The Hunt Explained (The Magnus Archives Entities) 

The Spiral woke up one day and chose chaos, and I love that for them. I hate it for everyone else, but I love it for them

From my perspective, it makes complete sense that the Hunt would create creatures, choose avatars, and then have those servants hunt each other. In this way, the Hunt is the only Entity that opposes itself. We see this sort of paradox also happen with the Everchase, where the Hunt gets so caught up in its itself that it becomes counterproductive.

"There’s a sharpness to them. They’re hunters. But over the years I’ve become a hunter as well and maybe predators recognize each other." - Trevor Herbert on Vampires, MAG 56: Children of the Night The language used here is a pretty strong nudge towards their alignment, to me!! I don't know how they're any more ambiguous than other monsters. All monsters are definitionally non-human, most horrors occur at night, everything eats, most evil is violent, these are way too broad to signify Stranger/Dark/Flesh/Slaughter. And there's a conspicuous differentiation in the telepathy of the vampires and the spider-girl Trevor kills (much like how Jane differentiates how Corruption feels from similar entities in her statement) indicating Vamps are NOT of the Web. Hunt has a dozen red arrows pointing to its connection.

My theory on the vampires, is that they are hunt aligned, but they are not your traditional manifestation. They are not born to inspire fear, like nearly every other entity creature. They exist, to recruit new hunt avatars. The hunt exists within parallel to the end, as a direct foil to it. The End is passive, only obtaining avatars from those that chance into it (thus imagery of dice.) The End does not seek a ritual, for it is a manifestation of oblivion, how can it seek anything? But the Hunt is driven, with a perpetual ritual, and I believe it actively seeks out avatars. The vampires are generated to lure humans in, give them something to hate, something to chase. The vampires provide a motive, a reason for someone to start hunting. (They can also serve as prey to keep the avatars fed.) Their first mention is in MAG 10, Vampire Killer. As I'm sure you know, the vampire in this episode not only introduces Trevor Herbert to the supernatural (and gives him something to hunt,) but provides a strong motive for him, by killing his brother. The vampire is quickly burnt up by the flame. I do not believe this is because vampires are weak to fire, but rather, the hunt allowed Trevor to have his first kill and survive, so that it could nurture him as a hunter. Their next appearance is in MAG 56, Children of the Night, which is simply a follow up to Trevor's statement, and shows how the vampires have turned Trevor into a hunter. They also appear in MAG 133, Dead Horse, in which the everchase hunters are found pinning some to trees. Tl;dr : vampires are the hunt's way of recruiting/feeding avatars

I would say that vampires are of The Hunt. Trevor saying in his statements that they're more like beasts than humans seems to imply they serve an animalistic fear. Since people are now much less afraid of becoming prey from regular animals I think vampires act as a kind of super predator with them inspiring fear by putting humans back on the food chain. I feel like werewolves are used the same way honestly, though with avatars turning into them in that case. Plus there's a lot of references to blood in relation to The Hunt and vampires, y’know, drink blood.

I think the vampires are supposed to be The Hunt because they're kinda only brought up in the context of The Hunt (Trevor Herbert, the everchase, etc.), but yeah it's another really ambiguous situation, like the zombies from ep. 122 or the necropolis from ep. 180 (which just ftr I think belong to The Extinction and The Corruption respectively).

the fact that the hunt is similar to a lot of other entities, mostly slaughter but also having ties to desolation and flesh, are really interesting for how the entities evolved. such as the extinction is mostly an offspring of the end (combined with other entities), i think its interesting to look at one of, if not the first fear entity to really be and how it has ties to a lot of the other violent entities. could say the same about the dark in its relation to things like the buried and vast but im already rambling a lot

Huh, I always pictured the Murder Club as Slaughter, but I suppose they do actually hunt each other pretty methodically, don't they? Granted as you mention the two do have a lot of overlap.

I think the Hunt is a representation of the Red Queen hypothesis, how the adversarial interactions between predators and prey (or parasites and hosts, although in TMA terms that's more represented in the Corruption) lead to a cycle of coevolution where each player has to keep moving--"running", even--to survive as they evolve ways to catch, on one hand, or evade, on the other, each other. I think that might account for the close but also antagonistic associations between Hunters--as intimately associated as the paths of their lives are, they are still the Red Queen's racers, and it takes all the running and chasing and pouncing they can do just to stay in the same place. I also think this ties into the Everchase as a never-ending hunt, a cycle of predation and evasion, and even how the Hunt can stand as a foil to the End. Ultimately I think it represents both the fundamental interconnectedness and necessary self-interest of life, as described through the relationship of predator and prey.

The vampires seem to me to be some strange combination of Flesh and Stranger, with their bloody and messy consumption of their victims calling out Flesh, but their speechlessness and general uncanny description indicate ties to The Stranger. One could also attribute their alignment somewhat with The Spiral, because of the way they trick their victims into believing they're safe with them and deceiving them into coming with them to a hidden place before they're brutally murdered, in a similar way to the false friendship themes of the distortion. Certainly a confusing group though I agree.

Art's improving and the quality of video is improving. Nice to see it. Congrats on 400!

