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pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Kurieg posted:

This may be more ambitious, but I've got a collection of the various Werewolf Breed Books, and I could review those as well... Yes, Including Nuwisha Pants?

Along these lines, I have every Revised Tribe Book other than Glass Walkers (for some reason) and Children of Gaia (for obvious reasons). I'm working on a series for those. I'll move up production if anyone's interested. I'm doing them alphabetically (which is also by chronological release date), so we'll be starting with Black Furies, which goes to amazing levels of insane. Attack of the Fetus Ghosts, anyone?

Like I said in the last thread, I actually do like the A Tribe Falls scenarios (although there are some lame ones), but other than the Ragnarok setting, the book is pretty meh. Hengeyokai could be pretty interesting, and the breed book run through would be hilarious. It's amazing how badly the Nuwisha book fails to make them even remotely playable in a group. PGttCB only marginally improves this.

edit: My bad! Silent Striders is the one with the fetus ghosts. Black Furies is the one with the sidebar about the merits of breast feeding vs. formula. It's hard to keep the crazy straight.

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Apr 2, 2013

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pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Fossilized Rappy posted:

Powers
Yet again, we have a section that begins with talk about what is and is not good for the "authentically retro character". First off is a no-go on psychic powers and anything too super-sciencey. Why? According to the author of this little tome, the first is because mesmerism was almost always a villain trait in the Golden Age, while the second is because kids at the time were unlikely to understand what things like vibrating super-speed or spatial distortion were. I'm sure that obscure Golden Age heroes known as the Flash and Dr. Occult might disagree on at least two of those points.

Actually, the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick couldn't vibrate to run through walls. His powers were more magical than later iterations (I believe he got his powers from Mercury's helmet?). Barry Allen, who got his powers from lightning and chemicals, invented the vibration technique. :flashfact:

But yeah, the mesmerism and super science things are silly, but I guess figures like Doctor Occult would be out of place in a Hitler Punching team. And the Human Torch was a robot!

Also, the Haunted Tank is the best, just like all the Silver Age WWII comics. I hope the book has hints to support those stories, rather than just the comics published during the thirties and forties.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Black Furies



Welcome to a very special F&F series. I'm going to be going through my Tribebook collection and reviewing every tribe's splatbook. I'll be judging them based on how effective they are at providing viable character concepts and encouraging players to actually use the splat. These will be the Revised versions, because those are the ones I have.

I'll be skipping over Children of Gaia, since that was covered in the last thread and I don't have the book, but that's a perfect example of a bad splatbook. Aside from all the :staredog:, the book portrayed the entire tribe as a crew of naive, connection obsessed idiots, and nobody wants to play one of those. There was no diversity, no realistic political or spiritual tension, or teeth displayed. It's a perfect failure. But enough about the series! Let's get to the main event.

Black Furies are one of the odder tribes, in that rather than representing a specific wolf population, like the other splats, they’re supposed to represent an entire mythological meme, which is itself tied to a gender. Strictly speaking, they’re originally from Greece, and a lot of their milieu and imagery is associated with Greek mythology. Personally, I find their brand of mysticism a lot more evocative than their feminism, and their tribebook does a good job of presenting that. I’m not sure Werewolf: the Apocalypse needed an all-woman splat, but it could have been a lot worse.

Before we start the book, here’s a quick summary of the Black Fury entry in the Revised corebook.


Look at those toenails! Totally a werewolf. Also, http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311

quote:

The Black Furies practice feminism with a vengeance.

Literally the first sentence and already we’re off to a great start. Legend has it that the Black Furies were originally a group of Greek women, who eventually inspired a whole bunch of warrior women myths. They also legendarily only produce female offspring, but it turns out they were just killing all their male cubs. (I’m excited to play a Black Fury already!) Nowadays, though, they just kick all of their males out (mostly into the Children of Gaia) and recruit lady werewolves. They keep male metis, though, and as we learn in their Tribebook, it’s because they’re sterile.

Remember, though, they don’t hate all men! Most of them get along just fine in packs with males. They just speak their mind and push for equality through recruiting women out of oppressive tribes. Seems to me that would create a lot of friction, but whatever.

Other than militant feminism, their other schtick is their Western mystic tradition. They have a spiritual connection to the Wyld (the counterpart to the Weaver and the Wyrm), and they worship it in a very particular Hermetic fashion. This involves maintaining strong natural places and performing witch-like rites (we’ll learn about those in the Tribebook, and oh man are they great.) Right now, it’s not clear how this is any different from the other tribes, other than how they’re all women.

Their tribe totem is Pegasus, who apparently really does hate all men because of Bellerophon. Packs of Black Furies are known as kuklos, or circles (I don’t know Greek, so feel free to point out if White Wolf is being dumb here.) They report to the Outer Calyx, the public leaders of the tribe, who then report to the Inner Calyx, the secret leaders of the tribe, who then answer to Pegasus. The Calyxes are in charge of protecting and keeping track of the Black Furies’ collection of fetishes. The main source of political tension is formed along age lines, where the younger tribe members are a lot more radical and political than the conservatives of the Calyxes.

Appearance: They’re women, so they could look like any woman. Good use of space.

Kinfolk: They’re women, so they could be any woman. There are some men who are just kind of ignored, but the Black Furies don’t hate them! Honest! Except some do. Another valuable entry.

Territory: Sacred groves, but those are threatened by MEN. They also try to be where violence against women is a serious problem.

quote:

The testosterone's getting a little thick around here. I say we let the men keep arguing for a few more hours and set off on our own. Let them keep posturing at the moot. We've got woman's work to do....
:nyd:

Stereotypes: Weirdly enough, they seem to like pretty much everyone, even the Shadow Lords and Fianna. The Fianna are particularly surprising, since they’re one of the most misogynistic tribes. The only tribes they don’t like are the Get of Fenris (assholes) and the Red Talons (racists).

Thoughts: This is actually not as bad as I remember. There’s not a lot setting them apart from the other tribes, other than the obvious membership requirements but they’re not so ridiculous as to be unplayable. There’s just not a lot to hook onto here. The wordcount they spend to counteract the stereotype that every Black Fury is a radical feminist just dilutes anything that would make them compelling to play. The Tribebook does a lot to fix this, but your mileage may vary on that.

Next time: “Unity in Alterity”, the lost TNG episode title.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



I kind of alluded to this in my last post, but there actually is an underlying logic to the Werewolf splats. Every tribe correlates to a specific wolf population, and every generalized wolf breed has its own tribe. Of course, there's got to be more to a tribe than "from a particular country", hence the weird political stances each tribe adopts. The Black Furies, for instance, are really the wolves from Greece, and the feminism angle is meant to make them more interesting. We'll soon find out that's actually the least interesting thing about them, but spoilers.

I actually prefer the diversity of Apocalypse to the homogenized vaguely Native American flavor of Forsaken. In each of the Tribe- and Breed-books, each splat actually has its own origin myth. The werewolves' myths are usually minor variations of the one in the corebook, but the breeds can get really out there. Even though the tribes tend to stereotype, at least there's an acknowledgement of cultural diversity. More tribes also means more cool powers, so that's fun.

Halloween Jack posted:

I think that's because the source subject matter for Werewolf is a lot weaker than for Mage or Vampire. In Western myth, werewolves are either baby-eating Satan-worshipers (premodern) or people who have a curse (movies) which doesn't make for a culture you can play in. I'm not well-versed in Asian and African lore, but I don't think their myths of werefoxes and wereleopards make them out as very playable character options.

That hits it right on the head, I think. Werewolf has to do a lot more myth and world building, because playing as the Wolfman doesn't lend itself particularly to player agency or acting as a party. I do love the werewolf cosmology, though.

In any case:

Tribebook: Black Furies

“Unity in Alterity”

The introduction fiction begins with Helena waking up, kissing her significant other Dian, getting coffee, and then driving to work at a clinic. Dian does the same thing, but has to pack up a first aid kit and a fetish flashlight. This is subtle juxtaposition, because Helena and Dian have very different jobs. I bet they turn out to have a lot of parallels, though!

As it turns out, Helena is a Black Fury, and she gives her elderly patients at the clinic potent herbal remedies for their illnesses, because gently caress the Weaver, man. She’s supposed to be a nurse, but fortunately for her she hasn’t been caught by her supervisors. Her “Mediterranean coloration” (ick) leads people to believe she’s descended from Indian medicine women. I have a rant prepared about Werewolf’s approach to politics and real life issues, but for now we’ll just say that this entry into the debate on traditional medicine, um, doesn’t really work.

Mors Rattus posted:

Old Werewolf is at its best when it is being Psychotic Captain Planet With Claws, and really becomes something terrible when it deviates from that. It's really, really hilarious when it's being Captain Planet Terrorism, though.

This is absolutely correct. I believe Ethan Skemp referred to this as "a metal album cover come to life" and when that aesthetic collides with real life issues, it can become amazingly insane.

Helena encounters a family that is obviously the victim of domestic abuse. The kids are malnourished, they have bruises, cuts and cigarette burns everywhere, and they look terrified and miserable.

quote:

I ask the necessary question. “Is their father here? Or at home?”

She shakes her head, still looking at the floor. “Haven’t seen him for months. He left us.” It is the answer I was afraid to hear. I know it is a blindness on my part, but these situations are so much easier to deal with when there is a man to blame.
:jerkbag:

As it turns out, Helena delivered the mother’s second child, so she’s bound to her by womb blood. Obviously. Helena takes the mother aside for a private talk.

Cut to Dian Axebearer (deed names, you know). She’s dealing with a trio of rookie werewolves. There’s Daniel, a homid who was drinking while guarding the caern, Raychel, an ugly metis who snuck into town, attracting attention, Sharpbite, a “feral” who’s apparently an rear end in a top hat. After some awful banter (“you can also call me ‘bitch’”), they set out to hunt a Wyrm monster. Sharpbite’s cocky, Raychel’s scared, Daniel doesn’t give a poo poo, and Dian’s got a greataxe.

Back with Helena, it turns out that the mother is possessed (or at least influenced) by a Wyrm spirit! Because of course she is. Helena can’t hulk out and kill the evil spirit (darn!) so they’re going to have to do some INTENSE METAL THERAPY. :black101: The mother explains why she loves her kids (her daughter chases grasshoppers :3:), and the demon’s resisting and there’s a werewolf cognitive behavioral therapist and oh man this is awesome.

Dian’s fight isn’t going so well, as a Bane is kicking Sharpbite’s tail (no pun intended). Sharpbite fox frenzies and runs away. It’s an emotion spirit of some kind, and it’s draining the werewolves will to live! It sends out a wave of helplessness, but Dian counters with RAGE and kerblammo! The Bane goes down.


HR Giger's initial ad pitch for the National Egg Authority was not well received.

The pair goes home, eat partially cooked steak (because they're wooooolves), and go to bed. They both got in a fight, see? See? It’s deep.

Thoughts: this story is pretty bad. Not in the sense that there’s anything really wrong with it, but it’s just so generic. It’s about fighting, like all Werewolf fiction, but that’s as far as it goes. There’s nothing about this that screams “Black Fury” over “Uktena” or “Children of Gaia”. It doesn’t make the Furies’ mysticism unique. In fact, it takes steps to make it homogenized and boring. Heavy metal therapy was pretty cool, as was the fight scene, but it’s got to have more than that to succeed. Negative points for the awful title, too.

The casual reader might ask, “Yo pospysyl! You’ve been saying that the Black Furies can actually be pretty cool and insane, but so far everything’s been really boring and uninspiring! What gives?” And you’d be right. All I'll ask

For now, we’ll end on the credits page, where we find out who’s responsible for this book. Ellen and James Kiley have already been brought up (it would have been hilarious if the feminist splatbook hadn’t been written by at least one woman, but alas), but it’s worth noting that Matt McFarland, known for his work on Changeling: the Lost, Mage: the Awakening supplements, and various “blue books” for the nWoD is a contributing author. As we’ll see, the work on the mystic trappings he introduces to Changeling and Mage have their origins here. See, the book focuses on two primary flavor sources for the Black Furies: Hermetic mysticism and feminism. I obviously don’t have any concrete information on this, but I’d be willing to bet that McFarland worked on the Hermetic end, while the Kileys worked on the feminist and political end. I’ll leave it to you to guess which one is better.

Next time: Words are tools of the Namer and baby talk is the one true language. (See, I told you things were going to pick up!)

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Bieeardo posted:

This. This is something that's always annoyed the unholy gently caress out of me about White Wolf. This... hate-on the writers and the lore have for human achievements and the human condition. This woman isn't abusing her children because they're an inescapable reminder of their deadbeat father, and it's the only form of control she's found in this tragedy that's her life, she's possessed. Every important person in history has belonged to some splat or another. Technology is evil, and really distributed by a ridiculous Illuminati of wizards. Psychiatry is horrible, because crazy people are glamourous enough to see changelings, and it kills changelings!

Right now I'm cringing at the thought of whatever shambling horror of Steinem-misquoting 'feminism' might be lurking around the corner.

Exactly. Elsewhere the Werewolf developers recommend that you balance out the Wyrm-slaying adventures with down to earth sessions where you deal with real life issues, grounding your characters as human or whatever. The Wyrm isn't supposed to be responsible for all human evil. This melding of real life human awfulness and high fantasy craziness is just awkward. Werewolf exorcisms are rad and the imagery was totally metal, but you don't see the kids after the exorcism's done, so you have no idea whether the exorcism even did anything. I understand that the writers are locked into this "we fight the Wyrm both spiritually and physically!" parallelism, but having it just be a regular lady doing terrible things would be so much more compelling. You could even have the Wyrm feeding on her or something if you really want to inject monsters into it. As it stands, the story is just so boring and so fantastical that it doesn't stand out.

I kind of regret not talking about that in the update, but don't worry, there'll be plenty of opportunities to complain ahead!


Hark! A Vagrant's going to be making a lot of appearances here, I can tell.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Speaking of sex and sexuality...

Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 1: Avenging Claws Part 1

First thing we get in this chapter is an apology for how bad it is. Always a good sign. See, Black Furies don’t actually write things down normally. Why?

quote:

Back to the subject of writing. Pure thought is wordless. It comes out of the Wyld. Ask an infant sometime, or a wolf. Oh wait! You can’t: the Namer long ago forced our communication into language and words, and as he did that, he forced our minds into a shape that only thought in language and words.

Got that? All language is the result of spiritual corruption, at least according to Black Fury theology. Spoken language is one thing, but written language is even worse. Spoken language, committed to memory, is tied to the ephemera of memory, while written words are trapped in stasis. Spoken language can die with the speaker, but written language might be kept by enemies, or worse, the Namer. This is a good preview of the Black Furies’ religiosity, if a tad ridiculous.

If you’re familiar with the Werewolf setting, “the Namer” might be unfamiliar to you. As it turns out, the Namer is the Black Furies’ name for the Weaver, because Weavers actually do useful things while the Namer only calcifies reality. It’s basically Banality to werewolves. Weaving is also important to the Black Fury milieu, since the Fates (a triple goddess, which will be very important) are themselves weavers. It’s a cool deviation, and it could provide a good vocal tic to your character.

To avoid the corruption of this written knowledge, the author has “agreed to sprinkle this text with half-truths, omissions, and outright lies,” responding to the protests of the elders. :allears: Remember, the history you learned in school is a damned Namer lie, so forget all that and listen to these admitted lies.

The Earliest Days quickly recaps the standard Werewolf origin myth. “Gaia created the Wyld, Weaver, and Wyrm, the Weaver and Wyrm went crazy and hurt Gaia, Gaia created Incarna and the Changing Breeds.” Luna was one of the Incarna (the Black Furies sometimes call her Artemis), and she took the werewolves under her wing. The Black Furies believe that werewolves are actually older than humanity or wolves, although how this reconciles with the First Change is anyone’s guess. There’s an alternate story that posits that werewolves came after humanity and wolves. After male werewolves started killing everything, the blood formed female werewolves, who swore to fix everything.

quote:

”We are Gaia’s answer. From the soil of Her Earth She formed us, from ground stained red by the blood of the murdered. She created us female, every one; She made us bearers of life so that we might never take life thoughtlessly. She gave us fur as black as night, so that the wicked might fear our righteous wrath. She gave unto us a charge: to hunt the kinslayers and other profaners of nature, and so protect our Mother. We are the daughters of Gaia, born of Her body and blood. We are vengeance. We are the Black Furies.”

I am totally starting a band, calling it The Black Furies, and reciting that before every concert.

Eventually, the first Black Fury pack showed up. The oldest Gorgon, Euryale or New Moon, thought that males were the weaker sex. The second Helena the Theurge, knew that men would eventually rebel against female rule and cause the downfall of womanhood. Stheno, the Philodox, was the wisest, and Medusa the Artisan sung and Raged a lot Isthmene, the youngest and most beautiful of the Gorgons, had a silver labrys and totally beat up anyone who messed with her. They gathered more lady werewolves, who settled in Greece and at first worshipped Luna directly, until she had to help everyone out.

Prehistory opens up with this:

quote:

The simple truth of human existence is that Man has never understood Woman. Consider the very earliest days of human awareness, say, a year after Gaia created both. Man has a straightforward life. He wakes up, he hunts, he kills, he brings home part of the kill to his woman, they eat, the sun goes down the go to bed, they gently caress – because, while Man and Woman might not know why sex is fun, it is fun – and then they sleep.

Woman’s life is much more complex, right from the beginning; she obeys mysterious forces and urges and often behaves in ways Man does not understand. With the phase of the moon she bleeds, and the blood brings changes in personality – Man calls it irrationality.

Nice :biotruths: there. The chapter continues its junior anthropology by describing childbirth and I’m not even going into that. Man apparently believes that Woman is some magic babymaker with strange dark powers.

How humans and animals understand that sex is related to childbirth has been a perpetual anthropological curiosity, but Tribebook: Black Furies has the answer! Werewolves told us. Of course, the Black Furies wouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, because that would spoil the feminine mystique. Upon learning about sex, Man invented patriarchy and rape! In response, Black Furies started the Impergium, the era where werewolves would stomp around controlling human population.


We interrupt your anthropology lesson with a werewolf biting off a Centurion's head

Sidebar: there’s a spirit of Patriarchy, because of course there is. This Patriarch isn’t necessarily the Judeo-Christian god, ALTHOUGH HE COULD BE.

The Impergium eventually ended (although the Bacchanite camp refused to stop killing men). By this point, humanity had invented cities (other books imply that this is the major move that convinced the werewolves that Impergium wasn’t worth it, and I think W20 has made that even more explicit). Even then, though, humans apparently worshiped the Earth Goddess. The chapter continues with some comparative mythology. Yaaaay. :geno: Comparative mythology has lost a lot of academic credibility since its heyday, so this is very much an artifact of its time. Apparently worship of fertility goddesses is linked to cave digging, which I don’t think is true, but I’m no expert.

Thoughts: I remember it being bad, but I don’t remember it being quite this awful. We do get some flavorful tidbits, with Wyld caves and an extreme paranoia and aversion towards the Namer, but it gets lost among all the…ugh. It gets better, I promise! Just hold on.

Next time: Clytemnestra, and the first appearance of the Order of our Merciful Mother. Those of you versed in Werewolf lore, get pumped and please, no spoilers.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Sorry for the weeklong hiatus, but here it is!

Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 1 Part 2

“Greece” begins with this:

quote:

The Titans, progenitors of the Greek pantheon of gods, were all nearly perfect beings: they sprang from the marriage of earth and sky, literally Gaia and Uranus (probably some incarnation of the Patriarchy spirit, or maybe the Namer himself, I don’t know – you have no idea how much of this stuff I’m making up as I go.

:allears: Never change, Black Furies, never change.

The narrator then goes into hysterics about how Uranus imprisoned the Titans underground, i.e. THE WOMB. The Titans, either superpowered humans or spirits according to Black Fury lore, freed themselves and ruled over Greece in an age of peace and prosperity. Zeus overthrew the titans, imprisoning them in the Underworld (remember, THE WOMB) and took over. The Black Furies are not fans of the Olympians, as Zeus is a sky god, which is bad, I guess. But, they also believe Luna took the form of Artemis and tried guiding them.

In the Trojan War, the Greeks want to take back Helen from Paris (the narrator finds it necessary to remind us that Paris is person, not a city :rolleyes:.) However, there’s no wind! They need to make a sacrifice to Artemis, so Agamemnon chooses his daughter Iphigenia. The wind takes them to Troy, where they win and come home. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, is angry about her daughter’s death, so she kills Agamemnon. Now, this is from the Orestia, which I haven’t read. I have read the Iliad and the Odyssey, though, and from those this doesn’t sound quite accurate. Then again Aeschylus wrote the Orestia, not Homer. If anyone knows more, feel free to chime in.

Back to the story, Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, kills Clytemnestra, believing that she just wants to continue an affair (the story I remember). The Black Furies (in the original the Furies) chase Orestes around the Aegean until he goes to Athens for judgment. Athena (a sky goddess) finds him innocent. To mollify the Furies, Athena appoints them as justice keepers in Athens, becoming the Eumenides, or the Kindly Ones.

The Black Furies have a different version! Luna sent Agamemnon an omen to protect him from the Trojan War. Agamemnon misinterpreted this as a need for sacrifice. Athena’s a jerk :hist 101: (a sky goddess, virginal(!), and “she sprang from the head of her father,” which is totally antithetical to the Black Furies’ Goddess concept), and valued the life of the father over the life of the mother. She didn’t grant the Furies their authority; they took it. In hunting down all criminals against women, they created an age of peace.

On to another myth! For thousands of years, Luna/Artemis was the Black Fury totem. The spirits of the Gorgons served her, except for Medusa, who lived for thousands of years. Medusa did eventually die, and Luna created Pegasus out of her corpse. Athena, out of jealousy, sent Bellerophon to tame Pegasus. Bellerophon fought with Chimera and the Red Talons (even though the Stargazers have Chimera as their totem, not the Red Talons), and so did the Black Furies. Eventually, Pegasus recognized Bellerophon as a glory hound, and so fought against him. Bellerophon had Pegasus gelded, which pissed it off even more. It killed Bellerophon, and told the Black Furies to never obey a man again! And also to stop killing male metis. Pegasus has no gender (:rainbowdash:), so that works for the Furies.

Bible Times! The narrator doesn’t like them. This whole section is :smug:theism incarnate. Old Testament days were barbaric, and the Glass Walkers allowed it to be so (remember, both the Glass Walkers and patriarchy are tools of the Namer). Adam named(!) Eve, in so doing using Weaver magics to destroy womanhood forever! They take great issue with Lot. It turns out that the Black Furies destroyed Sodom.

Sister Mary Windhowl of the Order of Our Merciful Mother (:haw:) agrees with the narrator’s summation of Bible Times, but brings up various powerful women of the Bible. Deborah led Israel in Judges, and various strong mother figures prevail. She doesn’t talk about Esther, though, even though that’s my favorite Veggie Tales episode.

They don’t object to the New Testament.

quote:

That Christ fellow sounds like he wasn’t an altogether bad guy.

:smug:

He is a martyr though, and martyrs are dumb! Suffering for suffering's sake is bad!

Dark Ages! I guess we’re not talking about Rome conquering Greece and co-opting its legendry. Okay. Christianity, with its mixture of Patriarch worship and “good stuff” spread across Europe, replacing the old sky god cults. They eventually took up violent conversion. The Black Furies fought back, usually with passive aggressive tactics like stealing their livestock or ruining their crops. They would also attack priests or conversion parties that captured “wise women” of villages and turned people away from the worship of Gaia. The Church was an incarnation of the Namer, the Furies’ gravest threat. I'm sure tons of angry teens did tons of werewolves kill :catholic: games as a result.

This is about when the Order of Our Merciful Mother began. A Black Fury kinfolk became a nun, and was a devout follower of the Virgin Mother. A pack of charitable Furies learned of the abbey, and pledged themselves to it as well. The new Order became influential in the church and steered Catholicism to revering the Virgin Mary. Other camps were unenthusiastic about the Order, but a Freebooter crone pack (the first we’ve heard of the crones, by the way, but certainly not the last) arranged a peace agreement between them. The Order survives to this very day, so you too can play a werewolf nun. :black101: This alone saves this book, and I won’t hear anything to the contrary.

The Black Furies then talk about Islam. Under Islam, women were property and were oppressed, with limited opportunities for divorce, property ownership, or testimony. The Black Furies fought in the Crusades against the Muslims to liberate caerns. This section could have been much worse, so I’m grateful that this section is really short.

Thoughts: Now we’re getting into it! The Black Fury mysticism and milieu is on display here. We have some good philosophical/anthropological hooks with the sky gods. I joked about them earlier, but it does make sense that the Furies would see them as manifestations of the Namer. Often, sky gods are creators and guiders of civilizations and laws, and so the primitive anarchical ethos of the Black Furies would find that offensive. The obsession with caves is also pretty nice.

I’m obviously not a fan of the :smug:theism, but werewolf nuns are loving hardcore and I love them.

Next time: Witches! Native America! Hopefully Modern Times and the end of Chapter 1!

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Apr 19, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 1, Part 3

This is going to be a long one, and for that I apologize. I just really want to get to the good stuff, i.e. the stuff that Matt McFarland wrote.

Because of the werewolf war against nuns (a result of inter-camp tensions, if you recall), the Church came to believe in witches. By the fourteenth century, the Inquisition started to fight against these witches, so we have the Black Furies to thank for the Spanish Inquisition along with everything else. I actually don’t mind this historical revisionism, because it would totally make sense for a secret warrior society dealing with an eternal cosmological battle to put itself at the center of a lot of history. Gaian ritual was mistaken for witchcraft and demon consorting, and a ton of Fury kinfolk died. Black Furies managed to get off scot free, though, because, hey, they’re werewolves, what do you expect? The Sisterhood camp originated here, forming to sneak women out of oppressive areas.

The Renaissance! It was a time of huge technological advancement, which to the Black Furies, is of course bad. Fortunately, there were Furies around to keep romanticizing nature, preventing Western civilization from becoming too corrupted by the Namer. The narrator speculates that if the Furies hadn’t done this, we would be living in a “cybernetic nightmare.” In other words, the Black Furies are the reason why you don’t have a jetpack.

The tribes were generally aware of the Pure Brother Tribes in the Americas and left them alone. They didn’t bother Africa because of the War of Rage, where they pissed off all the other werecreatures. Hey, wait a minute! They haven’t talked about the War of Rage at all! That’s, like, one of the most important aspects of the setting! Whatever.

