Tech HuntersReport
English：Tech Hunters · Factions
Adventurers who make a living picking through ancient ruins. They are few in number and stay out of politics, yet they are the only organisation in this world still digging systematically for the truth.
After the Second Empire fell, the continent was left littered with the wreckage of two civilisations — half-buried laboratories, automated machines still running, books that can neither be burned away nor read to the end. Most people choose to walk around such places. A few treat them as a trade. Tech Hunters is the name of that trade.
They are a thoroughly post-imperial product: an adventurers' guild that only took shape after the continent had slid back into primitive conditions, and one that hunts two things at once — technology from the ruins, and any scrap of a book that might help reconstruct history[V1 0:00:14].
A faction almost too small to be one
The wiki calls them a tiny organization — and they really are. In areas that overlap with civilisation (Heng and the Great Desert, for example), Tech Hunter patrol density is under 1% of that of other factions.
Curiously, if you count only town populations, the settlements the Tech Hunters control may add up to more than the Shek Kingdom and the Holy Nation combined. The contradiction resolves easily: their towns are sparse, scattered, and mostly empty. They are not a country but a loose web of waystations, with most members out on the road, inside a ruin, or already dead in some tunnel nobody remembers.
Territory: four towns and a string of waystations
The Tech Hunters fight no wars, yet they hold key nodes in the continent's south-east and in several extreme environments. By region, their influence covers Flats Lagoon, The Outlands, the Arm of Okran and part of the Bonefields, and only three of their holdings really qualify as cities: Flats Lagoon, Black Scratch and World's End[V1 0:00:14].
| Holding | Location | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Black Scratch | The Outlands | Faction headquarters, built on top of an ancient structure; home of the famous Great Library, the source of most blueprints |
| World's End | Arm of Okran | An enormous waystation built on a mountaintop, and seat of the Machinist university |
| Flats Lagoon | The zone of the same name | The last resupply point on the route into the Ashlands |
| Mourn | Bonefields | Formerly an imperial mining town, left half-ruined after a slave uprising |
Beyond those, every Waystation on the map is their construction — a bed, a drink and information for people on the road, and one of the few places in this world that does not ask where you came from.
The value of that web is not only logistics. The Great Library at Black Scratch plus a waystation communication network spanning the continent make the Tech Hunters one of the few organisations able to move news and records between regions; and they hold no innate hostility toward Skeletons, which on a continent where executing Skeletons is routine is itself a scarce quality[V2 0:13:25]. The price of that position is written on the map: Black Scratch is also one of the large settlements closest to the Ashlands, which makes it first in line in any scenario where the powers of the south-east push outward[V2 0:13:25].
Mourn's origins differ from the rest. It was originally United Cities territory that won independence through a successful slave uprising, and only afterwards drifted into the Tech Hunter sphere — one of the few cities they gained without digging through a ruin[V1 0:00:51]. Today it is a broadly free settlement whose practical influence rests with the Tech Hunters, and one of the rare cases in the game of slaves genuinely turning the tables[V3 0:03:23].
The division of labour with the Machinists
The Tech Hunters' real employers are the Machinists — the "Machinist university" at World's End. This is a scholarly organisation whose goal is to reconstruct world history and put lost technology back into circulation. Their method is to write their findings into books and let the knowledge spread on its own.
The division of labour is blunt: scholars cannot survive out there, so the dangerous half is outsourced.
- Finch — a Hive Prince, leader of the Machinists, author of several works including Cannibal Plains: The Devolution of Man?
- Iyo — a Skeleton assistant and the public-facing contact. He lived through the construction of the First Empire and the rise and fall of the Second, making him a first-hand source who is still walking around
Relations between the two sit at +100: complete allies.
Tech Hunter's Notes
The most valuable thing the Tech Hunters have left behind is not salvaged parts but notes. The Tech Hunter's Notes series is scattered across the map as a practical guide written for whoever comes next: which region is worth visiting, where people die, which shop has stock.
The books give the names of a few of their better-known members — Fish, Trepp and Zed. None of the three appears in game; they exist only in the text. Trepp is said to be one of the Tech Hunter captains, described by colleagues as a "difficult" woman, which mostly seems to mean reckless.
"There's probably decent gear to be found around here, if you don't mind crossing the Cannibal Plains." — Finch, Tech Hunter's Notes: Leviathan Coast
Politics: deliberately taking no side
The Tech Hunters join no nation's war. Instead they open shops in everybody's cities — the United Cities, the Shek Kingdom, Mongrel, even Spring, the Anti-Slavers' town, has their stall.
Commentators have pointed out that this neutrality has a structural cause: the Tech Hunters have no political system at all. Finch and Iyo are figureheads rather than rulers, and the faction is closer to a crowd of independent contractors sharing one signboard — with no polity to overthrow, no power has any reason to declare war on them[V5 0:29:36]. That observation dovetails neatly with the earlier contradiction about high town population and near-zero patrol density: their survival rests not on force or diplomacy but on there being no target to attack.
Their relation values are worth reading:
| Toward | Value |
|---|---|
| Machinists | +100 |
| Mongrel | +100 |
| Cannibal Hunters | +100 |
| Anti-Slavers | +15 (returned as +70) |
In other words, the warmth between them and the Anti-Slavers runs one way: Spring likes them a great deal, while they merely do not dislike Spring. That asymmetry is probably exactly what a neutral merchant should look like.
As for law, the Tech Hunters use the United Cities bounty system. This produces an absurd result: even if you commit a crime against Tech Hunters in Anti-Slaver-held Spring, the warrant is still issued by the Empire — despite Spring and the Empire being mortal enemies.
The two statues at World's End
The Tech Hunters' largest technology warehouse happens to sit inside Holy Nation territory. Two statues that look like Okran or Holy Lord Phoenix stand at the south gate of World's End. Finch's official line is that they are there for the Holy Nation to look at.
Given how thoroughly the Holy Nation searches, interrogates and burns books, two statues fooling them is not very credible. Whether the Holy Nation is genuinely deceived, or someone is deliberately looking the other way, the game gives no answer.
What is certain is the outcome: World's End is the only place inside Holy Nation reach where prosthetic limbs can be bought openly, and there are plenty of Skeletons standing inside its walls — while anywhere else in Holy Nation territory a Skeleton is executed on sight.
Trivia
- Characters the player dismisses automatically become "Tech Hunters". This is because the Tech Hunter faction reuses the ID of the old "Drifters" faction and it was never changed during development
- Tech Hunter squads wandering Shun, the Leviathan Coast and the Forbidden Isle may accuse the player of "impersonating a Tech Hunter" and simply attack
- If Emperor Tengu, Lord Inaba and Yabuta of the Sands all die, Stoat falls into Tech Hunter hands
See also
Video citations
- Kenshi: Major Powers | Tech Hunters and CannibalsCivilizationEx
- What If Cat-Lon Tried To Take Back Kenshi?HeroInHisHead
- Kenshi: Major Powers | United Cities and Holy NationCivilizationEx
- Kenshi Base Building - Lagoon CitadelHeroInHisHead
- Which Faction Can Succeed on Kenshi?HeroInHisHead