My initial guess for the nature of the Messengers that Imbue the Hunters was that they were old Wraiths of great power or fragments of same that got across the Shroud after the start of the latest big Maelstrom.
- It all makes sense now. The reason the Messengers are so bent on getting the Hunters to fight the "Monsters" is revenge for the spirit-nuke and the whole Ravnos situation that created the Maelstrom in the first place, forcing the old Wraiths into a desperate fight for survival before Imbuing normal humans (the only group of people on the planet not involved with the whole mess).
- It Gets Worse. Hunters are slowly driven insane from the Hunt (when it does not kill them first). Which sounds alot like the survivors of the Ravnos Bloodline that all went insane upon Ravnos' death. Further Revenge or Irony on part of the Messengers?
- There is a very obviously deliberate breadcrumb alluding to this in Ends of Empire with a description of "three angelic figures" rising from the ruins of the City of Enoch after it's nuked, implied to be three of the four Aralu entombed in the city's center, who silently look around and take stock of Creation before ascending and vanishing. It seems obvious these were intended to be the Messengers, but their physical description makes it sound like a Plot Twist where the Enochians were sorely mistaken about the nature of their gods. There's also a bit of a Riddle for the Ages that might just be chalked up to inconsistent writing where there are three figures described in this scene but only two Ministers of Creation who actually show up in the gameline, with the "third" one missing (see the Character Sheet entry for the Messengers).
- As for whether the dark Plot Twist that the Messengers were apex-level evil Wraiths (Malfeans) all along is possible, there is no clear canonical answer about this and the top-level grand poobahs in any gameline (Antediluvian Vampires, Archmages, etc) were generally able to break all the rules, but nonetheless it was a basic principle of Wraith that beings of Oblivion are extremely powerful in their natural habitat and become weaker and weaker the further "upward" toward the Skinlands they go, and Wraiths in the living world itself are extremely fragile and limited in their abilities, often needing a physical human host in order to function (which is why it's taken Grandmother so long to get around to eating the human world in the first place). The whole reason the Messengers are such an Outside-Context Problem for the World of Darkness is they seem totally unbound by any such limitations.
There are no monsters.
The Imbued are servants, or at least creations, of the Weaver and Wyrm.
- In the Hunter Storyteller's Companion, we are told that the Creator's "Ministers" are the force behind the Messengers and the hunters. In Kindred of the East and its supplements, we are told that the Scarlet Queen/Phoenix and the Ebon Dragon, two of the August Personage of Jade's Ministers, are also behind the creation of the Kuei-jin as well. Meanwhile, in Mage: The Ascension and its supplement Dragons of the East, we are told that the three forces of Creation, their Triad, is the Tiger (the Wyld/Creator), the Scarlet Phoenix (the Weaver/Preserver), and the Ebon Dragon aka the Centipede (the Wyrm/Destroyer). Thus, the Hunters aren't a force for good; they are chosen by the Weaver and Wyrm to attack monsters (primarily, those monsters that those forces oppose, though they're willing to lose a few of their own for their own ends - the Wyrm for destruction of everything, the Weaver as part of its plan).
- Blue-and-Orange Morality definitely applies for any of the deity-level beings in the World of Darkness, but even if the Ebon Dragon and Scarlet Phoenix literally are the Wyrm and Weaver that doesn't necessarily make them evil — keep in mind that Werewolf's lore tells us the "true" Wyrm, the Balance Wyrm, is a benign force that was imprisoned by the Weaver's madness and the malevolent version of the Wyrm as we know it (the Triatic Wyrm) is a mutation created by the Balance Wyrm's imprisonment.
- It's worth noting that Werewolves aren't meant to be an unbiased, accurate source about cosmic truths, and their overall attitude that the Weaver and Wyrm alike have gone mad and it's their duty to side with the Wyld against the other two in the name of balance (which means, among other things, being okay with murdering humans en masse simply for being too numerous) isn't necessarily meant to be objectively correct. Kindred of the East is the gameline whose mythology seems to get referenced the most by Hunter as actually being somewhat accurate, and the Kuei-jin see both the Scarlet Queen and Ebon Dragon as essentially benign forces, who worked together to create the Kuei-jin's predecessors the wan xian (as opposed to the Werewolves seeing the Weaver and Wyrm having been mortal enemies since before human history began). Note that the Eastern Fera's origin myth for the wan xian differs from the Kuei-jin's in this respect, believing the wan xian stole their power from the Weaver themselves rather than being appointed by the Celestial Bureaucracy (the Fera don't like viewing Creation in terms of human institutions like governments).