Eventually, though, America was discovered, and the Black Furies had to find a way to get over to Europe. They didn’t want to open any war bridges to invade, so they sent a few packs to stowaway with some nuns. The Freebooters who went over there (we have no idea who the Freebooters are, by the way, but we can gather that they seek out caerns to protect) really liked the natural expanses of the region. These packs took over a caern and opened up the moon bridges so that more Black Furies could come and fortify the base. The Croatan were justifiably pissed, so they sent some diplomats and warriors to confront the invaders.

The Croatan told the Black Furies to leave, the Black Furies refused, the Croatan left, came back the next day, while the Furies still refused. This cycle repeated a few times. The Black Furies thought that the Croatan were kind of incompetent, because, hey, the Furies managed to take over that caern really easily. Eventually, a Wyrm monster attacked the caern and after the Furies and Croatan teamed up to defeat it, they arranged a truce. Elsewhere, the Furies were less successful at arranging peace agreements. They still only have a tenuous understanding with the Wendigo, but they count the Uktena as allies.

After the Black Furies reached peace with the Pure Tribes, the Furies suffered a schism. The Calyxes, leaders of the tribe, didn’t want to commit the necessary numbers of Furies to the New World. Despite this, the Calyxes wanted to continue their authority over the region. After some clashes, the American Furies broke away from the European Calyxes and formed their own jurisdiction. This is much more sophisticated politics than I’m used to from this book, and it’s pretty thin on the bone here. We’re going to get more in the next chapter, though, so that’s fine.

After this, the Croatan sacrificed themselves to defeat Taker-of-Souls. Their spirit wards started to unravel, releasing a whole bunch of Wyrm spirits and giving the Black Furies a lot more work to do. Incidentally, the Great Dust Bowl may have been the result of one of those spirits. In the late nineteenth century, another big Wyrm spirit, Storm Eater, surfaced in the American West. In 1890, a team of various tribes figured out how to defeat Storm Eater. One of their leaders, Dara, was a Black Fury, and she was the first to sacrifice herself. Dara’s Vengeance is a potent artifact to this day, so go forth, PCs and find it!


Some body part is backwards on this lady, but I can't put my finger on it.

On the Amazon: they don’t take kindly to their Amazons being associated with the Amazon River Basin, because that’s just really dumb.

Today’s great line:

quote:

A few weeks ago, I was having an interesting conversation about healthcare systems with a Glass Walker of my acquaintance…

I can just imagine two werewolves sitting in some café, debating the merits of socialized health insurance.

Black Furies joined the Portugese settlers in South America, and they have some of the largest kinfolk populations in South America. They work really well with the werebeasts of the region, and are pretty strongly represented in Gogol Fangs-First’s Amazon campaign.

Speaking of wars, there were a lot of human wars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Black Furies fought in them. In fact, the Black Furies welcomed these wars, since the most aggressive males would be killed off. The Furies focused on protecting women from rapacious armies. In particular, the Black Furies were involved in the Balkan conflicts, fighting a Wyrm spirit called Kolkos War-Feast.

A personal addendum: the last few paragraphs are really poorly organized in the book. It constantly jumps forwards and backwards in time, from region to region. I’ve tried to make a little bit better, but it really reads amateurish. It’s definitely like another writer took the reins from the witchcraft section on.

The 20th Century saw great advances for feminism, but also brought heavy industrialization. The United States moved West, killing both Indians and nature. The Wyld lost a lot of power in the early 1900s.

And now for a weird short story! Fort Dodge was formed in the early Western expansion. A Black Fury kinfolk gave birth to a Garou, and the Claws of Glory pack came to town to celebrate and recruit. They found some Wyrm taint, leading to a Wyrm monster with a bunch of indestructible eggs. The eggs were associated with a shallow grave. They discovered that a schoolmistress who wasn’t possessed was killing and torturing a bunch of school children. The Furies killed the teacher, destroying the eggs. The spiritual resonance of that vengeance makes the whole town feel more justice-ier, even to this very day.

Women won the right to vote in the United States, but the Black Furies really don’t care. They’re from a very strict hierarchy, you see, so to them voting is just wacky.

World War I was a good time for the Wyrm. Black Furies participated in the war to fight the Wyrm monsters that would inevitably attack, and to protect women, of course. Disease sprits like Tarkhor Night-Murderer killed thousands, and other spirits like Ulgesh the Hope-Render caused mass trench suicides. One thing I will say for this book, they come up with awesome :black101: names for Wyrm monsters.

As women joined the workplace and won the right to vote, their social standing improved. The Black Furies really enjoyed the incremental sexual revolutions, because the Black Furies are secretly the most Third Wave of all Third Wave feminists. WWII was a particularly great time for this advancement, as women dominated the workforce almost totally. To the book’s credit, it gives the Black Furies a largely hands-off role to the feminist revolutions of these times.

The Black Furies really regret not doing more to fight Hitler earlier, but they were busy defending Greece and fighting the Wyrm monsters that resulted from the warfare. They couldn’t do much to stop the death camps either. Mainly, though, it was just ignorance that prevented them from taking more action. This is told surprisingly maturely and from what I remember, a lot better than other :godwin: books that deal with the Nazis and the Holocaust (I’m looking at you, Get).

The Black Furies are still pissed off about Women’s Liberation. There’s the idea that women are already liberated enough, and the work still isn’t complete. The Equal Rights Amendment was defeated. It’s all pretty much a wash.

In modern times, a male metis named Spartacus leads a revolt against the matriarchal leadership! Yes, really. His pack, named Freedom (yes, really), soon turned the revolt into a violent one, because he’s a MAN and that’s what men do (yes, really). Spartacus eventually lost in single combat, and was kicked out of the tribe. The way the narrator sees it, the metis already have it pretty good being allowed to stay in the tribe at all, so he shouldn’t have revolted. Hm. :raise:

The Stepmothers are another good pack gone bad. The pack, led by Sharra Clearwater, found an :moreevil: factory dumping pollutants into the river. They learned that it was run by Black Spiral Dancers, evil werewolves. The Stepmothers attacked the hive alone, but went Wyrm crazy in the process. Now they’re the Wicked Stepmothers (sounds like a biker gang from Grimm), led by the Sh’ra Gthulkya, Clearwater’s new identity. They kidnap babies and recruit them into their pack! They’re a grave threat to the tribe, and the Black Furies haven’t told anyone else, because of course.

Sidebar: Demon worshipping serial killers are real! Hide your kids, hide your wives, because there’s Wyrm worshipping madmen about. They kidnap babies, and are often just regular people, but possessed, but so subtly that they’re impossible to detect! :tinfoil: I have no idea why this sidebar is here.

A new schism is forming, as other female werewolves join the tribe just to fight the Wyrm, but with all ladies. They don’t buy into the same mysticism as the rest of the tribe, nor are they committed to the Furies’ form of justice. The traditionalists of the tribe hate them, and they’re not too popular among the general population either.

The narrator then sums up the Week of Nightmares. Either an ancient vampire, a new kind of super-vampire, or a really powerful Wyrm spirit woke up and tore poo poo up. Werewolves, vampires, kung fu vampires, and ghosts teamed up to fight the vampire. She believes the Illuminati killed the super-vampire in the end, which is actually pretty rad.

The Black Furies are very concerned with the Balkans, as they’re right next to Greece. Soviet control kept the region stable, so the collapse of the USSR is bad news. Violence against women is a huge problem around this time, and prostitution is rampant.

quote:

A side note here about prostitution: Personally, I don’t have any moral or ethical problem with the simple idea of loving for money, if it’s done freely, without strings, oppression, or abuse. Of course, it never is.

A weirdly serious turn for a book about werewolf nuns. :rolleyes:

Kelonoke Wildhair of the Sept of Bygone Vision formed alliances with the Red Talons, and surprise surprise, the Shadow Lords. Conveniently, this triple entente gives the Black Furies a scapegoat for when things go wrong, since the Shadow Lords and Red Talons are notoriously unstable. It’s some great subtlety.

The war against Baba Yaga in Russia killed a lot of notable Black Furies, including Mother’s Pride, leader of the Blood of the Sea Sept. Her pack, the Fiery Axe, died when fighting the zmei Gregornous. Tatania, a rumored weak leader, is now in charge of the Russian Black Furies, and the Get and Silver Fangs threaten to take over.


:ussr:

The Black Furies are involved in the Congolese Revolutions, but they’re mostly ineffectual. Their Freebooters have managed to claim a few caerns, though.

Medusa disappeared in 2000, and now the Gorgon hivemind has dissolved. Packs can’t follow the Gorgons as a single spirit, but rather must choose one Gorgon to follow. The Inner Calyx might know more, but they aren’t talking.

The Metamorphic Plague!!! This is a big deal in the metaplot. In the Dark Ages, the Red Talons were known as great prophets, rather than homicidal maniacs. One particularly notable prophet predicted a whole bunch of metaplot. One of the things included in that prophecy was that the Black Furies were going to get a “changing sickness”. The Metamorphic Plague is that sickness. It’s dominant in Mexico, but it spreads from Fury to Fury internationally. The Plague first makes the Furies angrier, then changes their appearance, then changes their memories and personality altogether. It’s spooky.

In a weird deviation from our history, apparently the Black Furies have managed to make the Virgin Mary even more widely worshipped by the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, the Pope himself has even called for the Virgin Mary to be named “Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate”. :wtc: And on that note, that’s the end of Chapter One.

Next time: The good stuff, and a completely different narrative style, and thank goodness for that.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Another week, another update to Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 2, Part 1: The Triptych, aka the Good Part

It’s italics time! The traditional revised White Wolf splatbooks share a common format. The first chapter is usually an in-universe history of the splat in question. Chapter 2, beginning now, features representative members of the splat explaining how they do things to an outsider of one kind or another. Different splatbooks experiment with this, but Black Furies is a bit more traditional, but that doesn't mean it's not great.

A cub, Anxi, wakes up wondering where she is. Upon getting her bearings, she realizes she’s in Ecube, the Black Furies’ Umbral homeland, essentially the resting place of Black Fury spirits. Three werewolves are with her, a lupus Theurge known as Amethyst Wing-Mender, a dark skinned Galliard in homid form named Carlotta Parts-the-Mists, and a giant man, Symon World-Reacher, Philodox. It seems that the Wyld chose Anxi to learn from these three representatives. Amethyst begins the lesson.

The Triptych!

quote:

The Divine is at once Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Where Gaia Herself is concerned, this three-fold entity explains the changing of seasons and the progression of the world. We lupus understand it just as we understand everything else: without thought. You have a long way to go, sister before you can know without thinking. If you ever conceive and carry a child, you will.

This is where this book gets juicy.


The big guy's the Matron.

You see, a lot of stuff in the Werewolf cosmology comes in threes, breeds, Virtues, and most importantly, the Triat. The basic structure of the Triat, Wyld, Weaver and Wyrm, is based on traditional triple goddess roles. There is a ton of mythological resonance here. The Scandinavian Norns, the Trimurti, the Morrigan, all of these partake in this symbolism. The triple goddess is popular in neopaganism, particularly in Wicca.

The Wyld can be understood as the Spinner or Maker. The Black Furies are based on the Greek mythos, so the Wyld is associated with Clothos of the Fates, Maiden spinner of infinite possibility, good or apocalyptic.

The Weaver is just that, or the Orderer. To the Black Furies, the Weaver is Lachesis. Once the Matron, it established limits on Clothos’ possibility. But, every rule must have exceptions, and Lachesis failed to understand that, going mad.

Finally, the Wyrm is the Cutter or Destroyer. Black Furies name it Atropos. Most tribes see the Wyrm as male, since it can’t create, only destroy. Black Fury narrator says that’s dumb. The Black Furies don’t understand why Atropos has gone insane. The narrator speculates that maybe Atropos has been replaced by something else.

There are plenty of triple figures in Greek mythology. The original Furies, or Erinyes, were Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. The Furies act as inspirational figures to the Black Furies, obviously, and they’re common names among the tribe, so if you’re struggling to come up with a name for your Black Fury character, well, look no further. It’s not clear whether the Furies were actually Black or not, but they exist as Wyld spirits, too infused with chaotic energy to manifest. The Inner Calyx knows a rite to summon the Furies and incarnate them in three Black Furies to completely wreak vengeance on someone. After that, they continue enforcing justice and nobody can tell them what to do, not even the Inner Calyx. This has the tremendous potential to backfire, so the rite hasn’t been performed in ages.

Pegasus is awesome, mythical and so unbound by material reality. It’s a Totem of Respect, not War, which is contrary to a lot of Black Fury positions and points to an inherent tension within the tribe. Pegasus demands that her totem followers protect women who can protect themselves, which can be difficult to figure out. The Get of Fenris can’t, and so Pegasus doesn’t allow any of them to follow it. Pegasus’ spiritual retinue includes the Gorgons, the original Black Furies, Panther, for some reason (it may have joined Pegasus after leaving Lion’s brood once it fell along with the White Howlers), female spirits of all kinds, and Greek mythological spirits, even including centaurs. Pegasus keeps their rapaciousness in line.


Even the art's better in this section!

Auspices come from lunar phases. Each lunar phase is a particular behavior on Luna’s part, so each auspice corresponds to some facet of Luna’s personality.

New Moons (Luna Cries): During the New Moon, Luna turns her face from the world and weeps. Werewolves born under the new moon wonder why Luna’s crying, so they try to fix the world until it no longer makes Luna sad. Ragabash sometimes cause pain to effect change, but it’s a necessary evil. Basically, Black Fury Ragabash are a little more politically oriented and structure affirming than the general New Moon. In order for a Ragabash to join the Inner Calyx, they must make Luna smile during the New Moon, in other words, change the phase of the moon on their own.

Crescent Moons (Luna Ponders): The Crescent Moon is Luna turning back towards the world, trying to answer life’s most persistent questions. Theurges do the same thing. Learning is good, no matter if it’s the answer to a big question or a small one. Black Fury Theurges, then, are more about inquiry than lore accumulation.

Half Moons (Luna Speaks): Luna emerges from the darkness to give pronouncements. She reveals what she was crying about and what she learned in her pondering. Likewise, Philodox are to reveal accumulated wisdom and truth. Philodox enforce the law, but to avoid Weaver stasis, they’re sure to make sure judgment is deserved, following the spirit of the law more than its letter. Remember, every rule has an exception. Black Fury Philodox are more flexible than the mainstream.

Gibbous Moons (Luna Laughs): Speaking the truth cheers Luna up, so she comes into the light a little bit more and laughs. Of course, it may just be because the alternative is to cry, and the Galliard understand this. Galliards translate the pronouncements of Luna and the Philodox and make it relatable to the common werewolf. They educate more than rock out.

Full Moons (Luna Acts): Fully emerged into the light, Luna is ready to fight, becoming Artemis the Hunter. The Ahroun are her retinue. The Ahroun lead, deciding when to put down contemplation and act. They make mistakes, and the Ragabash are around to take care of it. See? Everybody has a role, and werewolf society is a cycle of these roles.

Canonically, lunar eclipses only occur during full moons, so all eclipse-born Garou are Ahroun. However, they’re more inquisitive and sneakier, but also moodier and prone to Harano (werewolf depression).
Black Furies test judgment, vision, fury, and mystery during their Rites of Passage. Why four tests and not three? One’s not a test. Okay then.

Judgment presents a cub with a moral quandary, either acted out, spiritually reflected, or even real. The cub needs to decide what to do. For instance, she might be taken to an elementary school to witness some bullies messing with a loner. What should she do to punish them and to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Vision gives the cub a riddle or spirit-quest. It’s not too difficult, since the elders don’t want cubs to die. Fury is really a test of the cub’s control over her rage. She may be taunted, or presented with a dangerous situation.

The last “test”, mystery, isn’t a test, but rather the initiation rite, where the fury drinks Elusian wine and gets a mystic vision. Elusian wine is an ancient drink, used in festivals honoring Demeter’s annual farewell to Persephone. It’s really kykeon, made from wheat and purple die. Its recipe was a well-kept secret among the Greeks. Great philosophers like Plato, Socrates, Epicurus, and Homer were initiated into the Elusian mysteries, and they learned a lot. Historians speculate that ergot is a key ingredient to kykeon, since it’s a common purple dye. It’s also a childbirth aid, which of course is exciting to the Black Furies.

I am almost entirely certain that this chapter was written by Matt McFarland, since tonewise it’s a complete 180 from the previous chapter, and therefore awesome. It cements the Furies as a unique and even necessary entity in werewolf culture as the Western mystics. There’s tons of flavorful hooks here and more to come. We’re finally at the good part and nothing can go wrong, right? Right?

Next time: The evils of baby formula and the official Black Fury position on abortion. It’s the return of the Kileys, ladies and gentlemen!

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 26, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Kellsterik posted:

All the Werewolf related writeups so far are making me really sympathetic to Pentex's case.

You won't feel that way when you read more of Tribebook: Black Furies! You must definitely will feel that way.

It’s Symon the Metis’ turn to speak, as the Furies teleport to a clearing. Symon begins discussing the discomfort Anxi may feel when addressing a male metis member of the Black Furies. After all, the traditional familiar term among the Furies is “Sister”, but Symon isn’t a woman. People do address him as “Sister”, though, but he allows Anxi to call him Symon.

The Black Furies are weird about metis. Even Black Furies have to go through all the effects of pregnancy, and it can be unpleasant, even dangerous. Pregnancy alters the entire body dramatically, which is particularly bad for warriors. They can’t shapeshift when the baby reaches a certain stage of development, as it would kill the child, just in case you were wondering. Black Furies tend to eschew hospitals and modern childbirth in favor of natural locales and methods, even in the Wyld. Wolves have it easier. Metis’ deformities can make childbirth disastrous, nearly always killing the mother in childbirth, hence the discomfort.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a sidebar! I have to quote it in full because wow.

quote:

Carlotta speaks of poison:

Everyone agrees that breast milk is best for babies: doctors, researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and parenting gurus. But nobody makes money from breastfeeding. Sure somebody can make a little cash selling how-to books, bras with funny hooks and latches, or other paraphernalia, but the real money comes from selling something people use up and have to come back to buy more.

So how do formula companies get people to buy an obviously inferior product? They fill baby magazines with images of happy white families gathered around beautiful bottle-sucking babies, while the images of breastfeeding feature minority women without wedding rings. They give “seminar” trips in exotic locales in exotic locales to hospital administrators and ply the nurses with free pens and coffee mugs in return for their complicity in making sure every new mother leaves the hospital with a bag full of formula. They buy privileged patient information from doctor’s offices to carefully time doorstep deliveries of free formula to coincide with an infant’s growth spurts, when a mother may panic that she’s not providing her baby with enough milk. They compile free “how-to” tip booklets for breastfeeding that make it sound overwhelmingly difficult. They sponsor episodes of TV dramas in which young mothers kill their babies trying to feed them naturally, with special attention the unattractively cast breastfeeding zealot. They set the terms of the national dialogue on the issue stating that breastfeeding makes babies smarter and less likely to fall ill, rather than acknowledge that their product makes babies dumber and sicker.

If that weren’t enough, they ship their poisonous product to the third world, marketing it with images of prosperous American families. Poor families, wanting the American best for their families, spend a huge percentage of their monthly income on powdered formula and mix it with local unsafe water, and their babies sicken and die. They send cases and cases of artificial milk for disaster relief, knowing full well that it will not only go to the orphaned, but to young mothers who will be forced to buy it once both their milk and the disaster supplies have dried up.

And people buy it. They buy in and put it in their babies’ mouths in spite of the fact that it tastes terrible, is expensive, and isn’t subject to scientific testing or oversight.

Sound familiar? It should. It only gets worse when the Wyrm actually takes a hand.

So Tribebook: Black Furies weighs in on the breastfeeding vs. formula debate and completely embarrasses itself. I don’t want to derail this review, so I’ll just say that this rant just recycles really trite talking points that are easily countered. There are good arguments against formula, but they’re not here.

In an earlier update, I promised a tirade about how Werewolf best handles politics. Now’s as good a time as any, so here goes. The lead developers for Werewolf: the Apocalypse call it a “metal album cover come to life.” The world of Werewolf, then, is the crazy pseudo-spiritual metal realm of those covers. It’s emphatically not our own world. Every World of Darkness game brings that to the front, hence the title. When issues in our own world are present in the world of Werewolf, they’re writ spiritually large so that werewolves can have epic kung fu battles with them.

You might argue that Carlotta’s rant here is about the formula companies in the World of Darkness, not our own. But her use of common talking points in our own debates and that last line especially really make me doubt that. Having a werewolf lecture me on feeding my child formula when jobs and daily life make breastfeeding difficult comes off as :smug: and baseless. Having werewolves deal with real life issues in real life contexts doesn’t work, or is at least really difficult to sell well.

Matt McFarland handles the abortion debate a little bit better, but not much. His Black Furies are divided on the issue. On the one hand, abortion rights are an emblematic women’s right too. On the other, life is sacred to the Furies, and killing babies with technology is not great. In the end, McFarland’s approach is to just not tackle the issue at all, which is fine, but it raises the question of why it’s brought up in the first place. I think that precedent in Werewolf literature created an expectation of political talk in Werewolf books, forcing McFarland’s hand. The Kileys might have pushed him on it too.

That out of the way, let’s talk about the breeds!

Homids are the most politically engaged of the breeds, which makes sense. There’s also an aside on sexuality here. There are a lot of lesbians in the Black Furies, and nobody really cares. Sexuality is a complex issue. Furies are wary of scientific explanations for homosexuality. They’re more focused on the lovin’.

Lupus are the extreme minority in the tribe, and their wolf populations are threatened, like all the other tribes. They used to be the leaders of the Furies as the breed most connected to the Wyld, but as the homid majority has grown, they’ve lost influence.

Metis are unique in the Black Furies, since they can be male. In fact, male metis are more valued than females, and more are allowed to stay in the tribe. Symon theorizes that they’re kept because male metis are less likely to be accepted by other tribes. He also provides a much less charitable theory that female metis are less female because they’re barren. :stare:

The Black Fury kinfolk section mostly deals with how the Furies treat their male kin. They still respect them, but they treat them very carefully, and vice versa. They value marriage, but not as a contract.

Age roles are important to the Black Furies, as it’s a vital concept to the triple goddess.

quote:

Ah. You’re familiar with the concept; yes it’s like Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, or if you prefer, Urd, Skuld and Verdanda. I’m glad they still teach the classics in public schools – eh? A comic book? Well, I’ll be.

Maidens are women pre-motherhood. This doesn’t mean virginal, mind you!

Mothers are, well, women who have had children (whether a miscarriage still counts is debatable). The Black Furies want every member of their tribe to proceed into this group, but more and more young Furies want to avoid it.

Crones are those too old or otherwise unable to bear children. Yes, this does mean that all female metis are Crones. You can move straight from Maiden to Crone through injury or birth control.

Next time: Of calyxes and camps, which means more werewolf nuns!


Thank you so much for picking this back up! It's what inspired me to start participating in the Something Awful forums. I'm glad to see that the horrible charts are consistent, even in the art department.

edit:

Kurieg posted:

And there's a Pentex book too that reduces them to puppy kicking evulz.

That was actually written by my favorite member of the White Wolf old guard Richard Dansky. I like it, since it's basically a really good dark re-imagining of Hoggish Greedly and Looten Plunder. It also fleshes out Black Dog, which is great.

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Apr 28, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 2, Part 3

The Outer Calyx is comprised of 13 Furies. A pool of worthy candidates is selected every three years and the main thirteen are chosen via lottery to respect the Wyld. Dead members are replaced by their protégés or their seats are left open until the next “election”. In order to qualify for the Calyx, you must complete a variety of games at the grand moot, and of course there’s politicking along with that.

As one might imagine, elections via lottery are vulnerable to corruption and there is almost certainly some dirty dealings involved with the Calyx. Iona Kinslayer is chosen for the Outer Calyx year after year in defiance of probability and metis are very rarely called upon. Then again, this is a universe where the laws of probability are controlled by magical entities beyond mortal comprehension, so who knows?

The Outer Calyx is the body that decides tribe policy, what it should focus on and finding worthy members. Each member is responsible for a particular region of the world, and they serve a sept position in their region. Getting the attention of the Outer Calyx is a good way to get Renown, since they’re also responsible for dealing with spirits on a tribe-wide basis. Of course, if you get the negative attention of the Outer Calyx, that won’t work out well for you.

The Inner Calyx is different. Once, Luna granted five Black Furies, one of each auspice, a powerful fetish. The Ragabash got the Cloak of Luna, the Theurge her Salve, the Philodox her Bridle, the Galliard her Loom, and the Ahroun received her Bow. These five Furies were the original Inner Calyx. Nobody knows who the Inner Calyx are, but they have veto power over the Outer Calyx and protect the most powerful fetishes. They’re made up of five Furies with a representative from each auspice. To enter the Inner Calyx, there’s a challenging test. The Ragabash has to make Luna smile, i.e. make the moon change phase out of schedule, and the other tasks are equally impressive. Luna herself chooses the Inner Calyx, and she’s incomprehensible. Werewolves as low as Rank 2 can be chosen.

The Calyxes are a subject of a lot of controversy in the Black Furies, mostly between young and old Furies. The schism between American and European Furies was over their unquestioned authority. Worse than their centralization is their anonymity. The Inner Calyx is completely anonymous and therefore unaccountable. They might not even exist. The Outer Calyx is supposed to be randomly chosen, but newbie werewolves are less likely to be chosen, which is completely undemocratic. The lottery also removes accountability.

The Fury camps are known as kuklos. They don’t see eye to eye, but they don’t fight!

The Amazons of Diana aren’t a self-identified group. Really, it’s a catch-all term for a particularly aggressive Fury. Their goal is to prove themselves the equal of the Get of Fenris or the Shadow Lords on the battlefield. Rather than dedicate themselves to the vengeance that the rest of the tribe pursues, they focus on hunting Wyrm monsters, opposing the conservative members of the tribe. They’re the most vocal and visible Furies to other werewolves. Angela Cries-for-Blood is the most notable Amazon, and she’s responsible for establishing political alliances with other tribes. She’s a forward-looking voice in the Black Furies.

Carlotta pipes up again, recommending that Anxi not join the Amazons, because they’re maniacs, maniacs I say! :byodood: The Amazons claim to protect women and world and prevent violence, but really they’re all crazy kill monsters. Another valuable contribution from Carlotta, then.


Pictured: a cockroach dragon wolf with PVC pipe legs getting eaten by three wolves and axed while a legionnaire looks on. Werewolf!

