These stories first appeared in Hunt's Book of Weapons, an in-game collection of found documents curated by an unknown researcher. They are replicated here in their original format. This means that many of the stories are not presented chronologically, or in one grouping, and it is left to the reader to put together the puzzle pieces and determine to what extent they contain fact, fiction, or fable.

In the Hunt: Showdown 1896 release, our Variant terminology was simplified. We have updated it here.

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Drilling

DRILLING (See also, RIFLES, SHOTGUNS) A combination gun such as this is delicate to manufacture and rare as a result. Triple-barreled rifles never justified their cost enough to enter mass production, but rather were crafted with the primary purpose of hunting and gamekeeping. They remained a specialty tool that indicates an increasing wealth amongst the Hunters of the bayou.

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Journal of Mara Cranston
Handwritten, water damaged and hardly legible, 5" x 7"

December 18, 1894

In the weeks since her passing, I've mourned the loss of my sister Hannah. Even when we were both well into adulthood, I always thought of her as a baby, the very same way she looked on the day our mother howled and sweated while giving birth to her on the floor of our cabin. To know that Hannah died doing the very same thing, bringing a child into the world, has haunted my every dream. I can't help but blame myself for it, think that if I had only been there to hold her hand and keep her grounded through the pain, she might have somehow pulled through. I'm sure Jonathan did what he could, although I will admit to being wounded that instead of coming back to tell us of her passing himself, he ran off somewhere, leaving some stiff-lipped stranger from whatever organization he and Hannah were a part of to deliver the news: Hannah dead. Jonathan missing. The baby...the baby. I was told the baby also died during the birth, but something about the man's face gave way to something more. Was I just being paranoid? Why would he have any reason to lie about such a thing?

Regardless, it does nothing to change the circumstances. My sister is dead, and I miss her more than anything.

January 12, 1895

I can hardly believe it. Today some woman came into the shop and told me that she was one of the delivery nurses from the day that Hannah died. She pressed a locket into my palm as she spoke in hushed whispers, looking over her shoulder as though she was worried someone might be following her. "She called your name in the thick of it," the nurse told me, and I wept into my sleeve. "She loved you and would have wanted for you to have this." The locket was empty. The woman told me that Hannah had planned on using it for a photo of her new baby. Remembering the strange way the man from the organization had held himself when mentioning the baby, I pressed her until she spilled like a pierced yolk.

"Don't go if you value your mind intact," she told me from where I had pinned her against the wall. "You don't want to see what it became."

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Journal of Mara Cranston
Handwritten, water damaged and hardly legible, 5" x 7"
January 31, 1895

It was never a baby at all.

The truth is something I would have never believed if not faced with the evidence. Something is wrong in Louisiana, something that goes deeper than a nightmare plague. Nosing around the outskirts of that crumbling organization unveiled the truth: Hell has broken loose in this bayou, taken root in its marshes and mines and compounds, the very soil corrupted. And it doesn't start or stop with what happened to Hannah.

There are so many of them now, but if what I've pieced together is to be believed, Hannah gave birth to the very first. A lumbering, monstrous, headless blasphemy, voiding its bowels of bloated leech creatures which slither around its ankles and alert it to prey. Pa's Drilling rifle found its heyday as it helped me bring one down yesterday. I shot at a distance at first, and then, not realizing that the thing wasn't dead yet as I came to inspect its corpse, delivered the killing blow with the shotgun barrel of the very same gun.

I will live out the rest of my days scouring this land and killing every last one.

?????, 1895

Been weeks in this bayou now, or has it been months? The days blend together. The Meatheads, as the Hunters call them, are never-ending. One of these monsters will have to be the last of its kind, surely, surely....

My mind is going funny from being out here alone for so long. At night it's the worst. I've started hearing Hannah whispering to me from the dark, begging to know where her baby is, what's been done with her baby, where is Jonathan, where is her family? I had a dream that she stood before me, rotting and ruined from the waist down, torn open and gored and pointing at me, mouthing the word: family. The Meatheads are my family in some twisted, wretched way. All of this is just wrong.

