Vampire Hunting as a Sport 1

Vampire hunt was always a dangerous obsession, fanatic, self-destructive activity. If you are rich enough, well connected enough, has the skill and the information to get by, it may have been a lifestyle to you, but, even them, a tremendously unwise choice. In terms of self-interest. The reason that drove almost all of us at first was vengeance, was nothing anything else. Someone we loved, someone important, killed by a vampire.

Religious fanaticism accompanies it in some cases, but that is a doble edged sword. Because vampires always used organized religions as a intelligence tool, to find and keep under vigilance the most promising hunters.

The subculture is well described by that metaphorical onion Hannah Arendt used to describe Totalitarian Movements, and I say that without the negative connotation the self-declared “Political Thinker” applied to Totalitarianism. In the most external layers you have the types who think you can kill a vampire for good by putting a piece of wood though its heart and decapitating it.

Those brave idiots never find any blue blood. They “kill” the wild. Lowlife vamps that are hunted and killed by the vampires who have a family name. Those are the blue bloods. “Noble Vampires” they call themselves.

No matter how rich and well connected you are, you are not playing in the same league of the Vampire Families.

Those are organizations that in most cases have thousands of years of existence. Each one has a core of vampires, surrounded by their living descendants. Who dispute among themselves the honour of being chosen to became part of the permanent, immortal, hearth of the family. Most Vampires came from the nephews and in some cases grandchildren of the Patriarch of the family. Some talents are recruited from outsiders.

Vampires control their own population, the families have deals about that, and this is the reason why they hunt and destroy the low “born” vampires. To keep total vampire population under their control.

The Vampire Hunter subculture is used as a tool to search for those feral vamps, and that is the main reason why Hunter Clubs are allowed to exist. Hunter Cults tolerated.

Then, of course, the next layer from the surface of this onion to the core is the hunter who knows who is who. Knows the difference between a vampire with the weight of a Noble Banner on his back, the accumulate power of grow blood-seed in his veins, and the vampire hoboes he used to catch by luck. Crucially, this not-so-stupid-anymore hunter knows how to actually kill a vampire for good.

To do that you must first immobilize the vampire. Decapitation does that well enough most the time. However, you must not touch the hearth. Because next step is to cut that organ out. It must be taken intact, lose one piece, have it crushed in any way, and chances are you lost your chance to destroy that vamp.

Once you get the hearth, you may leave the rest behind. All you need to do is expose the organ to direct sunlight. Actual sunlight. The vampire body burns with the heart inside, but if it happens the vampire will came back eventually. Same happens if you miss a small piece of the hearth. About the hearth, don’t hold it in your hand unless you want to lose that hand. Because the damn thing will burn, and it burns hot. Faster than you would imagine.

Once it happens, is over. Noble or lowlife, young or old, that vampire is destroyed.

What nowadays means you can be charged with first degree ****. Since, six years ago. When the Vampire Families came into the metaphorical light of public spot.

Was the most unexpected thing that ever happened. I would never have imagined it was possible. In retrospective, scares me to admit, make sense. Our society, human society, was fucked up in a level too amazing to be believed or justified. Realistically, we where so divided between left and right, communists and liberals, traditionalists and radical feminists, new left, old left, far right, west/east, north/south, clime hysteria and eco-scepticism, misandry and misogyny, that few people could imagine a way out of that mess. And a growing percentage of people was reaching the conclusion that the best case scenario perhaps was human extinction in our life-time. Well, in the last minutes of it. That turns out to be the one moment when the existence of vampires could be welcomed as a refreshing change in subject.

It was, indeed.

The “Nocturnal Courts” brough new perspective to our mundane daily lives. Vampires exist, they need human blood. They cannot just take it always from voluntaries in a hygienic setting. Vampires need, for deep reasons no one fully understands, to hunt humans, against the will of their prey. Is not most the time, but they need it from time to time. That hunt do not cause permanent damage to the victim, most the time, but the vampire loses control sometimes, and kills the human.

All that was openly disclosed, and publicly accepted. By Treaties, ratified in Law, fast enough. Details change a little bit, from one country to another. Not substantially.

Vampires must hunt, humans die in the process sometimes. No one can be blamed for that. Is a tragedy of nature. Human nature, vampiric nature. The interaction between those natures. Of course, as long as that is understood, you may even not wish to avenge the violent killing of your son by a human-looking supernatural predator.

“Don’t take that personally”, I suppose. Valid advice.

Noble Vampires killing Low Vampires was kept under the carpet of “vampire law”. You know, the Nocturnal Courts have their own culture. Their own police. They deal with their own criminals as they always have. Extraterritoriality. Vampires do not judge humans, we do not judge them. Civilized as you could wish. I am fucking proud to be human!

Not, really.

Well, you see. The Vampire Families have always used the Hunter Clubs and Cults as recruiting ground. They see those places as farms for talents, successful hunters end up promoted to blood-thralls. Or even to full Noble Vampires.

The families are always at war against each-other, a skilled vampire killer is always welcomed. Kill vampires is a considerable part of the social obligation of most vampires. Looks like all ancient enough vampires have killed more vampires than any human hunter could ever dream to.

Closer to the core of that onion still, are the hunters who know for a fact that most organizations of Vampire Hunters have vampires behind them. Best case scenario, they have a vampire sponsor in their roots and escaped that influence over a century ago.

Not the most common situation, unfortunately. Most your fellow hunters, people you know and may have trusted in the past, are tools for some vampire.

When they don’t know that you don’t feel betrayed. The practical consequences however, those are the same either way. You are exposed.

You start realizing that you will never be paranoid enough. Because no matter how strong your mind can become, with exercises of meditation and self-discipline, sacrifice and iron will, some vampire will still have mind-control powers capable to brake your defences and reshape your memories. Believes. Loyalties.

All that takes is bad luck to cross the wrong vampire in the wrong moment. You don’t even need to make any mistake. And you cannot be sure you will have the chance to kill yourself in order to die human, free and with dignity.

So, you see! The most radical sport you will ever find.

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