Hunter's Guild

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Bishops
The insignia used by the Bishops following its rename from the Hunter's Guild.
Cognomina	Hunter's Guild (former, colloquial) Guild (abbrev., colloquial)
Founder	Evi Snijder
Membership	8 (outer circle)[amend] 26 (inner circle)
Admittance	Excluding vampires
Relations	Serpents (rival)

The Bishops, formerly and colloquially known as the Hunter's Guild, are a criminal organization and guild of vampire hunters in Offetstine. It is split into two halves, the "inner circle" consisting of humans that have full knowledge of the state of the organization and target vampires directly, and the "outer circle" consisting of mixed human and demi-human recruits, naturally excluding vampires, who behave as a more traditional criminal organization.

History

Despite its present incarnation being a criminal organization the likes of the Serpents or Ringleaders, the Hunter's Guild was initially exclusively a guild of vampire hunters.

Inception

The Hunter's Guild was founded by Hera Kraus and a loose collective of fellow vampire hunters, Agnes Lenz and Lewis Pickering, operating in Offetstine over 120 years ago, where one of the predominant vampire subspecies at the time, S. Consili, was especially prolific. S. Consili was inherently predisposed to evil and at the time was directly responsible for a large portion of violent crime in Offetstine. Despite this, they were able to evade police capture under the auspices of the Masquerade, making them a prime target for underground organizations such as the then-nascent Guild.

When one of its founding members, Lenz, was turned into an Eris vampire, S. Erisi, and another, Pickering, was deemed compromised by Lenz's compulsion, they were subsequently assassinated by Kraus, leaving her the only remaining founding member of the guild. Despite this, in her death, Lenz specifically implored Kraus to continue her work in the Guild. Kraus remained as a vampire hunter until her retirement to entrust the guild to her progeny, and eventual death to pneumonia in 1937.

During its foundation, the Guild was purported to have a flat structure. However, as it grew larger, the guild required leadership to keep it on track. At the time, Hera Kraus, being the de facto leader, was entrusted with the title. Upon her retirement, the title was passed down hereditarily through a series of near-unanimous votes by the members of the Guild. The last of these hereditary leaders was Duško Kraus, a controversial leader who was known for his belief in magical epistemology and his practice of recruiting hunters fresh out of secondary education, including Evi Snijder, then a fresh graduate of Offetstine Secondary School, who he saw as his foremost protégé.

Duško Kraus eventually voluntarily turned himself into a S. Consili vampire and attempted to capture and sexually assault Snijder, at which he was killed by her after a fierce altercation. The Guild bestowed the title of leader upon her unanimously in light of Kraus's passing, citing sympathy for the events that transpired and her lasting injury, and her fierce character that suited her to leadership.

Reestablishment

Eventually, the Hunter's Guild came to target Sonia Versace, leader of the Serpents, another criminal organization in Offetstine. As this was after the fall of the Coalition, the Serpents had amassed significant tenure across Offetstine, claiming most of the town's northern half as its territory. As it was otherwise impossible to directly do combat with Versace due to her shielded nature, Snijder decided to reestablish the Hunter's Guild as a criminal organization to ensure their chances of success.

At the time, the Hunter's Guild consisted of 26 members including Snijder herself, hairstylist and Guild spy Regina Winters, and former security guard and Guild frontliner Felix Seward. Snijder came together with with Winters and Seward to form the "outer circle" of the Hunter's Guild, a criminal organization set to compete with the Serpents from without, allowing human recruits to take the fall on investigative missions in place of Snijder and her "inner circle".

Publicly, the Hunter's Guild was initially proposed as a strategy to "fight fire with fire" and mitigate the rise of gang warfare in Offetstine, which has been especially prevalent since the fall of the Coalition. Despite their stated purpose, the outer circle is known for racketeering and, to an extent, violent crime targeting civilians. The organization is known for its boisterous nature and habit of overstepping its territory, specifically under the guidance of Snijder and Seward, in hopes of getting close to Versace.

Renaming

As the "Hunter's Guild" moniker eventually grew stale and did not fit the prescribed brand of the outer circle, the Guild was renamed to the Bishops a few months after its founding. The new name draws from its eponymous piece in the game of chess, wherein each player starts with two bishops which may each only travel to half the squares on the board, and are restricted to a single color complex. Furthermore, it draws from the term for a type of clergyman, under Snijder's characterization of the inner circle as an organization that rids the Greater Offetstine Area of the purported evil of vampirism, and the outer circle as an organization that rids it of the purported evil of gang warfare.

Under its new name, the Bishops use an insignia of their respective chess piece. The symbol is not widely recognized in the outer circle, but used in official communication all the same.