Bacchanates, on the other hand, are the most dedicated kuklo to the Furies’ vengeance. They enforce Gaia’s law, destroying her enemies. They dismiss the Amazons as third wave feminists only focusing on appearing the equal to men. Rather than fight the more visible forms of the Wyrm’s corruption, the Bacchanates hunt down rapists, domestic abusers, polluters, and those who clone humans(?). They totally wreck their targets, sometimes getting mistaken for natural disasters. edit: Seriously, they're all about the RAGE. First edition Bacchanates were never out of RAGE mode.

The Freebooters’ ranks are rapidly decreasing. They find places where the Wyld is strong to convert into caerns. Because there are so few Wyld places left, they have trouble recruiting new members. As a result, the Freebooters are further divided into two loose camps. One, led by the Ragabash-Mother Erin Walks-through-Darkness, believes that they need to find a new home for Gaia somewhere in the Umbra (basically outer space). They’re the extreme minority, though, and the rest of the Freebooters are committed to finding either very subtle Wyld hotspots or reopening closed caerns. They also steal tainted fetishes for purification.

The Moon Daughters, on the other hand, are gaining new members rapidly. They’re neopagans who want to revolutionize Garou magic. They modernize old occult knowledge, similar to the Glass Walkers. They’re committed to change.

That short description may sound boring, but a sidebar goes into more detail. They have a lot of connections to the human occult underworld, meaning they can find lone werewolves more easily and learn of strange supernatural phenomena they can deal with. They also try to shape those Wiccan communities to form a religion that can evolve to survive.

I’ve already talked a lot about the Order of Our Merciful Mother, but here’s the complete entry. It’s the result of Black Furies infiltrating the Catholic Church. The Order isn’t centralized, as each pack tends to its own community. When need is dire, though, they convene in northern Italy. The last time they did this was during World War II.
The goal of the Order is to use the tools of patriarchal culture to subvert it and create more favorable conditions for women. Those members of the Order who join other convents tend to actually espouse their virtues and are the most politically engaged sisters.

It turns out that Carlotta is a member of the Order (nooooo). She worked in the Vatican and faced a lot of the scorn that other Furies have for the Order. From their perspective, the Catholic Church and convents in particular support oppression. Carlotta argues that those women who join convents choose to do so, and the Furies shouldn’t judge their reasons for doing so (not a strong argument). The Order isn’t even exclusively Catholic; there’s at least one Muslim member of the Order.

As a personal aside, there is precedent for convents subverting the will of the larger Catholic Church. You might remember the National Coalition of American Nuns and the LCWR publicly dissenting with the American Council of Bishops over healthcare and several other policies. Back during the sexual revolution of the sixties, a young sociologist entered a convent to educate the nuns there. Six months later, the convent had descended into lesbian orgies and was cast out of the Church. The convents have always been more liberal than the mainstream Church, and its inclusion here is pretty cool. Werewolf nuns are also a great thing that makes this Earth a richer place to live in.

The Sisterhood is the connections camp of the Black Furies. They maintain information networks and can procure things. They were founded during the Inquisition when they maintained an underground railroad to rescue accused witches. They accumulated a lot of information doing so, and they continue that propensity to this day. They don’t like the Order, believing that they’ve been tainted by the Patriarch spirit. Carlotta attests that she’s worked well with Sisterhood members before, though. edit: According to the first edition book, the Sisterhood concentrates properties and manpower. A lot of this was mystical artifacts. I assume this aspect was downplayed to avoid stepping on the Freebooter's toes, but mechanically they stick with this interpretation.

The Temple of Artemis is the conservative ideological leader of the Black Furies. They have very strict membership conditions (meaning your character can’t start as a member). They believe that the Black Furies should stop working with the other tribes altogether since the Furies alone uphold Gaia’s laws. They see the fight against the Wyrm as quixotic and choose to focus on their original roles as avengers and enforcers. They hold an undue influence over the Outer Calyx, although they often judge werewolves without the sanction of the Calyxes or even local septs. They don’t like the Moon Daughters as they’re namby pamby liberals.

Next time: The Quran, casual racism, and more sex talk.

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 03:55 on May 17, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tasoth posted:

Did any authors of the oWerewolf books ever try to introduce the concept that the Wyld can flourish in a city? Or did they really stick to the 'PROGESS = WEAVER/STASIS' component to the mythos?

That's pretty much the Glass Walker's whole schtick. They open up caerns in cities and generally try to negotiate a peace between the Weaver and the Wyld. The Bone Gnawers are a little bit better at finding pure Wyld spots in cities. One of the most important septs in the metaplot is a Bone Gnawer caern based in Central Park, and they even deal with the fact that every facet of the park was carefully calculated and designed.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 2 Part 4

Let’s finish up Chapter 2 already and go go go go go!

Symon tells Anxi not to underestimate the importance of the Litany, since it’s one of the few things the Garou Nation could agree on. I’m only going to tackle the notable ones, since a lot of these don’t add anything to the corebook description.

Garou Shall Not Mate with Garou: Symon, as a metis, doesn’t really like this tenet. After all, would you feel comfortable telling a metis that his existence is a bane on werewolf kind? Well, obviously some werewolves do feel comfortable with that, but nevertheless it’s complicated. Like all the tribes, the Black Furies claim that they treat their metis better than their peers.

Carlotta says that “mate” doesn’t necessarily mean “have sex”. You know what that means! Lesbians. Preventative measures for pregnancy tend to go screwy for werewolves, so gay sex is the only way to get your werewolf jollies. Of course, not everyone’s gay, so straight people have to deal with that.


Toto likes to watch.

Personal aside: I get what the designers were trying to do when they put such an emphasis on werewolf sex. It’s all very Freudian, with the Eros and Thanatos urges duking it out. In a constant crisis war situation, those urges are going to be stronger than ever, and in part werewolf is about confronting your own RAGE. That conflict invites the parallel with Eros. The problem is that most gamers are going to sign on for RAGE and less for freaky werewolf sex. At the table you can downplay the emphasis on werewolf lovin’ or recast it as courtly forbidden love a la Tristan and Isolde, but why put so much wordcount into something that’s going to appeal to so few people?

Combat the Wyrm Wherever it Dwells and Wherever it Breeds: Apparently the Litany verbatim states that the Wyrm is the source of all evil, but Symon doesn’t buy it (and if I recall correctly none of the other tribes believe that either). The Wyrm does profit off evil and make it worse, so fighting it is still important in the battle of good vs. evil. After all, the Black Furies spend a lot of time enforcing justice, and the Wyrm exacerbates those problems.

Amethyst is less enthusiastic. Fighting the Wyrm as the werewolves do now only targets the symptom. The disease itself is unbeatable.

Respect the Territory of Another: Pretty standard. No mention of Greek hospitality codes, though, which is lame.

Accept an Honorable Surrender: Don’t fight other werewolves. Even if you have to deal with a formal challenge, you should make sure it’s a fight to first blood, or even change it to a contest of wits, like a chess match! If you lose a fight with another good werewolf, call it quits before you die, because a dead Garou is a useless Garou. Carlotta warns that this can be difficult, because of the RAGE.

Submission to Those of Higher Station: Higher station usually means a man, so Black Furies don’t like this tenet. At least, that’s how other tribes see it, which creates tension in inter-tribe relationships. Furies also don’t like submission. Younger Furies will be particularly rebellious. Carlotta agrees with the young Furies, recommending that they stick up for lady werewolves that are browbeaten by a male alpha.

The First Share of the Kill for the Greatest in Station: This leads to pissing contests between wannabe alphas. Black Furies are better, though, so they take a more egalitarian approach, sometimes letting their underlings pick a valuable fetish from the spoils.
Amethyst tells a story about a Glass Walker who found a fetish in a vampire’s haven. Against the Black Fury’s protest, he took it for his own, since it had Glass Walker markings on it. Later, he was put down for eating humans. Apparently, the Glass Walkers gave the vampire the fetish to make him less hungry. I guess it had the opposite effect on werewolves? :iiam:

Ye Shall Not Eat the Flesh of Humans: Humans are addictive, apparently.

Do Not Suffer Thy People to Tend Thy Illness: Although the Furies are potent healers, sometimes they just have to let some werewolves go. It’s sad, but that’s life.

The Leader May be Challenged During Peacetime: This is the most controversial of the werewolf laws, since werewolves are constantly at war. The Black Furies have it even worse, since the Inner Calyx is completely anonymous. You can’t challenge a leader if you don’t know where to find her.

Carlotta wants to add her own tenets to the Litany! These are rules that the Furies consider equally important to the Litany. First, Suffer No Abuse to Women. Second, Remember your Parents. This is to prevent Furies from hating all men, since they have important fathers to remember. Train the Weak; Protect the Helpless: nothing’s going to advance if the weak stay weak, so it’s the Furies’ job to make them stronger. Keep the Wyld Places Pure means to focus on protecting Wyld hotspots, and also to protect your virginity for as long as possible.

The narration shifts to Carlotta as the Face of the Mother (the atlas section) begins.

Europe: there are a lot of different civilizations here! Most of the European Black Furies are in Greece, but they’re allowed to populate wherever they have permission. The Get of Fenris don’t like them, though, so there are very few German or Scandinavian Furies.

The Calyxes are based in Greece. The Inner Calyx is rumored to have a super-secret island in the Aegean with their own caern. Any Black Fury can visit a Greek sept for certain moots. It’s a festival of revelry and occasionally righteous murder, fun for the whole family.

In the early 2000s, when this book was written, the Balkans were in a crisis. The Black Furies work with the Shadow Lords to help out. The Furies fear that some Wyrm creature is pulling the strings, but they recognize it’s probably just humans being humans.

Asia belongs to the Stargazers. There’s lots of rumors of crimes against women, but no word of organized Black Fury activity. There are Black Furies around, though.

The Middle East! Carlotta knows about the reputation that the Middle East has (before 9/11), but she wants to make sure Anxi knows that the Quran is more complex than a lot of people give it credit for.

quote:

The Quran, for example, states that women must wear veils so that they will not be molested and may maintain their dignity. The idea is for men to talk with them rather than ogle them. Can’t say I disagree with the spirit, but the problem is that it has the effect of making women the same, and I can’t help feeling that might make us interchangeable for some men. Also, it isn’t just the veil that causes us problems. Female circumcision, while not an official Islamic practice, does happen. There are certain circumstances where it is legal for a father to murder his daughter.

This is…actually pretty culturally sensitive, but a little misplaced. No mention of stoning rape victims? Women are seriously oppressed in certain Middle Eastern countries, and while bringing it up might make the book a little too “real” for some, presenting this front doesn’t really work either.

Carlotta warns that there are a lot of vampires in the Middle East, so be on the lookout. Remember, pre Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.

Africa’s pretty bad. All the massacres strengthen Banes, which makes things even worse. There’s some talk about the Ahadi, which is a contender for the coolest thing about Werewolf: the Apocalypse, but the Black Furies can’t breed with African wolves. Why they can’t breed with African humans is anyone’s guess. Only the Red Talons, Silent Striders, and Bone Gnawers have kinfolk there.

THERE’S NO BLACK FURY SECT IN SOUTH AMERICA. The Amazon War rages on, and a Get of Fenris member is in charge. The Black Furies are frustrated, but they just barely manage to admit that Gogol Fangs-First is doing a good job. Electra Shildmaiden is the key Black Fury player, collecting stories of the war and of native peoples.

America is the land of the free! :911: Carlotta goes on about how much women suffer in the United States, mostly about rape culture in a roundabout way. Women feel uncomfortable in their bodies due to ads and sex is repressed. It’s a bad deal all around. If only they lived in the Middle East!

There are very few Black Furies in Australia because of the Bunyip ghosts. The Black Furies who do live in Australia are based in the Kangaroo Island Protectorate. They’re still guilty for their part in the Bunyip genocide.


Why is this giant naked lady smiling? I'm concerned.

The Wyld Umbral realms are the most important to the Black Furies. Pangaea’s a nice place to kick back and relax. They send cubs to train and learn in the Heart of the Wyld. The Inner Calyx may meet in the Black Fury homerealm. The Atrocity realm is the most important non-Wyld Umbral locale, since it allows Furies to see all the crimes against women taking place in the world. It’s important to remember, though, that what you see in the Atrocity realm has already occurred. You can’t stop something going on in the Atrocity realm. Many Black Furies go crazy trying to prevent all those tragedies.

Carlotta prepares an interview with two Furies to discuss the other tribe and breed stereotypes. Cara is a young liberal and Konstantina is an conservative Crone.

Bone Gnawers: Cara doesn’t trust them. They’re gross, creepy, and they deal with Weaver spirits. Konstantina doesn’t like them either, but she does appreciate their connections. Using their networks doesn’t come cheap, though.

Children of Gaia: They adopt male Furies, which makes them okay in Cara’s book. Konstatina knows that even though they’re the peace tribe, they can still fight!

Fianna: They’re alcoholics and they always hit on the ladies. Cara begrudgingly accepts them, while Konstantina values their fighting spirit. Amethyst interjects to let us know that drinking is a skill too, and a valuable one at that. It can get info without the use of any magic.

Get of Fenris: Cara knows this one Fury who left the Get. She didn’t get any respect, and the ladies won’t stand up for themselves. Konstantina believes they fought for the Nazis. Amethyst agrees, the Get of Fenris is worthless.

Glass Walkers: Cara believes the Glass Walkers are okay. They’ve got connections, but they might be cyborgs and cyborgs are creepy. Konstantina believes that they may be corrupted by the Weaver!

Red Talons: Cara just kind of avoids these guys. Konstantina fears that they may join the Wyrm out of RAGE.

Shadow Lords: They’re untrustworthy, says Cara. Konstantina has fought with the Shadow Lords in the Balkans and she trusts them. The Silver Fang propaganda machine may be wrong about the Lords. Symon, though, believes that the Shadow Lords have a big scheme going, and it might involve the Furies!

Silent Striders: They’re quiet (:haw: ) but they have good info. Pay whatever they ask. They’re good people.

Silver Fangs: They’re too old! Konstantina respects them. Carlotta suspects they’re going crazy (they are).

Uktena:

quote:

Cara: The Uktena look like the end result of a Klansman’s nightmare: they’re a delightful medium-brown, with the features of all six continents wrapped up in each face

:thumbsup: Konstantina doesn’t trust them for dealing with Wyrm spirits. Symon doesn’t like them for killing the Bunyip and then stealing their caerns. They also kicked out a lot of Fera from their caerns.

Wendigo: They’re assholes! And racists!

Stargazers: Whatever.

It turns out that the other Fera aren’t extinct! Carlotta alone’s giving us her opinion on the breeds.

Ajaba: Carlotta heard from a Fury who heard from a werecheetah that there were werehyenas who named themselves “Choosers of the Dead”. Carlotta didn’t believe the hype, but there was this one time that her library was broken into, but the only book missing was about a giant hyena demon! Eh, probably just a coincidence. :what:

Ananasi: Maybe they have to do with the mythical Arachne! They’re bitter about something…

Bastet: Some Furies take Panther as their totem, but the Furies don’t have good relations with the werecats. They don’t know what their role is, but they do take advantage of their secrets.

Corax: The Furies like them since their warriors are female.

Gurahl: Extinct, but they were pretty cool.

Mokole: Dragons have it rough, just like witches, so the Black Furies look out for these guys.

Nagah: Extinct, but it’s weird how few records there are of them…

Nuwisha:

quote:

I once saw a man approach a pack of Black Furies and hail them with “Hey, girls!” Of course, they surrounded him menacingly; he didn’t flinch. They shoved him a bit; he didn’t lose his smile. Finally, one of them asked him what he meant by addressing them so disrespectfully. He just grinned wider and asked if they really were girls. And none of them knew how to answer him. After all, if they said “no”, they would be denying their sex. If they said “yes”, they’d look rather foolish. I don’t remember any of them answering, but the Nuwisha just walked on, leaving them confused and frustrated.

:iceburn: Symon says they’re loving trolls.

Ratkin: They’re creepy. Don’t trust them.

Rokea: Weresharks?!?

:drac: Vampires are city folk and sponsor efforts to pave over paradise to increase their feeding grounds. They can enslave werewolves. Basically they’re the antithesis of the Black Furies and they must be destroyed.

:smugwizard: They can be okay, but they sometimes abuse spirits. Sometimes, though, they misinterpret werewolves as demons and try to suppress them.

:ghost: Help lady ghosts, but don’t feel too bad when you see the ghost of a man you killed.

:orks101: (Best I could do, sorry) The good news: satyrs are real! The bad news: they’re rapists.

And just like a cheesy movie, the three spirit wolves bid Anxi adieu and she wakes up.

Next time: Mechanics! (finally)

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012




I never knew I needed a space detective game, but it turns out I do. Great review.

General Ironicus posted:

Flattery (Interpersonal): A knack for sweet talk.

Flirting (Interpersonal): A knack for sweetie talk.

:haw:

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 3, Part 1

All the Tribebook mechanics chapters are organized identically: first a guide to using backgrounds, then new gifts, and closing out with nifty rites and fetishes.

First, Background suggestions!

Allies: A lot of Furies are from other tribes, so they probably have friends from the tribe they left behind. Because they’re politically involved, they also have connections in left wing NGOs. Despite their mysticism, they don’t tend to have supernatural allies, not even the Wyld changelings.

Ancestors: Because the Furies are tied closer to human political history than most tribes, determining what era the ancestors you’re contacting are from is a good idea. Pretty good advice!

Contacts: The temptation here is to just have contacts with feminist organizations, but Black Furies are just people, except they’re also werewolves. Pretty much anyone could qualify as a contact to a Fury.

Fetish: While most werewolves use klaives, Furies favor fetish labrys, a double headed axe that the Gorgon Isthmene wielded. The Black Furies’ powerful fetishes are all from ancient Greece, and they should maintain that imagery. Modern fetishes tend to be useful tools. Surveillance tools are a good idea to better track down transgressors.

Kinfolk: Mostly humans, tend to worship Gaia. Basically dirty hippies.

Mentor: Predominantly crones. A retired crone is going to be more accessible, but less helpful in battle, while a working crone is going to be busy all the time. If a Fury’s mentor is from another tribe, it’s probably female. To have a male mentor would draw a lot of ire from other Furies (plot hook!).

Pure Breed: Not as socially helpful within the tribe. Higher Breeding will make you look more Greek and have your wolf form much more pretty. Men will also be nervous around you.

Resources: This varies from person to person!

Rites: Rites are pretty common among the Furies. Even starting characters are encouraged to know rites.

Totem: Furies don’t like male-ish totems like Bull or Grandfather Thunder. They also don’t like city spirits like Cockroach. Other than that, though, they’re fine with anybody.

Amazons of Diana: No real suggestions. They do tend to live near caerns if they’re sedentary, but many are nomads looking for Wyrm monsters to kill.

Bacchanates: As one of the more mystical camps, they have more mystical backgrounds, i.e. Fetish and Rites. Devoted as they are to traditional Black Fury ways, their Totems are almost always Pegasus or one of the Gorgons.

Freebooters: As nomads, they don’t tend to have Allies or Kinfolk, since these represent close, developed bonds. They do have Fetishes that they discover on their journeys or caern Rites.

Moon Daughters: On the other hand, Moon Daughters are all about the connections. They tend to have lots of dots in Allies and Kinfolk. They’re pretty mystical too, so they take Rites and Fetishes (although rarely fetish weapons). They’re also educators, so Mentor’s a good choice too.

Order of Our Merciful Mother: A lot of them take vows of poverty, so no Resources or Fetishes. They do have lots Allies and Contacts, built from spending time in communities.

Sisterhood: As information brokers, they have lots of Contacts, Allies, and Kinfolk they can call upon. Selling their info gets them a lot of Resources too.

Temple of Artemis: Don’t start as a member of this camp, you special snowflaker! Anyway, they don’t have Mentors because they already know everything they need to. As elders, they have higher Pure Breed and Rites. They also get access to nice Fetishes.
Next is the Gifts section. Now, before we look at the gifts in this book, let’s see the Fury Gifts in the corebook to see how they compare. They only have one unique gift at Level One.

Breath of the Wyld: The Fury creates a feeling of life, vitality, and peace in the target, refreshing them. The target gets a +1 bonus on all Mental rolls, but the difficult of Rage rolls is increased by 1. Taught by a servant of Pegasus.
The other two Gifts increase senses or the ability to find the Wyrm. These are good characterization, painting the Furies as mystical (Breath) or as hunters of the Wyrm or other transgressors.

The only new Level One Gift that all Black Furies can take from the tribebook is Watchful Eyes. The Furies need to find transgressors even if they aren’t of the Wyrm! Spending a Gnosis point and succeeding on a Perception + Investigation roll reveals where a transgressor might be, with a decent margin of error. Taught by an owl spirit. Another perception gift.

Amazons of Diana can take True Shot at Rank One. Artemis was good at archery and so are her followers. Spend a Rage and get +3 on your next bow attack. Artemis demands that her followers be virginal, though, so mothers and crones get +2. Flavorful!

Members of the Order can get Mother’s Touch, which is a Theurge gift. Sisterhood members, meanwhile, get Spirit Smuggler, taught by a raccoon spirit, which allows them to send a small item into the Umbra temporarily. This is good, but the Sisterhood is so poorly defined that I don’t understand why they get this Gift. edit: It's more reminiscent of the first tribebook. It would make sense that werewolf nuns can heal you, I suppose.

The core Level Two Fury Gifts are Curse of Aeolus (summons a fog, difficulty dependent on environment) and another sense boosting Gift, again establishing mysticism and hunting.

Any Black Fury can take Kali’s Tongue at Rank 2, a touch attack that stops healing or regeneration for a certain amount of turns, taught by a cobra spirit. They can also learn Stoking the Soul’s Fire from a wolverine spirit, which can refill your RAGE. These establish an angrier tone for the Furies.

An Amazon of Diana can take Flurry of Shots which grants a free bow attack. Kind of OP, although I’ve never seen in in play, but it’s taught by a Lune, so it could be really difficult to learn. Bacchanates can learn a Gift of similar strength in Rend, which takes away three dice from an opponent’s soak pool, even if it’s a solid object.

Freebooters can learn Messenger’s Fortitude, a Silent Strider Gift, and Omen of Power, which allows the Freebooter to find a caern or abandoned fetish within 20 miles, making it the signature Freebooter Gift. Moon Daughters, out of the generosity of their heart, can lend a Gift to another werewolf through the use of Spirit Loan, taught by a hen spirit.

Here’s a fun one: members of the Order can learn Truest Sacrament from a unicorn spirit. This Gift convinces faithful parishoners that Gaian ritual is natural. Basically, it brainwashes people into participating in the Gaian spirit cult. It’s Jack Chick’s worst nightmare!

The corebook Black Furies get more anger Gifts at Rank Three. Coup de Grace, a misnomer, doubles the damage an attack does. Visceral Agony doesn’t do any extra damage, but it doubles wound penalties for a certain amount of turns. The tribebook brings Barring the Will, which refills the willpower pool.

The tribebook also has Flames of Hestia at Level Three, which can purify food, people or spirits, and by “purify” I mean do 1 unsoakable aggravated damage per success. The Sisterhood gets the gift Winged Delivery, which summons a spirit owl to express deliver something at 100 miles per hour. I really think the Sisterhood should have been smugglers rather than generic information brokers, because their Gifts are actually interesting and tailored to that end.

The first core Gifts I don’t like for the Furies, Body Wrack just causes pain, stunning the opponent for several turn, and Wasp Talons allows the Black Fury to shoot her claws out of her arm. Cool, but also really loving weird. Body Wrack just seems awkward to use in a standard combat.

Only Crones get to use the Level Four Bolster the True Name, which refills your Gnosis pool. Such eldritch power must be kept out of the hands of the cubs! More usefully, Amazons of Diana can take Blizzard of Arrows which allows you to shoot every opponent you can see in one turn at no penalty. :black101:


What does it take to impress that werewolf?

The capstone core Gifts are Thousand Forms, which is freeform shapeshifting (most Furies shapeshift into pegasi) and Wyld Warp, which summon a whole bunch of Wyld spirits who then do whatever the Storyteller wants. Both of these are really evocative for the Black Furies’ worship of the Wyld, but I can’t see anybody taking Wyld Warp over Thousand Forms.

The capstone charms in the tribebook are restricted to camps, annoyingly. The Bacchanates get Storm of Mother’s Wrath, which summons a gently caress-off hailstorm that penalizes all physical dicepools by 3, except for you pack. Humans flip their poo poo when they see this storm and try to get out of there.

The Temple of Artemis gift Walk with Hades has some…interesting flavor text.

quote:

When Persephone entered the lands of the dead with Hades, her lover, her mother, Demeter, the harvest goddess, went in after her. As an aspect of Gaia, Demeter understood her daughter’s desire for Hades, but refused to let a powerful spirit remain in the deadlands for long. Eventually, Persephone acquiesced to return to the living realm, under the agreement that she could periodically return to Hades’ side, and could return to the Underworld, eventually.
Demeter agreed to this arrangement verbally, but eventually performed a secrete ritual to block her daughter from returning to the land of the dead.

I’m not sure whether the writers knew the story or they’re trying to be clever, but this is lame. The gift itself, taught by a follower of Persephone, who created her own paths into the Underworld, allows the user to enter the Underworld and talk to ghosts. I have no idea why they didn’t just use Orpheus for this.

Next time: No jokes about Fetishes please; that just really wouldn't be Rite. :downsrim: Also Merits and Flaws.

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 05:34 on May 13, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



:frogsiren: Squick ahoy! :frogsiren:

Tribebook: Black Furies

The Black Fury Rites are all secret, so if your non-Fury character starts with one, you’re a special snowflake. Of course, a lot of these rites are particularly well suited to lady characters. I’m really not sure the other tribes would want some of these Rites.

The Rite of Motherhood initiates a Maiden into, well, Motherhood. The new mother needs to break out of her chains to get to her child. Hopefully that child is still alive, or this could be a really gross initiation.

The Rite of Acceptance allows a werewolf from another tribe join the Black Furies. Doing rite stuff for a few hours summons Pegasus (or at least an avatar). Impressing Pegasus with your Etiquette or something allows you to join the tribe! If you don’t, you have to do a quest. If you botch the roll, you can’t join the Furies.

Soothe the Scars is magical domestic abuse therapy. It calms down the victim and allows her to move past and heal with incense and New Age or “children’s music”. I’m sure Raffi does wonders for helping people through domestic abuse. It prevents Wyrm spirits from possessing victims and helps them through the healing process. It’s a Level Two rite, which seems high.


