Tales of the Hunt

The Staff

For once, I haven't seen any urban myth that have to do with this chapter. I guess you could count the scientific research teams as the evil science people some seem so afraid of, but other than that, it seems pretty unheard off.

Sadly a facility cannot be only composed of intervention teams and scientists. Honestly if it was we would probably have made something important explode long ago.

The staff (By my definition) is any worker that doesn't belong in the category Newbie, intervention team or lieutenant. Any non military jobs I guess.

First of all I'm going to be talking about the guards. It should be pretty obvious that it's because it's the one I know the best about.

We were tasked to accompany the intervention team to guard the heavy (and then the threat, once neutralized) and to keep an eye on the prisoner once in the outpost. Sometimes we also had to bring them to an outside location without the help of the intervention team, so we still had a basic military training, even if I personally don't consider myself part of it.

If it was a life or death situation, I guess I could be used as an intervention team honorary member. In fact, I met a guy who did just that, which is why I'm thinking about it right now. I'll talk about him later, the story is worth telling.

One thing I hated with being a guard was that we were the ones that had to stay awake in the middle of the night while everyone was enjoying their sleep. Although their work was absolutely insane in terms of danger, I was sometimes envious of the intervention teams, as my work wasn't all that thrilling.

Our most interesting moments were the captures and traveling with the prisoners. We were not theorically supposed to, but more often than not we ended up speaking with the entity in the back if the IT was not present.

Most of the time it wasn't really dangerous, just a bit strange ethically speaking. We were not supposed to chat, we were supposed to be scary and impressive. But trust me it's much easier to guard a relatively relaxed creature than one that is scared out of its mind.

Those conversations are the source of most of my knowledge, that and late nights (after all alcohol always bring out the best stories).

Like I said earlier, there was usually more guards in the outposts than there was hunters, simply because we needed to be able to switch frequently for night watch. It also helps to have people who are competent drivers on the camp. I've never met a facility's engineer, scientist or even a goddamn radio guy that knew how to drive a van properly. I mean, they got the job done but it was disgraceful.

Other than the guards, we always had a radio technician who practically lived in the radio van or whatever place served for communication. I didn't bother much with them, although I knew some a bit they changed pretty frequently for some reasons. They were in charge of transmitting orders, trying to get the IT to listen to them and to do the whole geolocalisation business. I'm guessing they also had visual feedback and served as tactician, from what the IT described, but I've never had the confirmation. The IT seemed to like them like you like a little brother, but the feeling was probably not reciprocated.

Sometimes we had a few normal techies assisting the communication techie, and helping with the material when something was a bit complex. Sometime there was also an engineer in the pack, mostly to explain how new gear worked or in case of urgent reparations. Most of the time they stayed in the permanent outposts.

If we were lucky we had a cook, if we were not we had rations.
Most of the time they were the most uniformly liked.

If we had techies, they set up the camp but otherwise we were the one to do it, the IT helped from time to time.

In the permanent outposts it was a bit different. There was full blown jails that we had to guard, and a lot more staff. Engineers, scientists of all sorts and techies thrived here, but IT only came for one day at most to stock up before going back.

There was also maintenance personal for once. I'm not really sure if they had been recruited here or not. Some were obviously newbies who were in time out for disruption, but some seemed like normal peoples. Same goes for the cooks.

Those camps also had traduction expert, and some office dwellers (secretary and all the like, I've only seen them to get paperwork done and I'm honestly not good enough in English to know all professions, but you get the idea).

Then we had the recruiters and the whole army training deal. Honestly if you can picture yourself a training camp, it's close enough.

The recruiters have their own cars, and cooperate with our magic experts, which I'm going to talk about right after them. Basically they received orders of who to find and tried to coerce them into joining. They had an extensive list of their personality/identity and had access to their papers.

I've quickly discovered that in certain cases, those who did not accept were considered as criminals and we had to go get them. They usually join once they realized they've hit a dead end. Most of the time those ones were like me, humans who touched stuff they shouldn't have been fiddling with.

Lastly, although magic isn't very well seen in the facility, we still use it at our advantage. I've never personally met nor seen them, but there are rumors of seers getting the information of who to recruit, or who will be a grave danger. The staff and the IT were reasonably scared of that idea. I'm not sure if I believe it but it is completely possible, and at one point with magic you just have to say fuck it and accept it.

We also had enchanter, if that the right word. They were just called magic engineers and worked with weapons and armor engineer, but I deed see some enchanted vehicles at some point. Non magic engineer either adored them or despised them, no in between.

They are the ones who engineered mind control non lethal weapons. They aren't as efficient as the name may suggest, but they get the job done. It's basically a strong impulsion to, for exemple, take a different path. When you know about it it's really not hard to be unbothered.

It also works as a memory eraser to an extent. Most people just believe what they saw was a dream. Humans being logical beings, it doesn't take much to make the mind accept that. I've heard from several sources that it was way less efficient if the person already knew about magic though.

I might be forgetting some jobs that I haven't met much, and I'm not talking about the leaders, as I don't know much about them. I assume it's like any secret service.