Fomori

When the Wyrm utterly corrupts a human’s mind, body, and spirit, that victim becomes a monstrous fomor. This is usually the work of full-body Bane possession. The Wyrm grants each fomor supernatural power, but there’s always a price to be paid. Monsters cursed with the Wyrm’s power are always marked or deformed in some way. Whether the victim volunteers for this bargain in a devil’s deal, succumbs to seduction, submits to duress, or is brutally taken by predators, the results are always horrific.

The least and most pitiful fomori become mindless, raving cannibals struggling to survive in places the Wyrm has blighted. Even barely sentient fomori are drawn to places of pollution, defilement, and human suffering, knowing their infernal allies are drawn to the same prey. The most dangerous ones retain their intellect, cunning, and guile. Once they’ve learned to hide their curses and imperfections from ordinary people, they walk among us, preying on the weak and the wounded.

There was a time when most fomori were merely possessed animals: monstrous creatures that became the source of legends. Since the Delirium distorts the memories of humans who witness true evil, people who survived their attacks never fully remembered what they witnessed. Throughout history, their stories became the basis for many tales of mythical creatures: manticores, dragons, and stranger abominations. As human civilization became more advanced, so did the minions of the Wyrm. Human hosts became far more effective agents of evil than enraged animals. The Fianna have elaborate tales of these monsters attacking the kingdom of Eire, rising from the sea to assault mankind’s heroic defenders. Wherever pollution, corruption, or victimizations take place, Banes gather, and fomori may rise again.

When a Bane possesses a vulnerable human host, that person’s consciousness and personality remain, but the malevolent spirit gives strength to the victim’s darkest and least desirable tendencies, bestowing supernatural power. Not all victims become permanently corrupt when a Bane possesses them, but people with low morals or desperate needs usually don’t recover from spiritual possession. Some are even genetically predisposed to possession, inheriting curses and legacies far more dangerous than a Garou’s inherited lycanthropy. If a person is particularly evil or psychotic when the Wyrm finds that victim, the host’s supernatural enhancements become even stronger, and the descent to complete mental and spiritual degeneration is even faster.

Mindless or barely sentient fomori who gather in numbers band together for survival. They could be living in the squalor of a remote backwater village, squatting in the ruins of an abandoned building in the bad part of town, or hiding from the modern world in subterranean chambers, such as storm sewers, transit tunnels, or long forgotten caves. Though mainstream media is wary about showing the most toxic hellholes on the planet, such places certainly exist: in fact, there are places where pollution and devastation blight the natural world with very little help from the Wyrm at all. For the Garou or other shapechangers, these forsaken places are prime hunting grounds: anything that cannot be redeemed is killed, and hopefully, rituals can reclaim those stalking grounds. Monsters in the physical world are only one part of the problem. The Umbral reflections of these physical places are even more hellish. If Banes survive, they only need more vulnerable victims to create more fomori.

Intelligent fomori have far more resourceful and insidious allies. In the 20th century, many of the Wyrm’s minions worked within an elaborate corporate organization, acting as agents of the Pentex Corporation and its subsidiaries. One of their most insidious operations was a program called Project Iliad, in which the company recruited promising employees and subjected them to horrific experiments. The Garou raided many of the laboratories and factories used as part of this project, but that didn’t prevent the Wyrm’s minions from learning from their mistakes. Each time the Garou removed one of the heads of this financial hydra, another subsidiary would arise to replace it.

In the 21st century, each subsidiary of Pentex now has its own program for weakening humans and making them more susceptible to spiritual corruption. As Pentex subsidiaries continue to poison and destroy the planet, these new enterprises have recruited the most vulnerable of these victims as powerful fomori. Working together through conspiracy and subterfuge, they create shock troops to use against the Garou Nation and all of human civilization. Some freaks are trained for paramilitary packs called First Teams; others are employed to focus on the secret mission statement of a corporate subsidiary.

Lone fomori are harder to find, and when thoroughly entrenched in their surroundings, sometimes harder to kill. A loving family may go to great lengths to protect an isolated fomor relative, never fully understanding the cause of his or her affliction. Some fomor are fortunate enough to have concealable afflictions and can manage to sustain themselves in human society for short periods of time, albeit with the kind of low-paying and humiliating jobs must humans tend to avoid. Granted, their ruthless cunning and psychological maladjustments may cause them to self-destruct in a matter of months or years, but not before they’ve spread more corruption, suffering, and victimization in the world around them. Acting against these modern monsters can be difficult. When a pack of Garou shows up to abduct a corrupted child living in a suburban household, or when a retail clerk surrounded by security cameras gets a visit from shapechangers, the pack may find “doing the right thing” a little more difficult than they first suspected. Solving these problems with violence is a quick-and-dirty solution, but the legal consequences and strain on their Veil of secrecy complicate matters immensely.

### **The Wyrm's Conscripts: Fomori**

Slavering mutants, twisted killers, and hideous blasphemies wrought in flesh—these are the faces of the Wyrm’s conscripts in its war against Gaia. Fomori are what happens when the pure spiritual essence of the Wyrm invests itself in Earthly flesh. Though blessedly few fomori are strong enough to challenge a werewolf one-on-one, the Wyrm’s mutants come in near-infinite variety, and all too often, that element of surprise is enough to spell the end of one of Gaia’s defenders. Whether the fomor itself lives to fight another day is of little import. So long as life and corruption both remain in the world, the Wyrm can always bring forth new fomori.

#### **The Role of Wyrm Taint**

The Garou rightly describe many things as “Wyrm tainted,” and one of their most common Gifts helps them to detect the presence of the Corrupter’s spiritual effluvia. Indeed, one of the major purposes of Pentex is to flood the world with Wyrm-tainted products, from toys, makeup, and films to food, drink, and therapeutic retreats. But what does eating Wyrm-tainted food and using Wyrm-tainted products do to a person?

It does a lot of small, subtle things. It makes people a tiny bit quicker to anger, it makes them a little less tolerant of those around them, it makes dark thoughts and selfish urges rise up more easily than they otherwise might. But the biggest and — from the perspective of Pentex — most important result is that Wyrm-tainted individuals are much easier targets for the Possession Charm (see W20, p. 367). Depending on the severity of the Wyrm-taint a person has taken into himself, the difficulty of the Possession Charm lowers by between –1 and –3. As Pentex’s profits rise, the number of fomori grow year by year.