Let the healing begin.

The Fertility Rite! Okay, this one is pretty bad. It’s meant to fix the wombs of those who can’t conceive children anymore or increase the chance of conception. To do this, the lady has to strip, lie down, and be anointed with the menses of a fertile woman. It can be used on men too, but I have no idea why a Fury would use it on a man.

Meandering Path is a Freebooter rite that allows them to find a suitable place for a caern in the wilderness. It’s a pretty tricky series of rolls that doesn’t necessarily give you a specific caern spot, but that makes sense. Finding caerns is supposed to be difficult. The Order of Our Merciful Mother is developing a similar rite for cities.

Bearing the Caern is like the rite Building the Caern, but it uses the birth of a newborn. The child becomes a superbaby, immune to the Delirium and spiritually connected to the new caern. The baby’s healthier, and is often raised in the caern. If the birth goes well, it’s a good omen, but if it’s messy, it’s bad. This is actually really cool for the setting and there could be plenty of stories prepared about its use, but I have no idea why a group of player characters would take this rite over the more general purpose Building the Caern, as they’re both Level Five rites.

Wasn’t that scene in Game of Thrones with Melisandre and the shadow baby cool? With Birth the Fire Warrior, your Black Fury can do the same thing, only instead of being a shadow, it’s a Fire Warrior. Inspired by the Aztec myth of Coatlicue giving birth to Huitzlipochtli, the Aztec god of war, to protect her from her rebellious children, this rite allows a Fury to go into labor for ten minutes, then have her loins explode with fire, producing a warrior to kill all your enemies. Cool!

Python’s Trail is a little more low-key. Derived from the practices of the Oracle of Delphi, the Fury gets high and receives a vision of the past, present, and future. She can analyze a loved one’s timeline, her own history, or a more general prophecy. To get anything useful from these visions demands a lot of successes.

Avenge the Innocent is the rare rite of punishment that is used predominantly on humans, rather than Garou. With some tangible and spiritually significant artifact from the target’s crime, the Fury can burn it and summon a hippogriff spirit to age the target one year per day until he dies. Pretty dang metal, especially since the target doesn’t even need to be present, or even known to the Fury. The crime in question can range from a murder to a bad divorce settlement.

Curse on Household is an even worse curse. It’s reserved for really bad transgressions: murder, rape, cannibalism, or parental incest. The curse doesn’t affect the targets themselves, but their children, their children’s children, and so on. You can be specific about how the curse proceeds down the line. You can also decide when the curse will take effect. It doesn’t necessarily need to occur at birth. The curse can be anything bad: chronic schizophrenia, hauntings, inability to keep a job, bad luck, or a skin condition. The curse must have a fulfillable condition to lift it, but it can be something really improbable. It requires a pretty easy roll, but it’s a Level Five rite. The two punishment rites are among the best I've read. They really evoke the kind of spiritual horror that this game should have.

Rejuvenate the Soil is an Autumn rite that produces better crops in the next year. Kind of step down from the previous rites, but it’s Level One.

The following Rites can only be performed by certain age roles. The Rite of Pure Breeding helps a Maiden divine whether a certain mate would be good to breed with. Free the Wayward Child allows a Mother to kick her son out of the tribe using an anointment of tears.

Curse of the Crone is, of course, a Crone rite for philanderers that renders a male target sterile and shrinks his dick off. Activating it uses a physical artifact from the target, anything from an article of clothing to his semen. It can be undone, though. Less ludicrously, Find the Scythe allows a Crone to divine how a target will die.

Totems! These mostly come from Greek myth, natch.

The Muses collectively act as a totem for Black Fury packs. They used to serve individually, but there aren’t enough Furies to do that nowadays. They teach their charges art and manners, boosting a Social attribute and Performance, Expression, or Enigmas for each pack member. Each member of the pack should be closest to a particular Muse. Calliope likes poets (Expression), Clio serves historians (Enigmas), Erato makes erotica (Expression), Euterpe likes instrumental musicians (Performance), Melpomne inspires tragedians (Performance), Polymnia favors sacred poetry (Expression), Terpsichore inspires song and dance (Performance), Thalia likes comedy (Performance), and Urania favors astronomy (Enigmas). I really like the Muses, so I’m glad to see their inclusion. Muse packs need to devote their lives to art and protect free expression.

The Gorgons now serve as totems separately. In-universe, the pack must choose to follow the Gorgons, but the specific member will choose the pack. Out of character, the players can just choose the Gorgon.

Euryale is a hardline feminist. As a Ragabash, she encourages her followers to act against patriarchal norms. As the oldest Gorgon, she supports the classic Fury belief that women are superior to men and should subjugate them. She really likes lesbians and slut walks. Followers get the Gifts Kangaroo Leap and Fatal Flaw and +3 to intimidating men. Euryale packs can’t include men or participate in male-led septs unless the sept leader defeats the pack alpha in single combat.

Helena is more equitable than Euryale. In fact, she’s often hard on women, placing some blame on the mother if the father abuses her children. She’s most devoted to the truth, however, and will punish only the most culpable party. Following packs get the gift Name the Spirit and bonuses to Charisma and Investigation, as well as a Wisdom renown. Her packs must have equal membership of males and females.

Isthmene is the youngest and prettiest Gorgon. She’s the Ahroun of the group, and she doesn’t like backtalk. She hates it when her older sisters condescend to her. Her followers get bonuses to Glory, Rage, and labrys wielding. They’re also immune to fox frenzy. Their ban is that they have to beat up any male that insults them.

The whole reason the Gorgons were split up is because of Medusa's disappearance, but for some reason she still has her stats laid out. She hates men even more than Euryale. She’s even upset that male metis are allowed in the tribe. She grants the Gift Inspiration and bonuses to Craft and Honor, but she doesn’t allow her followers to even speak to males.

Stheno is the most devoted to finding Medusa as the one who holds all the Gorgons together. She doesn’t like men, but she supports Helena in the sisters’ fights. She grants Strength of Purpose and bonuses to Stamina, Strength, and Wisdom. Her followers can’t refuse a request to fairly judge a case, especially if it’s between a man and a woman.


I don't know what's going on with that lady in the back.

Panther hasn’t taken a new pack of Garou followers for a long time, so taking her at chargen would have to take some pretty strong justification to the ST. She grants Eyes of the Cat and lowers all rolls involving stealth, grace, or balance. Her followers can ask favors of Bastet, but Get of Fenris and Red Talons hate them. Panther demands that her followers protect all cats and spend a month in the Amazon once a year.

Themis was the Greek god of justice. She kept balanced between the Triat, but in recent times is stuck between the Wyld and Weaver. Her realm is now in the realm of dreams, giving her the sobriquet “Dream-Weaver”. Her followers are devoted to justice and tend to be older Furies. Each of her children get a permanent Wisdom renown and bonuses to Enigmas and Gnosis. Her Galliards get Dreamspeak. Everyone gets prophetic visions. She won’t let Glass Walkers follow her, nor can her followers ever learn Glass Walker exclusive Gifts. She’s the most expensive totem in the chapter.

Before we delve into Fetishes, it’s important to lay out the stats for the signature Black Fury weapon, the labrys. It’s difficult to wield, but does an impressive amount of damage even unenchanted. Wielding two at a time is extraordinarily difficult and boosts Intimidation rolls.

First up is fertility charms. Of course. They boost fertility. Next is a quiver of silver arrows. They deal more damage than regular arrows and deal aggravated damage to werewolves. Cavern Torcs allow a Fury to see anything within a certain distance.

The Sisterhood gets a cool fetish: the Coin Reader. It can discern the last seven people who touched a given coin. Again, the Sisterhood gets cool tricks, but they’re so varied that I can’t figure out their role.

A Bow of Artemis boosts hunting rolls and all Archery rolls, but only a Maiden can use it (remember, Artemis). A fetish labrys is just like a regular labrys, but it deals aggravated damage. Pandora’s Box can trap Bane Spirits. A Labrys of Isthmene is just like a fetish labrys, but it grants the use of Spirit of the Fray.


Eerily prophetic

There are only five Lashes of the Furies. They do decent damage and leave distinctive permanent scars. They can also reveal the sins of those they strike. The Bronze Labrys, the most powerful fetish in the book, does slightly more damage than a fetish labrys, grants a free Block, and gives extra Gnosis to the wielder.

The first merit here is Unusually Fertile. Of course. It doubles the likelihood of getting pregnant after intercourse! Caern Child is the child that was born with the Birthing the Caern rite. Basically you’re the chosen one of a given sept and you get all the benefits and costs, spiritual and social, that entails.

The only flaw of the book is Infertile. Of course. You lose a point of honor renown and can never learn Mother gifts.

Next time: Sample and famous characters! “Phear my l33t skillz bizatch!”

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 03:10 on May 3, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Mr. Maltose posted:

Isn't the entire point of Werewolf that every tribe sows the seed of it's own idiotic destruction, but why change horses midstream?

Ding ding ding. The targets have the opportunity to shake the curse, but the concerns of werewolves are so far removed from reality at that point that it's unlikely they'll ever be able to fulfill the conditions.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Black Furies

Chapter 4, Part the Last

The last chapter does two things: describe sample and important splat characters and provide a summary of what the splat’s all about. Here, the authors state that Black Furies aren’t about rejecting males (they have brothers, so that’s completely ridiculous! Why would you think the tribe that doesn’t allow men in it is somehow defined by that choice?), but rather about their mysticism and their society. They are in a bound sisterhood, so they have important spiritual connections. Let’s see how the sample characters mess that up! They don't!

Omega Female

quote:

I don’t understand. Why shouldn’t I submit to him? Doesn’t he outrank me?


Ron Spencer's on art duty for this chapter, and I gotta say, he's risen to the challenge of drawing a non-badass werewolf quite well.

A wolf-born New Moon, everyone knew this character was different, but hated and feared her. She wasn’t treated as well as her fellow pups. She got food after everyone else, and life sucked, but she accepted her lot because someone has to be the omega. This, of course, is not how wolf society works at all. There’s an alpha, the oldest and most reproductively successful wolf, and everyone else. Wolf society isn’t hierarchical at all and most Werewolf books actually recognize that.

The First Change happened when a beta female beat the character up when she was shot down by the alpha. Even though she knew to resist (ugh), the character felt her RAGE and she killed that wolf. She ran away until other Black Furies found her. They were upset because she killed a wolf kin (even though Garou are rare enough that it should really balance out but whatever), but she was accepted into the tribe anyway. She learned quickly out of fear of rebuke, but werewolf society is confusing! Everyone gets to breed? (Again, the alpha wolf doesn’t stop anyone in the pack from having sex because it would be dumb to stop kin from producing more kin to help hunts.) Some people are better than others? (Why would this be confusing to her?) Asking questions is the Ragabash way, but she feels uncomfortable doing it. What an empowering archetype.

The character sheet is well thought out, even though she would probably be better suited with higher physical than social stats. Her RAGE is low, though, and her Talents are spread a little thin.

Computer Witch

quote:

Phear my l33t skillz, bizatch!
:facepalm:


Oh, I'm going to hate you, aren't I?

She grew up in the suburbs, which didn’t help her spiritual connections. Her mom was nominally interested in nature, but she was also kind of lazy. Her dad was into technology. He encouraged her interest in technology. When she discovered the Internet, she loved all the information she could get from it, but hated the porn and piracy. She totally hacked the hell out of the bad sites. Her First Change happened when she found a bondage porn site. She flipped a poo poo and destroyed her computer. Her parents managed to talk her down and call up the Furies. I don’t care what anybody says, this First Change reverses my opinion on this character and makes her my favorite.

She got through orientation just fine, but her interest in computers was scandalous. Computers are the tool of the Weaver. It’s why it has webs. :tinfoil: When she demonstrated how easily she could find rape porn and snuff peddlers, though, the local Furies supported learning computer spirit magic. Unlike the Glass Walkers, she forcibly binds technology spirits rather than befriending them. She’s not a great fighter, but she has good insight into Weaver and Wyrm spirits. Her roleplaying notes recommend that you use pseudo-sorcerous lingo like “hex” or “virtual pentagram” to build up your witch status.

Quote aside, I was pleasantly surprised by this character. She’s pretty cool. She’s physical tertiary, which isn’t great, but she hasn’t dumped any important stats. I would argue that she has too many points in Contacts when she would need more Resources, but that’s not a huge complaint.

Modern Day Atropos

quote:

Too late for prayers now, sonny-boy.



Strangely :black101:. She grew up in a hick town. She didn’t go to college and married out of high school. Domestic abuse was pretty high in the area, but she found a good man and had several children. Her life was pretty boring, but she was an avid reader in anthropology and folklore.

Her First Change happened in her fifties. Her youngest was coming to visit her with her new baby, but they were hit by a drunk driver. The driver in question was the judge’s brother, so he got off easy. She flipped out and probably murdered the drunk. The Furies found out and took her in. She took to Garou life easily. She’s devoted herself to taking care of minor problems like mortal criminals so that the Furies can focus on the major ones. Taking care, of course, usually means murder. She knows the evil that lurks in men’s hearts and will totally put a battle axe in your face, but she’s also still very motherly.

I love this character. She has the physical stats she needs to fulfill her concepts, although she could do with more Dodge and Melee. Just switch some points out of Crafts and into Melee and she’d be among the best sample characters the tribebooks have to offer.

Oracle

quote:

Hear the words of Gaia’s dreams, proud child of Stag! Do not set foot on the battlefield without girding thy loins with the armor of wisdom, or else you throw away your life! But wield the weapon anointed for thee, and they foes will fall as wheat! A great doom lies over they meeting with the Black Children, and Death waits at thy heels with bared white teeth! Ai! The vision passes…I can see no more…


Organization XIII now accepts werewolves.

As a metis, her mother was cast out to perform an atonement quest. Because she died on the quest, the Furies never spoke of her, unsure of whether she was absolved or not. She was treated pretty well for a metis, and the local Mistress of Rites took her in and trained her in her practices. She became an expert in interpreting the Python’s Trail visions, but she was passed up for filling her mistress’ role when she died. She offered to take her skills elsewhere. She never learned the Python’s Trail rite, but she could still make up oracular visions.

A basic false oracle archetype, but it works. Again, physical tertiary, which is bad for a Galliard, as there’s limited opportunity for her to use her increased RAGE. She’s pushed up Rituals and Rites, so she’s got that down.

Soldier of Our Merciful Mother

quote:

Hail Mary, full of grace. Hear the prayer of the warrior who kneels before you. Bless me, sacred Mother, in my battle and forgive me for the blood I must spill. Have mercy on the souls I free from their corrupt bodies. Amen.


gently caress yeah, Ron Spencer!

Of course the only representative sample character from a camp is from the best camp. She had a lot of brothers and sisters growing up. Her parents had to work hard to care for all the children, so her grandmother was mostly responsible for raising the family, and she did a great job. Her grandmother was very faithful and the Soldier inherited that devotion. She worked hard in Sunday School and tried to live her life to the standards of Christianity.

In high school, her junior prom date tried to rape her, but she hulked out. She still feels guilty about it and does a lot of penitential work. This isn’t to say that she thinks she deserved the attack or anything. She now works with the Order as a warrior with faith. She’s not a member of a convent as her RAGE is too high, but she does her best to live a Catholic lifestyle and avoid excess pride.

The character’s evocative, but she doesn’t have the stats to back it up. Her Attributes are fine, but she doesn’t have enough combat abilities. She needs to concentrate her ability dots to truly support her concept.

Leukippes


Featuring Angelina Jolie

One of the greatest Furies, Leukippes was a great Scythian archer. She lead the Furies of her nation to overthrow the Assyrian Empire. Her greatest exploit, though, was defeating the sorcerer Kamisos. He was a false (or not) devotee of Apollo, but truly served the Wyrm and hunted down Greek werewolves. Leukippes and her pack infiltrated Kamisos’ revel and slew him. She’s used to demonstrate the power of infiltrating Patriarchal institutions subtly and the danger followers present rather than the religions themselves.

Guilieta Hidden Road


:catstare:

Guilieta was a Ragabash working during the Inquisition to rescue accused witches. She was religious and her First Change may have occurred on a pilgrimage. This didn’t shake her, though, as she eventually came to influence in the Church and a member of the Order. She first tried to stop witch hunts, then directed them towards proper targets. Her actions supported the nascent Sisterhood, and to this day the Order and the Sisterhood fight over her legacy.

Electra Shieldslayer



Born Electra Stavrakis, she was from South Carolina during the sixties, a very contentious era to be raised. She participated in feminist movements and Changed during a demonstration gone bad. Although she doesn’t do much political activism nowadays, she focuses on raising awareness from sept to sept. Her cause of choice is the Amazon campaign, but she has trouble motivating other Garou to get involved. She’s made progress in developing local allies, but the Balam want her to depose Golgol Fangs-First for someone more kind to Bastet. Her stats are kind of low for Rank 4, but she knows a lot of Rites and Gifts. She really is built around social motivation rather than brawling, but she exists in a warzone.

Mari Cabrah


"This right here? It's a head.

She’s a signature character from the novels! She worked with Jonas Albrecht to protect Evan Heals-the-Past and formed a pack together. They had adventures, resulting in Albrecht reassuming the throne of the Garou Nation. She’s gotten some notice too, communing with Pegasus and handling a lot of powerful fetishes. She now works in New York as a vigilante. Her main rival is Kula Wiseblood, who accuses her of being soft and a bleeding heart werewolf liberal. She doesn’t really work with other Black Furies, and other werewolves doubt her competence, which works just fine for her when she proves them wrong violently. Incidentally, she’s the Black Fury illustration in the corebook. Although her stats are primarily built around asskicking, she’s a Theurge, and she knows every Rite she can or at least how to learn it.

The Manslayer


The first ever wereowl.

A Black Fury serial killer, she’s murdered at least 150 men, most likely many, many more. The people she’s murdered aren’t deserving either; she’s torn apart entire strip clubs. Despite her excess, she’s still considered a Black Fury, meaning Pegasus at least tacitly approves of her actions, which really isn’t helping Fury PR. Pegasus refuses to comment, making matters even worse. The Furies are divided on what to do with her. Some say that she needs to die while others believe she can be saved. Nobody knows who she is or how she’s managed to evade notice. She might have supporters across the Black Furies or even in other tribes, or she might be a rogue Black Fury faction. Basically, she’s a walking plot hook.

And on that note, that’s Tribebook: Black Furies! Final verdict? I liked it. The history section is useless, but the other chapters have cool, evocative material. Usually the last chapter is the weakest in a White Wolf splatbook, but this one really stands on its own. There are epic plot hooks to sink into, and the Furies certainly feel more necessary than their core entry makes them out to be. They're not just feminists; they have an active role in human society in judging crimes, more so than the other tribes, and they have a devotion to mysticism that rivals the Uktena. They feel fully realized. If we’re going to judge the book on whether it makes Black Furies more playable or interesting to enact, I’d argue that this one does. It’s certainly not the best Werewolf has to offer, but it’s decent, and it could have been a lot worse than that. But next time, we’re going to look at a book beyond decent.

Next time: Bone Gnawers!

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Bone Gnawers


No joke, this exactly what a hobo werewolf would look like. Impressive.

Like last time, we’re going to look at the Revised Core entry for the Bone Gnawers and see what the writers are building on. Also like last time, the Bone Gnawers an atypical tribe in that their membership is more politically oriented than their place of birth. The Bone Gnawers are the poor werewolf tribe. This is probably a necessary archetype for Werewolf, since who doesn’t want to play a wisecracking, streetwise werewolf? Like Billy Joel from Oliver & Company, but angrier. The book even tells you that every Bone Gnawer is cynical, world weary, but totally hilarious! Archetypal as that is, it’s still evocative.

As briefly discussed in the Black Fury book, to be initiated into a tribe you have to be approved of by the totem spirit of that tribe. For the Black Furies, you had to impress Pegasus, and Pegasus automatically refused any non-metis males. The totem spirit watches out for its tribe kin, and if they change they’re more readily allowed into the tribe. They still have to do the Rite of Passage, but it’s less onerous. A werewolf can renounce his or her tribe and join another, but they have to work harder to impress the other tribe’s totem. For that reason, the Bone Gnawers are disdained, as the werewolves believe that they’re incapable of joining a “real” tribe.

That suits the Gnawers just fine, as they’re the most populous of the tribe. Anybody the other tribes don’t accept, they will. They’re originally from North Africa and India, but nowadays they can be found in any urban jungle. They’ve always lived among the poor and disenfranchised, and they claim to have teamed up with or been folk heroes. Their devotion to the common man leads them to espouse democratic values in their septs.

The Bone Gnawers also have weird totems and rites. They work with City Fathers, trash spirits, and other incarnations of the contemporary world. Their rites incorporate a milieu of pop cultural references. For instance, they’ll spread peanut butter to invoke the spirit of Elvis, or chant Frank Sinatra tunes to summon the spirit of New York. This only tarnishes their reputation even further, but the Gnawers will accept any ritual technique one of their members comes up with.

Living in the city, the Gnawers develop a few cultural quirks. Generosity is a big deal among the Bone Gnawers. Their elders, known as Fathers or Mothers, take in large swaths of unprivileged people to care for them, even if they’re not Kin or Garou. The Gnawer combat style is built around guerilla warfare and sneak attacks. They’ll work with anybody, even unsavory supernatural types. A developed system and lexicon for scavenging trash is popular among the Gnawers, delineating Stuff, Loot, and Things. (I’m not sure why this is included in the core, but it’s a fun idea from the Tribebook)

They have many camps, including some that live in rural areas. The Hillfolk are werewolf hillbillies and the Maneaters are werewolf cannibal hillbillies. In my estimation, the only thing better than a streetwise werewolf is a redneck werewolf.


Not sold on this lady, though.

Appearance: They look pretty scruffy and mangy. Their wolf forms are covered in patches of different colors. They’re scrawny, but they can’t be mistaken for stray dogs.

Kinfolk: Unlike most tribes, their kin isn’t from a particular race or background, but they do tend to be poor.

Territory: The Bone Gnawers make their homes in the city, but in the poorest areas. This isn’t to say that they’re solely from the ghetto. They protect major public services in the city, including libraries, museums, parks and playgrounds.

quote:


Hey, you! Stop pissin’ on my drat box! What do you think this is, a men’s room? This here’s my home, and if you don’t zip it and run right now. I’m gonna have to bite that thing off. You hear me? I BITE!

The Bone Gnawers can’t have Ancestors, Resources, or Pure Breed backgrounds, but they get an extra willpower in return.

The Stereotypes are related to us by Piss-in-the-Wind. Bone Gnawers have great deed names, by the way. They like the Black Furies because feminism. They drink with the Fianna. They’re bullied by the Get of Fenris. They don’t trust the Red Talons because they want to kill everyone. They’ll feed the Shadow Lords info. The most interesting relationship they have is with the Silent Striders. Interpersonally they’re fine, but Owl has it out for Rat, so their tribes are constantly at odds.

Next time: The Long Dark Fast Food Breakfast of the Soul

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

"Falling Down" and Chapter 1 Part 1

quote:

Once upon a time, I thought I was free.

You know that old axiom, “the first sentence of a story tells you everything you need to know”? Brian Campbell really seems to have taken that to heart.

The main character of “Falling Down” was a working stiff with three minimum wage jobs. He lived a pretty squalid lifestyle, making ramen in the coffee maker, drinking soda for breakfast, the worst. The job we're talking about today is Burger Czar at O’Tolley’s, the Pentex version of McDonald’s. He had a dorky uniform and his attempts to modify it were spoiled by his knowledge that thousands of other workers modified the uniform in exactly the same way. His main task was to take abuse from customers who buy food he can barely afford with an employee discount.

There were a few things that broke up his pathetic life. At O’Tolley’s, there was a regular customer who went by Walter, but everyone called him Wimpy. Wimpy was a crazy homeless person. He’d beg for change until he had enough to buy a single burger and a glass of water. He’d rant and rave about the kinds of things crazy homeless people rave about : conspiracy theories, giant rats, secret vampire societies. He was a weirdo and our hero hated him for that.

The second thing that brought our hero some solace was drinking with his friends. These particular friends were Black Dog fans who did all kinds of perverted poo poo in their games. If you got them started on their games they wouldn’t shut the gently caress up, so instead our hero talked about his work, mostly about the crazy poo poo Wimpy would say. They had beer money, though, so they were okay.

One night, the crew was wandering around drunk and they came across Wimpy. Our hero saw Wimpy and thought about all the times he had to serve him and act polite to him and listen to his stupid stories. One thing led to another and the gang beat Wimpy down. Wimpy took it, as if he accepted that he was the kind of person these things happened to.

The next day, our hero woke up guilty. He kept to his routine (the only way to keep sane) and went to O’Tolley’s. Wimpy showed up without any marks or scars from the fight. The only thing different about him is that he bought his burger and left, no stories, no nothing.

A few weeks later, our hero was doing his routine, telling all the customers “Thank you very much,” no matter how much poo poo they gave him or how detestable they were. One customer, though, reacts strangely. It turns out that he had said “gently caress you very much, ma’am.” This of course gets him fired, and he’s ready to do a dramatic exit when he sees Wimpy laughing at him. This freaks him out, so he slinks out.


Bone Gnawers are too poor for ink.

For a month he hunted for a job, unwilling to debase himself before his stepfather. He was eventually evicted. Without any gas money, he decided to pack all his stuff in his truck and sleep in his car. He’d use his gamer friends’ house to bathe. One night, returning to his car when he got tired of his friends playing Revenants or whatever, he encounters Wimpy. This time, though, Wimpy shoves him. Wimpy kicked him around a little bit, and starts to grow and get a little fierce looking. Wimpy attacked him like an animal. Eventually Wimpy calms down and tells our hero that he’s a Bone Gnawer kinfolk.

Nowadays our hero is free. He’s not tied down by possessions or that poo poo. He lives out of his car. Every day he goes to O’Tolley’s and orders a single to take to Wimpy, and every day Wimpy says, “Thank you very much. gently caress you very much.”


If you want a picture of the future, imagine a werewolf booting a human face, forever.

What a story! It’s pretty dang good. The problem is that it literally tells you that our hero’s life pre-Werewolf is crappy. The “homeless people have it great!” moral is also a little disconcerting. It’s one thing to believe that homeless people deserve their misery, but to actually believe that they’re better off homeless is, to my mind, even worse. Still, the description of low wage America is furiously awesome. It shows what the werewolves are fighting against superbly. It also gives us a good look into the kind of life a less homeless werewolf might lead. It goes for something very different than most tribebook intro fiction, and I like it.

