Editing Witch Hunter (section)

==Known Witch Hunters==
*[[The Lighthouse]]; Canadian Hunter Network<ref>The quartet in ‘Magog picked up all the C4 we had to dole out before I could get your bid in. Supplies are running low, with the last source we had getting arrested. I know you said Eva was messing around with your grenades, and I know Mac taught you how to rig a daisy chain pin pull. I stuck a belt of pineapples in your shipment. I can’t imagine it’s unwanted.<br><br>Rocket? I have serious reservations about giving you that RPG launcher, boy. Either you’re using it, and I don’t think you’re equipped for it, or your sister is using it, and we’re talking a slew of other problems.<br><br>Consider asking for help instead. Offer still stands. I trust your sensibility, Andy boy. If you think you need seven (now eight) good witch hunters to cut down the riff raff, you know we’re good for it. We’re all in this together, Andy boy. You two, me and my guys, the Magog nuts, the Montreal organization. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/09/04 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 10|Gathered Pages: Andy's Notes]]</ref><ref>[[One After Another 10.d]]</ref>

* Montréal Witch Hunters<ref>'''Estrella Vanderwerf'''<br>Estrella leads her family practice at 17, after all family practitioners over the age of eighteen were executed by the Montreal Witch Hunters. - Bonus Material: [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/09/10 Student Guide]</ref><ref>“What ''we'' do,” Cleo told Verona, in her heavy accent, “is we act like sports recruiters.  Go to schools, find the untapped.  The angry, the abused, the talented ones who’ve gone down the wrong track.  If you can run and hit hard and you’re a good little boy, you might make the lacrosse team.  If you can run, hit hard, and you’re angry as all hell at the world, or if you want ''more'' than chasing a ball, we offer.”<br><br>“What-[...]-what are the perks?”<br><br>“I could tell you about money, nice apartments, connections, sometimes you dial in a favor, and someone that’s ''really'' good at hurting people will take your abusive mom and pop into their custody, keep ’em for a few years to try their tools and techniques on.  But mostly?  Mostly, we all feel, deep down inside, it isn’t fair, and gosh…”<br><br>Cleo shook her head.  Verona couldn’t take her eyes off the Other to focus on her, but she could see it in the background.<br><br>“…Assholes like you are cheating and making it all more unfair than anyone else.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2021/08/17 Excerpt] from [[Summer Break 13.5]]</ref>
**[[Cleo Aleshire]]
*The Augury Assisted Abbots<ref name=":2">
:The Abbots keep an Augur bound in shackles and charms they've picked up, as well as the Augur's child. The Augur identifies targets for them in riddle-speak, which they use to narrow down the type of Other or practitioner they're dealing with, reaching out to home base a state away. They then tailor their munitions and approach appropriately, aiming for devastating opening moves, not giving targets a chance to respond. Typical attacks are two snipers with specially made bullets at two different angles, each with a spotter, and a team of five midrange guys. Their bullets go through barriers, protections, hurt even Others that can't normally be affected by bullets (immaterial, etc). Each wear charms that make them harder to see with the Sight, not easier. Everyone and everything they take down gets butchered and taken apart to serve as more charms for the same purpose, protecting them, their hideouts and homes, their families, etc. The Augur cooperates because they know when they die or finally break down under the accumulated costs of Seeing that much, their child is next in line. - [https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/iq6g7c/_/g4pyrzr Wildbow on Witch Hunters]</ref>
* The Power Couple<ref name=":3">
:Long and Mayes are a Witch Hunter pair who rove around in motorcycles. Mayes is a Designated Victim. Whatever fate the universe weaves, it keeps putting her in the way of hostile Others and monstrous practitioners. Kind of like a Gilded Lily (someone who, by dint of circumstance or shenanigans on the universe's part chronically stumbles onto magic items). Between the two of them, they've survived enough crap that the pattern's been established, and practices don't really affect them anymore. What's more, their return to sender vibe is really, really strong. They're scrappers, with a few cursed items that don't really affect them, and a strong survivor vibe. Most of the time they crash into a scene, with a whole lot of chaos, start crashing into wards and summons, rebound them, and follow them back to the head of the snake. This does mean L&M sometimes let things loose or screw up balances, but they can often kill their way through those things, or they'll just kill the people who swoop in to deal with them; They're not the strongest, but have a way of turning up in delicate situations and have enough momentum they'll probably get 5-10 years of 'work' done before they get turned into paste or worse. - [https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/iq6g7c/_/g4pyrzr Wildbow on Witch Hunters]</ref><ref>“Each of the Witch Hunter groups have a different philosophy,” Mr. Samaniego said.  “Montreal is ''mean'', they want to hurt.  Cleo came from that group.  They’ll lie, cheat, steal, deal with organized crime.”“[...] Long and Mayes travel across North America. Mayes is like you, Clementine, except instead of finding things, Others find her. She and Long have gotten very good at self defense, and very good at sending problems back to the source. Rebounding curses, returning summons. There’s Folk. There’s Hayden. More itinerants.”<br><br>“Lots out there,” Avery said.<br><br>“We work with them all. Long and Mayes stop in, we supply them, they teach my guys to rebound stuff. Montreal’s Witch Hunters teach us about items and practice. We supply the Magog five, Magog helps us deal with the nasty ones, when what the Lighthouse has available isn’t enough. It’s not easy. Long and Mayes are chaos incarnate, Magog is uncompromising in a way that makes me look like a dream. Clem knows what I’m talking about. Balances.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/06/11 Excerpt] from [[Crossed With Silver 19.5]]</ref>
* The Eliands ([[Collector|Anti-Collector]]s)<ref>
* The Eilands have been dealing with others, practitioners, and cursed items for several generations. At this point they consist of three teenagers/young adults, as well as their father and uncle, with the father & uncle being retired after bad injuries and trauma. Each of the kids roams, looking for Others, while carrying a device or tool.