In essence, when the Garou look upon the twisted face of a fomor, they’re witnessing the future the Wyrm has in store for the entire human race.

#### **Playing Fomori?**

The “Quick and Dirty Fomori” rules found on page 429 of W20 are useful for generating fomori characters. But what does it mean to play a fomor? What are fomori, from a player’s perspective?

It’s easier to start by establishing what fomori are not — they’re not the X-Men. They’re not misunderstood targets of unwarranted prejudice, sporting badass superpowers. A fomor is a person who has fused, body and soul, with a spirit of pure corruption. Fomori can be complex and even conflicted, but the source of their powers—the Bane within—is a thing of pure and unambiguous evil.

How much impact this has on the fomor varies. Some fomori, such as Freakfeet or Hollow Men, retain the classification of “human” only by the most generous definition of the word. Others retain much of their former personality and code of ethics. Usually, fomori weren’t very nice people before their possession, but that’s not a universal rule, sometimes fomori are just unfortunate. It’s easier for a Bane to curl up and make a home in the soul of the weak-willed or the already-corrupt, but the truth is, a Bane strong enough or lucky enough can infest just about anyone.

From the perspective of the Garou, this makes fomori tragic, but any pity or sympathy for the mutant generally only extends so far as to try to give it a clean, swift death. The Galliards do know tales of Garou packs who worked with fomori — generally possessed Kinfolk — but none of those tales ends well, and all those sung are with shame. Ultimately, to play a fomor is to play an unfortunate victim of the supernatural world, probably doomed to a short life and an agonizing death. Play it as a blackly funny one-shot splatterpunk romp, or for tragic pathos, depending on the desires of the group. Alternately, fomori can make decent characters for “everything goes” World of Darkness crossover games. If you already have, say, a dhampyr, a ronin Garou, and a Hollow One mage rambling around in a Winnebago, what harm is there in tossing a fomor into the mix?

For those wishing to play fomori, character creation works much the same as Garou, subject to the modifications mentioned above. The Storyteller decides how many powers you can take when making your character, and will hand out new ones at no experience point cost when he decides your inner Bane is asserting itself. Often accompanied with a new, attendant Flaw; because nobody said possession was going to be pleasant.

## **Fomori Breeds**

While the majority of fomori are unique horrors, there are a few commonly recurring “breeds,” either the result of possession by a peculiarly focused type of Bane, or the product of intentional development programs, generally either those of Black Spiral packs, or Pentex’s Project Iliad. What follows are a selection of some of the fomori breeds most commonly encountered by the Garou.

### **Quick and Dirty Fomori**

Nearly any weak-willed or vulnerable human, from any walk of life, can become a fomor. Pentex has plenty of subsidiaries to help with the selection process. If you’d like to run a campaign with a wide range of fomori, it’s simply a matter of taking the stats for an ordinary human and adding a dash of corruption. It starts like this:

1. Prioritize three categories of attributes (Physical, Social, and Mental), putting six dots in the primary category, four in the secondary, and three in the tertiary.
2. Prioritize three categories of abilities (Talents, Skills, and Knowledges) the same way, with eleven dots in the highest category, seven in the secondary, and three in the tertiary.
3. Most fomori start out with Willpower 3, but no Rage or Gnosis (unless a power grants Rage or Gnosis.)
4. Choose one to three fomori powers. Consider powers that tie to a mortal’s background (Phoenix Fire for a fireman), environment (Noxious Breath for someone stalking in a nightclub), or favorite Pentex product (Berserker for a kid who collects Wyrm-tainted action figures).
5. Add one of the following powers, since they’re the most common ones fomori possess: Armored Skin, Berserker, or Gifted Fomor. Nearly all fomori also possess Immunity to Delirium.
6. A fomor can take up to three points in the following Backgrounds: Allies, Contacts, or Resources.

Bestial Fomori
 **Abilities**
 **Powers**
Each fomor gains supernatural power from the Bane infesting it. See the list below for plenty of suggestions, or feel free to invent new ones. Most fomori have
 **Equipment**
Tattered or foul-smelling clothing and possibly a sharp object (Strength +1 damage). Fomori with military training may have pistols, rifles, knives, bulletproof vests, riot armor, or more exotic equipment.
Even a half-crazed fomor can buy a dirt-cheap cell phone at a convenience store for communicating with its allies.

Enticers
An Enticer is a social predator, carefully groomed and deployed by Pentex to lure the company’s enemies into traps, turn Gaian loyalists into besotted traitors, or act as the leading wedge of a divide-and-conquer operation. The Enticer doesn’t have much of a choice. Pentex binds him in chains of addiction and dependence. Those few “wild” Enticers created outside of the company’s control normally burn themselves out in a downward spiral of parties, flings, and abusive relationships.
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
 **Genesis**
Few Enticers come from “the wild,” but most come from Magadon’s subsidiary Siren Pharmaceuticals. In addition to makeup and cosmetics, Siren targets men with body sprays, moisturizers, shaving creams, hair dyes, and other products advertised as increasing their sex appeal. Ordinary Siren products are simply Wyrm-tainted cosmetic products designed to attract Banes of insecurity and vanity, but a few times a year, Siren sponsors various beauty contests and fashion shows, giving the winner a year’s supply of exclusive, limited-edition products. These are loaded with Wyrm-taint, Banes, and addictive additives; a few months later a Pentex representative swings by to rescue the winner from their life-destroying transformation into a fomor, which should be well underway at this point. The company plies the fomor with more addictive cosmetics, as well as doing its best to supply them with other, harder addictive narcotics, and takes over their finances by putting them on the company payroll, anything to get the Enticer on the company’s leash in the long term.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
It’s good to be needed. Most people have their day in the spotlight and then wither away, but not you, everyone loves you, everyone wants you, everyone hangs on your every word, and they always will. That’s good, because it lets you keep living in the style to which you’re accustomed: uppers in the morning, downers to stop at the end of the day, and a whirlwind of self-satisfaction in-between, at least when the boss doesn’t need something taken care of. You don’t like to fight, but you can when you have to, you’d much rather send one of your many admirers off to take care of problems, though.

