The Final Hunt
The Hunter's Final Trial
You are ready for this trial, son. I believe so, your trainers believe so, and so does your brother. Your target is chosen and the blade has been laid at your door. Now it is your turn to hunt him and return victorious as one of us. As a hunter. Prove your worth to the clan, Cinaed, as you proved it to me long ago and they will see you as one of us.
The Final Hunt is the last step in a hunter's training in their clan, the final trial that will make or break them in every sense. This hunt will test all of the skills that they have learned over the years of their training to their fullest extent, from tracking to observation to the kill itself. Those who undertake the Hunt are never released to it on a whim; their trainers, clan leader, and family rigorously go over their progress and achievements before ever sending them out for their last trial. This is because the Final Hunt is not only a trial of the hunter's skill but of their ability to survive on their own.
To Hunt Our Prey
The main goal of the Hunt is to fully assess if a hunter will be able to stand up to a vampire alone. It is rare for a hunter to strike in pairs or more since the Blessing of the Hunt was gifted to them by the witches and a hunter must prove themselves to take on a vampire in one-on-one combat. The Final Hunt is the trial that will prove if they are capable of doing such.
Like the trials, the goal of the Final Hunt came sometimes shift in different clans. In some, the goal is merely to prove that the hunter can survive an encounter with a vampire. In others, the goal is to earn their first kill - stalked, hunted, and slain by their hand and their hand along without aid. Most clans go with the former as their goal of the Hunt. In the Smith, Kosho, and Wolfe clans, however, a kill must be secured by the hunter for them to have passed the trial.
Hunter Becomes Hunted
When it is decided that a hunter is ready to face the Final Hunt, they are given a target to hunt. The vampires chosen for this are usually younger - at least under fifty years old - and ones that are typically either lone wolf types or prefer to deal with what they see as prey alone. All that a hunter receives to begin their hunt is a knife - usually an ancient, retired blade held by the individual clan that is only ceremonial in purpose - and the name of their target. From the day they receive the name, they have a year to search the records for their target and begin their hunt. And they must do all of it alone. If it takes more than a year to even find their target, the Hunt is considered a failure and the hunter returns to training until they are considered ready again.
Once the target is tracked down, it is up to the hunter to consider how and when they will strike. In the case of the Nerugal, Alkina, Bongam, and Holt clans, this involves considering all points of how they will confront the vampire and either kill them or simply survive the encounter. If they survive the encounter with full proof that they did such (a common way in modern times is the use of a bodycam or GoPro camera instead of older proofs that involved taking trophies), they are considered full hunters upon their return home. In the case of the Smith, Kosho, and Wolfe clans, the Hunt is not considered successful unless the vampire is killed and proof is generally required in order to confirm the kill as no one is watching to make sure that such occurs. Many will bring back the head of the vampire in question, but returning with other limbs is also an option so long as there is an identifying mark upon it that matches to the target. While the Smith and Wolfe clans do leave the option open to use a visual recording device to confirm the kill, the Kosho clan still requires hard physical evidence that the target was slain.
History
When Neruĝal and Alkina began the first clans together, there was no established trial that brought the young hunters of the clan to adulthood. There were so few hunters then that being able to wield a blade properly - whether a hunter's blade or not - meant that one was ready to face their ancient nemesis. The trials came later, though the Final Hunt itself did not come until long after the establishment of the Kosho clan.
The trials themselves came from the combined teachings of Neruĝal, Alkina, and Kosho, organized some decades after Kosho's death into a consistent establishment amongst the three clans after an Alkina hunter became aware of their eastern neighbors after hearing supposedly tall tales of them while travelling the Silk Road. These trials eventually became the training that all young hunters go through in their training under their clan, the steps adjusted somewhat in certain clans but generally held to consistently across the board.
The concept of the Final Hunt, however, was not fully set into stone until the bushi or samurai formed during the Heian period in Japan. While the Hunt did not come directly from them itself, it certainly took inspiration from samurai culture when the Kosho clan established it as the final trial that would make or break their new hunters. Though the modern version of the Final Hunt doesn't have all of the intricacies that the original Hunt did, it still holds to the original point of the trial: to prove oneself by surviving or killing a vampire alone.
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