[s]Next time: "An Elder Gets Drunk on History"[s]

Ah, gently caress it. Let's start Chapter 1!

Before that, though, let's take a look at the credits page. Brian Campbell's the guy responsible for this book. It's hard to find a complete bibliography for him, but I happen to know he was the main writer for Clanbook: Nosferatu, so those of you mentioning the parallels between the two splats, you were on the money. Wikipedia tells me he worked on Star Wars and Call of Cthulu d20 properties. He also worked on Fading Suns, so he's made a lot of appearances here on F&F.

We have a light art staff for this book, and if there's one huge weakness to this tribebook, it's the art. The first picture in this update is pretty typical work. Ron Spencer is back on sample character duty. He has some great designs, but that's for another day. The interchapter art is also decent, if a little samey.


The Bone Gnawers have a long and storied history of hitting dudes in the face.

That aside, let's get drunk on history with an elder. The history chapter in Bone Gnawers is back to traditional White Wolf splatbook style, with various narrators offering perspectives. The chapter itself is a Recitation, a Gnawer storytelling ritual. One Galliard begins the story and anyone can interject if they believe they can tell the story better or if the leader draws a blank. Control of the story passes from teller to teller. Anyone can join in if they have the charisma and the moxy. This is actually a very traditional mode of tale telling, so it's great to see it here. The Gnawers also engage in Testimony, which is like Recitation, but it's in response to a request for information about a particular supernatural creature. If there's a vampire in town, various tellers will testify everything they know about vampires, for example.

The tribe here is gathered around a barrel fire, and a bottle of hooch is passed around to denote the storyteller. The elder begins his story by admitting that there's really no way for the Bone Gnawers to present a true account of their history. Unlike the other tribes, they can't contact their ancestors. Their lineage is too mixed for that. Of course, it doesn't matter much now that the Apocalypse is on its way.

The narrator alleges that the Bone Gnawer doesn't have a true ancestral homeland. They're more of an international werewolf community; if Gaia thinks you're good enough to be a werewolf, you're good enough to be a Bone Gnawer. Once you first changed, you left behind your humanity. You don't need tribal hierarchies or possessions or histories. The Bone Gnawers are a family, and there's plenty of room around the barrel fire. Rat looks out for her own and there's macaroni and cardboard stew to go around.

The Bone Gnawers are proud scavengers, lurking on the edges of history. The Bone Gnawers were tasked with taking care of all scavengers, spirits and animals and humans alike. The Gnawers protected humanity when the other tribes ruled over them. Bone Gnawers was an insult, one of the oldest in the Garou tongue. They were great warriors, overwhelming their enemies with numbers when all else failed. They were and are the shock troops of the Garou Nation.

Eventually, mankind built cities to protect themselves against the werewolves. Once the tribes realized that continuing to war against them was futile, the Concordiat was formed and the Garou Nation pledged to set itself apart from humanity to let human civilization to develop. Two tribes refused to do this. The nascent Glass Walkers were well-respected so they could do what they wanted. The Bone Gnawers, on the other hand, got the raw end of the deal. They couldn't survive without humanity to scavenge off of. So they stayed in the cities, in defiance of the Litany. The Silver Fangs declared them "urrah", or tainted, and so the Bone Gnawers formed their tribal identity.

Next time: "Forsooth!"

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

As the Bone Gnawers grew accustomed to the city, they noticed the Weaver spirits getting stronger and stronger. Humanity grew more organized, more regimented. The Glass Walker enjoyed the resources progress and the Weaver provided, but the Bone Gnawers were more wary. While the Walkers sustain the institutions and spirits that protect humanity, the Bone Gnawers fight to free us from them. The Walkers love human society, the Gnawers exist outside it.


I'll grant that the interchapter art is alright, but everything else sucks.

The elder begins talking about the Gnawers of Ancient Egypt (made up of those rejected by the Silent Striders), but is interrupted by the alpha Teeth-of-the-Jackal, a metis. He denounces the idea that the Bone Gnawers have no pedigree, no history. The Gnawers are just more inclusive. They’ve widened their gene pool and are better for it. Considering how much problems the Silver Fangs have with inbreeding, this is probably accurate. The Bone Gnawers are spread out, but that’s not to say they don’t have a home.

Teeth argues that the Bone Gnawers are originally from North Africa, but the North African gnawers didn’t just follow Rat. Without wolf kin to call their own, the homid Gnawers followed scavenger spirits of all kinds, everything from jackals to hyenas to crows. The leaders adopted Jackal, the elders chose to follow Crow, the Ragabash and other politically oriented Garou took Hyena, and the rabble followed the universally popular Rat. Now that the scavenger spirits are returning, their stories can be told.

The Silent Striders are the canonical masters of North Africa. They were engaged in constant war with Set and his minions. The Striders were mostly losing, so they came to the Bone Gnawers for aid. Now, the Bone Gnawers were even then used to getting asked for help and then betrayed later. That made the followers of Rat not too inclined to strike the first blow against Set the blood god. The followers of Jackal, with more in common with the Striders and seeing an opportunity to earn some respect, did agree to help the Striders. Of course, both the Striders and the Jackal children lost. Set’s darkness wasn’t contained to Egypt, though. Eventually, it forced the Bone Gnawers out of their homeland. Today, the Bone Gnawers will never abandon another tribe in need, for fear that they’ll suffer the repercussions once again. It’s also why Owl demands rat sacrifices and hates the Bone Gnawers. Those Silent Striders who follow the Egyptian totems still are welcome among the Gnawers, however.


The Bone Gnawers always go for the face.

While the Bone Gnawers gained a lot of their population from less selective breeding, they gain even more from rejects from other tribes. Those cubs who can’t meet the expectations of their native tribe are accepted into the Bone Gnawers to prove themselves. In their native tribes, those cubs would be forced to eat last, to gnaw on the bones of the carcass. Hence, Bone Gnawers. The other tribes saw these rejects as expendable, and once the Gnawers believed that their sacrifice could earn respect. Now, though, they consider life too precious to give away on the expectation of other tribes. They’ll never sacrifice themselves today.

Smell-of-the-Crowd, a Frankweiler (a camp) picks up the story.

quote:

God’s wounds! What a tragedy this is, when Garou turns his back on Garou! Fear not, child! We shall shelter you from the night! We shall take you in as our own, clutching you to our very bosom!

:allears: I think we have a contender for Best Camp. The Bone Gnawers form their own kin, a family of all those who Rat accepts. There are serious disadvantages to not having a tribe, some of them even mechanical. You can’t earn rites or tribe gifts. Joining the Bone Gnawers, even if it’s not cushy, is better than not having tribe at all. You can eat anything! You can live in cardboard castle! It’s fantastic. This may seem like glorifying poverty, but trust me on this, there’s something else at work.

City life made it difficult for the Bone Gnawers to establish any organization. Without caerns to build a sept around, it was up to the oldest Gnawer in a given city to take care of all the other Gnawers. The way this worked was as diverse as the early cities. In some cities, every auspice had their own mother or father, a King of Fools or the Witch Mother. That practice is much rarer today, but it still survives. The Bone Gnawers have existed since cities have. In ancient Babylonian texts, there are records of Hammurabi dealing with rats; the Gnawers, of course.

And now, the most important sentence in the entire book:

quote:

We may look like fools, but we strive to be saviors.

The Glass Walkers are bound to the vice and greed and entrapment of the city, while the Gnawers simply do their work there. All the Walkers’ debts trap them even more. The Gnawers owe no one.

quote:

Friends and countrymen, attend! The Weaver is everywhere! (Stab! Parry! Thrust!) Every time you have to stand in line, with every form you’re dumb enough to fill out, with every bill you’re stupid enough to pay, she spins her web of deceit to bind you. Soon you’ll be anguishing how to pay our car bills, your espresso maker, your Franklin Mint miniatures. Soon, you’ll be blind to the world around you!

The Weaver’s all about conformity, but the Bone Gnawers break out of it, especially by devoting themselves to democratic ideals. The other tribes, rigidly hierarchical as they are, reject the concepts of democracy and equality, but the Bone Gnawers embrace everything the Garou Nation casts aside. With democracy, the Bone Gnawers could organize and help their human charges. They would even fight the Glass Walkers and the Shadow Lords to protect their kin.

All those ideals really came to a head in Rome. The Gnawers fought against the Glass Walkers among the patricians to protect the poor and maintain the ideals of the republic. They wandered the catacombs, feeding on the refuse of the Romans and pursuing their own goals. Eventually, though, they spread away from Rome, to the north. There, they assisted the Get of Fenris among the Vikings, serving as spear carriers. The Bone Gnawers always serve.


At sea or in an ice flow? You decide!

With that, the Smell-of-the-Crowd gives the stage to The Hood, a werewolf wearing a hoodie. He’s a member of the Hood camp. He gives a significantly more cynical view of Bone Gnawer history. Because of the Bone Gnawer’s commitment to serving the Garou Nation at large, they are the true source of power. Any Silver Fang or Shadow Lord ruler owes the Bone Gnawers a great debt, yet the Bone Gnawers persist at the bottom of the food chain.

quote:

Look at this poor sap. Living off garbage. Sleeping in the street in that smelly cloak. What’s so great about being homeless? Dropping out of life? Freezing at night? Starving by day? We’ve seen it up close. People around us dying a little each day. Day by day, they freeze to death. They starve to death. And if that’s not enough, they rip each other off along the way. For what? Money? Power? Privilege? For nothing.

We’re supposed to protect the world, and protect the people in it – even if the other tribal elders say we shouldn’t. The folks in our tribe slum just about everywhere. Because of it, the Garou howl that we’re rejects and losers. Don’t believe it. They say we’re cowards, bastards, lazy, selfish, or worse. Don’t buy it. Don’t forget the reason we stayed in the cities in the first place: to watch over mankind.

:drat: This right here is the ethos that makes this book. It speaks to the tragedy of the tribe. The intro fiction sells the misery of poverty, but this sells the misery of trying to fight it. The Garou Nation has failed to save humanity. The Bone Gnawers are doing the best out of any tribe, but they also fail. Not only that, but they’re rejects among their own kind. They can’t help anybody, not even themselves. They can only watch and try to put as cool a face on it as possible. They can be heroes, but they are going to lose in the end.

Throughout history, they’ve tried their best but have always lost. In the Dark Ages, Robins Hood among the Bone Gnawers would hide their identities with their hoods and do their best for the peasantry. Even today, a Bone Gnawer camp accepts that legacy and carries it on. Yet feudalism persisted. They fought against the plague and the Ratkin agents that perpetuated it. Yet millions died, and even today, those Ratkin still threaten humanity and the poor have to deal with plagues as bad or worse. The Bone Gnawers cling to heroism, because that image is the only thing they have claim to.

Murder-of-Crows, a Philodox, brings up the ultimate failure of the Hoods. They and the supernaturals who took a direct hand in human affairs spurred the Inquisition. Thousands of Gnawer kinfolk were hunted down by superstitious inquisitors. The Garou could hide, so the brunt of the Inquisition’s wrath fell on their defenseless allies. Eventually, the Gnawer leaders held a Piping, grand moots of all the Bone Gnawers. The greatest of these councils was held in Barcelona. There, the elders issued the Ban of Man. No Gnawer could help or hunt mankind unless the tribe was threatened. Vigilantes and heroes alike were forbidden (The Hood, of course, has left the scene by now). Of course, the tribe at large still continued to do so, but the official tribe policy was to maintain their own survival above all.

Next time: :911:

edit: The upcoming Exalted kickstarter has me excited! Because my tribal catalogue isn't ambitious enough, I'm considering doing a travelogue of the 2e Exalted setting, culminating in...something special. It depends on how much info the kickstarter has, though.

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 03:24 on May 9, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



I should be more clear: the travelogue would be an F&F of the Compass of Terrestrial/Celestial Directions. The Infernals are tangential to all of those except Malfeas.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Kavak posted:

They actually list Legend of the Overfiend in the inspirations section of the core book.

Cthulhutech should not be about humanity's darkest hour- it should be about humanity's transformation. Read the Shadow out of Time, according to Lovecraft we've got millenia left. An alliance with the Deep Ones, government support of magicians and insane science, all of this should be part of us joining the same "community" as the Mi-Go, Yithians, and Elder Things, or re-joining it depending on how you want to view it. It's the end of an age of innocence, but it's not The End.

But that would draw inspiration from mecha anime, which would just be disrespectful to Lovecraft's legacy. :shepface:

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



And I'm back! A short update today, but there's a good reason for that. I've been updating my old posts, clarifying some stuff that may have been confusing and stuff that definitely confused me. With that out of the way, we can get to

Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

The Bone Gnawers really came into their own during the Age of Exploration. After the success of the first Piping, further tribal moots became commonplace as communication and travel improved. The amount of Garou that could reasonably claim the name “Bone Gnawer” increased. The Bone Gnawers began to have an actual political presence in the Garou Nation simply because they could actually agree on things and make their existence known. Many Gnawers gained upwards mobility, well, at least among the Bone Gnawer ranks.

The urge for exploration eventually led the Gnawers to the New World. Various Gnawers stowed away on the early voyages and sent back reports about the land of plenty. Eventually, a new Piping was called in Lisbon, and the Gnawers planned a mass exodus. They got assistance from other tribal elders, who wanted information and expendable scouts to get it. The Gnawers were promised respect, but of course, they didn’t end up getting it. Tired of their treatment among the other European Garou, they left, with Corazon Bitefinder leading the exodus. The Pure Tribes resented this, naturally, but the Bone Gnawers began the European Garou presence in the Americas.

The story is here picked up by Welcomed-into-the-Hall-of-Presidents. When the Gnawers found America, they finally became a full-fledged tribe. Their early sponsorship of the democratic revolution gave them a stake in the Garou Nation they never had before. They were the patrons of America, and the other Garou had to respect that. No other tribe, save the Pure, can claim to be as home in the USA as the Bone Gnawers, and even the Pure are uncomfortable in today’s United States.

Helping the American revolutionaries would mean breaking the Ban of Man. To do so, the American Gnawers developed the High Ban. The Gnawers could still fight in homid form, but not use any of their werewolf powers. They couldn’t sneak through the Umbra to attack supply lines or use cool rites or gifts. If they were grievously injured, they could still retreat to heal, but they were out of the war for good. This way, they could still help their charges while maintaining the Veil. The High Ban is still in common practice today.

The success of the American Revolution inspired other revolutions, most of which Bone Gnawers participated in. The revolution they’re most proud of is the French Revolution, created to distract the humans from the Gnawers’ true mission: to kill all the Parisian vampires. With the help of the French Ratkin, the Gnawers purged France of vampiric influence. During the Russian Revolution, the Sept of the Noble’s Will, a caern granted to the Bone Gnawers by the Silver Fangs but ruled by their nobles, was overthrown, becoming the Sept of the People’s Will. The Fangs retaliated harshly, but they’ll never rule the caern again.


Perspective? What's that?

That aside, the new governments were entirely developed by humans, and the Bone Gnawers freely admit that (the vampires won’t, but that’s a story for another day). However, the Garou Nation failed to develop. The elders the Bone Gnawers made a home for took power from the Pure Tribes. In protest, many Gnawers left the tribe and explored the west as ronin. These Gnawers became the Hillfolk, taking up rural trades and filling the wide wild landscape of America.

The next section is titled “The Civil War”, but it’s not about that at all. Instead, it’s a discussion on totems. As more and more Bone Gnawers concentrated in America, the local scavenger spirits grew more powerful. In time, the access to these spirits made the United States the new Bone Gnawer homeland. But the scavenger spirits no longer fully encapsulated the Gnawer agenda. At long last, the Bone Gnawers began to hope. They believed in the promise of America, along with everyone else. And so, the American Dream took on sentience and became one of the patron Bone Gnawer totem spirits. It represented the ability to create new traditions if the old didn’t suit you, to find a new home if you were thrown out of your old. The America Dream is a full-fledged Incarna, and it’s among the most popular Bone Gnawer totems.


That werewolf is wearing a WWII army hat. I take back everything I've said about the art.

During the Gilded Age, the Glass Walkers’ wealth increased tremendously. The Bone Gnawers hitched their wagon to theirs, serving as the muscle to the Walkers’ brains. Together, the two tribes ruled the bootlegging industry. The tribes got along well, but it wasn’t like they were going to become one urban tribe. Then the Great Depression came around. The Walkers were hit hard, but they passed most of the hurting to the Gnawers. The Gnawers, then, were in a real tight spot. They became more involved in human affairs than ever, raising funds, defending tent cities. Their conduct proved that the Bone Gnawers could really make a difference where the other tribes couldn’t.
Hall closes the Recitation by describing World War II. The destruction caused by that war confirmed that the End Times were finally here. Teeth-of-the-Jackal urges his followers to start acting now, because the Apocalypse is here and there are no consequences. It’s the perfect time to finally change the world for the better. The Bone Gnawers can finally live to the fullest. Meanwhile, the Old Man who began the Recitation drifts off to sleep in an alley. A crow spirit takes his fetish dagger and flies away. The Old Man is dead.

Next time: Finally quoting Tyler Durden

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

Chapter 2, Part 1


Scott Prescott, I know you can do better than this. See me after class.

In sum, the Bone Gnawers live on the fringes of society, avoiding the Weaver’s grasp, and are idealistically dedicated to equality and democracy for all. Of course, they’ve failed to actually promote these changes to the extent they would like. Other tribes may even consider their opposition to hierarchy as an easy excuse for laziness. Their life on the fringe doesn’t make them any easier to like: they smell, they look degenerate, and they often go insane. Theurges sometimes get lost in the barrier between the Umbra and our world, losing the ability to tell the difference between the two.

There are Gnawers who simply want to abandon the hierarchies of the Garou Nation and disperse. They still fight the Wyrm, though, making them the only line of defense in areas without many werewolves. All Gnawers are determined to survive and develop the talents necessary to do so. When all the other tribes fail, the Bone Gnawers may be the only ones with hope.

Before they change, Bone Gnawers still find themselves at the fringes of their society. The point of conformity and order becomes foreign to her. Wealth, success, all the rewards of conventional human life are worthless to the nascent Garou. The injustices of society make the cub angrier and angrier, until the RAGE boils over. After that, the discomfort of society only grows into a choking ozone miasma. But, they also have a way to at least more tangibly fight the corruption of the world.

Many Bone Gnawers aren’t born into the tribe, but their reaction to their First Change places them there. If a new werewolf shuns all society and gives in to the survival urge, he may be a good candidate for the Bone Gnawers. Some werewolves go insane at the First Change, becoming Lunatics, and the Bone Gnawers accept them too. Cubs lost by their kin-fetches (guardian spirits) may find themselves running into the arms of the Bone Gnawers. The Gnawers’ dispersal and large population often puts them into the position of the first Garou a new werewolf meets. Their reputation also sends them “problem cubs”, those new werewolves that the other tribes don’t know how to handle.


What happens when a werewolf gets an itch. Also, I love the guy in the lower right hand corner.

There are Bone Gnawer kinfolk, though. Throughout history, the Bone Gnawers have found themselves attracted to working class heroes. The worthy are inducted to their line. Social mobility being what it is, most Gnawer kinfolk are still proud members of the working class, or less proud members of the impoverished.

Why do the Bone Gnawers recruit so many cubs? Their Rites of Passage are a joke, and many members don’t even go to any tribal events. Many tribes accuse them of just fleshing out their numbers. There is some truth to this. The Bone Gnawers can call upon their rabble in times of need, and they will come. The rabble includes Garou with a variety of talents, most which involve violence and crime. It’s the Bone Gnawer secret weapon. It’s what makes the Bone Gnawers such effective shock troops and what makes them expendable.

Members of the rabble have it rough, especially those who are truly anti-social. Without a pack support structure, werewolves tend to fall into Harano, werewolf depression. To prevent this, rabble members often join impromptu packs to accomplish discrete tasks, like finding shelter or planning a convenience store robbery. They also use the Gift Tagalong temporarily assist other packs.
The stereotypical Bone Gnawer sept is based around an urban caern, but there just aren’t enough for those to be truly popular. Not any public park is going to be pure enough to open a caern. Even if you do have a caern, it’s difficult to open it or defend it in the middle of a city of millions of people. Nonetheless, they still exist, and there are some yet to be opened.

The Sept of the Green is one of the most famous and important Gnawer septs. Based in Central Park, it supports about 50 active members of the Gnawer. It’s led by Mother Larissa and it accepts any guest who asks for assistance, much to the consternation of the Get and Shadow Lords. The Sept of the Awakening in Washington DC supports itself on the spiritual energy of democracy and patriotism. It welcomes werewolves with a political bent, particularly the Black Furies and the Children of Gaia. They have a bit of a vampire problem, though. We’ve already talked about the Sept of the People’s Will. The Bone Gnawers there overthrew their Silver Fang sept leader and now run it communally.

Many Bone Gnawers fearful of the corruption of the city found septs in rural caerns. Often formed around families, the rural septs rely on communication between smaller cells across the country. They adopt the folk ways of their kin families and maintain connections between hundreds of septs.

Time for a scary story! Until a few years ago, the Sept of Dandelion Hill was a fairly anonymous caern overshadowed by other more famous Appalachian caerns. One Memorial Day weekend, a group of cliath from New York showed up at the Sept’s doorstep, looking for information on a fetish. They saw that the sept had a lot of fetishes of their own, predominately featuring carved bone. The guests were invited to a feast. The Ragabash of the tribe grew curious about her meal and investigated. She eventually found a shed, filled with desecrated human corpses. Over the next three days the pack was hunted down by the sept. One pack member managed to escape and alert nearby septs, who destroyed the Dandelion Hill Maneater cult. It turns out that the cult had killed over fifty humans and ate them. The echoes of those three days still persist in the Atrocity realm.


In case you can't tell, this werewolf has a corncob pipe. Ron Spencer is my favorite.

Most urban septs don’t have a caern to base itself around, so the tribe has invented its own method of finding space. While on the move, a group of Gnawers can find a place to stay the night. They consecrate it, forming a Stomping Ground. These Grounds will often be found in tent cities, underpasses, or anywhere else a gathering of homeless people wouldn’t be too suspicious. The spots are guarded carefully and urban spirits will let the werewolves know if anything is amiss. Humans are allowed inside these Grounds, and many valuable connections are made by offering this protection.

As egalitarian as they are, the Bone Gnawers still have elders that they respect. Anybody with the requisite renown can claim to be an elder, but they need to make that claim before a Bone Gnawer audience and have a majority accept their claim. Even if that audience isn’t exactly representative of the Gnawers at large, it still counts, although a successful elder will listen to voice of the people. Another good way to earn favor is to offer gifts. Generosity and compassion are among the top qualities the Bone Gnawers look for in elders, and generosity in the approval process indicates you’ll continue to act that way. Other tribes call this corruption, of course. Venerable elders are given the title Mother or Father, the only titles the Gnawers have.

Focusing on survival above all, Bone Gnawer war heroes are rare. There are those that do dedicate themselves to earning glory, though. These are known as the Rat’s Teeth, and your Bone Gnawer character is presumably one of them. Otherwise he’s loving around getting food in the city. That can be fun, but that’s not really what Werewolf’s about. Because of the Gnawer dedication to equality, earning respect as a Gnawer can be a challenge. Even if you’ve saved the city, you still have to live like the rest of the Gnawers and are subject to the same obligations.

Both the Gnawers and urban spirits participate in a complex economic system known as “Stuff, Loot, Junk, and poo poo.” Loot is really useful things that you find on the street. It can sell pretty well at a pawnshop. Junk is things that don’t really work or aren’t useful, but could come in handy one day. Spirits will do a lot for just the right piece of Junk. You don’t want to throw it out, but it’s not exactly Loot either. Stuff is in between Loot and Junk. It’s stuff that is yours. While not as useful as Loot, it’s part of your identity. Unlike Loot or Junk, you’ve claimed ownership of Stuff. You’re not going to part with it in a trade because it is yours. A gift of Stuff is a honored gift indeed, at least to a Bone Gnawer. poo poo is poo poo.


I'm pretty sure "Trilobites Rock" is an in-joke, but I can't place it. Can anybody else give a hand?

Loot, Stuff and Junk have spiritual uses. In the Umbra, dilapidated items become better, more platonic forms of what they are. A broken umbrella may become a shield against acid rain spirits, or a ratty overcoat may become a badass trenchcoat. Loot forms are better than Junk forms, for the most part. Stuff has the best forms for its owner, so Gnawers will hold on to their Stuff. Theurges find Stuff the most useful, since they can personalize their Rites with them. A material component for a Rite can be exchanged for something that fulfills the same metaphysical purpose. The Rite of the Questing Stone, for instance, can be performed with a compass and wire, rather than a rock and string.

Next time: Sleeps-with-the-Fishes and friends

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Apologies to Syrg for not providing titles for my updates! I'll do so from now on.

Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

Chapter 2, Part 2

Quickly, now, the auspices! Ragabash are clowns and criminals. Their humor hides their devious dealings! Theurges are either crazy seeming urban shamans or compassionate healers giving their services to the needy. Bone Gnawer Philodox are more engaged in human politics and welfare than their tribal counterparts. They make the democracy of the Gnawers possible with their mediation. Galliards are slam poets and street performers connecting the Bone Gnawers to their human charges. Ahroun specialize in underhanded tactics. They swarm their enemies with sneak attacks, wearing down the enemy to save their strength for survival. More aggressive Ahroun Gnawers specialize in terrorism.


If Rob Liefeld could draw, this would be his interpretation of a spear.

Homid werewolves still shun human society, but are the most adept at existing at its fringes. They keep to their human forms, all the better to not arouse suspicion. However, werewolves can’t regenerate in their breed forms, so Homids are especially eager to join Umbral adventures or pack raids in order to slough off some of the ravages of living on the street. Contrary to popular opinion, Metis aren’t really treated any better in the Gnawers than in other tribes. As outcasts, there just tend to be more Metis in the Gnawers than in any other tribe, and they’re treated as such. Lupus are never born from dogs. Some Gnawers have experimented with it, but it’s an embarrassment and never works. Many Lupus are bred in captivity, but they are still full wolves, with all their instincts. Some wolf kin travel into the city to live, scavenging and sneaking. A recent flood of urban Lupus is causing some Gnawer leaders concern.