I awoke from the dream sitting up against a tree, my shirt opened, my arms cradling a dead leech from the Meathead corpse still sprawled across the road behind me. I had been holding it as if to breastfeed. I do not know how much longer I will last before I succumb.
Come back, Hannah. Next time I won't be too afraid to step forward and take your hand in mine.

Drilling Dumdum Ammo

RN: Records about the family of Hannah Kinney are scarce—clearly she wanted to protect them when she left behind her old life for the Hunt. Alas, it's a shame that such measures were made in vain in the case of her sister Mara.

Drilling Shorty

DRILLING SHORTY. (See also, DRILLING, RIFLES, SHOTGUNS) To modify a weapon as specialized as the Drilling typically required either great luxury or an equivalent irreverence. It was generally the domain of thieves, as it allowed the looted prize to be hidden far more easily and to be wielded with far more abandon.

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Letter to Jodie Cranston
Author: Franklin Kinney
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
1/2

Cousin Jodie,

I am well. I still miss the snow a lot but I like swimming in the river. I'm big enough this year that I can stand up on the tips of my toes and walk all the way across!

I do not think that Auntie Hannah moved away. Uncle Joseph moved away last year and Mommy and Daddy didn't look so sad every day after that. And Uncle Joseph was funnier than Auntie Hannah. Mommy has never forgotten to cook dinner but yesterday I told her I was hungry five times until she made soup.

How are things on your farm? I hope you will come and visit us soon, maybe for my twelfth birthday? Then we can eat that new pecan pie your mommy makes. I bet you can't walk all the way across the river.

I'm still hungry.

Goodbye cousin Jodie,
Big Frankie

Drilling Penny Shot Ammo

RN: A surprising coincidence for Mara to see her late sister's delivery nurse. Was she sent by someone as part of a grander design, or did guilt push her to Mara Cranston's door? Alternatively, Mara's derangement began long before she picked up that Drilling rifle.

Drilling Flechette

RN: Discovery of these writings also asks the immediate question of what became of Mara. As we know she did not successfully eradicate the "Meatheads"—her most obvious fate is a disquieting notion.

Drilling Hatchet

DRILLING HATCHET. (See also, DRILLING, RIFLES, SHOTGUNS) The Drilling as manufactured had great utility for hunting: being a combination gun that could bring down a boar as easily as a duck and keep both carcasses profitable. Shortening the Drilling and adding a hatchet was common among brigands, as it turned the combination gun from an elegant hunting tool into an all-purpose murder weapon.

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Letter to Franklin Kinney
Author: Jodie Cranston
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
2/2

Cousin Frankie,

I may be four months your junior, but I am surely taller than you. I wager that I can walk across your river without it even coming up to my chin! In fact, I'll even wager my slice of my mom's pecan pie, since I am so certain.

The farm is very quiet these days. I hope you will visit soon to bring some cheer and make me laugh. Nobody makes me laugh anymore. My family hasn't been talking a lot, so I am glad to hear from you, cousin. I was listening to the adults talking from my bed and I believe Aunt Mara and Aunt Hannah both went to New Orleans, so they did move away. But there was a man who I hadn't heard before and he said some words I didn't understand.

I hope you come and visit soon, for I think my family is going to move away as well, far away from Louisiana. Do you think moving away is why your adults are so sad too? Do you think we'll be moving to the same place? Gosh that would be lovely, would it not?

Maybe it will be so lovely that Mother and Father will start sleeping again! The words they have started singing at night scare me. One time I heard a third voice that sounded like Auntie Mara. She said "take your hand in mine," and I wanted to see her so badly. I ran downstairs and saw Father's eyes were black while Mother painted things on the floor. She had bandages on her arms to not get them stained. Mother hates our arms being dirty when we make breakfast.

Now I stay in bed and close my ears every night.
Jodie

Drilling FMJ Ammo

RN: The disturbing turn of Mara's mental state begs the question: Did she simply fall victim to the harsh isolation of the bayou, or was there something more at play?

Drilling Slug

RN: Mara being aware of the AHA but refusing to partake puts her in a very dangerous position. If the madness or monsters didn't take her life, it seems likely there would be guns ready to silence her.

Drilling High Velocity Ammo

RN: It is unsettling to witness Mara go from promising vengeance upon all Meatheads to eventually deciding that they were a sort of family to her. What could have inspired such change?

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