While plenty of games have successfully balanced PvE and PvP play, none have done it in such a dark and eerie way asHunt: Showdown 1896has. Set in the Deep South and partly in Colorado, this game throws monsters and fellow hunters at you in devastating amounts.

But, why is thissouthern gothicsetting so dark and creepy? What is making all these creatures appear, and leaving nothing but devastation behind it? Well, the answer to both those questions comes down to a single entity: The Sculptor.

Hunters attacking Spider boss in building in Hunt: Showdown 1896.

Who Is The Sculptor?

There islittle known about who or what The Sculptor actually is, but some bits of information can be gleaned from the journals of those who have lived and hunted around the Bayou and Mammon’s Gulch.

The Sculptor is a god-like entitythat is revealed tocome from The Land Of The Dead. It shows this connection to its home byaltering the bodies of living thingsall round it. This willingness, if not need, to morph the flesh of the living and bring on undead qualities has earned it the moniker of The Sculptor.

Hunter walking through ruined town at night while hodling a knuckle knife in Hunt: Showdown 1896.

Other hunters and even those that run the American Hunter’s Association have some differences of opinion about The Sculptor’s identity. Some say it is a being from another realm, while others say it is The Devil or Satan itself.

What Does The Sculptor Want?

There seems to beno pattern in the places The Sculptor chooses to use itsinfluence.

Since The Louisiana Event,the American Hunter’s Association was formed to not only combat the monsters The Sculptor creates, but also try to stop it entirely.

Two hunters walking through burned forest at night by the light of the moon.

They still know little, but it seems that the only goal for this creature is to corruptand make the world of the living look as similar to The Land Of The Dead as it can.

Whether these isolated incidents of corruption are just The Sculptor plying its trade, or if there is a larger game at play, is still unknown.

The map screen for Mammon’s Gulch in Hunt: Showdown 1896.

What Are The Sculptor’s Powers?

The best idea of how strong The Sculptor is inthe mortal world are the places where it has come and gone. The Louisiana Incident ground zero, other places around the Bayou, and Mammon’s Gulch in Colorado are all good ideas of what it can do in a short time.

It seems thatThe Sculptor has the ability to alter the living flesh of people and animals that it comes across, not only necrotizing them, but also mixing them with wood, parts of other living things, and metal.

The Sculptor’s presence in an area also seems to cause insanity in people and animals after a certain amount of time, as shown in the various journals of survivors and hunters. Some seem to be more resistant to it than others.

These creatures not onlyattack anything that comes near them, but some also seem keen on eating the things they kill, as seen through the Grunts that can be found eating corpses, and The Butcher, who slaughters animals rather wantonly.

The Sculptor seems to have anaffinity for three different things in its creations.The first of which isfire, as seen through the Immolator, and Hellborn. It also usesvarious animal and insectoid parts in its works, like in theHive, Armored, and Butcher.

But, it doesn’t seem shy aboutusing the creations of humans in its monsters either, via the steel parts of the Razor Wire Armored, Assassin, and Scrapbeak especially.

The result of the creatures he makes isinstant chaos and death as the remaining denizens of an area try to fight back. This is seen through the various corpses and dead animals throughout these areas.

Known Places The Sculptor Has Been

The only connection the places that The Sculptor has been have with one another is thatthey are often isolated, and somewhat impoverished. This is seen through the various huts and shanties that dot the maps in the game.

It also seems to be keen onmorphing those who are already injured, sick, or in some other way downtrodden, as seen through some of the Hive diary entries and through the creation of Scrapbeak from an injured Civil War soldier.

Stillwater Bayou

Stillwater Bayou is one of, if not the, first place The Sculptor appeared. Deep in the south,the Stillwater Bayouof Louisiana, often now referred to as just the Bayou, iswhere most of the hunters of the AHA first saw what they were up against.

The often aquatic environment makes for tough and slow travel for hunters, which is something thatproves deadly for many trying to cross the Bayoueither towards a target or in escape from rival hunters after picking up a bounty.

Lawson Delta

The Lawson Delta is quite similar to Stillwater Bayou, with much of its landmass underwater ranging from ankle to waist-deep. The destroyed towns not onlymark the damage from The Sculptor’s influence, but also seemingly a flood.

The Delta wasone of the first places that the Scrapbeak monster called home.This makes sense as many hunters noted the various trenches, armories, and storehouses left over from the war.

One of the journal entries of Ada Ruth Shell, a survivor (for a time) of The Louisiana Incident, states thatThe Sculptor also has the ability to duplicate monsters it created, as seen by Ada whose mother was the first Hive. This is why unique monsters like Scrapbeak show up in multiple areas.

Desalle

DeSalle is by far the most populated areathat The Sculptor has hit so far. Well, formerly so anyway. The streets of both upper and lower DeSalle lay abandoned and in disarray, with only a few monsters now stalking the streets and shotgun houses of the area.

This is one of the first placesRotjaw was spotted, in addition to some of the variants of Grunts, some of which still grasp tools and weapons from their previous lives in their gnarled claws.

Mammon’s Gulch

This is thefirst place the influence of The Sculptor has been noted outside of the American Deep South. It is ironic that the one place in Colorado that now has been turned to hell on earth is referred to as Mammon’s Gulch.

This area sees not onlymost of the previous monsters that The Sculptor is fond of, minus Rotjaw, as the small streams are not conducive to its hunting grounds, but some new creations as well.

The Hellborn stalks many of the old mines of Mammon’s Gulch, but whether the flames it carries are an upgraded version of the Immolator’s is unknown.