The Snipe Hunt

* **Description:** An insular gang and cult of hobos riding the rails of the Big Loop rail line led by the mysterious Snipe.
* **Home Base:** Mobile. The Snipe Hunt doesn’t have anything like a fixed abode. They ride the rails along the whole of the Big Loop rail line. They never stray far from the Iron Road they ride but near it they run the rails, they hide in the massive freight cars, squat in the shadow of the fueling and repair depots, lurk around train stations and hold court in railyards, unchallenged by RailSec .
* **Colors/Signs:** The Snipe Hunt has no need for colors or symbols to identify each other. They know each other by the obscure hand signals and nearly incomprehensible patois of English, Anishinaabe, Dakotah and Ghost-only-know-what-else that they all seem to speak. Besides, even without them opening their mouths, you can always know a member of the Hunt by looking at them. Nothing you can put your finger on, but you always just KNOW.
* **Leadership:** The Snipe Hunt only follows one thing, they follow the Snipe. Not much is truly known of the Snipe outside the trademark battered black coat and the leather plague doctor mask. Nobody even knows if it is the same inhabitant in the costume as when the Snipe first emerged during the first waves of the VITAS  plague decades ago. The Snipe has been around almost as long as Whiskey Jack himself. The only thing that is known for sure is that the Hunt follows the Snipe without question and without hesitation.
* **Rackets:** The Hunt is involved in the kinds of activities that you would expect out of a bunch of modern-day hobos running the rails. Busking, petty theft, small-time con games, informal gambling and smuggling contraband across the borders connected by the Big Loop. Its also an open secret in the shadows that the Hunt will hurt or kill for pay, depending on the target and how sophisticated their security is. Less well known is their talent for hacking. After all, the Big Loop is fully-automated and protected by the combined security systems of the STC  and to ride the rails in the Sixth World requires a lot of technical skill, which people wouldn’t guess from the Hunt’s rough exterior.

### Relations

* **The Jacks:** With their rough manners, violence, nomadic lifestyles and insular ways outsiders often mistake the Snipe Hunt for Jacks, but the two groups couldn’t be farther apart. The Jacks often try to prey on the rail-runners, and the Hunt even sometimes preys on the Jacks. They are much alike in the way that natural competitors for similar niches in the ecosystem.
* **Roamers:** The relationship between the Roamer Families and the Hunt is complicated to say the least. A lot of the Hunt come from Roamer origins despite, or perhaps because, of the universal distrust shown the hunt by the Family Heads. And yet, when they’re looking for help, or need something done outside their own moral codes, these same heads will send someone down to the trainyards, with a gift or an offering or a bribe, for the Snipe and its Hunt...
* **I-29ers:** In all the years there has been a Snipe, the Snipe has never shown any definite evidence of having Awakened abilities. But the Snipe has always been attracted to any phenomena that effects its precious rail lines and some things about the Snipe, such as the Snipe’s ability to predict the mid-west’s famously chaotic weather, seem to border on the supernatural. The Snipe and the I-29ers stick to their own spheres, the Snipe and the Hunt to the rails, the I-29ers to the roads, but those spheres do overlap in places and in those places, they are usually careful to stay out of each others’ ways. Besides, those members of the Hunt of Roamer extraction still have the fear/respect for the hitchhiking mages that was bred into them from childhood.
* **The Lake Devils:** The scale of smuggling that the Snipe Hunt does is nowhere near enough to threaten the cargo haulers of the Lake Devils so for the most part the Devils leave them be. However, their specialized skills and area of influence do make them a valuable source of information within their specific world and sometimes their ability to hack the Big Loop makes them useful for the Devils’ purposes, although the Devils are always careful not to push these favors they do each other too far for fear of scaring off the famously skittish hobos.
* **Riverlings:** The mystery and nomadism of the rails appeals to the romance of many Riverlings and some are attracted enough to leave their beloved River for the Iron Horse. Those that do are regarded with equal parts awe and suspicion by their fellows on shore, who distrust any group that isn’t Riverling, but at the same time will give the proper respect due to the stories these rail-riders bring back with them.
* **The Night Bazaar:** Even the Snipe Hunt needs a place, secure but off-the-grid, to sell the wares they’ve scavenged, refurbished or stolen. And when they’re stopping in Region 3 of the Zone, that place is the Night Bazaar and they are considered equal among the various groups that maintain this farmers black market.
* **Setebos:** Don’t ask me. I got nothing about this one.

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