Ferectoi, the Larvae of the Wyrm
This is because the Ferectoi are perfect creations of the Wyrm’s will. Ferectoi are pre-natal fomori, conceived in a twisted mockery of natural reproduction and born already twisted by the will of the Corrupter. No Ferectoi was ever seduced or enticed into the Wyrm’s service; they were made to be what they are, one and all.
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
 **Genesis**
A unique monstrosity known as a Breeder Bane produces Ferectoi. The Breeder Bane is a grotesque jar of disconnected anatomy, a self-impregnating monstrosity designed solely to pervert the natural processes of human reproduction.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
You may look human, but you’re something greater than those around you are, and you know it. You’re stronger, smarter, more evolved. You have a great role to play in shaping the future. Your only regret is that you have to hide that power so much of the time. You long to unfurl your chitinous limbs, spew balefire upon your enemies, and proclaim your ascendance over a dying and obsolete human race.
Until then, you’re a wolf among sheep, and that has its own pleasures.

Flesh Packs
Once possessed, a Flesh Pack fomor suffers rapid, severe decline of his mental faculties, at the same time the possessing Bane pumps him full of aggression and a growing hunger for raw meat — any kind will do. Most Flesh Pack “alphas” begin by raiding the nearest grocery store, but quickly proceed to devouring neighborhood pets and then neighbors. A growing Flesh Pack is easily capable of depopulating a small town or village, and indeed Pentex has recorded Flesh Packs doing so in Mexico, Chile, Somalia, and Siberia.
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
Flesh Pack “betas” look outwardly human, but seem anything but normal. They’re disheveled, filthy, and utterly manic with the need to eat. *Any* meat will do. A flesh pack will descend on a supermarket and tear apart its meat section as readily as they’ll consume the shoppers. They’re never sated, and their regenerative powers will allow them to feast on in agony almost indefinitely, even as their stomachs rupture and re-seal around lumps of raw flesh.
 **Genesis**
Flesh Packs spawn from Banes known as Winding Hungers, a kind of cannibal-spirit of gluttony and murder. Winding Hungers are only capable of possessing those who have eaten human flesh, making their fomori blessedly rare. Although when Pentex needs an outbreak badly enough, it’s not averse to slipping a burger made of long pork into a local O’Tolley’s. Pentex targets Kinfolk when possible, in the hopes that they’ll carry the infection inside the bawn of an isolated, selfsustaining caern.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
Hard to think, don’t need to think, need to eat; you’ve never needed anything so bad. Wait, did something move over there? Meat! Does it look familiar? The screams don’t matter, just the blood on your tongue and the flesh ripping between your teeth.
Damnit, you’re still hungry.

Freakfeet
Despite their variable appearance, all Freakfeet are genetically identical. They are the result of a geneticspiritual fusion of human and amphibian DNA with aH’ruggling Bane. They’re dull-witted and cowardly but vicious creatures, experts at creeping, slinking, and abducting targets from within their own homes, the better to either feed or grow their home nest.
 **Atributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
Freakfeet look like grotesque little toadmonkeys. They’re generally human in outline from the waist up, although with weirdly elongated arms. Their eyes are enormous, popping out of heads bulging up from wide, powerful shoulders; Freakfeet have no necks to speak of. Their legs are tiny, from six inches to a foot in length, ending in enormous feet with long prehensile toes. Freakfeet skin is waxy and rubbery beneath its glistening layer of slime, and these fomori come in a wide array of different colors, of which the Freakfeet are inordinately proud. Although they move with a seemingly awkward lope, Freakfeet are capable of impressive ground speeds.
 **Genesis**
 **Roleplaying Notes**
You have only the haziest memories of the host-flesh. You remember places, faces, names, facts, but have no emotional connection to them. They are likely to be the first things you hunt. You are born hungry. You love sliding through the pipes and drains of the city, collapsing your rubbery skin and using your natural slime to glide smoothly along. You like playing with the malleable flesh of those you capture. You must serve the Queen and you must serve the hive. Food, new brothers, and a bit of amusement are all that you need now.

Gorehounds, Take Two
 **Attributes (old)**
Strength 6, Dexterity 3, Stamina 6, Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 1, Perception 4, Intelligence 2, Wits 2
**Attributes (new)**
 **Abilities (old)**
Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Intimidation 4, Melee 4, Stealth 5
**Abilities (new)**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers (old)**
Immunity to the Delirium, Mega-Strength, Mega-Stamina, Regeneration.
**Powers (new)**
 **Equipment (old)**
Household implements such as meat cleavers, chainsaws, pitchforks, cordless drills, or screwdrivers, to be terribly misused.
**Equipment (new)**
 **Image**
 **Genesis**
In the past, Slaughterhouse Video produced heavily Wyrm-tainted direct-to-VHS slasher films, occasionally with minor banes sleeping inside the tapes, distributed through seedy video stores. These days, business is better than ever. While their Classic Slaughter line has jumped from VHS to the direct-to-DVD market, Slaughterhouse has also expanded with a Grim Reality line of “real” gore documentaries, compiling animal attacks, industrial accidents, and other purportedly genuine compilations of human death and mutilation. The videos have just enough obviously staged fakery to deflect suspicions about their primarily real content. Slaughterhouse has also jumped enthusiastically into the modern “torture porn” genre, discovering that aficionados of their Blood Trap line of low-budget films are ripe breeding grounds for a whole new kind of Gorehound.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
You stopped really feeling pain a long time ago — or much of anything else, for that matter. Now you only feel alive when screams ring in your ears, or when you feel hot wet blood soaking your arms up to the wrists. You’re living the dream; you’re carrying out a mission. It’s all that matters.

