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Werewolf
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My name doesn’t matter right now. You wouldn’t understand it anyway. Just come with me. Trust me. I bet you’re wondering how you’re still walking. After getting yourself torn up like that, losing control like that, you should be lying in a heap in the alley, shouldn’t you? But look: you don’t have a single open wound anymore, and in a minute the scabs should fall off. Feels good, doesn’t it? You can feel that warmth, that energy, coursing through you. It’s a weird kinda energy. Some people have told me it’s like angry sex. I wouldn’t know. I’ve done a lot more than someone my age, but not that. I’ve always thought of it as that rush you get when someone’s goaded you into doing something you wanted to do, but were lacking the drive. Get down! Quiet. Not a word. Ok. They’re past. That’s another thing: learn to pick your battles. We may heal quickly, but don’t think you’re invincible. We can’t spare anyone. Now here’s the most important bit. The things I have to tell you in case I die suddenly. Don’t look so surprised. You should realize that there are…forces…after us. There are things that would rather we not be having this little chat. Yeah. That was what I thought when I first heard it, too. But the idea of a vast cosmic conspiracy gets easier to palate the more you see. After a few changes, and a Reaching, you’ll accept it. Sorry, I’ll explain the technical terms later. Actually, it’s not a grand conspiracy. Here’s the deal. The world is corrupt. It’s going to pot. There are three metaphysical theories with bad attitudes that are fighting. Originally, they were in balance; then people fucked things up a bit. Entropy, chaos, whatever. So the force of decay, what we call "the Wyrm," to use an over-used image, is gaining excessive power. Meanwhile, stasis, a. k. a. "the Weaver," is trying to calcify everyone and everything, take the wonderment out of life. Leech the magic from the world. The very fact that we can change shape is threatened by this thing! Lastly, we have the Wyld, our putative friend. As much as the force of pure chaos and creativity in the universe can be anyone’s friend. Really, this thing must have brought all this upon itself, and only it can get itself out again. Pure creation is the only thing that can cause anything in the universe. But I digress. So, come with me and fight the good war. Stay away from silver, keep your eyes, ears, nose and every other sense you have, keep ’em all sharp. Don’t worry about death; that’s inevitable. Worry about a useless death. Make sure to bring some of them down with you when you go. Merciful Gaia, protect thy children. Die wyrmspawn! Werewolf. The name brings images either of B-movies or truly terrifying tales told around a campfire that time you went camping in British Columbia. It can evoke images of man-eating beasts, or beneficent druid-types guarding the woodlands. In the early traditions of Eastern Europe, werewolves were only the latter. The Celts attributed shape-changing powers to their druids, and the wolf, being a symbolically potent animal, was always a good choice for your holy men to associate with. The first written record of a werewolf, to the best of my knowledge, is in the writings of Pliny and Herodotus. The Romans have some interesting werewolf stories, such as in the Satyricon, where one of the narrator's friends is accused of being a werewolf. Only at this time, once the wolf started to become an enemy of the people (as a predator of flocks) rather than a mysterious and powerful companion (as a social carnivore, possessing many traits desired by hunter-gatherers) did the werewolf start to become a man-eater. In Amerindian mythology, the werewolf (or a creature so similar we can risk calling it a werewolf) remained relatively friendly. There are some cases, such as the Navajo Skinwalkers, where shape-changers were forces of evil, but mostly the werewolves seem to have been in the model of the European Druids. The werewolves of this game are much more in that ancient style. They are creatures of great passion, might, and tragedy. They were created in the long-ago by Gaia, the Earth, to protect Her, but have ultimately failed. They can walk between worlds, the material and spiritual realms, the worlds of wolves and men, the worlds of reason and rage. But they are not fully of any world. They are eternal outsiders, given great power by their birth, but greater alienation. Here I have some resources for the game, such as our house rules (in the number-crunching sense) and some home-brewed spiritual items. |