**Eula drives around with a camper at the back of her truck, filled up with the electric engine created by an Alchemist practitioner, made to create a gateway to the dead. When she flips it on, power goes haywire all across whatever town or area of the city she's in, and the immaterial becomes material, practices and power transfers go buggy, many Others are slowed, crippled, and agitated, and she uses a tesla cannon in combination with a very amped-up cattle prod to subdue Others. Once they're weak enough, she drinks them up with her device (if immaterial) or cages them in specialized electric fields (if physical), and drags them back home. They get added to the 'vault'. 
**Lester works with a giant 7.5 foot Other with a smiling cartoon face painted on his helmet and baggy clothes that hide everything from the neck down. Lester likes to use a shotgun, explosives tuned to the Other (salt grenades, silver nailbombs), and similar methods to get an Other weak enough for his Other friend to grab and hold onto. Then they get dragged to the Abyss, where the Other gets to play with them until Lester gets back home. When he gets back, the Other, according to the terms of the deal, brings the target back, bound in a small child-like doll with a painted face. The doll goes to the vault. Lester doesn't tell his family that the deal also says that if he can't supply an Other every two weeks at a minimum, he has to supply a human child. Those three dolls (so far) are at the bottom of the lake, a two hour drive from home. A small price to pay.
** Ruth is the black sheep of the Eiland family. She was reluctant with the 'family job' and nearly died a few times as a younger teen, getting captured and kept by goblins for a week before her family rescued her. Ever since, she's been wild, promiscuous, neurotic, alcoholic, and addicted. Hard to blame her, when even seven years later, she's finding things beneath her skin, or vomiting and having her stomach lining tear as things come free. She almost spiraled into total self destruction before she went on a job to stop a(nother) alchemist who was trying to unravel immortality, but those rinsed in the elixir would become indestructible statues with consciousnesses trapped inside them. She kept the formula and uses it as a weapon, now. She doesn't get everyone she goes after, but those who have even chance meetings with her end up partially petrified, or with their skin dotted with scars from where droplets touched and turned the flesh to stone. When she does get a victim, however, she turns them into statues, which then gets shown and sold as high art. Her family hates that she's doing this, because of the higher profile, but it drives her forward when she feels she has pretty much nothing else. Whatever doesn't sell (or solidifies into a shape that won't sell) goes to the vault.<br><br>The vault gets stronger as stuff gets added to it. Trapped others, items, devices. Their father and uncle mostly deal with the 'soft' stuff, like cursed items, which also get added. They aren't really building a conventional 'collection', though. Rather, the more that gets added to it, the easier it is to subdue Others and practitioners to get them to the point where they can be added to the collection (getting stunned by the electricity, grabbed by the Other, brought low by the petrifaction) - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/17K1y-3cBqYOToj_eIKQ0DwvZc5qLkGQsqi8OmLG9clk Witch Hunter Examples]</ref>
* Reith Library [[Skeptic|Blind]]<ref name=":4">
:The Rieth Library studies Others, traces them back to origins or realms of origin (Abyss, warrens, spirit world, courts) and maintains contact with several higher-ups. Alabasters, Spirit Kings, Goblin rulers, etc. When they set their sights on a particular Other or Practitioner it's typically for a major reason. They then cite old rules, precedent, deals, and stuff dating back hundreds of years, or otherwise appeal to specific individuals, to obtain permission at the source to have their target dealt with. When successful, which is often, practitioners can be cut off from their practice, or Others weakened and cut off from allies or power sources. Their executioners are 'The Blind', men and women raised from birth to be steeped in doubt and skepticism, while the higher ups are the opposite. The doubt is a blessing that affords The Blind further protections and diminishes every Other and practice in an area. This combines with the Big [[Karmic]] O.K. they get from the higher-ups to make them very matter-of-fact, to-the-point Witch Hunters. Their victims typically have their eyes gouged out, eardrums pierced, and hands cut off, before being bound as necessary in power suppressing restraints, if Other or nonhuman enough. - [https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/iq6g7c/_/g4pyrzr Wildbow on Witch Hunters]</ref><ref>“Each of the Witch Hunter groups have a different philosophy,” Mr. Samaniego said.<br>[...]<br>“The Reith Library, they play the system. They’ll go to powers in charge, Lords, Judges, Gods over realms, whatever it takes, and they’ll bring obscure precedent from old records, and they’ll get permission. They walk the line of almost being practitioners, and then cultivate doubters in their rank and file, the opposite. Soldiers who are similar to your acquaintance Sharon. The skeptic. [...] It’s like conventional law enforcement, getting warrants, except they capture their targets, butcher them to make them even less able to practice. No tongue, eyes, hands, ears. ["] - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/06/11 Excerpt] from [[Crossed With Silver 19.5]]</ref>