Hollow Men
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
Colony Powers (see sidebar), Dispersion, Immunity to the Delirium, Prolonged Life, Regeneration. Regeneration requires calling more animals from the surrounding area to replenish and mend wounds; if no such creatures are available, the power doesn’t work.
Hollow Men are among the upper echelon of fomor power, but the exact nature of that power differs depending on the type of Scavenger Bane possessing them. Some examples are below:
**Spider Colony:** Venomous bite, Wall Walking, Webbing
**Rat Colony:** Footpads, Infectious Touch, Rat Head
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
 **Genesis**
Hollow Men are thankfully rare, as the circumstances that permit their creation are quite uncommon. Scavenger Pack Banes can only possess a relatively fresh, mostly hollowed out body. The ideal body is one still in the process of dying. The Bane drives packs of its patron vermin, such as rats, snakes, roaches, or wasps, to stampede into the gutted husk and complete the task of hollowing it out. Within a matter of minutes or hours, the new fomor rises and goes about carrying out the Wyrm’s will.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
You’re empty. You have your old memories, but not your old life. You hate everything, especially the colony that nips at your skin and skitters across your bones. Nevertheless, you need them. Without them, you’d be so empty. So alone. Without the rats in your eyes, you couldn’t see. Without the rats in your head, you couldn’t think. They’re everything to you now. You need them. You hate them. You need them.

Normalities
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
 **Genesis**
The first Normalites were the products of a Pentex subsidiary known as Homogeneity, Incorporated, a business centered around “curing” homosexuals of unwanted sexual desires through a $2,000, ten-week course of isolation, religious services, and hypnotherapy. Project Iliad has since diversified, branching out from the original company to sponsor the use of its methods by a number of homosexual “rehab” programs, both Pentex-sponsored and wholly independent. In recent years, it has expanded its operations to include “treatment” of transgendered individuals as well. The banes that create Normalites prey on self-loathing and identity conflicts, and the programs that create Normalites create and magnify these feelings to a disturbing degree. Full possession and transformation takes between six and ten months. The psychological changes begin in a matter of weeks, while physical transformation doesn’t begin until the final month of the process.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
At first, the program seemed like it worked. You realized that your desires were disgusting and wrong, but over time, they faded away. Granted, no heterosexual impulses rose up to replace them, but that was okay, it was enough just to be free, for a while. Then your other desires began to fade as well, even as you became acutely sensitive to the freaks around you. Your rage toward anything “abnormal” grew, even as everything else dimmed out, you managed to become normal, so why couldn’t everyone else? Worst of all were the freaks — and you knew them to be freaks — who seemed completely normal on the outside.
By the time your genitals atrophied away, and your smooth flesh reabsorbed your eyes and nose, all you could think of was to hunt down the other, hate the other, kill the other. That’s when the nice men from Project Iliad came, and showed you how you could help shut down all deviation, once and for all.

Shadowfiends
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
 **Genesis**
A product of Project Iliad, all Shadowfiends are created using a special serum crafted by Pentex’ twisted scientsits. Specialists observe potential participants over the course of at least two months before sending invitations offering a large sum of money simply for attending a special seminar. People who respond are treated to a formal dinner and stay in a hotel where the seminar is held. Pentex specialists filter through the attendees, watching them from cameras and listening to their conversations. By the end of the night, they decide who they want.
Everyone will sleep well the following night from the time-release drug laced through the food at the dinner. Those chosen by Pentex are then injected with the serum that sends the victim into pain-laced nightmares for the remainder of the night. The serum opens the person up for possession, and, by the time morning comes, Pentex has created a monster.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
Pentex is everything. You live and breathe the will of the company, and you will do all you can to fulfill its requests. You’re not stupid, however. You take your time, analyze your targets, and when you strike, you do it quietly and without fanfare. You’re curt and only speak and do what’s necessary. Your job is to exterminate the enemies of Pentex, and no one is better suited for the task.

Sons of Typhon
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
 **Genesis**
Becoming a Son of Typhon requires being accepted into the Tau Upsilon Phi fraternity, which makes itself as appealing as possible to the campus populace. Heads of the fraternity sift through freshman classes and pass out pamphlets depicting attractive women clinging to members. The fraternity’s promises are simple: a place to belong, have fun, and have access to all the women a man could ever need.
The initiation process, however, is hell. Once a potential member is selected to apply, the brotherhood proceeds to tear down his pride. For two weeks, the applicant is subjected to varied forms of humiliation and tain that range from holding heavy bags at arm’s length until told to stop, to straight-up sexual assault. Failure reflects an inability to comply with authority, something the frat won’t accept. Failed pledges are beaten and shamed in any way the members see fit.
 **Roleplaying Notes**
The world is your puppet to play with as you please. You love to be on top in every respect of your life. The more people who run around and do your bidding, the better you feel. But you also understand authority, and until you hold the reins, you respect it and follow those who do.

Toads
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities**
 **Backgrounds**
 **Powers**
 **Equipment**
 **Image**
Toads seem human at a glance. They’re overweight (but not grossly so), situation-appropriate-but-shabby dressers, with wide-set, bulging eyes. A Toad’s fingers are like damp, clammy sausages, and their complexion starts at bad and gets worse over time.
 **Genesis**
 **Roleplaying Notes**
It’s all about control: the power to hire, to fire, to reward and to punish. You enjoy it when others labor to please you, and hate being looked down on. You let disrespect roll off your back like water when it happens, while making sure you always get even later. You’re a bully at heart. You try to avoid any fight where the odds aren’t stacked in your favor.

## **Fomori Families**

Not all fomori are created. Some are born.

As the number of fomori increase, they encounter one another more frequently. Drawn together by taint, mission, and sometimes chance, fomori typically work towards a common goal — or just as often, tear each other apart. But occasionally, in a fit of domination, lust, or (rarely) sympathy, fomori become sexually involved. The product of such a union is usually human, but not always. Families of fomori who bred true have appeared in remote areas and cities alike. While still relatively rare, the influx of Wyrm taint has their numbers increasing year by year, and with each successful birthing of a new fomori the creatures come that much closer to overrunning Mother Earth.

The first such family arose in a small community in the heart of Wyoming. One of the locals struck a nest of slumbering Banes while digging for a well. The disruption awoke the spirits, which proceeded to wreak havoc on the town. After a day of terror, the Banes had possessed fully half the town. The other half lay about, feeding the ground with their remains. The new fomori, still human enough to be horrified at what they had done, cut off connections with anyone outside the town. They barricaded themselves in with only one another for company.