- Also, despite how much the Werewolves see her as a villain, of all the Celestines the Weaver actually is the one closest to "good" by the standards of normal humans, since normal humans are her favored children and she's the only one who actually thinks killing normal humans is wrong in and of itself. The fact that most of us would agree the Werewolves' Impergium — directly ordered by Gaia — to cull the human herd was a monstrous crime means that our morality is in fact the same as the "Weaver's madness", and the fact that the Zeal Hunters fight Werewolves because Werewolves see nothing wrong with killing humans is completely consistent with both being servants of the Weaver and being "good" by normal human standards. (It's the theory that identifies the Scarlet Queen with Gaia rather than the Weaver that runs into much more troubling Blue-and-Orange Morality discussions.)
- Along these same lines, the Ebon Dragon being the source of the Mercy Virtue in Hunter while being identified with the Omnicidal Maniac we know as the Wyrm (or as the 2e version of the Ebon Dragon in Exalted) seems like a truly bizarre Heel–Face Turn at first glance, until you remember the Balance Wyrm's existence and that the Wyrm was supposed to be a benign force of "good death" before it was twisted into a monstrosity by the world going out of balance. If the Ebon Dragon is the Balance Wyrm itself or a manifestation of it, then it represents the parts of the World of Darkness lore where the malignant "undead" entities were created as an act of mercy to try to make the transition of death easier, which was then twisted into a curse by souls unwilling to accept it. (See Demon: the Fallen for lore about how the Underworld was once known as the Haven and was explicitly a training ground for souls corrupted by Oblivion to have a chance to purge their darkness and Transcend, or Gehenna's big reveal that the Curse of Caine was originally an act of mercy to give Caine the chance to forgive himself and make peace with death.) It fits pretty well with how the Mercy Creeds, especially Redeemers, serve as ghost therapists and sidekicks for vampires seeking Golconda, among other things, and it adds credence to the Epileptic Trees that the original identity of the Ebon Dragon in terms of the Demon setting is the angelic Charon who created the Underworld (after whom the mortal shade Charon was named).
The Purpose, Days of Fire, And Lucifer The Morning star
- For this explanation to make sense we need to establish the links between Hunter: The Reckoning and Demon: The Fallen as well some basic knowledge about Satan and Satanis Good. The First glimpse we have, other than the information mentioned on the Storytellers books (which to some degree are obscure enough that anything can fit in there) We find out that there's several ways for the World of Darkness to End and several potential Pathways. As we reach to the end of the book we find the name Woodrow Miller, a Government Agent investigating the killing of the Translator of Days of Fire. The book establishes that Lucifer actually loves humanity, even if they are flawed and deeply respects their ideals of freedom. to the point that Lucifer CREATED Christianity so he could fight the Earthbound, as well to give humans a tool to fight Evil. With that information given, we jump right into the book "Time of Judgement" in which we start with a preface told by Lucifer. If we jump right into pages 10 and 11 of that story, we can see how an Imbued named "Wendell" is about to fight Lucifer because of "The Shepard" told him to. This one Manages to Hurt Lucifer, making him Aware of the power invested in the hunters and that God Would forgive Him Making feel Horrified and in disgust of God using humans as a tool. With that in mind, and based on the scenarios mentioned on "Days of Fire" and "Time of Judgement." we understand that God Created the Hunters., Its purpose has to do with the "Week of Nightmares" scenario. Its highly likely to be a direct Cosmic Answer to the potential End of the World as We Know It Possibly because of the waking up of such beings as Belial the Great beast as well the other Cosmic Hi jinks that ensue.
- It's definitely possible that the Messengers were literally acting on behalf of the Creator when they Imbued the Hunters but the lore seems to try to throw this into question as much as possible, because the whole angst of the setting of Demon: the Fallen revolves around Have You Seen My God? and God to all appearances having either died or abandoned Creation after the Fall. Lucifer isn't a completely reliable source — no one but God Herself would be — but he's more informed than any other character we ever get the POV of and he treats the idea that God Herself Imbued the Hunters as laughable. Being proven wrong about this wouldn't alleviate any of Lucy's Rage Against the Heavens mindset, since refusing to do anything about all the suffering throughout human history until now and then to intervene only in this specific and limited way is the epitome of In Mysterious Ways.
