as such, Underground tactics run the gamut from poisonings to breaking-and-entering assassinations to organized-crime subterfuges. While the other creeds can be defined by how the Hunter does things, the Underground can perhaps be better encapsulated by viewing how it responds to having a limited number of options: It finds the best in what it has.
It’s about traps, tricks, and fighting dirty from the perspective of an Underground Hunter, as cells often have to run without the superior funding and firepower of established orgs. That means a lot of improvisation, a lot of misdirection, and a lot of working through proxies and lookouts. The same kids who hang out on the corner, keeping an eye out for cops, can just as well keep an eye out for a vampire’s sedan or a weird shapeless thing that leaps across rooftops.
An Underground Hunter’s lack of orthodoxy can be an advantage, certainly. Supernatural enemies can find the Underground to be unpredictable, since they’re rarely using any sort of codified process or observable procedure outside their own idea of “best practices.” The do-it-yourself nature of the Hunt is often the extent of the philosophy behind Underground Hunters — kill the monsters and keep them guessing. Which isn’t to say the Underground is stupid, foolish, or uncoordinated. Rather, there’s a forthrightness in their approach rivaled only by the Martial creed, just without the toe-to-toe going-at-it. Making monsters regretful is the point of the Hunt.
Creed Field[]
Desperation tends to drive Underground Hunters to be at their best when undertaking stealth and subterfuge in all their forms in service to the Hunt.
Gallery[]

An Underground Hunter
References[]
- HTR: 5th Edition Core Book, p. 49-51
Hunter: The Reckoning Creeds | ||
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Imbued creeds | Avenger · Defender · Hermit · Innocent · Judge · Martyr · Redeemer · Visionary · Wayward | |
Mortal creeds | Entrepreneurial · Faithful · Inquisitive · Martial · Underground
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