They soon fell prey to their urges, and soon enough the fomori produced children. As the community degraded in a swirling mass of debauchery and sadism, the children born lived short, horrible lives full of various tortures. It wasn’t until three years later that a child bred true, emerging from the womb with a Bane in its heart. Inspired by the infant fomor, the townsfolk developed rites and rituals to attract more Banes as they partook in bloody orgies. Soon enough, fomori births became more common. Human children suffered as they always had, and though some were possessed after their births, none lived past their tenth birthday.

The community allowed nobody to leave, and as they reached sexual maturity, the new generation joined in the orgies of sex and violence. More offspring spawned from the unholy unions and, after two generations, the town started to slowly expand with a growing fomori population. The Black Spiral Dancers dubbed the town Hell, Wyoming, and the name stuck.

Pockets similar to Hell, Wyoming exist throughout the rural areas of the world. The isolated fomori families are masses of inbreeding, caring not about who has mated with whom. Conceived from taint and sin, the children of such families have the best chance of breeding true. Half are born with a Bane clinging to their soul. The community looks down upon those who aren’t born possessed as second-class citizens and use them as victims for their sick games. They often die after just a few years. Children who do breed true are greeted with enthusiasm and ritual. The young usually inherit a deformity from each of their parents, but the communities need and desire diversity. Over the years, the elders have created a number of rites to give their offspring more power. When a fomor child survives to the age of five, the community gathers for an infernal baptism. They brand gylphs into the skin of the child as the elders call for the Wyrm to bestow favor on the youth. At the culmination of the ritual, the fomor gains a new deformity fitting of her personality.

Outsiders stumbling upon these isolated groups rarely leave. They’re used as twisted playthings or subjected to torture depending on the whims of the families. The fomori commonly kill their victims in brutal survival games or lock them up and torture them until they die — or accept the Wyrm and become fomori themselves. The fomori don’t use captives as breeding stock. The chances of a child breeding true are much smaller with a non-fomor parent. Conceiving children with outsiders is a waste of time and effort. When elders discover forbidden couplings, they carve the unborn out of the mother’s womb. If the mother dies in the process, it is of no concern to them.

Remote communities are not the only places an unwary victim might find fomori families. As their numbers increase in urban areas, so have families started to spread. Ironically, the poor and downtrodden are not the most likely to harbor Bane-ridden families. Instead, the lower-middle class hide most of the urban atrocities.

Deluded into believing that they are an evolution above humans, the urban families strive to keep their powers secret from the public while maintaining seemingly ordinary lives. Members who can pass as human find occupations through which they can spread their taint. Those who can’t take low-level jobs at various Pentex subsidiaries. Company recruiters keep tabs on the families, offering education to any children who can’t attend a normal school due to their deformities.

Urban families do not fall into the mass of inbreeding that is prevalent among their rural counterparts. Instead, their children spread out into the world, through Pentex initiatives and through cults masquerading as family support groups, meeting other humans and fomori with whom to start relationships. Such relationships devolve into hatred, anger, and abuse, but sometimes the two fomori form a permanent link and, despite hating each other, they find themselves drawn back to one another time and again.

Large fomori families are very rare in the cities. The possessed, after all, have access to an unlimited human population. Because their blood is not as strong, they breed true with other fomori only one time in ten. Any offspring conceived with a human has no chance of being born with a Bane in her heart. Due to the lack of inbreeding, the children are all born with one inherited deformity — which can come from either parent — and a new power of their own. Their deformities are not as obvious to casual observation, and they are more likely to pass as normal in society. The children have a chance to accept their Bane and grow with it. Many who survive to adulthood are true horrors, fully accepting of what they are and the powers and deformities they possess.

Inspired by the fomori ability to breed true, Pentex started Project Echidna, using genetic engineering to take spiritual decay into its own hands. All of the Project’s attempts to create fertile fomori in a controlled environment has failed. All children conceived in the labs have either been normal humans or have died in their mothers’ wombs. Frustrated, the company has turned its attention elsewhere.

Hidden in zoo laboratories around the world, Project Echidna employees work fervently to recreate fomori families in various lines of animals. Unlike humans, the experiments have met with some success. They’ve created fertile fomori among carnivores, with the greatest success rate occurring among wolves and the great cats. They keep the offspring away from their parents after birth to stop the young killing their siblings — or the parents feasting upon their children. Project Echidna nurseries have found that fomori animals bred and raised in this manner have more control over themselves than their wild counterparts, making them trainable. The company raises and trains the creatures, keeping them separated, until they reach maturity. Siblings share most of their powers and deformities, and only a select few gain more as they mature. Project Echidna is actively working to make their fomori spawn stronger, keeping the best for future breeding stock, but their funding is being siphoned off into Project Lycaon’s attempts to create shapeshifters.

When the fomori come into their full powers, they are shipped off to different departments and subsidiaries where they commonly act as guard animals. Some make their way into First Teams where they are used to track down Garou in a similar fashion to police K9 units. Black Spiral Dancers will sometimes buy the less deformed creatures and then use them against Garou and Fera alike. Werewolves suddenly ambushed by great cats with strange powers might find themselves placing blame where it doesn’t belong.

### **Fomarchs**

Standing in direct contrast to the tried-and-true fomori breeds, the atrocities-in-flesh known as fomarchs are a new experiment by Pentex, part of the company’s ongoing efforts to lessen its dependence on other Wyrmspawn such as the Black Spiral Dancers. Fomori are all well and good as disposable shock troops. They’re cheap, easy to replace, and versatile in their variety of hideous forms, but their benefits are generally their drawbacks. They’re short-lived, generally dying by their third deployment, and most of them have to be housed and trained well out of the public eye due to their hideous mutations. Most of all, they’re weak—very few fomori are capable of standing up to a werewolf in single combat. Fielding them in strike teams only mitigates this problem to some degree, since the Garou normally operate in packs as well.

