Cryptid Chaser

**Key Features** | »*Savage Heston-99* mail-order rifle»"All-Seeing Eye" telescopic camera»Last-last-generation Kwolek vest»"How to hunt THEM" Tract»Makeshift helmet (from kitchen bowl)

## Tactical Analysis

* **Over the rivers, through the woods:** The basic "infantry" of the Network, Cryptid Chasers arm themselves with thin armor and a lever action hunting rifle to try and find the world's last remaining creatures. Usually they have to use it on other human beings in battle.

* **I spy:** To aid in both pastimes, the chasers can set up their own telescopes, able to see across long distances and scout out anything they can see.

* **Not a killer:** Cryptid chasers are only looking for undiscovered creatures. Fighting a war against other people was never something they knew to prepare for, or even anticipate. As such, in combat they're about as useful one-on-one as a sasquatch in the desert.

* **Seeing is believing:** Though their combat skills are still poor, most crytipd chasers start to learn how to carry their telescopes around without setting up the tripod, meaning that eventually they can switch between their rifles and scopes and still move holding either.

## Background

*"Be very, very quiet, we're hunting cryptids.*"

-  An excerpt from a Network tract, "How to hunt THEM"
Mankind likes to think it's documented everything that needs to be documented. All the elements of Earth, all the races of men, all the foods and goods he buys. People satisfy themselves in the knowledge that science documents everything as they buy a new car and drive off to their homes. Science knows better, however. Every day new species are discovered worldwide. Some are insects found in peoples gardens. Some are found deep in the world's jungles after decades of searching. Some just got missed by explorers looking for more "interesting" finds. For some people, there's a limit to what they believe exists and what does. It's easy to believe that the world forgot to catalogue a beetle, but how could science have missed a seven-foot ape in Oregon?

Some people don't buy that story. Science has screwed up before after all, as was the case with the coelacanth off South Africa, or the gorilla if you want to go farther back in history. Stranger creatures are found every day, so it stands to reason that maybe science is putting on a set of blinders willingly. Why? Some believe it's because to admit these creatures exist is to undermine modern science as a whole. Others say it's a willing conspiracy, to stamp out the existence of these creatures to either protect them from us, or us from them.

Those who believe in the existence of these creatures have decided to find them before the world destroys them. Of course, the world is dangerous to go traipsing around in the forests without protection these days, so these men and women have done what little they can to protect themselves. Buying mail-order rifles and surplus body armor (in some cases even raiding the kitchen for pots as makeshift helmets), these people are taking to the forests and waters in ever increasing numbers. Slowly, they've found one another through mailing lists and letter writing clubs, sharing stories about found evidence and even creating a museum of sorts in the Pacific Northwest. This is what brought them to the attention of the Third Eye.

In a series of letters made entirely out of newspaper and magazine clippings, the Third Eye gave these people pictures of everything from what looked like a massive Philippine Eagle flying over the Australian outback to a massive deep-sea eel off the coast of Vallejo, CA. Massive apes in what looked like primitive rags on the Russian-Chinese border, and a strange canid-like animal on the Mexican banks on the Rio Grande. It didn't take long for these men and women to contact the burgeoning Network and state they wanted in.

Though subpar combatants, these cryptid chasers have their own brand of wilderness survival training and field surveillance skills to let them see farther than any typical soldier, especially when they set up their telescopes and scan the field ahead of them. Already their partnership with the Network has given them results, from the confirmation of the existence of "el chupacabra" under the control of the Technocracy, to the clues pointing them in the direction of a mysterious blank spot on the map off the coast of Australia. There are even rumors of an expedition to the Amazon, to find the source of rumors regarding a jungle land filled with undiscovered creatures.

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