A History of Vatican Ninjas
For Love at First Bite
When I bounced the concept of Vatican Ninjas off of a Catholic group, I think my response was
“Well, who else would be better equipped for such a position? The Church is a long standing institution that deals with the supernatural on a routine basis. The Church would feel obligated to fight back Satan’s forces, of course.”
Ahem.... yes, my argument was "With Great Power, comes great responsibility."
Though my first thought is really:Who else is gonna do it?
Of course, the Vatican has its own army. It’s not a very big one, granted, but if anyone is going to be able to give shooters training to fight the abyss, it’s going to be a few thousand priests. There will be battle meditative prayers, that can hide them from the enhanced senses of vampires.
Basically, if a vampire has the senses of a Sith lord, going through a silent, prayerful meditation would make them invisible. In fact, if it’s a saint versus a vampire, a vampire would have to directly lock eyes on them — assuming, of course, the saint doesn’t have the power to cloud vampire's minds…
Sadly, I now have a Simon Templar / The Shadow crossover in my head.
But that’s another story.
The Vatican Ninjas would probably start to become a serious institution somewhere around the Protestant Revolt of the 1500s. It’s when Europe started to really go dark. How dark? Look up the Anabaptists sometime: these guys were so nasty, Lutherans and Catholics stopped fighting each other, looked at the Anabaptists, and promptly joined forces to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
The crucifix fell out of fashion in Protestant areas, and traditional Vampire lore stress a crucifix, not a cross, being a problem for a vampire— otherwise, a lowercase “t” in block lettering would suffice. This situation required forces that are specialized in battling creatures that are stronger, faster, and nigh indestructible.
After two hundred years. and the "Enlightenment" hit, and believe it or not, but superstition increased. Ouja boards became common. Isaac Newton dabbled in the occult, and had volumes of horoscopes that he forecast. The mystical age of “intellectual brightness” really had a five to one ratio of occultist crap emerge.
Of course, in a world where vampires exist, the obvious reason for it is simple: the Catholic church used to have local teams to deal with Supernatural crap. When the Church left, so did said teams. With the suppression teams being removed, demonic activity spiked. Occult belief was a “rational” response … at least to people who abandoned faith for whatever nonsense they came up with along the way.
So, who is going to clean up the mess? That's right. The only organized game in town who covers the planet. They’d probably be called something like “tegumento daemonium interfectores,” which is what I get when I load “covert demon killers” into Google translate, so I expect this to be hysterically inaccurate.
The load out for the ninjas would, over time, have to evolve, but it would still be a wide ranging arsenal. Fifty-caliber sniper rifles would be mandatory for removing the heads off of vampires at a distance. There would be silver ammunition components (hollow points with silver balls instead of stems— silver is too hard, and doesn’t have the right spiral of regular bullets). They could carry crosses, and holy water, and squirt guns. Their traps would include bouncing Bettys filled with holy water. Incendiary grenades and high explosives would have to be mandatory, I'd figure.
And, even though I have them dealing with a lot of vampires, they will, of course, be trained to deal with other supernatural threats. I figure that demons, elves and werewolves would be in the top five threats in their inventory.
The Ninjas will of course, have a mandatory retirement age of 65. Why 65? Because that’s the retirement age for priests. Why not sooner? Because the ones who survive the field long enough become trainers ... if they can be dragged out of the field. Outside of someone who is a careerist, name me one average beat cop or soldier who wants to be transferred too far away from the street / the action / their men.
But as noted, they have to survive the job long enough.
See who lives and who dies in Good to the Last Drop.
Illegitimi non carborundum