Fomarchs are a next-generation experiment in “elite” fomori. Pentex designed fomarchs to have fully concealable powers. Each fomarch has, at minimum, the Bestial Mutation power. They should work as solo operatives, or with backup from “normal” fomori. To be considered a success, a fomarch must be free of any drawbacks that severely curtail its life-expectancy, must have powers at least on par with a Ferectoi, must be able to completely conceal its powers by adopting an outwardly-human guise, and must be at least functionally sane. Pentex has attempted a number of methods to create fomarchs, experimenting with multi-Bane possession, binding of exceedingly mighty Banes into hosts, and even with mystic and genetic augmentation of standard fomori. The majority of these experiments have created deformed, hulking failures, which become as fodder for the front lines or the vivisection tables, but each success helps the company zero in on a reliable method to augment its forces with elite special operatives and mighty leaders, at least, so Pentex hopes.

A handful of fomarchs is detailed below; each considered a success by Pentex. All fomarchs are, to date, unique. Pentex has yet to devise a method of reliably creating fomarch “breeds.”

#### **Icomammus**

The fomarch Icomammus is a horse-sized, wraith-like being that seems to hover over the ground. Unlike other fomarchs, extreme physical violence isn’t its strength. The threat of Icomammus comes from within. The monster’s body is a semi-translucent shell of deceptive hardness, with the general shape and bioluminescent appearance of a jellyfish, down to the hundreds of whip like stingers that dangle from its body. But the bell-like horror isn’t just an empty cartilaginous ball of mesoglea. As the ghostly fomarch drifts in the wind, the cloudy liquids floating within its body clear, and a gray, human-sized fetus suspended within, lacking a nose or mouth. Its enormous jet-black eyes sometimes cut through the liquor amnii to peer out. Those who catch its gaze can feel Icomammus rifling through their thoughts and memories.

In addition to this telepathic probe, Icomammus supports itself by psychic projection, though its telekinetic gifts do not extend beyond self-propulsion. The rest of its vast psychic powers depend entirely on the delivery of a toxic sting from one of its many tentacles. After injecting a target with the psychoactive venom of Icomammus, the fiend may project illusions intense enough that they become like reality, to the point of doing extreme psychosomatic damage to victims.

#### **Temenathus the Great**

The fomarch called Temenathus was adapted from a failed NDL (see p. 167) project attempting to recreate the extinct Camazotz using a genetic werewolf-fomor hybrid and the spirit of a bat. The charnel beast that resulted was not a proper shapeshifter, but rather a man-bat horror whose slavering, unhinged jaw, and incessant screaming made it one of the most terrifying fomarchs produced by Pentex. Temenathus is a hulking beast with arms that drag the ground, trailing the leathery membranes and long bony fingers of a bat’s wings. Its wings don’t allow flight, but they do support enough of its considerable weight to allow it to glide. With its coal-gray, wolf-like fur, the beast is rather adept at blending into shadows, getting the moon at its back and then descending down on its victims.

Temenathus screams when it moves, its shrieking echoes creating a sonic reference point for its auditory senses. When it fights, it primarily uses the long, diseaseinfested claws at the ends of its human-like hands to slash victims, using its giant unhinging jaw full of bristling needle sharp teeth to rip the flesh from corpses. In addition to its tremendous speed and strength, that rivals some Crinos Garou, Temenathus’s salivary glands can release acid when it bites, allowing it to deliver a festering, and mortal wound. Recently, Temenathus developed incredibly overdeveloped shoulder muscles that open up to reveal soft glands that can squirt streams of this acid up to 10 yards away. Opening its shoulder glands releases such a terrible stench that the smell alone can send victims reeling; allowing even a human nose to detect and track Temenathus for hours after it uses this attack.

#### **Unicorn**

The fomarch codenamed Unicorn is a deliberate insult to the Children of Gaia. In many ways, it is more limited than other fomarchs, though Pentex scientists hope to generate arms and legs in the next iteration of the horror. For now, Unicorn remains of use only in aquatic deployments. Having the body of a great white shark with a huge proboscis from the top of its head, and four pectoral fins rather than two, Unicorn is so-named for the gigantic conical chitin spike that juts from its proboscis. This appendage pushes down at the monstrosity’s skull so forcefully that its eyes are sunken beneath their sockets, leaving bloody, ragged holes where they should be.

This headspike is not just a weapon, but also a beacon that makes the Unicorn receptive to sensations generated by Wyrm-based Gifts. As a result, the Black Spiral Dancers can use their Gifts to both lead and track Unicorn. Its horn also leads it to nature spirits, which it can strike from the physical world. Unicorn’s horn contains so much tainted Gnosis that it can strike both physical and Umbral targets with equal facility. Finally, the creature’s horn allows it to hear the prayers and rituals used by the warriors of Gaia. Though limited by where it can swim, it has led Pentex-crewed ships right to the shores of remote islands and hidden coasts sporting the cairns and holdfasts of the Garou and their allies on half a dozen occasions.

Kinfolk whom Unicorn hunts dream of a great glowing-eyed single-horned beast pursuing them through the shadows. Other times, their nightmares feature a great shark-shadow passing under the clouds.

## **Supernatural Fomori**

Possessing Banes twist human flesh and human minds into a mockery of Gaia’s design, but what happens when a person has already become something other than human? What happens when a Bane tries to possess an already-supernatural beings?

In short: nothing good.

Most Banes simply can’t do it. Supernatural beings tend to have some built-in protection against possession, meaning that only the strongest or most specialized of Banes have a shot at possessing a vampire, mage, or — Gaia forbid — a werewolf. Still, it happens occasionally, and the results can be among the most gruesome things a pack of Garou may ever have to face.

### **Vampires**

Vampires are hard to possess. Perhaps the Curse of Caine is such a potent form of damnation that any lesser affliction has trouble taking root; perhaps it has something to do with vampires already being dead. Whatever the reason, very few Banes can find any purchase in a vampire’s pale and withered soul. Those that do tend to be Banes of blood and madness, and they can make a vampire’s unlife very short and very unpleasant indeed. Detailed below are two examples of the kind of fomori possible when a Bane manages to curl up in the black and empty pit that was once a vampire’s soul.

