Eastern Bloc

Eastern Bloc - OverviewSoviet.jpg
The eastern bloc is akin to a super conspiracy per the hunter rule book, and is a widespread organization fuctioning through out parts of Eastern Europe, the old Soviet countries, parts of Latin America, Cuba, much of the Arab world and China with some other assorted countries from the third world. Taking operatives from all of these areas they are a diverse and often contrarian organization. They tend to as a whole be filled with significantly more idealists than you would think given the history of the countries involved. Viewing themsleves as true revolutionaries, and quite often firm believes in the internationale movement of communism the agents and operatives of the Eastern Bloc, or People's Supernatural Protection Agency (PSPA) strives to protect the populace not just against supernatural monsters but eldritch horrors.

The Eastern Bloc specializes in direct firepower and so-called 'dirty' weaponery.

PSPA - History:
(Links to the Great Wiki provided where nessacary to assist in historical background)

Before Recognition
The PSPA has its roots in the 1920's from two very different sources. In the formation of the Soviets, or worker's councils during the Russian Civil War, and in the Warlord Period within China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beiyang_government). In the aftermath of the first world war and the sheer amount of life taken, there was anarchy - for China endured a period of feuding warlords, and Russia was invaded by the Siberian expeditions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Expedition). In this time of turmoil missing individuals were found and some limited effort was made with better statistics and headcounts to determine what was going on, and if it was enemy action. Overtime more corpses turned out strange signs appeared, and quietly word was exchanged - amazingly those who investigated tended to turn up dead.These short lived watching groups started exchanging information, in the USSR as a sort of provisonal soviet without location, and in China as the Shadow Cadre of officers - including a large number of former royalists to the gone Qing dynasty. Both tried, and sometimes succedded in bouncing back against the supernatural but quickly noticed how often these night hunts and investigations left them out of the power plays of both entities.

As Stalin came to power the Soviet without Location found itself defined as an enemy of the state, which thankfully was lessened given the general service to the public - and unfortunately privately declaring themsleves compeletely mad leading to thier deportation to the Gulags before they were known as Gulags (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag), with the lucky ones serving as guards and quite a few unlucky forced to work maddening hours. The good news in a sense was with other purges happening involving the increasingly paranoid soviet leader, the Soviet without Location was largely forgotten and quietly released by a few remaining friends in 1932, rebranding themsleves given thier experiance with the Gulags and Siberia as Internal Security in Siberia - by this point the thought of them being mad was commonly held enough that most of thier tasks were simply make work by those upstairs.

Likewise, for the Officers - and increasingly large number of civil servants - of the Shadow Cadre, ouster from any sort of influence given thier bizzare ideas came quickly when after serving some use in solidfying the KMT goverment in 1929 where the Shadow Cadre was sacked at the first sign of souring relations leading to the Central Plains War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Plains_War) where many died in the infighting, leading to most of the remnants living in the countryside - now typically obsessed with thier duty, or to near Mongolia.

Both groups spent until 1938 in relative secrecy, absorbing other small groups of hunters and occult investigators, learning more of what they hunted, with at best limited support from the home goverment - typically they were hunted down if thier existance was learned of. They noticed trends, stuck to the shadows, and tried thier damndest to at least curtail the things that lurked - frequently becoming obsessed. Throughout Central Asia, Siberia, and in the infighting of China they roamed desperately trying to fight off or curtail the parasites off of the various internal conflicts. In 1938 they had coalesced, into NKVD unit 771 in the Soviet Union and the Shadow Cadre in China, meeting for the first time in the wake of additional aggression by Imperial Japan in the Lake Khasan incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan) where both groups met each other for the first time attempting to prevent a group of vampires from feeding on the wounded soliders. There a tenative accord was worked out, as both groups agreed to work together for the duration, and to share information from percieved supernatural attacks.

Collectively the partnership continued, and it is often suggested that they played a vital role in preventing some of the first hypernationalistic mages from altering the course of the war, including wrongly thier own side several times, - and that legendarily they supposed prevented vampires from feeding off the corpses of the various battles in China, curtailing and even assassinated warlords who were thought to bend to thier will - including unfortunately for them a high ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party. Anything for thier sacred duty. Through the war however they were ignored, thought to be insane or hunted as radicals - rarely giving any help, mainly due to the afore mentioned incident.

After world war 2 ended, they saw themsleves as liberators and NKVD Unit 771 and the Shadow Cadre fused, determined to purge the parasites, the hosts, the strange, the unexplainable. Maybe it was the new blood, maybe it was a proliferation of ideas from high command, and maybe it was undertaken for thier own survival but they began adopting a communist line where there wasnt much of one before. Indeed, by 1946 they ceased an open if quiet recruitment policy and in China no longer worked with the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War#Post-war_power_struggle_.281946.E2.80.931947.29) some credit this as part of why the Communists won in China. Sometime in between a man named Halavir Descrein, a Frenchman who was a part of the French Communist Party before the war and fled to the Soviet Union took control and tried to make the organization more offical, laying down ground work for what would become the PPSA in the loose 'Shadow Hunters' group - and using some offical connections they made great strides in significantly reducing supernatural activity and even began collecting occult lore of thier own, however in the aftermath of the Berlin Airlift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_airlift) he was executed under orders from Stalin for plotting against the goverment - as in hunting down a pack of werewolves who were determined to ressuruct the third reich he has made offers of help to the Allies occupying Germany at the time.

This led to a chaotic phase where no one really knew what to do, Halavir was the prime organizer and with him dead - and with it the support they got immediately post war, it seemed like another purge was incoming and so for the most part they went to ground losing the edge they possessed. However, the Supernatural sprung back - paving the way for them to re-emerge as well after the Tridal incidents in the Korean War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war).

The Tridal Incidents
After the Chinese crossed the Yalu River, that's when the murders began. Some say that in a sense the elusive Eastern Shadow Hunters started it, striking wild without the benefit of the admittedly higher command. The part that matters is the running afoul of several covens of vampires at once - who caused nighttime massacres amongst small units of the Chinese intervention forces that just could not be explained, and several soliders went missing.

There was extensive investigation, leading to validation of several theorists, particularly from the Shadow Cadre of China which led to funding and resources to hunt them up, the supposed 5th column of the Americans who did truly bizzare things such as draining the bodies, or according to 1 infamous report turned into giant dogs and ate some of the chinese voulenteers.