I’ve just found your videos and I am so excited to binge the rest!! Starting with this one because The Hunt is my favorite entity by far and I LOVE the idea that the hunt is distinctly tied to working as a group until they get it the way. It reminds me of games like assassin or tag where initially it’s good to form groups to keep each other safe but as soon as the game begins to end or it is just more within your benefit all the alliances break and people don’t just become indifferent but actively turn on each other for personal gain. It’s also the only entity which I personally find exciting not in the sense that the rest are uninteresting (they’re fascinating) but that most of the statements related to the hunt sound entertaining to me (minus the murder) or remind me of something I find entertaining, mostly being related to sports which brings me to the idea that it is also one of the entities I feel is mostly physically tied whereas most other entities (the vast, the eye, the desolation, the lonely, the spiral, the stranger, the buried, the web, and to an extent the corruption) do have a physical way to manifest but seem mostly conceptual in the way people fear them. The only others which are also distinctly physical are the flesh and the slaughter which were noted to be part of the hunt for a long time which just reinforces the idea of the hunt being more physical than other entities. Lastly, this is mostly an observation with the fandom, but I’ve noticed a lot of people when conceptualizing the fears/entities find a way they can relate to it or see it reflected in themselves as if they were an avatar (at least for the more popular fears) but with the hunt (and probably some of the other fears) people seem more inclined to see themselves as a victim of it by looking at it from the prey or an outsider perspective opposed to that of a hunter (which is the perspective I conceptualize the hunt from) and I’m currently trying to determine if that has affected any of the hunt-related fan content (outside of character fan art) because it seems to have affected all the entity playlists for the hunt I could find and further see if it could be related to the proportionally low number of fans I’ve encountered who align themselves with the hunt. Anyways, if you couldn’t tell. Favorite entity, nice video, can’t wait to watch the rest!

Dude I love watching your art improve with every video, not to mention the video itself is always top notch

The vampires are probably part of the Hunt, but I have also seen people argue that they could be related to the Web because of their mind control abilities (or what seems like it)

I think Vampires are a manifestation of The Hunt as sorry of a prey entity. They are meant to be killed by the Hunters, but because The Hunt is about the thrill and fear of the chase, the Prey is just as dangerous as the ones hunting them. I particularly believe this because during The Everchase, the camp of Hunters is constantly being attacked by Vampires.

I'm excited for more on this series

I always wanted a series with focus of different entity at the center(eye) which would dictate format(even working on fan fic idea based on that) and Hunt would be far and away the easiest one. Julia and Herbert chronicles of monster slaying or something like that so instead of people suffering powerless it would be Fears getting the L. Consequently I think its fascinating how hunt is one of if not best entity at fighting other and itself for that matter. We all now Jon later got nifty combat powers, but for the most part eye awatar would only " record them into submission" (aka not much power in direct confrontation) and for all potentially fancy powers other could give you if you are in encounter with hunter, most of the time it will be on their terms and let me tell you you are not gonna like them. They will find you and ignore all your avatar or monster privileges and just plain murder you. I know Gertrude begrudgingly was Eye adjacent, but man she would make killer huntress. She kinda filled that role actually.

Oh god not the corruption... Its the one entity that really gets to me ;--; It literally uncovered my tryptophobia thanks to fluckin jane prentis XD

Idk I think the fact that Vampires are so animal, and that they almost uniquely can be mistaken for a slightly unorthodox dark fantasy creature with its own ecology kind of settles the matter for me

i really wanna see one of these about the flesh tbh

The search for the lost city of Z was NOT the first attempt at the Everchase. In that very statement we meet other hunters su h as the ones searching or "hunting" for the Northwest Passage. Also, it would seem that the Everchase is a spontaneous ritual, seemingly starting only when an unobtainable goal is hunted for a sufficiently long time It would also seem that whatever form of the Everchase was previously done on is brought to the latest form of it, thus giving plausibility to my theory that the Everchase could have a current ritual somewhere in the modern world

Yknow i thought the vampires were somewhere between the dark and the stranger

I already made an entire paragraph discussing what the vampires could be on reddit so I'll just post what I said there. While less likely, there is also the possibility that vampires are connected to more than one power somehow. We know that artifacts connected to multiple powers exist(even if their rare such as with the supposed Book of Solomon) and we know that a single person can be connected to multiple powers even if they aren't an Avatar of all of them. For example, Martin and his respective domain are connected to BOTH the Lonely and the Eye, not just one or the other. We have yet to see this apply to monsters perse but the fears are enough of a spectrum that I don't think it's an impossibility. It could also be that the vampires are basically unaligned with any specific power and it's just whatever power rewards them based on whatever fear they happen to get. I find the last one the least likely since they seem to lean towards the Hunt in various ways so I find it unlikely that they are completely unaligned. But at the same time, the fears can overlap in powers and abilities as long as it gets the desired fear. It's not necessarily about the imagery but how it's used. Are these bones being used to remind you of a meat grinder, remains of a bloody battle, or your mortality? If we approach it from this angle the vampires probably have to do with the Hunt with them creating the fear that you could be Hunted down or next on the menu and if you fight back you might become caught up in the Hunt. It's also important to note that as you yourself point out in the videos hunters are sort of valuable because of their ability to kill a lot of things of other powers(and they tend to be a lot more controllable than Slaughter folk). So this actually adds to the idea that it is not outside the realm of the possibilities that even if the vampires are ultimately parts of the hunt some of the other powers might also be getting in on that action somehow by using them. I could totally see the Web manipulating vampires for some sort of purpose. It could also be that the vampires just so happen to feed the other entites. Its important to remember that all the entities are just pieces of something bigger. As pointed out by Leitner they are like body parts of something incomprehensible. Gerard compares them to colors and if you want to springboard off that white light is made up of every color and the entities could be viewed the same way. As different hues under a spectrum(even if they clash). This means that the vampires could also fall under some middle ground too. Like maybe the Web and Hunt bringing in the idea that something hunting you has you right where you want it or you have fallen into a trap.

I would love a video in the vampires i might to late tho maybe it was already made. I always found them sort of off, they seemed unfitting for the vibe of the magus archives

we eating good tonight!

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