The Bone Gnawers can’t take the Pure Breed background at chargen, so to speak. Because of all the people they’ve integrated into their breeding stock, there’s no such thing as a Platonic Bone Gnawer. Because of this, there isn’t a purebred upper class among the Bone Gnawers that can get respect with other tribes, yet another thing demoting the Gnawers to second class status in the Garou Nation. Gnawer kin can be found in among ethnicity. This means that a Bone Gnawer might find himself kin to another tribe. For instance, a nineteenth century Gnawer might later join the Fianna, meaning that many present day Fianna can find a Gnawer on their family tree and vice versa. The Gnawers tend to leave behind illegitimate children. Some rationalize this, claiming that a true Bone Gnawer can survive such adversity. There’s pushback against this attitude, of course.

Most Bone Gnawers devote some of their time and energy to promoting certain causes. Communities of likeminded Gnawers form camps. Some have formal structure while others just share common ideals. Many camps actively recruit Gnawers to help in their projects and cause, while others are secret societies, usually involved in crime.

Rat Finks:

quote:

Sleeps-with-the-Fishes, a Ragabash informant, can give you a tip or two:

“You want facts? We’re going to play a little game. You ask me a question you want answered. I’ll tell you what I want to know in exchange. If you want the truth, it’s going to cost you. Now, write down what you want…take it to the fourth bathroom stall in the O’Tolley’s restroom…stick your question to a piece of chewing gum…and leave it inside the toilet paper roll. One of our rat-spirits will contact you.”


The Rat Finks are information traders. Gnawers tend to have contacts with many menial laborers: janitors, temps, clerks, waiters, etc. The Rat Finks can get a lot of information from these contacts, and they put it to work. They may help plan corporate raids on the basis of some particularly sensitive piece information. More often, they’ll play it more subtly, spying on a target company to see what it’s up to.

As implied the representative quote, the Finks’ trademark is unusual transmission methods. They have a complex system of codes and buzzwords and even more ways to get a message to someone who needs it. They might send codes via personal ads, a child’s clothing, street signs, or even Goldbergian instances of random happenstance.

The Rat Fink connection network isn’t limited to Kin. The Ratkin and Corax can be taught Fink codes to be inducted into the loop. In return, they can learn some especially juicy secrets. Even some Nosferatu are allowed in the circle. The Finks are less likely to trust other tribes, especially the Glass Walkers. No Walker is ever allowed to learn the Finks’ secrets.

Most Gnawers participate in the Finks without actually becoming a member. They’ll be called upon to do some cryptic task or to gather some information, usually by an unexpected source. In return, they may find themselves with better political success. Certainly they’ll have access to some very privileged information, or at least very privileged sources. Few Gnawers are actually full members of the Rat Finks.

Frankweilers: Frankweilers are the guardians of museums, public libraries, anywhere that has free or cheap admission and is devoted to education or culture.They’re named after From the Mixed-Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler, a book where two children live on their own in a museum after hours. The Frankweilers tend to live and stay within a one or two block radius of their preferred cultural hotspot to protect it.

The Frankweilers were originally known as the Theatre Lupine and although they focus less on the high arts today, they still avidly participate in showing classical theatre to the caerns, giving a very unique flavor to their traditional Garou stories. Some Frankweilers take on their theatre personas everywhere they go, becoming quixotic classical heroes. They even take on the names of famous literary characters.

The camp is known for being great educators and public advocates. They teach literacy or ESL, participate in health awareness programs, or even act as pro bono lawyers. They tend to be college dropouts or unlucky humanities majors. Where the Wyrm tries to prey on malaise and despair, the Frankweilers fight it.

The Hood:

quote:

For a protection racket, the Hood ain’t half bad.

The Gnawers are known to have a secret network of untraceable criminals. In every city, a Bone Gnawer elder can call upon some identitiless shmuck with no name to do whatever dirty deeds need doing. The Hood are one particular wing of this anonymous culture. They pledge to rob the rich to give to the poor, like their namesake. In name, the Hood acts separate from the rest of the tribe, but elders will still award them renown for their illicit activities.

The Hood does three things: hunt down and mark the filthy rich, with an emphasis on filthy. Wyrm taint often goes along with wealth. There are plenty of exploitative assholes who aren’t involved with the Wyrm, though. Even the Glass Walkers are sometimes targeted by the Hood. Then, they give their earnings to charity. It only goes so far, though, as their money comes with strings attached. Behave poorly and you earn the Hood’s wrath. The last activity of the Hood is to protect the homeless by any means necessary, but they only save the homeless worth saving. When the Hood helps someone out, they’ll stick around to make sure he stays safe, both from enemies and from himself.

Deserters: As the Apocalypse draws near, many Gnawers are trying to find ways to escape Earth before it all blows up. These Gnawers are experts and navigating the Umbra, spending more time there than many spirits. They plan and execute voyages farther into the Umbra than any other werewolves. They look for a way out.

It seems, though, that there is no way out, and many wayward Deserters are coming home. All their time in the Umbra has left them detached from the world, and now they’re even more homeless than the rest of the Gnawers. They’ve seen the things man was not meant to know, and they refuse to talk about it. Many have gone insane. They can’t recognize the artifacts of material life anymore. They do retain their extensive knowledge of the Umbra, though, and can be vital resources for any Umbral adventure. They may join other packs, but they’re liable to jump out into the Umbra for exploration.

Road Warders: The name says it all. These Gnawers explore the roads, seeking out Wyrm creatures to slay. They sneak aboard buses and trains, and they’re masters of hitchhiking. Unlike the Silent Striders, the Warders don’t really have a destination in mind when they travel. The journey is their only purpose. It makes them unreliable messengers or diplomats, and they refuse the jobs anyway. Their adventures on the road expose them to a variety of connections and friendships that can be valuable on their next excursion. They have a tendency to show up at Bone Gnawer septs just when they’re needed, bringing news of Wyrm threats or other pressing matters. Werewolf hitchhikers is what I’m getting at, here.


This guy looks trustworthy enough to let into your car.

Hillfolk: Hillbilly werewolves! These guys live down south and in Appalachia. They reject all modern technology, instead perpetuating the folk traditions of their chosen people. All the standard hillbilly stereotypes are applied to the Hillfolk. They’re seen as inbred and backwards. They do indeed drink moonshine, but the Hillfolk prefer “true moonshine”, infused with Wyld energies and too potent even for the Fianna. They scare off any “revenuers” (tax collecters), leading to stories of cannibal rednecks. Living close to fae strongholds, they develop lots of changeling connections.

The Swarm: While Rat is a totem of war, the Gnawers prefer sneakier tactics, to the disdain of the other tribes. They prefer guerilla tactics and sneak attacks to the Silver Fang duels. If the Wyrm isn’t going to fight fair, the Gnawers reason, why should the Garou? They aim to survive to continue the fight rather than seek glory or honor.

The Swarm are the masters of this fighting style. Worshippers of the Rat God, Rat’s true war aspect, they lie in wait secretly, waiting for the opportunity to fight for the tribe’s survival. When Gnawer elders encounter a situation that can’t be resolved with diplomacy or subterfuge, they call upon Rat’s Teeth, and when they do they strike hard.

Members of the Swarm often receive a personal vision from the Rat God, filling them with unquenchable bloodlust. They can act as sleeper agents in other packs, even devoting themselves to other pack totems, while still committing acts of urban terrorism and attacking vital targets.

That was the camps! Gotta say, these camps are great. There’s not a really boring pack among them. While the Sisterhood in the Black Furies can be made exciting with a little bit of work, every camp here provides flavorful character hooks. The Hillfolk are the weak point here, since while werewolf hillbillies are cool, it’s not exactly fertile ground for characterization. Still it’s better than the Amazons of Diana, whose hook was literally “We fight the Wyrm,” in a game where the Wyrm is the primary antagonist.

Next time: "You would speak of culinary habits..."

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



It's been a while, but here's more

Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

Chapter Two, Part 3

The only thing that sets the Garou apart from common monsters is the Litany, and so every Garou follows it. It’s the very basis of any form of werewolf community, at least in the Western Concordiat. The problem is that the Litany isn’t a written legal code. For those of you versed in legal parlance, it’s a system of common law rather than constitutional. Thus, any ruling or understanding of the Litany is based solely on precedent. This is brought to extremes by the Concordiat’s modern oral society. The letter of the law may as well not even exist compared to its spirit.

Because of the dominance of precedent in werewolf law, any ruling is by default rigged against the Bone Gnawers, as time and time again they’ve been ruled against in the past. The Litany is built to support heroes, and the Bone Gnawers are manifestly not heroic. Even when they’ve won cases, it’s the Philodox of the other tribes that are recognized for defending them. To avoid this, Bone Gnawers usually seek justice among their own tribe, since they’re more likely to have favorable precedent than other tribes.

Cut to a transcript! It’s a formal debate on whether to find all the rabble in New York accountable for violations of the Litany. This could mean that they be banned from any moots. Pro-exile is Zachary Ellison, a Shadow Lord. The contra side is taken up by Victor Bonecrusher, a Gnawer Metis. Most of the other tribebooks put very little effort into their Litany sections, so this is welcome, but at the same time it’s long and if you’re not interested in werewolf court drama, you probably won’t find this interesting. Then again, Law and Order with werewolves sounds pretty great.

First up is Garou Shall not Mate with Garou. Ellison alleges that the Gnawers have been loving non-stop, boosting their ranks with lazy Metis. Most other tribes put their Metis to work, forcing them to guard their septs and perform other arduous tasks which the Metis are suited to as giant wolfmen, but the Gnawers don’t do that. Bonecrusher argues that they treat the Metis like any other Gnawer because the Metis haven’t done anything wrong. The truth is that the Bone Gnawers are a little lax on restricting sex; it’s only a crime if you’re caught. Most Gnawers know or learn how to use protection. Still, it’s werewolf incest, and that’s just gross. Metis are outcasts, and therefore accepted by the Gnawers, but they will still exile any Garou that produces one.

Next is Combat the Wyrm Wherever it Dwells and Wherever it Breeds. Ellison is upset that the Gnawers tend to align themselves with Wyrm tainted parties, like the Ratkin or vampires. Bonecrusher points out that the Shadow Lords do the same thing. The only difference is that the Bone Gnawers’ deals don’t tend to blow up in their face. The Bone Gnawers are focused on survival, so the committing to destroying all the agents of the Wyrm everywhere is impractical. They tend to fight more indirectly, focusing on helping communities affected by Wyrm taint.

Respect the Territory of Another is a difficult tenet to uphold in the city. Ellison accuses the rabble of sneaking into different septs without introducing themselves and helping themselves to valuable resources. All Bonecrusher can say to this is that introducing ones’ self in Garou culture often means a recitation of lineage, which many Gnawers can’t do. Instead, the Gnawers uphold the sanctity of foreign territory in their own way, not pissing anybody off, messing up the local ecosystem (such as it is), or performing illicit business in another party’s turf.

Ellison says that the Bone Gnawers can’t Accept an Honorable Surrender because nobody would surrender to a Gnawer! :iceburn: Bonecrusher offers to punch Ellison’s lights out. Bone Gnawers tend to abuse this law in physical challenges, but they’re very adept in non-traditional duels. The Gnawers have mad basketball skills. On the streets, though, members of the rabble will gently caress each other up and expect to be hosed up in return.

The Gnawers just tend to go through the motions of Submission to those of Higher Station, and both Ellison and Bonecrusher know it. Bonecrusher, though, argues that their impoverished state is submission enough. The Gnawers really do respect their own Mothers and Fathers, but anybody else can just expect a Rite of Contrition once in a while.

On to The First Share of the Kill to the Greatest in Station. Ellison says that all the Gnawers have to offer is cardboard stew, but Bonecrusher points out that showing disgust at a gift of food from a starving man is a dick move. The name “Bone Gnawers” is derived from their position of getting access to a carcass last. Thus, the Gnawers pride themselves on their propensity for scavenging. Often, an elder Gnawer will claim the greatest share of the loot on a scavenging mission. Otherwise, it’s every werewolf for himself.
Speaking of food, Ellison accuses the Gnawers of producing cannibals in violation of Ye Shall not Eat the Flesh of Humans. Bonecrusher argues that the Gnawers devote themselves to hunting down the remnants of the Man Eaters of Dandelion Hill. They have specialized rites for it and they’re all trained to find the telltale signs. Whether or not there are still Man Eaters in the tribe is unclear (plot hook!), but the Gnawers focus on it anyway.

Ellison then argues that the Bone Gnawers have failed to Respect those Beneath Ye – All are of Gaia for failing to properly care for their cubs. They’re forced to scavenge and scrounge. They’re improperly dressed, educated and fed, and the Gnawers have full responsibility for that. Bonecrusher retorts that the Shadow Lords, as superior to the Bone Gnawers, could also care for the cubs, or even the Gnawers as a whole. The Gnawers’ focus on democracy is traditionally justified with this code, as it makes the elders directly accountable for respecting their constituents.

Because the rabble aren’t accountable to anyone, there’s a danger that they’ll endanger The Veil. Ellison can’t verify whether there have been any breaches, and that worries him. Bonecrusher takes this as a sign that the rabble are capable indeed. The septs themselves don’t allow anyone out of Homid form, but this renders their caerns vulnerable to attack.

Do Not Suffer Thy People to Tend to Thy Illness is violated by the Gnawers respect and veneration for their weak elders and their mentally ill street prophets, Ellison argues. Bonecrusher argues that they need their wise leaders, so they’re not really tending to anybody’s illness. Sometimes, elders leave the protection of their septs to brave the streets, proving their capacity to survive as a Bone Gnawer. Street prophets need to prove their ability before earning the respect of the tribe, as well as their ability to take care of themselves.

While the Gnawers aren’t likely to Challenge a Leader During Wartime, they will refuse to rally to a war leader’s cause, preserving their own safety. Challenging a Bone Gnawer leader is a moot point, since democracy means that anybody can be a leader. Bonecrusher responds that tons of anonymous Gnawers have died for the Garou Nation’s wars and they must be respected for that. Truly, the Gnawers devote themselves to their leaders, as their strategies rely on pack tactics.

Ye Shall Take No Action that Allows a Caern to be Violated is a tenet that the Bone Gnawers take very seriously. There are very few urban caerns, and for the most part the Gnawers are responsible for protecting them. Thus, anyone who lets one of these caerns go is verboten among the Gnawers.

The final verdict is a compromise. The rabble are allowed to moots, but they’re subject to more scrutiny. Bonecrusher believes that he won, but it’s likely that Ellison threw the debate to continue investigating the supposed depredations of the rabble.

Time for stereotypes!

Black Furies: Sleeps-with-the-Fishes thinks that they’re just as committed to social justice as the Bone Gnawers, but the Furies hate men! Oscar Spits-Far just thinks that they’re uppity and prudish.

Children of Gaia: Mother-May-Eye believes that they’re the only ones that really care about the Bone Gnawers and their kin, but Dagger-Bite thinks they’re wimps.

Fianna: The Fianna and their kin were once among the downtrodden masses, but now they’re doing just fine.

Get of Fenris: Not Here advises that flattering their strength makes them easy to get along with, and that’s important, since the safest place to be is behind a Fenrir.

Glass Walkers: There was a time when the Glass Walkers and the Bone Gnawers were considering banding together, but now the socioeconomic gap between them is too wide. The Walkers tend to exploit the Gnawers, but the Gnawers scam them right back.

Red Talons: They’re a danger to the Garou Nation, says Reads-the-Paper. The Bone Gnawer Lupus consider them backwards.

Shadow Lords: The Gnawers have symbiotic relationship with these guys. They’ll give the Shadow Lords info, but when their scheming comes to fruition, the Gnawers are right there ready to backstab the Lords and get influence.

Silent Striders: The Road Warders respect them as traveling companions, but the Swarm, worshippers of the Rat God, hate Owl and his followers.

Silver Fangs: Joe Crow respects the Fangs as leaders, but he doesn’t quite trust them, as they’re batshit insane. He recommends keeping your distance. Fyodor Slams-Stoli recommends Communist revolution.

Uktena: On one hand, they might be in thrall to the Wyrm. On the other hand, the Uktena’s kin are downtrodden too.

Wendigo: They’re damned Canadians. gently caress those guys, with their socialism and their gun control.

Stargazers: It wasn’t an easy choice to leave, but it was probably the right one.

A general rule for other supernaturals: hide from everything.

:drac: Don’t work with vampires. Even if they’re committed to acting like a human, they’re going to lose. There have been many werewolf/vampire alliances before, and they’ve all failed. Vampires place their own survival first and foremost. They prey on the defenseless that the Gnawers commit to protecting. The Rat Finks will work with the Nosferatu, as they’re outcasts too and are generally more trustworthy. It only goes so far though, and they’re constantly vigilant.


I...I don't even...

:smugwizard: Sorcerers defy Gaia with their magic! However, you can learn some good improvised rituals from them. The Weaver doesn’t like them, which is fine in the Gnawers’ book.

Hunters: They’re crazy, which means they’re dangerous. If you find one, take them out fast.
:ghost: Don’t sleep in a graveyard.

The Fae: They don’t belong in this world anymore, and it’s killing them slowly. Don’t get involved.

Walks-the-Earth, a Road Warder elder, tells us about the Fera. He’s roamed the world searching for the American Dream (maybe literally), and he’s seen all kinds of weird shapeshifters, like lizardmen. I’m only including the interesting ones, since most of these are pretty generic.

Ajaba: Some Bone Gnawers from African have hung out with these guys, but the hyenas are crazy and well hidden.

Gurahl: They’re generous, so long as you don’t let them know you’re a werewolf.

Mokolé: Sometimes they’re involved in drugrunning. They’re pretty cool when they’re high.

Ratkin: They’re devoted to chaos. The Bone Gnawers will work with them, but it can get hairy.

The Miseries section is a bit of an anomaly for a tribebook. Essentially, it’s a list of metaplot-tangential plothooks for Bone Gnawer focused chronicles.

The Nosferatu are beginning to stir. As the Bone Gnawers claim more territory, they’re more likely to encounter unsubtle vampire activity. A big conflict between the two groups is almost certain to go down.

The Ratkin are returning from the Umbra en masse, and the shamans devoted to Rat are in a perfect position to figure out what they’re up to. They have some big plans, that’s for sure, and they might cause some massive damage.

There’s a spiritual conflict going on between two aspects of Rat. The Mother Rat is a spirit of generosity, compassion, and charity, while the Rat God is a totem of war. Followers of the two aspects are engaged in debate over the tribe’s approach to the Apocalypse. Whether the Gnawers will help the weak through Armageddon or attack the Wyrm in a death swarm is unclear. Extremists are already beginning to rally followers and stir trouble.

The rabble is growing and it’s becoming more difficult to involve them in the tribe. Integrating them into werewolf society is going to be essential for the final battle. However, many of them plot rebellion, making the Garou Nation into a more egalitarian society. Can the Nation afford such upheaval when the end is nigh?

The Hood plans a revolution against the wealthy, toppling them to help the needy. Bone Gnawer elders oppose them, but their resources are strained already. They might not be able to stop the Hood’s reckless plans.

The Ring of Shadows is a rumored conspiracy of Bone Gnawers, Ratkin, and Nosferatu. What his conspiracy is up to is unclear. Perhaps the Nosferatu secretly run the Gnawers, or they’re planning to blow up a city.

After all this, we need to know how Bone Gnawers have fun. Subway surfing is always a good time. It’s exactly what you imagine: there werewolves jump on the roof of a subway car and ride it. Certain Gifts can prevent a Veil break. It can draw the attention of some unsavory types, though, so it can be dangerous. Still, all Gnawers are encouraged to ride the rails at least once. The Feast of Fools picks one Gnawer to be treated like a king for the day.


This is more like it.

Next time: Let’s make pipe bombs.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

Chapter 3, Part 1


Way to uphold the Veil, guys.

Like all the tribebooks, the book sees fit to advise us on how to pick Backgrounds for our Bone Gnawer character. Unlike other tribebooks, they actually offer non-generic, useful hints.

Bone Gnawer Allies are often influential but charitable figures that can give a Bone Gnawer a hand, in some ways replacing their nonexistent Resources. You might get shelter from an Ally, and it comes with no supernatural or political strings attached. Sounds good, right? Well, when one of the suggested Allies is a kindly old lady who recognizes you from a homeless shelter, it kind of puts the utility of mundane Allies against, say, a Fetish into question.
Bone Gnawers can’t access their Ancestors, so don’t try it! If a player wanted, I would probably be amenable to letting it fly, though. There’s less compelling reasons to deny Bone Gnawers access to Ancestors than Resources or Pure Breed.

Contacts are something of a Bone Gnawer specialty. They keep their ears low to the ground, so they can get all kinds of juicy information from a variety of street level sources.

More so than other tribes, Bone Gnawer Kinfolk can be anybody. They do tend to be poor or at the very most low middle class, though. Kinfolk can be a little more useful than Allies, though, so you can create Kinfolk with a very special set of skills. Dock workers might be useful for physical aid, or you could have some seedy criminal relatives.

The book actually gives good guidelines for creating your own Fetishes. A good rule of thumb is to allow Fetishes to replicate a Gift of a level equal to the Fetish’s dot value. A two dot Fetish could have a level 2 Gift, for instance. This is especially appropriate for the Bone Gnawers, whose Stuff based magical system lends them to have a lot of easy to use Fetishes. Bone Gnawer Fetishes tend to be common, but broken modern day items. They don’t really have a lot of tech uses, per se. Instead, they focus on practical needs. Examples include a Styrofoam container that refills with cheap fast food, milk cartons that can track missing children directly, or a bucket that deals lethal damage if you hit someone over the head with it.

Because Bone Gnawer kin is so scattered, they can’t take Pure Breed. As discussed previously, there’s no such thing as the idealized Bone Gnawer.

Bone Gnawers also can’t take Resources, but dealing with that is a little more nuanced. Resources indicates a reliable income stream, which defies the basic notion of a Bone Gnawer. They can have money to use, but it’s always transitory. Money is spent quickly, and borrowing it can be a risky venture. Sources for borrowing money tend to dry up fast when you can’t pay your debts. There are ways for a Bone Gnawer to come up with money, though! You can make a modified hunting roll to “hunt” for money. Just replace Primal Urge with the appropriate ability. You can only make this roll once a day.

Unlike Merits, the nWoD equivalent to Backgrounds, Backgrounds usually can’t be increased with experience points. You can only get Backgrounds in play via Storyteller fiat. Befriending people gets Allies or Contacts, finding a Fetish gets you Fetish dots, and so on. Bootstrapping is an optional rule to change that. You can buy Backgrounds based on their current rating. This means that adding a new Background where you have no dots can still only happen by Storyteller fiat.

But there’s another optional rule to fix that! You can take a Background dot where you didn’t have one before for that chapter, but you get half the experience for that chapter. You can’t keep it though unless you really earn it.

Since all of this is contingent on the Storyteller using these optional rules anyway, you could just ask him for the opportunity to earn Backgrounds, but most roleplaying game rules preclude actual adult communication. These rules are silly, but if a Storyteller is a grognard who really can’t handle players getting stats for “free”, then he might like these better.

Without any introduction, here are the Bone Gnawer Gifts! Like last time, we’ll look at both the Revised core Bone Gnawer charms and the tribebook’s additions. While it may have seemed weird for the Black Furies, there’s a very good reason to do this with the Bone Gnawers.

First, the core. The trademark Bone Gnawer Gift is Cooking, a Level 1 Gift that allows the Gnawer to cook anything and make it edible. It doesn’t necessarily taste good, but it can be eaten. Resist Toxin is found in several tribes’ Gift list, but the Gnawers learn it from a trash spirit. Tagalong is a weird one. It allows a Gnawer to receive the benefits of a pack totem without actually joining the pack. The pack does have to consent to the Gnawer tagging along, though. From the 20th Anniversary Edition, there's Scent of Sweet Honey, which sounds lame until you realize it allows a Gnawer to sic a bunch of fleas and rats on a person for a day, penalizing every action they take. It also includes Trash is Treasure, which allows a broken or worn item to function as if it was in perfect condition. This incidentally allows you to fire an unloaded gun.

Similar to Cooking, The Hungry Hound allows the Gnawer to find the nearest source of edible food. Ironically, it’s taught by a raccoon spirit. Cooking is generally better than this Gift in every way, though, since it allows the werewolf to eat anything everywhere, without a hunt required. Smell of Success is much better, enabling a Gnawer to smell how wealthy a passerby is. Urban Ward sets up an alarm around a certain area. As you can imagine, the LARP rules for this are ridiculously complicated. Similarly, The Mark allows you to mark your territory in the traditional canine manner. A dog spirit teaches this gift, of course.

Declamation allows a werewolf to read things really quickly and remember all of it. It’s used by the Frankweilers and Ratfinks. This is where the problems with the Gifts in this book start becoming apparent. While most of the Gifts here are mechanically sound, there’s some conceptual drift going on. There are so many Gifts in this book, but so few that you can actually imagine a Bone Gnawer actually taking. Look at Desperate Strength. It allows you to take aggravated damage to improve a Feat of Strength roll, but what about that suggests “homeless werewolf”? It would be much more appropriate in Get of Fenris or Silver Fangs. W20 handles this better by downgrading the damage to bashing and decreasing the bonus accordingly. It's less allowing you to do ridiculous stunts via self harm and more draining your energy to perform certain tasks.

:siren:Kitchen Chemistry:siren:. Hoo boy, Kitchen Chemistry. With ten minutes, one point of RAGE, and any three common kitchen chemicals, you can make a bomb. How much damage does it do? One level of aggravated damage for each dot of permanent RAGE the Gift user has. This means that an Ahroun that doesn’t buy up his RAGE can get a Gift that does five levels of aggravated damage at chargen. Since aggravated damage is unsoakable and unregenerable, this is enough to kill some supernaturals in a single explosion. The only complicating factor is that it requires an Intelligence+Science roll to use reliably, but it’s difficult 6, meaning that on average you’ll get half your dice pool in successes. Basically, any Homid or Metis that takes this can render any combat irrelevant. “Imbalance” is a term that’s thrown around a lot, but this right here illustrates all the problems imbalance causes. If you have decent RAGE, Intelligence and or Science stats, why would you take any other Gift? I mean, if you were a Bone Gnawer IRL, Cooking would be really cool, but most Storytellers aren’t going to really call for hunger checks. No one’s going to look at a flavorful thing like Cooking when Kitchen Chemistry exists. Again, the LARP rules on his are complex and onerous.


Rat'll just teach anyone how to blow up entire rooms of people.

Next time: Holy poo poo, there are a lot of Gifts.

