The Hunter's Guild

The Hunter's Guild is the central governing body within the *world*. Its primary purposes are to regulate all hunting activities and manage the monster population.

## **Goals and Policies**

The primary goal of the Hunter's Guild is to prevent further damage to the monster populations. This is so they can prevent other monsters species from going extinct like some ancient species. It doesn't exist to annihilate all monsters, they exist to harmonize humans with nature by hunting said beasts. In order to enforce and balance this policy, the Hunter's Guild uses hunters, making them a major part of the corporation.

The Hunter's Guild keeps tabs on the monster populations in areas and prevents hunters from taking the same quest more than once, unless it is necessary. However, if a monster threatens lives, towns, cities, etc. then hunters are allowed to hunt it to prevent destruction, even if the monster is rare, as long as the monster is at least repelled or slain. The Guild also prevents poaching. Poaching can lead to a multitude of punishments, but most commonly death at the hand of a Guild Knight.

## **The Four Swords of the Guild**

The Hunter's Guild's crest has four symbols on it that are the ideas that the Guild seek to follow. The top symbol represents Respect for nature, the left represents Life as a community, the bottom represents Crafting from nature, while the right represents Prosperity from nature.

## **Services and Responsibilities**

The Hunter's Guild unifies and regulates the hunting activities on which many people make their living. The guild aggregates hunting and gathering requests from far and wide, and posts them within their gathering halls and outposts throughout the land for professional hunters to undertake. These 'quests' can have many purposes, including defense of citizens or towns, or research into monster anatomy and biology. On certain occasions, for example, an Elder Dragon attack or a sighting of a rare or previously undiscovered monster, the Hunter's Guild itself will issue a hunting request to a specific range of hunters. The guild keeps a comprehensive list of all known monster species and variations, and will supply hunters with this information on a regional basis.

Furthermore, the Hunter's Guild is responsible for discovering and determining specific hunting grounds throughout the land. Only when a swath of area is officially within the guild's jurisdiction can it be embarked upon for the purposes of undertaking quests. Even despite this, the guild will sometimes only allow hunters within a specific city or region to accept certain quests. Finally, the Hunter's Guild is prone to building coliseums and arenas in which controlled hunter vs. monster battles take place. These arenas are meant both for training purposes and the entertainment of the public.

## **Employees**

The Hunter's Guild has a number of different of employees. There are the Guild Masters, Guild Managers, Guild Knights, and Guild Receptionists.

## **Locations**

The Hunter's Guild headquarters are located in the city of Dundorma, and all major announcements and actions are made from this location. Beyond this, the Hunter's Guild commands a sprawling territory comprised of many districts located in a multitude of regions. Each district has a Guild Master that manages the district, though not all of them are the best managers. The main districts of the Hunter's Guild are the Minegarde, Dundorma, Loc Lac, Tanzia, Val Habar, and Mezeporta districts. Hunter's Guild-certified gathering halls can be found in all major city centers, such as the ones noted above. Smaller Hunter's Guild outposts are commonly set up in less populous and more remote towns and villages, such as Kokoto Village, Pokke Village, Moga Village, or Yukumo Village, and are handled by one or more Hunter's Guild-employed representatives. These smaller outposts are considered to be a part of the larger districts in which they are located. For example, Pokke Village belongs to the Dundorma district and Yukumo Village belongs to the Loc Lac district. Each district manages certain hunting grounds, though some districts share certain hunting grounds.

## **Storage**

The Hunter's Guild provides storage rooms for the hunters. This storage is used to store items and materials that hunters have collected, while a hunter's equipment is stored in the weapon shop to be cleaned and taken care of by workers.

## **Registration**

In order to undertake guild-sponsored quests, one must first register themselves as an official Monster Hunter under the Hunter's Guild. Following this, hunters are given a specific measure of personal skill or "Hunter Rank" (often shortened to HR) through which the Hunter's Guild can gauge one's ability to undertake varying levels of hunting requests. In accordance with this, the guild will assign rankings, often on a number-of-stars basis, to quests listings to ensure that dangerous or difficult quests are only embarked upon by skilled hunters who have proven their aptitude. This is both to ensure the safety of its hunters and to ensure that the request is properly completed. If hunters are extremely skilled, they will sometimes be sent to do secret requests or investigations for extremely dangerous monsters. They will do these quests secretly so it won't cause a panic to the public, in order to get a better understanding of said situation, because in some cases it is just a false alarm, and so the Hunter's Guild can come up with the proper actions needed to protect the truth or the public without causing a panic.

Each hunter is also given a Guild Card that they can customize at their own freewill. They are used as an ID for hunters to list their name, what Quests they've done, awards they've collected, and the monsters they have slain. These cards can be made out of various materials like timber, ore, and monster materials. The Guild Cards of some elite hunters are known to be made of parts belonging to more dangerous monsters. Some legendary hunters have cards made out of Elder Dragon materials. Each hunter is known to have their own personalized title.

## **Awareness**

Though the Hunter's Guild is connected together, each district of it prefers to work alone. This means that not every district is aware of new discoveries made by the other, such as locations and monsters. For example, the Mezeporta district wasn't aware of the existence of the Exotic Species, such as Deviljho, until very recently, while Loc Lac district was very much aware of these monsters.

## **Fate of Captured Monsters**

The fate of a captured monster depends on the reason for its capture. Usually when a monster is captured, it is torn apart in its sleep with ease by the corporation that requested it. This is due to said corporation wanting to research the body parts and organs of said monster, allowing them to better understand a certain species. The corporations that request for monsters to be captured include Elder Dragon Observation Team, Wycademy, and the Royal Paleontology Scriveners. On some very rare occasions, the monster is tamed and becomes a person's pet.

In Astera, on the other hand, a captured monster may have a few parts taken from it if necessary, but typically it is studied alive for a period, then released. There was however at least one incident where an Odogaron was taken as a pet by a researcher.