God, I just rediscovered this and I'm THRILLED to see that you're still working on this project – it's such a wonderful thing to see in motion, and to read through. I'm planning to use this as a rough setting guide for a RWBY-themed TTRPG campaign, since it addresses most every issue I had with canon. A couple of questions I had, though: 1) How available do you feel huntsmen are for work/how numerous are they? 2) Is there any difference in opinion of huntsmen between kingdoms?
Oh, man, thank you. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate hearing that. It’s incredibly validating to be told that all of the time, energy, and research that’s gone into it so far has paid off, and that people genuinely enjoy engaging with the content. With luck, I’ll be working on this project for at least another few years, so there’s still plenty more to come. :)
That TTRPG sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun! Needless to say, I’m flattered you’re using the worldbuilding here as a basis for the campaign.
At the moment I don’t have a definitive answer for the total number of Huntsmen across Remnant. But if I had to throw out an estimate, I’d say it’s about 40,000 (or 0.0114% of the global population, which is 350,000,000). As for their availability, it depends. While there’s no immediate shortage of Huntsmen, there is some competition for work.
Certain types of work are considered more “stable” than others because they’re offered through the government. For example:
Teaching. Arguably one of the more sought-after forms of long-term employment, that entails working at one of the four academies or any of the various prep schools. In order to qualify for this type of work, a Huntsman needs a Class-A license, which requires seven years of schooling.
Outpost positions. For the duration of their employment, Huntsmen are permanently stationed at the outposts in an “on-call” sort of role. This job holds a lot of appeal for people that enjoy a more rural lifestyle. In order to qualify, however, a Huntsman needs a Class-B license, which requires six years of schooling.
Bounties. Any sort of job listing that requires apprehending a person is strictly authorized by the government. To reiterate: Private clients do not have the legal ability to post jobs of this nature. Typically, work like this is “outsourced” from the local law enforcement when the target is considered too dangerous for non-Huntsmen to subdue. In order to be authorized to fight and subdue non-Grimm targets, a Huntsman needs to have a Class-B license.
Security detail. Jobs of this nature involve working for government agencies as guards. This can include things like protecting the CCTs, perimeter walls, or inter-city public transit (such as roads and rail lines).
Expansion teams. Perhaps the least common form of government employment on this list, since city-building takes a lot of preparation, time, and resources to pull off. When one of the kingdoms wants to build a new settlement, Huntsmen are contracted to first go into an area and cull all of the Grimm in the immediate vicinity. From there, they’re responsible for protecting the surveyor teams, engineers, and other laborers over the course of the area’s development. Projects of this nature can take years to complete. Depending on who you ask, this is arguably the most dangerous form of government work a Huntsman can undertake.
The remainder of the work out there is found through private clients. Most of the time it’s for things like security, although research agencies will sometimes put out ads for Huntsmen to participate in academic studies, or to procure Grimm as test subjects. (The latter requires quite a bit of red tape, including the permits to actually be in possession of Grimm.)
Government jobs are generally considered more “stable” because they’re long-term and always available (albeit, in limited quantity). The drawback is that they usually require higher-level licenses for a Huntsman to undertake.
Jobs in the private sector, although in constant flux, aren’t quite so limited/don’t have as many barriers to entry, so Huntsmen tend to gravitate more toward these roles. It’s how companies like the SDC manage to snag Huntsmen for their payroll.
While there’s always going to be a demand for Huntsmen, there’s no denying that, over the years, settlements have gotten better at withstanding Grimm. Rapid technological growth has dramatically increased global safety over the last few centuries (particularly in the immediate decades after the Great War), so there’s been a slow but noticeable decline in work from private clients. That, coupled with the number of Huntsmen competing for jobs, means that they’re not insulated from poverty.
It’s not something that the public likes to talk about (in no small part due to how people sensationalize Huntsmen).
At the moment, global opinion of Huntsmen is high. It’s really only a handful of people from Atlas which think Huntsmen—give or take a few decades—will gradually become obsolete.
Here’s the thing about Huntsmen, though. They’re a bit like vaccines, if you’ll forgive the topical example. When a vaccine successfully reduces the disease threat, the perceived risk decreases, as cultural memory of the effects of that disease fade. Ironically, people stop vaccinating because they don’t think it’s necessary, even though vaccinating in the first place is what created that perception.
If Huntsmen are like vaccines, then Grimm are like a disease. And if people ever believed that Huntsmen were no longer necessary for public safety…
Hopefully it never comes to that.