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 08:40 on May 22, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

Chapter 3, Part 2

The Bone Gnawer tribebook organizes its Gifts a bit differently than its counterparts. As we saw in Black Furies, most tribebooks have Gifts that only members of a particular camp could take. Sometimes this didn’t make a whole lot of sense, since some camps like the Amazons of Diana didn’t really formally initiate members, but it also did a good job of actually distinguishing one camp from another beyond the weak fluff writing. Here, though, the camps are described well enough to actually be compelling in their own right, so every Gift here can be taken by any Bone Gnawer.

On to Level 2 gifts, then. In the core, Bone Gnawers can pick up Blissful Ignorance from the Ragabash Gift list, allowing any Bone Gnawer to temporarily erase a memory to avoid giving away secrets. They also get Odious Aroma, which increases a Gnawer’s stank to the point that anyone in the vicinity gets a -2 penalty to all actions from choking. W20 has Cornered Rat’s Ferocity, which sends the werewolf into a frenzy, boosting all attack rolls. Between the Cracks points out a secluded urban area to perform rites or to set up a Stomping Ground. Guise of the Hound allows a werewolf to shapeshift into a dog, rather than a wolf, to better blend into an urban environment.

From the tribebook, Dead End allows the Bone Gnawer to create a misleading graffiti tag or redirect a street sign to prevent someone from tracking him. Basically, you become Bugs Bunny. It increases the difficulty of finding the Gnawer “beyond that point”, but I really have no idea what this means. Road Ward is better, allowing a Gnawer to jump off a car or other vehicle going 75 mph or more without taking any damage. A wanderlust spirit teaches the Gift. On Patrol is an enhancement to Sense Wyrm or other Gifts that can detect supernatural creatures, increases the Gift’s radius to an entire city block.

Stone Throwing Devil increases throwing damage. It’s useful for rioters. I Got a Rock also boosts your throwing capability. It says that it increases throwing accuracy, but really it lowers the difficulty of throwing anything, no matter how cumbersome, to 4, which is insane. You just need to be able to lift the item in question.

Hootenany is a standout Gift. Used by the Hillfolk, it’s basically Inspire Competence for werewolves. A werewolf plays a musical instrument, and every member of his pack gets dice to increase their Athletics or Brawl checks. Any enemies in the vicinity have to succeed a Willpower check or they’ll be forced to dance. The book recommends performing Dueling Banjos.

Core Level 3 Gifts include Friend in Need, which allows a Gnawer to lend willpower, RAGE, Gnosis, Gifts, or even health levels to a packmate or fellow Bone Gnawer. They also get Reshape Object from the homid Gift list. Instead of Friend in Need, W20 includes Call the Rust, rendering a metal device unusable, taught by a water spirit. Gift of the Termite does the same thing, but with wood. Gift of the Skunk is, of course, taught by a skunk spirit. It gives a werewolf musk spray, which can incapacitate targets. It doesn’t work on beings with no sense of smell, though.

The tribebook brings us Lucky Bastard, a once-per-session reroll. Streets Tell Stories gives a Gnawer limited postcognition on any city street. It’s taught by a City Father or Mother itself. Laugh of the Hyena boosts a Gnawer’s resistance to mind control, as long as he laughs out loud. Rant and Rave allows a Gnawer to speak crazy talk that can only be understood by packmates. The werewolf can also send psychic messages across a certain distance, across the state at its highest level. Yes, this does mean that it has less range in Rhode Island than Texas.

Cooter’s Revenge enchants a car repair tool, decreasing the difficulty of all repairs with that tool to 4. RAGE allows it to be used as a weapon. This isn’t the last Dukes of Hazzard reference in the book, either. Dumpster Diving allows a werewolf to teleport from one dumpster to another anywhere in the planet, at the Great Trash Heap’s discretion. After all, all trash piles are just fallen reflections of the Great Trash Heap’s might.

At Level 4, Bone Gnawers can learn Attunemnt from the core, allowing the Gnawer to ask city spirits anything. Infest summons vermin to wreck a house. W20 has Blink, a more quick and reliable urban teleport.

The tribebook offers Shadow of the Rat which is a straight difficulty buff to all Stamina rolls. Pretty boring. Face in the Crowd allows a Gnawer to direct an already extant angry mob. Trust Me makes one lie a Gnawer tells in a session completely believable, no roll required, as long as he ends the story with “Trust me.”

Level 5 core Gifts include Riot and Survivor. Riot creates just that, a riot. Five successes on a difficulty 8 Wits+Subterfuge roll can send an entire city into a riot. Survivor removes the need for sleep, drink, or food for a certain amount of days. An extra Gnosis point can add Stamina levels and remove wound penalties, but the duration is cut short.


From W20, featuring the cut Gift: Hug of the Raccoon

From the tribebook, Piping sends out a summons to all the Bone Gnawers in a city. Help Me makes a human so compassionate towards a Gnawer that he’ll go to ridiculous extremes to help the werewolf out. He might empty an ATM account, or lend the Gnawer is car. Abuse can carry Honor penalties, though.

Next time: Rite of the Pizza

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 20:35 on May 22, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Tribebook: Bone Gnawers

Chapter 3, Part 3

All tribes put their own spin on Rites, but Bone Gnawer Rites are the spinniest. While other tribes rely on repetition of proven methods, Gnawer Theurges throw whatever works together. Other tribes may consider this blasphemous, but it’s really hard to find the necessary components for an ancient nature rite in a contemporary city. Optionally, an ST may make the Rite more difficult with improvised ingredients, in return for extra renown awards from Bone Gnawer elders. Gnawers can even make up their own rites! There aren’t any rules for this, though, but many current Gnawer rites are based off of those improvisations or variants on pre-existing rites.

Rite of the Cardboard Palace creates an adequate shelter for a Bone Gnawer out of cardboard and assorted trash. It’s bigger on the inside, and it won’t break the Veil. It’s such a great palace, you can heal aggravated damage inside. The Rite of the Pizza requires calling up a gang of Gnawers and agreeing on buying a pizza, unanimously agreeing on toppings. Should this requirement be resolved, the group can decide on a specific goal and receive extra dice they can spend on tasks directly related to that task. The difficulty on the roll to get these dice is really high, though, so you’re most likely only going to get two. The LARP rules literally require buying an actual pizza and sharing it.

Rite of the Crash Space is an upgrade to the Cardboard Palace; it makes recovering Gnosis in your hovel easier. Rite of the Shopping Cart makes any container into a limited Bag of Holding.

Rite of the Cardboard Fortress, as you can probably guess, is another upgrade to Cardboard Palace. It’s even bigger and you can use it as a gate to the Umbra. If the fuzz smashes up your fortress, they’ll find nothing inside. Rite of Man Taint is a contested roll to find out whether a werewolf ate a human. Rite of the Leash is a very severe punishment rite that attaches a leash to a Gnawer for breaking a law, humiliating him. He can’t run away, for the leash is unbreakable.

Rite of the Signpost makes a particular road really inhospitable to travel. It’s creepy, easy to get lost in, and really smelly. Getting through the route requires a Willpower roll. Rite of No Trespassing does the same thing, but allows many werewolves to cooperate, making the Willpower roll more difficult.

Time for Fetishes, then! Lost Keyring is a keyring full of assorted keys. Making a Perception+Repair roll based on the complexity of any given lock allows you to find the key for that lock on you keyring, allowing you to open any conventional lock. If it’s a key card system, you’re out of luck. Ivan’s Molotov is a magical Molotov Cocktail that causes a ton of aggravated damage. It’s basically the Fetish version of Kitchen Chemistry. The Whole Gym Bag is a Bag of Holding that transforms with the werewolf, but it can’t hold technological items, meaning guns and computers.

Rover’s Whistle is a dog whistle that works on werewolves. It can also summon a ton of stray dogs. Hitching Glove compels a driver to pick you up when hitchhiking. Spirit Radio is a little bit more inspired. It allows you to eavesdrop on spirits, getting news reports on spiritual activity all over the city. Umbral CB allows a werewolf to broadcast into the material realm from anywhere in the Umbra. Trucker lingo is required, though.

Merits & Flaws: Struggling gives a Bone Gnawer access to Resources, as he has a minimum wage job. On one hand, this can derail an entire chronicle, since the PC has to accommodate working in addition to werewolf adventures, but on the other hand it’s a good explanation for why a character’s absent when his player’s missing a session.

Shame is actually a Merit, as it gives A Bone Gnawer access to Ancestors, albeit from another tribe. See, the character is actually descended from a disgraced member of another tribe. This gives your character a dark secret though, as if other Garou learn about your ancestry, your social rolls with them are penalized, especially if they’re from your ancestral tribe. It’s a very effective plot hook, basically.

Ratkin Buddies is a more expensive Merit, but Ratkin can be pretty useful allies. Once in a story, the ST rolls on a table. On a bad day, Ratkin mess with you. On a good day, Ratkin will help you out, or even give you a present. 40% of the time, they’ll do nothing. Ratkin won’t reveal themselves to members of other tribes, though, so that can be a good plot hook. That doesn’t really justify taking this merit over Allies, though, if you want Ratkin friends.

Anosmia means you can’t smell! This penalizes hunting and Lupine Perception rolls, of course. Lost Homid means you’re a feral amnesiac, with the same Ability restrictions as a Lupus! It’s only a 2 point flaw, even though this is character defining and a ridiculous challenge to overcome. Phobia is obvious, but why it’s in the Bone Gnawer book is less so. Jackal’s Blood is the only Flaw here with teeth. It basically gives the ST a chance to completely screw you over once a session, in any way he sees fit.

On to Totems, one of the most fondly remembered sections of the book, and deservedly so. Totems have always been one of my favorite parts of Werewolf, since they're a very clear statement of purpose on the part of a PC group, a fun character, and a source of a lot of great symbolism. This book gets that very well. First, we get an explanation of totemic aspects. A totem can symbolize different things to different tribes, thus granting different abilities. The moon itself is a great example of this: it’s alternately a warrior, bard, lawyer, mystic, or trickster, depending on its phase. Rat has three major aspects: a trickster/stealthy form, a war god form, and a nurturing form. Most Gnawers see Rat as the tricky clever warrior, but two extreme camps have rallied around the Rat God and the Mother Rat.

Followers of the Rat God are obsessed with violence for violence’s sake. They can’t be tricked into serving anyone else, not even with Mind magic or Dominate. They only serve their God. Devotees of the Mother Rat are compelled to offer charity to anyone who demands it, particularly children and Metis. Any aspect of Rat can take on the form of any given rodent, leading the Bone Gnawers to treat them with reverence. This makes Owl’s command to sacrifice rats especially scandalous to the Gnawers.

The American Dream is lost, but certainly not dead. Its followers are compelled by optimism about the future of the nation and of themselves. They know that America is filled with good people and they seek to help those people out. The American Dream doesn’t offer much advice, but it comes at exactly the right moment, usually in the guise of an average American citizen. Because recognizing the Dream in its incarnate form is so difficult, its followers treat everyone with respect. To those with a more mystic, Wyld bent, the American Dream can appear in the form of a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. STs are advised to designate one minor mortal character in a chronicle as the American Dream in disguise, who will come to the pack’s aid when they really need it.

Followers of the American Dream get a couple of benefits. They can’t get lost in the USA, even when compelled. They also get 2 dice in Athletics and Empathy to share. The Athletics bonus doesn’t apply to hockey or soccer, and Empathy doesn’t apply to foreigners. Everyone in the pack gets Social bonuses when dealing with officers of the Constitution. Followers are also compelled to act obnoxiously when dealing with foreigners or overseas.

Tasmanian Devil, the old Bunyip totem, has chosen to patronize the Bone Gnawers. He grants everyone Hare’s Leap, 2 extra points in Enigmas, and easier access to the Umbra. Her followers have to advocate for the Bunyip and pass up no opportunity to kill Black Spiral Dancers, who tricked the Garou Nation into killing the Bunyip.

The General Lee isn’t the Civil War general, but is the totem of Cars, taking on the aspect of the greatest car of all time. A pack devoted to the General must choose a rundown car to repair. This car houses the General. As they increase in rank, the car’s capabilities increase with it. At Rank 5, the car can drive into the Umbra. At any level, the car is the Coolest Car. The difficulty of stunts or chases is decreased and every member of the pack gets points in Drive and Crafts (specialty automotive repair). They can even reroll failed Drive checks at Rank 3. In return, they have to spend an hour a day maintaining their vehicle.


Boss Hogg has opposed the Duke boys for the last time.

Jackal was an ancient patron totem to the Bone Gnawers when they hailed from Northern Africa and he still offers his aid. His followers get Survival 2, Leadership 1, and Blur of the Milky Eye to share. He also grants 1 dot of Ancestors to each of his followers, even if they’re Bone Gnawers or Silent Striders. Glass Walkers miss out. Devotees are loath to strike first in a fight, as befits a scavenger. If they do attack first, the Storyteller can turn one failed roll into a botch within three sessions.

Mouse is a bit of a curiosity. She only costs one background point, but he only grants one point of Stealth and Tagalong. She basically exists to introduce followers to other, more powerful totems to follow. She forbids her followers from breaking the Veil for any reason.

The Great Trash Heap is the totem of junk. His consciousness is spread through every individual trash pile, dumpster, and land fill in the world. Once a moon, he’ll answer any question from his packs. Members of a GTH pack can contact each other through tin cans and get Enigmas and Investigate 2. They must live on a trash heap, though.

Crow is another scavenger spirit, but the aspect the Gnawers respect is one of loyalty. His followers must fanatically rally behind a cause or party, and in return they receive points in Alertness, Subterfuge, or Etiquette. He’s usually on hand for advice as well. His devotees can also choose to take a vow of poverty, and in return they get extra renown and a murder of crows they can use for any purpose, which is amazing considering Bone Gnawers can’t have Resources anyway.

Hyena is a constant critic of authority and a savage fighter besides. His trademark is manic, derisive laughter. His followers get extra willpower, Primal Urge, and Subterfuge, as well as Laugh of the Hyena when they reach Rank 2. However, his followers also tend to go crazy, requiring a daily willpower roll to resist madness.

Next time: Mediation via chain beatdown

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



This tribebook takes a different tack for their sample characters, not recommending them as PCs at all. Even the historical figures are meant to have their stat blocks repurposed for personal characters. Common sense to someone not used to metaplot, but good advice nonetheless.

Rabble Rouser


How nineties, for a book published in 2002.

quote:

The Time is almost at hand. Spread the word.

The Rabble Rouser came from a hard scrabble background. Her dad was always away on “business” with his “pack” of “buddies” and her mom was poor. Turns out, she was a Bone Gnawer. Her dad sacrificed his time with his family to serve the sept, but both he and his daughter were treated like scum. The other Bone Gnawers, though, helped out the Rabble Rouser. So, RR has decided it’s time for revolution. You still have to keep it on the DL, though, since you don’t actually have the backing of the rabble just yet. Basically you’re a spy.

Gotta say, not a great character archetype. Ragabash are supposed to be all about “questioning the ways” anyway. This is a pretty personal crusade, too, unless you’re building the chronicle around revolution. If you need a quick young Turk werewolf, though, you can look to the Rabble Rouser, I guess. She’ll be crap in a fight with tertiary physical traits and only two dots of Brawl, but if you’re not playing her that’s fine. Her Gifts are well chosen, Persuasion for social stuff, Blur of the Milky Eye for sneaking, and Tagalong to better support her role ingratiating herself to diverse communities For some reason, she has a lot of Rites and Rituals dots, which I suppose means she’s supposed to be a revolutionary leader, but otherwise she’s statted out like a starting character. Her equipment includes “anarchistic literature” :raise: A poor showing.

Bird Lady


Pictured, someone passing herself as a "kind old lady"

quote:

Here, pretty, pretty, pretties! Come and tell me what you’ve been doing in this big, dirty city! Yes, come and tell me!

A lot of oWoD splatbooks have a habit of making their sample characters X profession, but a supernatural creature! This is a good example of this. A crazy bird-feeder, but a werewolf! She’s forgotten what it’s like to be human, if she ever was a human (her breed is Lupus, so no). All she remembers is playing with birds, and the birds being there after her change. Feeding the birds helps her keep her cover up, which is good because she can’t stand being around anybody other than birds.

Again, playing as this character would suck, but for entirely different reasons. While playing a werewolf revolutionary could be pretty cool, this character is a fishmalk, plain and simple. The roleplaying hints give her free reign to babble incoherently around other people. Her statblock is useful if you want a mad street prophet Theurge, but again, she’s built as a starting character. She’s well put together as a mystic, but she’d be even worse off in a fight than the Rabble Rouser, with only one dot of Strength and one dot of Brawl. Don’t play as this character, is what I’m saying.

Metis Mediator


Is it just me, or does this picture evoke the hammer and sickle?

quote:

I thank the sept leader-rhya for allowing me this chance to speak. I ask this opportunity not merely for my own sake – but for the sakes of all those whose voices were never heard.

:jerkbag: In the lesser tribebooks, being a Metis is used as a character hook all on its own. While the Metis are compelling, relying on that hook is going to be boring. This character is built along those lines. He was raised by a sept of another tribe, who taught him that to make up for his sinful existence, he needed to die for the sept. When he realized that this was wrong, he left and was accepted into the Bone Gnawers. Even in the Bone Gnawers, leaders just wanted him to serve their schemes. Once the Mediator stood up for himself, he earned the respect of the Bone Gnawer metis community. Now, he represents them in the Gnawer political arena.

Now this guy’s built great. He’s got points everywhere he needs them, in Law, Politics, and Etiquette. As a hulk, he’s also got a combat role, and he has points in physical traits, Brawl and Melee. While a werewolf social justice warrior doesn’t get me excited, it might work for someone else, especially if you’re doing a political chronicle. The character’s got an arc to his own. I approve. The only weakpoint is that his equipment includes a copy of Plato’s Republic, which is not only pretentious, but also dumb considering Plato advocated for segregation and a rigid caste system.

Frankweiler Bootlicker


I thought wereapes wouldn't come until Changing Breeds!

quote:

Oh wise and revered elders, if I might be so bold, I have composed a certain ode to the exploits of our most puissant warder, and would love nothing better than honoring him with my humble verse. <clearing throat> “Behold! The thews of the mighty wolf! Far stronger than the forge’s steel…

One of two camp representatives. At his core, this character is a bad poet and hero worshipper. Pretty basic, but can make for some really fun roleplaying. Statwise he’s... weird. Physical tertiary, again, but he has a high Intelligence score, which I feel would deteriorate from the fun of playing this character. He’s got a great Dodge score, but no combat skills whatsoever, which is definitely bad for a werewolf character. His Gifts are all over the place, with Persuasion, Cooking, and Call of the Wyld (a magical summons). I’m just baffled by this character, unfortunately earning him the Worst Sample Character badge, since I have no idea what to do with him.

Mountain Man


Do hillbillies even use those bottles anymore?

quote:

Shee-it, sure don’t grow them Spirals that big out here, do they? Why don’t y’uns sit back a spell; I’ll handle this lil’ fella.

The other camp representative, and by far the better one. A literal country wolf in the big city, he’s built for one thing and one thing only: killing poo poo. He’s got the stats for it, too. He’s maxed out Strength, but hasn’t dumped Dex either. He’s dumped Intelligence, which is great conceptually. All of his backgrounds have bone into Kinfolk, and although this is against the rules, it’s great. His Gifts are a little weaker, with Hare’s Leap and Falling Touch standing out as a little weird. Resist Toxin is great, though. This one gets the badge for Best Sample character.

Corazon Bitefinder always had a curious connection to the sea. At birth, his mother tried to drown him, but he survived. He had the ability to sing the fish out of the water. His mother believed he was the spawn of an incubus that had seduced her (hooray, implied rape! I thought we had left you behind in Black Furies). Tired of her constant attempts to kill him, Bitefinder left to seek his fortune. He survived five shipwrecks before his First Change.



The Bone Gnawers of Lisbon put him to work getting fish for the poor, but Bitefinder just wanted adventure on the high seas. In 1540, the Bone Gnawers held a Piping to discuss exploring the New World. Bitefinder and a few courageous Gnawers offered to lead an expedition, but every voyage Bitefinder was on met shipwreck, so he was mocked. His team stowed away on a ship, and fought a giant Umbral Wyrm monster. They made it to the Americas, and Bitefinder led the remaining Bone Gnawers to the New World.

Henri Eau-de-Fleur earned his deed name through his trademark odor. His Metis deformity was a vicious stank, and his elders taught him Odor of the Skunk and Scent of Sweet Honey before he could handle them as a cruel joke. He was cast down into the sewers of Paris for “surveillance”, but Henri excelled there. He quickly befriended the Parisian Ratkin and learned about all the supernatural happenings in the city.



Of particular note was the conflict between the Nosferatu of the sewers and the other vampires of Paris. Henri, other Bone Gnawers, and the Ratkin waged war against the Nosferatu. The Nosferatu tried to claim refuge with the other vampires, but they were turned aside. They then accepted an alliance with Henri’s army and drove out all the vampires of Paris. The Nosferatu were diminished enough to be wiped out in the conflict. Soon after the vampires withdrew their support, the aristocracy fell in the French Revolution. Thus, Henri Eau-de-Fleur is seen as its secrete patron.

Young Blackie Chuzzlewit is a literal legend among the Bone Gnawers. His father, an American railroad magnate, abandoned his mother and left them in destitution. His mother soon died and Blackie was sent to an orphanage, but he left at age six to live on the streets. He moved to a new coal mining town, where he worked as a child miner. When he was trapped in a cave-in, he took his First Change and stepped sideways. Eventually, he found his way to the Scar, and there is where his adventures began. Basically, if Charles Dickens wrote epic fantasy, he would write of Blackie Chuzzlewit.


Conquerer of the Scar, ladies and gentlemen.

Mother Larissa is the Mother of the Sept of the Green in New York City. Despite heavy opposition, she’s held leadership for decades. Her sept will shelter anyone who needs it. She presents a front as a crazy witch, and offers consultations. She loves telling cheesy ghost stories, taking inspiration from House of the Dying, a seventies comicbook and a riff on Tales of the Crypt. She’s getting old though, and she’s curiously reluctant to leave her personal haven on an island in Central Park. The Bone Gnawers of New York hope she’ll rule for a couple more decades, though. She probably won’t be much good in a fight, but she’s got the mental and social stats to be a powerful ally.


Really, lovely when you get to know her.

Carlita Gutierrez, aka “Big Sis”, is the signature Bone Gnawer! She changed as an eight year old Cuban squatter in Tampa. She’s fifteen in 2002 and she’s already Rank 2. She’s committed to helping her new Bone Gnawer family after tragically killing her family when she hulked out. She’s an able pugilist, and as a Philodox she has a keen sense of justice. Eventually, she wants to become a Mother, but rather than offering material generosity, she makes her name by kicking rear end. She’s beaten fearsome banes and Black Spiral Dancers, and even helped Jonas Albrecht’s pack kill the legendary beast Jo’cllath’mattric. Currently, she serves as an emissary between the major septs of Florida. In my opinion, Werewolf as really cool signature characters, and Carlita’s one of the best.



And on that happy note, the tribebook is over! What did I think? It’s really good! But you all knew that. The Bone Gnawers aren’t my favorite tribe, but this book really warmed me up to them. It’s very focused on their theme, that they’re at the bottom of the totem pole when they feel that they do the most good. They have no hope of ever bettering themselves, so they revel in their status as losers. All they can do is keep on trying to protect their charges as best they can.

The book’s full of great ideas and setting materials. This book alone can be used as a guide to running urban Werewolf stories, it’s that good. There are a lot of mechanical problems, but those can be overlooked because of all the fantastic fluff. I’m not really any more likely to play a Bone Gnawer in the future, but it looks like a lot of you are, which means it’s done its job.

Next time: Let’s take a palate cleanser with Bunyip, then move on to First Edition Children of Gaia, shall we?

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Here’s the deal with the Bunyip. As an extinct tribe, they don’t have a tribebook to their own. This will just be a done in one entry for completeness’ sake, focusing on their W20 entry.

Bunyip


Of course he has a boomerang.

The Bunyip were the werewolves of Australia. Of course, there aren’t any wolves native to the continent. Instead, the tribe interbred with thylacines, more popularly known as Tasmanian tigers. The werewolves that joined the initial Australian continent recognized they needed to immerse themselves in the landscape, so they enlisted the aid of the Mokolé to truly become a part of the land. When dingoes were first bred in Australia, they kept to their thylacine forms to stay closer to their homeland. They were known as great Umbral explorers. They maintained their caerns so well they were able to travel throughout the continent, spreading the radius of their septs far and wide.

The War of Shame occurred as the rest of the Garou Nation found their way to Australia. The Bunyip’s thylacine form already made the incoming Garou suspicious, since at this point they had hostile relations with most other werecreatures. Still, unlike in the Pure Lands, the two parties managed to maintain a truce. The Garou would keep to the colonies while the Bunyip would hold most of their caerns. In reality, this was a cold war, constantly in danger of heating up.

The trigger for the Bunyip genocide was when the Garou found a desecrated Red Talon corpse in near their encampment. Enraged, the Red Talons swore revenge against the Bunyip. Fighting broke out between the Talons and the Bunyip. Still, the Silver Fang in charge of the Australian Garou was willing to see reason. He called a moot of all the tribes residing in Australia, including the Bunyip. The Bunyip never made it, and so the Garou declared war against the Bunyip. Every tribe participated, even the Uktena and Wendigo, somehow. Only when the last Bunyip died did the Black Spiral Dancers behind the corpse reveal themselves. The Bunyip had sent an emissary party, but they were waylaid by the Dancers.

Not only did the Garou kill all the Bunyip, they also drove the thylacine into extinction. Thus, there is no way for any Bunyip to exist in the present day. None. Don’t try it! Seriously, don’t. Here are some stats anyway.

Appearance: They’re thylacines, so they’re small and lanky. Those Bunyip with higher Pure Breed tend to be bigger, a throwback to their origins as wolves.

Kinfolk & Territory: They interbred with the Aborigine of Australia and Tasmania and traditionally only associate with Australian locals, whether human or animal.


A bunyip, not of the Bunyip but a bunyip, like the Great Bunyip. Confusing?

Tribal Totem: Bunyip (Great Bunyip, specifically) is the totem of the Bunyip. He’s a water monster, half mammal half reptile. Ngalyod, the Rainbow Serpent is also a big deal to the Bunyip. He’s the mythical creator of the Dreamtime, important in Aboriginal faith. Other patrons included I’wai the Crocodile, Boobook the Owl, Bougoodoogahdah the Lyrebird, and Tulu the Kookaburra. These are the best totems.