Bloodworms
Or, it ends quickly and prematurely when a Bane known as a Thirster manages to slip into a vampire’s soul during frenzy.
It’s an excellent partnership at first. The vampire grows more resilient, and her blood seems more powerful and potent. But her self-control starts eroding soon after, and it becomes much easier for the scent of blood to send her into a killing frenzy. The Bane eats another piece of what’s left of the vampire’s soul during each murderous revel, until there’s nothing left but a creeping, bloodthirsty corpse. That’s when the real renovations begin.
 **Powers**
Blood Gorge, Corpse Hide.
**After losing all Humanity:**
 **Image**
 **Roleplaying Notes**
You’re an ambush predator and don’t have any worries in the world to distract you from the hunt for blood. The blood is everything, and when you’re warm and sloshing full of it, you’re content to hide and digest. It’s perfect. You can’t remember why you wanted to fight this.

Draugr
Then a Rot Walker enters the picture.
Draugr are among the rarest fomori in the world, and this is a very fortunate thing. Rot Walkers normally only possess the dead, and have little interest in vampires. When such a Bane does turn its attention to a vampire, it normally lacks the strength to adapt its normal form of possession from the dead to the undead. However, on those few occasions when it works, the result is a nightmare: for the vampire, for the Masquerade, and for the sept that has to clear out the Draugr and its brood.
Possession by a Rot Walker erases some of the vampire’s distinguishing characteristics. On the plus side, it no longer needs to sleep more than a couple of hours during the day, and sunlight inflicts bashing rather than aggravated damage. Less welcome are the fact that its fangs shorten and dull (inflicting lethal rather than aggravated damage), and its bite no longer inflicts a hypnotic euphoria, it just hurts. Nor can the vampire close its own bite wounds. Given that most vampires bite right into a major artery and then seal the wound, a Draugr leaves its victims bleeding out. What makes the Draugr so dangerous though comes after a victim dies of its bite.
They get back up.
 **Powers**
 **Image**
 **Roleplaying Notes**
You’re not sure why this is happening — it’s hard to feed, now, and when you kill someone, they come back. You don’t have to sleep so much during the day, which at least gives you time to watch over your growing collection of corpse-servants and to think about what to do with them. You know you’ve become a Masquerade breach waiting to happen, but at this rate, you’re going to have enough loyal muscle to get even with all the other vampires in the city before they start calling for your head. Maybe this could be your ticket to becoming Prince….

### **Werewolves**

Can a werewolf become a fomor? Absolutely. It doesn’t happen very often, though. Any Garou who isn’t already deep in the Wyrm’s thrall will feel something amiss as soon as possession begins, and the Garou are uniquely capable of stopping the process (generally by stepping into the Umbra and tearing the offending Bane to shreds). Once in a while, though, it happens, and the resulting fomor is one of the gravest and most personal insults to Gaia and the Garou Nation that a werewolf can conceive of.

Generally, only the youngest of cubs gets possessed. It’s not a fast or simple process where a werewolf is concerned (the difficulty of possession is always 9), and even making the attempt is usually enough to set the local sept on the warpath. Most Banes are smart enough to realize it’s not worth the trouble. There are always a few exceptions, though, and there is one particular breed of Bane specializing in possessing werewolves.

The Garou aren’t the only shapeshifters on the block, of course. Curiously, the other Fera do not share a uniform resistance to possession. In general, the deeper a Changing Breed’s link to the Umbra, the more possible possession becomes. Those shapeshifters that can’t naturally step sideways into the Umbra tend to be nearly immune to Bane possession.

Finally, the Black Spiral Dancers vary on the subject of Bane possession. A few of the tribe’s most hardcore Wyrm fanatics see the invitation of a Bane into their soul as an act of ultimate communion with their Dark Father. The majority of the Spirals, on the other hand, look on the idea of werewolf fomori with revulsion and horror. Fomori are sick jokes, the lowliest of the Wyrm’s minions, disposable chaff fit only for shock troops and servants. For a Black Spiral Dancer to submit himself to that sort of slavery and indignity is repugnant. Most Banes know better than to attempt to possess a Black Spiral Dancer without an invitation first; the Wyrm’s wolves can be creative indeed in exacting retribution.

Howling Shamblers
 **Powers**
 **Image**
 **Roleplaying Notes**
You’re so confused now—a few months ago, you were strong and proud, but now everything seems to be going wrong. It’s — AROOO! — it’s hard to concentrate, and you itch and ache all the time. Sometimes your thoughts don’t line up so well. Sometimes you want to do awful things, like something
was whispering in your ear. AROOO! But the wolf’s still alive and well in you, and it wants to hunt and howl.

### **Mages**

Mages, for all that they dabble in powers Gaia did not intend for humanity, remain fundamentally human. As such, they’re susceptible to Bane possession, and all the horrors that come with it.

Mages do have a few things going for them. Their souls are particularly powerful and resilient. The difficulty to possess a mage is three higher than it would otherwise be. Once possession begins, many mages are capable of wielding magick to contest the Bane’s efforts directly.

On the other hand, mages who deal with spirits don’t always know what they’re getting into, and some foolish or wicked mystics may actively invite Banes into themselves, believing they will be able to command the spirit, or not understanding the bargain they’re making. Either way, the result is a fomor wielding both the degrading blessings of the Wyrm and the mystic power of an Awakened soul.

In the long run, this isn’t a good thing for anybody other than the Wyrm. A mage fomor retains full access to her magic, and gets new powers, to boot. It seems like a great deal. At least until the mage attempts her next Seeking (a kind of mystic trance in which the mage communes with a portion of her soul in the hopes of achieving greater enlightenment). The mage discovers that her Avatar partially fused with the possessing Bane, covered in weeping sores, rugose scales, or some other outward sign of its corruption. A fomor cannot successfully complete any further Seekings. The Avatar doesn’t even offer enlightenment, but instead tempts the mage deeper and deeper into the sick philosophy of the Wyrm. Rather than Ascension, it speaks of the glory of destruction, the purity of annihilation, and the joy of scourging and defiling an ignorant and malleable reality. “Success” on such a Seeking simply allows the mage to escape with her sanity intact; failure bestows a Derangement and costs the mage a dot of Arete.