Gifts! The Bunyip don’t have a full Gift list per se. Most of the Bunyip’s Gifts are recycled from other tribes, but they do have a few unique ones.

Bunyip’s Spell is a paralyzing gaze that only works on mortals. It’s part of the mythical Bunyip’s repertoire, and so is taught by the Great Bunyip. Crocodile’s Cunning allows a Bunyip to hold his breath for an hour. Lonesome Voice of the Bunyip was one of the last Gifts of the Bunyip, derived from their death cries. It saps willpower points from anyone who hears it. Dance of the Lightning Snakes calls thunderbolts to hit an opponent, but only in the Umbra. Billabong Bridge allows a Bunyip to teleport between two bodies of freshwater personally known to the Bunyip. Other Gifts allow the Bunyip to control the weather, heal, or alter the environment, particularly in the Umbra.


Another Bunyip, not a bunyip Bunyip or a bunyip bunyip, but a Bunyip.

Why then, are the Bunyip important? There’s no major setting of Werewolf in which the Bunyip are playable. There’s no way the Bunyip could reach the Dark Ages setting, and it would be exceedingly difficult for a Bunyip to show up in the Wild West. There are a couple of reasons other than actual playability that the Bunyip’s story is included. First, it provides a historical setting in the form of the War of Shame. Second, it makes Australia a dangerous and therefore compelling setting. The ghosts of the Bunyip still haunt Australia and their Umbral allies don’t take kindly to werewolves.

The last reason is the most important. The War of Shame is integral to Werewolf’s main theme of RAGE. The tagline “When Will You Rage?” wasn’t played up for nothing. Everything about Werewolf is defined by the wolves’ relation to RAGE. Mechanically, it’s their power stat, and whether it’s high or low can have serious consequences. If a werewolf spends all of his RAGE, he’s in danger of losing the ability to shift, while if it’s too high he can frenzy. RAGE is the equivalent to vampire’s need to feed. If a vampire doesn’t need to drink blood, he’s basically not a vampire anymore. Anything else is just icing on the cake. Anger is integral to what this vision of werewolves is.

But it’s not limited to that. To me, Werewolf is an examination of the necessity of RAGE. The Apocalypse is coming, and the only thing you can really do about it is be angry. To do otherwise would be to accept the death of you and everything you hold dear, and that’s unacceptable. So the werewolves RAGE and fight, because that’s the only thing they can do. Just because their RAGE is necessary doesn’t mean it’s healthy, though, and that’s where the War of Shame comes in. The anger of the Garou has screwed them over, even leading them to wipe out an entire tribe. To some extent, uncontrolled RAGE has lead the werewolves to losing the Apocalypse war.

Every tribe has to deal with RAGE in some way or another. The Black Furies are angry that patriarchal society sucks so hard and that women are dying and that nobody understands the Wyld anymore. The Bone Gnawers are angry that they don’t get any respect and no matter what they do they can’t change society for the better. Next time, we’ll see how the Children of Gaia deal with Werewolf’s core themes. Spoiler: They don’t.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012




I'd post the cover image, but there is none. More on that next update.

Here we go, the Children of Gaia. It’s been said before, particularly during Kurieg’s great review of the Revised tribebook, that the Children of Gaia really don’t make sense as a tribe. After all, this is a game about werewolves fighting giant monsters, and these werewolves don’t fight. While that is certainly true, I don’t think it gets at the core of what’s wrong with the Children of Gaia as a Werewolf splat. Like I said last time, Werewolf is a game all about RAGE, and simply put, the Children of Gaia aren’t angry. It’s not even a point of conflict for them, like the Uktena or the Stargazers. They’re just beyond anger. The concept of this tribe misses the entire point of what a Werewolf werewolf is.

That said, I do have soft spot for this tribe. If the oWoD had a robust mortals system, the Children of Gaia would make awesome villains. Just think about it: a friend or family member joins this crazy New Age club that seems almost like a cult to your characters. You investigate and wham! Turns out that not only is it a cult, it’s run by werewolves who want to enlist humanity in destroying civilization and sacrificing them to stop the “Wyrm”, whatever that is. Now you have to fight hippy werewolves. The Children of Gaia also work well as antagonists to a Werewolf group, in a sort of Walter Peck way. Your pack’s trying to do a job, but the Children keep interfering, making things worse. Even if they have a point, stuff needs to happen.

But anyway, enough of my sermon, let’s get to the core entry. This is going to be combination of stuff from Revised and 20th Anniversary. While their breeding stock comes from the Fertile Crescent and Phoenicia, the Children of Gaia truly established their tribal identity during the Impergium. They were the Garou that opposed the culling of humanity and successfully petitioned the Nation to step down. Of course, popularity for the impergium was already dwindling due to the difficulty of breaching new cities and the prevalence of silver weapons, but the Children of Gaia prevented the Garou Nation from engaging in a drawn out war.


From Revised, by Ron Spencer

Nowadays, the Children of Gaia are committed to two missions: fighting the Wyrm and mediating the divisions between the various tribes and septs. Of course, fighting the Wyrm takes on a different connotation to the Children of Gaia. To them, the Wyrm is to be healed. It was once an essential part of the Triat, after all, but it’s gone crazy. It can be helped, all it needs is love. They’ll still take down fomor and other Wyrm monsters that are a clear and present danger, but their first response is to figure out a way to make peace with the Wyrm.

The Children of Gaia are a relatively populous tribe, as they will accept anyone, even moreso than the Gnawers. They’re a popular tribe among metis, since they treat their metis better than any other tribe. They also take most of the male Black Furies. Also, on the sept level, the Children of Gaia are very egalitarian. They do require two elders in each sept, though, the Voice of Gaia (always female) and the Arms of Gaia (always male) to mediate disputes. Other than that, it’s free reign, attracting many homid Garou to their ranks.

Their politics more easily extend into the realm of mortal governments, too. They’re responsible for a variety of special interest groups and NGOs, and it is here that the Children of Gaia shine, protecting many natural areas and earning the respect of the Pure tribes for helping Native Americans. They have the largest kin and mortal networks out of all the tribes. They’ve even began initiatives to decrease the Veil to establish a network of mortal insiders. This is of course completely secret, since the other tribes would destroy the Children of Gaia if they ever discovered their transgressions.

Appearance: Their wolf forms are gray and brown and instead of radiating an aura of menace, they’re cute and cuddly! Truly, these are misunderstood monsters. In 20th Anniversary, they change this so that they project an eerie calm.


The hardest picture Ron Spencer has ever had to draw. From W20

Kinfolk: While the tribe originated in the Fertile Crescent, they haven’t had a real presence there for years. They now accept kin from any nationality, so long as they’re politically engaged.

Totem: Unicorn cares for the Children of Gaia. It’s normally peaceful, but it can be ferocious if threatened.

”Revised edition” posted:

Of course I’m teaching humans to respect nature instead of fear it. We destroy what we fear. That’s why you kill humans, isn’t it?
:rolleyes:

”W20” posted:

We’re Garou. We draw out the toxins from our Mother’s blood, cut away Her cancers, slay the parasites feeding on Her flesh. But once the surgery’s done, you have to bind the wounds back up, too.

Stereotypes:

Black Furies: They hate men!!!! (Revised) They have a lot of mystic knowledge, and they should share it. (W20)

Bone Gnawers: They’re Garou too, so we shouldn’t treat them badly. (Revised) They do care about the Nation, but it’s too bad they’ll sell us out to survive. (W20)

Fianna: They’re very emotional, and for that they should be respected.

Get of Fenris: They’re assholes. (Revised) They’re badass, but we can’t get along. (W20)

Glass Walkers: “Can they survive out of their fishbowls?” (:confused:) (Revised) They’re logical, but also alien to us. (W20)

Red Talons: They’re honest, but too bitter. (Revised) If only they weren’t psycopaths. (W20)

Shadow Lords: They’re selfish pricks.

Silent Striders: It’s good to be free, but I miss them! :qq: (Revised) I feel sorry for them (W20)

Silver Fangs: We need strong leaders. The Silver Fangs aren’t that.

Stargazers: We need their wisdom. (Revised) They’re devoted to peace just like us, but they want to forsake all emotion! (W20)

Uktena: Looks like we’ve got to heal the divisions between us. :downs: There’s a lot of mistrust between them and the Nation, which is too bad for both. They’re in danger. (W20)

Wendigo: We’re trying to help them, but they’re assholes.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Sorry it's been a while, but it's hard to make this entertaining. Here's my best shot!



Like all the First Edition tribebooks, instead of a nifty Steve Prescott cover, we get an intro comic. These ranged from “popcorn fun” to “so bad it’s good” to “just awful”. Children of Gaia’s comic, made by Dan Smith (thanks, Bieeardo!), trends towards the latter category. I’m in the habit of uploading nearly every image from a tribebook to give a good representation of the art, but doing that for this comic veers dangerously towards :files:, so I won’t be doing that. I will add some representative panels, though.

First page features a naked wolfman, front and center. He’s in Glabro, not Crinos, so he probably has a dick. It’s tastefully hidden by flames, though, not unlike a certain famous deer man picture. Naked Wolfman is proposing a unity pact that will send regular search parties into the Umbra to help out imprisoned spirits and fight Wyrm banes in spiritual form. This is not popular, as there are more pressing concerns. Case in point, some scuttle banes are poisoning the bay!

Also, :smugdog: “We don’t trust your kind, blight! I mean, Blythe!”

Blythe proposes a compromise. He’d lead a war party to kill the scuttle banes. If they win, they’d form a unity pact, but if they fail to remove the banes the Children of Gaia would drop their request. Not only does this miss the point of the objections, but it is also a terrible plan. Regardless, Blythe challenges the size of the werewolves’ dicks, so their honor compels them to go along with the plan. However, treachery is afoot! A few delegates plan to assassinate Blythe on the mission because submitting to the Children of Gaia is bad, I guess.


This is like something out of Goblins.

And so the mission goes off. The party travels down a river, but suddenly, pattern spiders attack! They’re literal giant spiders, which is kind of a lame interpretation. One of the conspirators makes his move and Blythe is carried away in the current. He finds himself in a cave. There are pattern spiders there, too, but Blythe is compelled to heal them. He notices there are Wyrm leeches on the spider and he kills them. The spider leads him to the scuttle bane’s lair, and Blythe kills it.


Perspective? What's that?

Later, the conspirators report that the mission fails. They’re smug, but Blythe comes back ultra smug and has them dance for him. And scene! That was as weird as it was awful.


When will you dance?

After a Yeats quote, the Introduction begins.


No joke, the best piece of art in the book.

quote:

Cast your senses about, and behold the world with your new eyes, your new ears, your new nose, your new tongue, your new skin, your new knowing, your new being. What a world of wonders our senses disclose! The bounty here is infinite, and springs from that same eternal source of life that offered you up as a benediction to the world.

Smell how the wind celebrates your presence! Hear how the animals of the forest sing your song! Taste how the plants of the earth rejoice in your communion with them! See how Luna and all the Celestines shine upon you and bathe you with their infinite light! Feel the vibrant pulse of the world’s living aura cradling your new flesh. Know of the love of Gaia in the space above your eyes and throughout your being. Be joy.

The universe hallows you and offers up its entirety to your succor and increase. There is no place so bleak, so dark, so corrupt that the love of Gaia cannot pierce it. Even in the deepest pit of the Wyrm, if you seek for Gaia you shall find her.

The Soul of Gaia is without limit. Your spirit is without limit. You have entered this land of false divisions to heal the rifts, bind up the wounds, and dry the tears of life. You will succeed. Gaia has foreseen it.

:gay: Part of the reason I wanted to do the First Edition tribebook is to describe some of the differences between the First and Revised writing philosophies. This passage is a great example of First edition’s reliance on purple prose. The entire book is written like this, and it does not let up. It’s a fun read, but it’s not good by any stretch of the imagination. This is a result of the biggest difference between the First and Revised edition tribebooks: looser editorial control. While the revised tribebooks are rigorously structured, with history, society, mechanics and characters chapters, the writers here can cover whatever they want, and in some cases that’s better. I don’t really need to know how werewolves reacted to WWI to get inspired in a modern setting. Then again, you get stuff like this which is just ridiculous to read.


:stonk:

Chapter 1 tells us to relax and listen to a history of the universe. Ambitious! Once the world was united and happy. Everything was one! But then things divided, and that was sad. The Triat was born and they started making things, and then the spirit and material worlds split. Then Eater of Souls, an aspect of the Wyrm, started attacking Gaia’s soul and she called for help. Wolf came to her aid, but he died. He was the first Child of Gaia, and the first werewolf. All werewolves are descended from him. Therefore, there shouldn’t be any tribes and it’s the Children of Gaia’s job to tell the other tribes that their existence is pointless. You can see why they’re not very popular.


Yeah, okay, I get it.

The true origin of the Children of Gaia came when the so-called tribes started fighting amongst each other. Gaia rescued some cubs and cried on them, giving them super Life powers. Gaia told the werewolves that fighting was of the Wyrm, and the werewolves were so impressed by the ultra-special Children of Gaia that they laid down their arms and wept. But they still didn’t learn their lesson, that all living things are Children of Gaia, no matter the tribe or species. Even Wyrm monsters are the Children of Gaia.
The werewolves were good at fighting Beast of War and Eater of Souls, but the Defiler Wyrm remained hidden, waiting. It takes advantage of the pain caused by spiritual detachment. To defeat it, the Children of Gaia plan to take down the Gauntlet separating flesh from spirit. Nobody’s sure how this is going to work, but the Children of Gaia are confident that it will.

Speaking of the Defiler Wyrm, he had a cunning plan to defeat the werewolves once and for all! See, Gaia made everything balanced. Populations could sustain themselves and would never overpopulate, despite that being a major evolutionary drive. Even humanity was content in this. But the Defiler Wyrm planned to help the humans breed beyond their means. Unlike all other animals, humans can breed whenever they want (kind of). Through making consensual love, humans can grow closer to Gaia, for that’s Gaia’s gift to humanity.

quote:

Even the most wicked, Wyrm-tainted person sees Gaia at the height of passion. (This is why we seem to “blank out” at the zenith of lovemaking. For we have beheld the face of Gaia, and the image is too great to bring into the limited confines of our conscious minds…)
:geno: Werewolf fans that you’ll find on the White Wolf forums will claim that the First Edition book is better than Revised. Keep this in mind.

The Wyrm saw an opportunity to corrupt this gift. Before his involvement, humans restricted their offspring to sustainable levels, somehow. This is despite the lack of birth control and the spiritual desire for loving. Because most people chose not to have sex during the lactation period (seriously, this is in an RPG supplement), children were born three to four years apart. Thus, children could be loved and cared for, decreasing the influence of the Wyrm.

:siren:

quote:

To overcome humankind’s natural abstinence from sex during lactation, the Defiler invented rape. Rape is unknown among animals in natural settings. But the defile tempted some wounded males, and encouraged them to overcome women by force, to turn love into violence.

:facepalm: This is the kind of thing that immediately seems stupid, but once you think about it, it becomes more and more stupid until the whole thing melts into a meaningless succession of words. Remember, this is the better edition!

Population quickly grew and so they were influenced by the Weaver, who taught them how to live in cities. This scared the werewolves, and so they started taking their own efforts to curb human expansion: the Impergium. This was super bad, and the Delirium is a result of the fear it caused. Eventually, they teamed up with the Black Furies and Stargazers (the Bone Gnawers aren’t mentioned) to convince the others to stop.

With the rise of cities, the Weaver’s power grew. For the most part, these early cities were matriarchal and the Children of Gaia taught them how to sustain their society. I suppose they also taught them about menstrual cycles and pulling out to allow them to control the size of their families, even though they apparently already knew about this. Of course, the Wyrm made efforts to forbid birth control and encourage rape, which caused mass poverty and despair. Despite how easily humans are swayed to atrocity, the Children of Gaia are in awe of their ability commune with Gaia.


:gonk:

Next time: Hammurabi, protector of peace and human rights

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jun 29, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Bieeardo posted:

That comic looks suspiciously like Dan Smith's work.

You would be correct! I'll edit my post to mention that.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Selfishly, Deadlands Noir. I've been considering a purchase and I want to be sold on it. Deadlands is cool, noir is cool.

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Pussy Cartel posted:

Just you wait. Rifts Africa makes Rifts England look like some Ken Hite masterpiece.

Edit: Of course, Rifts England just so happens to make Rifts Canada look good, too.

Hey, Rifts Canada is good and I won't hear anything against it. Anything that offers a Sasquatch class is alright in my book. :colbert:

(Then again, I like some of the more usable (as far as Rifts goes) vampire OCCs from Vampire Kingdoms, too)

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Exams and the job search have made this long overdue, but behold!



Chapter 1, Part 2

Well that certainly was a long time. Where was I?

quote:

Of course, the Wyrm made efforts to forbid birth control and encourage rape, which caused mass poverty and despair.

gently caress. Let’s not waste any time, then. One of the best tribebooks is coming up shortly, and if we’re going to get there, we need full steam.

The werewolves, and especially the Children of Gaia, tried to lead humanity down a path of peace, while the Wyrm targeted bitter individuals and encouraged them to dominate their fellow man and generally make everyone miserable. Despite the best efforts of the Children and the Black Furies, peaceful cities were conquered by warlike states and the Defiler Wyrm claimed more and more souls. Where the Children of Gaia fomented freedom, the Defiler turned those ideals against the love of Gaia and transformed it into hedonism and awfulness. Worse, the Defiler encouraged a love of symbols over love of spirits! For an animistic society, the Children of Gaia are oddly concerned about idolatry.

The Wyrm found eager allies in vampires, who are assholes. The Children of Gaia found allies in lady vampires, because they apparently like women more than male vampires like men. :iiam: They also joined forces with the elves and faeries, but they’re confusing assholes, so that doesn’t work out too well. Mages helped out too, but, again, they’re elitist assholes.

Towards the end of the Impergium, Gaia revealed to the werewolves that there was an entire continent that was unspoiled by the Wyrm. The Pure Tribes went over to the Americas and many Children snuck along with them, disguised as Croatan, Wendigo or Uktena. Most stayed behind to help develop the ancient world and save the humans from themselves. Now, we know that the settlers of the Americas crossed over the ice bridge formed during the Ice Age, before any cities were known to exist, so this doesn’t really make sense. However, this is more of a legendary history than anything, so we can let that go.

Speaking of legends, let’s go gently caress some up! Apparently Siduri Sabitu of the Epic of Gilgamesh was actual a Child of Gaia. When she poured the cup of reality revealed to Gilgamesh, it really told him about vampires.

At this point, the Children of Gaia regarded the human race as children. (Nowadays we’re adolescents. I can’t imagine why anyone would consider the Children of Gaia to be condescending.) As children, we needed parental rules, i.e. the rules of Gaia. The Children of Gaia did so through human rulers, particularly Hammurabi. Hammurabi’s laws ushered in an age of peace for Babylon, despite allowing slaves, legalizing violent vengeance, and encouraging public stoning of those who violated the sanctity of another’s fields. Fortunately, though, a wily Children of Gaia Ragabash was able to secure some property rights for slaves! Truly, the Children of Gaia are wise and compassionate.

In Egypt, the Silent Striders encouraged belief in the Gaian Egyptian pantheon. It was truly a time of peace and justice in ancient Egypt. It was the vampires who encouraged all the excesses of the Egyptian pharohs. But, Nefertiti, kin to the Children of Gaia, and her ally Ahmenhotep exiled the vampires when Gaia granted the pharoh super light powers. Ahmenhotep then changed the state religion to worship of Adem, a god of light. Monotheism is apparently of Gaia, so this was great. Him and Nefertiti did all kinds of great works, excluding ending slavery, but what can you do? Then the vampires took over again and planted King Tut in the throne.


Notice the shadows here. These aren't vampires. A giant jackal/wolf is crushing innocent people. A tribe of peace indeed.

In Crete, the werewolves fought a big battle with some Wyrm monster. Crete was the stronghold of the Apis, the minotaurs or werebulls. They all died in the fight. Most subsequent books state that the Apis were driven extinct during the War of Rage by the werewolves, but internal consistency has never been the strong suit of the oWoD.

Everybody loved Gaia in Greece. Worship of Pan-Dionysus, “the virgin-born king who is sacrificed, gives of his flesh to his followers and is resurrected” (:what:) was popular. Dionysus was half-man, half-beast. Look, like Alien Ant Farm, I have no problem with getting myths wrong. But clearly the book here is trying to impress us with its historicity and getting things so blatantly wrong just ruins that. Pan was the half man, half beast, not Dionysus. The most animalistic Dionysus ever got was partying with satyrs and creating dolphins.


Even more mythic inconsistency. Minotaurs wear boxers, not briefs.

Greek democracy was also a ploy by the Children of Gaia to bring the city states closer to the Wyld. Unfortunately, only males had rights in these early democracies. Still, the werewolves still taught the women how to wield power. One werewolf, either a Black Fury or a Child of Gaia, was named Lysistrata. Also werewolves invented the Olympics, because they wanted to prove that “democracies do not war with democracies.” Let’s just move on.

The Gaian pantheon of India encouraged a religion of all sex, all the time. The Children of Gaia taught the Indians the Tantric mysteries to further their love of sex. There’s no escape, is there? :negative:

Buddha…existed. The tribebook just thought you should know.

quote:

The Children of Gaia journeyed into the far corners of Asia, where we suffered great losses at the hands of the terrifying eastern vampires, who are infinitely more powerful than their western counterparts, and far more knowledgable.

:allears: Oh, early nineties White Wolf, I can’t stay mad at you. In Asia, the Children of Gaia chilled with the Stargazers and the dragons. They invented Confucianism, but Lao Tzu’s koans were totally mind-blowing!


I assume this is an eastern vampire, since only one of those can handle the power of this image.

The Hebrew originally worshipped a female and male god, but the Wyrm perverted their religion into a patriarchal one encouraging violence and death. Where once inheritance and rulership passed down from the women, “like all early societies” (forget it, it’s Gaiatown), the Semities were ruled by brutal king. Eventually, though, Jesus came along to try and fix everything. Eventually, his church was corrupted by the Wyrm, who created the Council of Nicea to enforce one solitary set of Gospels. Religious wars started. Eventually the Children of Gaia installed Julian as emperor (somehow), but he was ineffectual, and so the Roman Empire fell. At least this book doesn’t claim that Jesus was a werewolf.

In Arabia, wolf and moon gods and their worshippers ruled over the lands. When thing got out of hand, the Children of Gaia sent their kin Zoroaster to sort them out. Unfortunately, the Wyrm corrupted all these religions. Its servants collected all these ideologies, desexualized them and turned them into the Koran. (Um.) Children of Gaia kinfolk mobilized sufi ideology to counteract this, but to no avail. Making the modern Middle East peaceful is a challenge, because

quote:

An ancient vampire called Malkav slumbers there somewhere, a vampire consumed by madness. His lunatic dreams infect the people, and drive them to madness and war. Some of our Ragabash say this vampire is a source of enlightenment, but few agree.

Many Arabian Children of Gaia are very exceptionally savage, though others are extraordinarily peaceful as Sufi-like.

:psyboom:


An evil Arabian cow eating babies. Am I reading RaHoWa? EDIT: Turns out this is an Etruscan wolf, associated with the Roman Empire. Thanks House Louse and Baofu!

In Northern Europe, the other Garou tribes took care of stuff, but the Roman Empire brought war to the land. (Because it’s not like the Visigoths were particularly warlike, right?) Fortunately, as the Catholic church turned apocalyptic, people lost the will to plan out wars of conquest. Sure, why not? Still, the Church justified the widespread enslavement of millions. To counteract this, the Children of Gaia created the Reformation! Again, sure, why not?

The Wyrm then moved onto the New World. The Pure Tribes had grown pacifistic in the intervening centuries and so were not prepared for the incursion. Eater of Souls cursed the Indians with plague, and we’ve got to break down why this is offensive. It’s true that the coming of European people brought smallpox and other diseases that wiped out ninety percent of the Native American population, and that this was largely unnoticed by the Europeans. But, a lot of this was intentional biological genocide, and to attribute that to a fictional nonhuman entity is horrendous.

When the Croatan sacrificed themselves to seal Eater of Souls away, a Child of Gaia died with them. Of course the Children of Gaia would be so petty as to make sure everyone remembered their sacrifice too. The other Pure Tribes regarded the European tribes with suspicion (hm, I wonder why? It’s not like they tried killing all the Indians, oh wait) but the Children of Gaia patiently waited for them to get over having ninety percent of their people’s population wiped out. The Pure Tribes now respect the Children of Gaia over everyone else. loving great.

The Puritans the Children of Gaia had created had been corrupted by the Wyrm and now terrorized the New World. In response, the Children of Gaia refocused their efforts to reforming all of human society. To that end, they created the Age of Enlightenment and Deism, somehow. They also invented the Iriquois Confederacy and American democracy. Compare and contrast to the Bone Gnawer treatment of the same subject.

Jacques Necker, Child of Gaia kin, was the French Minister of Finance. It was he who planned the French Revolution. He had the government borrow money to join the American Revolution, but all the spoils went to the Americas. The vampires of France were distraught, and their hold over France weakened. Necker, though, deplored the violence of the revolution.

If there was anything the Founding Fathers stood for, it was tolerance for everyone (excluding non-white, non-male, non-property owners). :downs: One of the biggest things the Children of Gaia accomplished was helping to settle a peace between the USA and Canada. Even bigger is that they “freed women from the shackles of servitude,” even though Britain did it way before and that sentence is completely meaningless.

The rest of the chapter is just a summary of American history as told by the most naïve person in the country, and it’s boring and dumb and I’m tired of this stupid, stupid chapter. Suffice it to say that, without exaggeration, the Children of Gaia are responsible for every major positive political victory in the United States.


I hate this book.

Next time: Chapter 2 – The Quest for Peace

pospysyl fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Jun 29, 2013

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



House Louse posted:

That's not an Arabian cow, it's an Etruscan wolf - the kids are Romulus and Remus. I suppose the Roman Empire was so evil it ate its own children?

Baofu posted:

Compare to


The She-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.

Whoops! My bad. Editing this right away. In my defense, it was in the middle of the Middle East section, nowhere near a section on Rome.

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pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



Kellsterik posted:

So the Children of Gaia invented Confucianism and maybe Christianity, but Islam was created by the spiritual embodiment of evil. Do I have that right?

Yep! :downs: Well, to be fair, they didn't invent Christianity, just Protestantism.

They also managed to write a page about Islam without mentioning Mohammed once.

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