Worse, the mage’s corruption spreads out into her magic. Her vulgar magic taints the substance of reality with the Wyrm’s taint, acting as a beacon to Banes, who may glean an extra point or two of Essence from the free-floating, tainted energies. Soon, swarms of Banes constantly follow the mage in the Penumbra. If left unchecked for long enough, it may act as a catalyst to despoil an entire city. Certainly, she’s a severe threat to any place of spiritual power she interacts with.

Excising a Bane from its fomor host with magic is a possible, but difficult, and a fomor mage can’t perform the exorcism on herself. Even with the Bane removed, the mage is likely to suffer lingering damage to her soul and magic. If she’s lucky, it won’t persist into her next incarnation.

### **Changeling**

Those few fae remaining on Earth are strangely resilient to the power of the Wyrm. Their faerie souls shrug off the attentions of Banes without the changeling even being aware of the attempt. It is as though they are another order of being, indifferent to the wars of the Triat.

Yet, changelings are not purely fae. To survive in the magically barren modern world, most of the Earth’s remaining faeries have hidden themselves away in a guise of mortal flesh, and this flesh remains vulnerable to the attentions of the Wyrm’s minions. A changeling who has forgotten, temporarily or permanently, her fae nature is susceptible to Bane possession (though the difficulty to do so is still one higher than normal or two higher in the case of sidhe). A changeling who becomes a fomor in this fashion cannot recall her fae soul so long as the possessing Bane remains in residence. Her true nature remains trapped and slumbering, and in deadly peril. Generally speaking, barring miraculous treasures of the Dreaming, or the assistance of Fianna Theurges capable of driving out the Bane, a changeling fomor is doomed to live out the remainder of its days as an ignorant thrall of the Wyrm.

When a changeling fomor dies, its faerie soul is in terrible jeopardy, and may fall into the jaws of the Wyrm to be destroyed forever. Roll the fomor’s Glamour rating against difficulty 7. If the roll succeeds, the changeling’s soul passes on to its next incarnation as normal, if it fails, the soul is destroyed as surely as if struck down by cold iron.

### **Everything Else**

What of the other odd residents of the World of Darkness? Generally, they’re out of luck.

Kinfolk are as susceptible to Bane possession as anyone else, to the lament and horror of their Garou relatives. Indeed, Pentex often specifically targets Kinfolk when able; who better to strike against the Garou than those closest to them?

Those blood-addicted servants that vampires know as ghouls are still fundamentally human, and thus similarly vulnerable. So too, might Banes possess those of the strange bloodlines of “ghoul families” known as revenants, and even —hypothetically — the rumored and possibly apocryphal children of mortals and thinblooded vampires.

Mortals who dabble in the world of the supernatural generally have no special protection from becoming fomori, with the exception of the Imbued, “hunters” of all stripes, from the Society of Leopold and the Arcanum to Strike Force Zero and the Shih, are all vulnerable to possession.

Hedge mages, psychics, and mediums are also at risk of possession. Pentex has a specialized program known as Project Aeneid dedicated to experimenting with psychic fomori. Such individuals do not even enjoy the slight protection afforded to greater supernatural beings, due to the way their gifts require them to open themselves up to the world.

Finally, those fae-blooded individuals known as kinain are considered entirely mortal for the purposes of the possession Charm.

## **Spawn of the Wyrm**

If Banes and their twisted flesh-puppets were the Wyrm’s only creations, the work of the Garou would be much more straightforward, if no less daunting. However, the Wyrm’s polluted loins are fecund indeed, and multitudes of horrors walk the Earth, stamped by its taint. Some of these are twisted things the Wyrm has spawned upon the face of Gaia; its servants at Pentex made others. Each is a threat unto itself.

Heart Seekers
Heart Eaters are soft-bodied, writhing, flexible things. No creature of Gaia could feel anything save revulsion for a Heart Eater. However, the Heart Eaters understand the emotions and relationships of others all too well. Possessed of an uncanny empathy and a genius for relationship dynamics, Heart Eaters find it easy to sniff out deep bonds between others. When they find a particularly deep or vital bond, they go to work.
 **Attributes**
 **Abilities:**
 **Rage** 5
**Gnosis** 8
Strength +3 bite (lethal)
Strength tentacle attack (bashing, out to 10 feet)
Heart Eaters are willing to play the long game when wearing a loved one’s skin. They’re cowardly things, more interested in destroying hearts and shattering sanity than in simple murder. As a result, they often leave the paramours of their victims alive after paralyzing them, “disrobing” in front of a horrified captive audience. The greatest of Heart-Eaters may stalk a preferred target throughout his life, returning to check on him every few years, waiting patiently for him to fall in love again, and then repeating their masquerade. Supernatural beings, already alienated from the rest of the world, are particularly tempting targets.
Heart Eaters are mostly solo operators, seeming to reserve their Wyrmish devotion exclusively for Empress Aliara, but will work occasionally with other Wyrm-horrors or even Black Spiral Dancers if they can be convinced that their allies are also true servants of Aliara. Heart Eaters are especially dangerous when working alongside others, restraining their natural impulses in order to act as long-term deep-cover spies within Kinfolk families or even septs of the Garou.

Thunderwyrms
 **Attributes:**
Strength 8, Dexterity 4, Stamina 8
Charisma 0, Manipulation 0, Appearance 0
Perception 3, Intelligence 1, Wits 2
 **Rage** 6
Bite (Strength lethal), Roll (Strength bashing — more than 3 successes indicates the target is pinned under the creature’s bulk)
 **Image:**
Thunderwyrms range in size from merely huge to unspeakably gigantic. The most commonly encountered normally stretch 30 feet in length, and almost eight feet wide. The largest, and presumably oldest, is Grandmother Thunderwyrm: she spans the length of two football fields and is almost three hundred feet around. Rumor has it that she contains an entire Wyrm caern in her gut. The smallest Thunderwyrm yet seen — presumably newly hatched — was only the length of a man.
Encounters with Thunderwyrms are rare, and generally in rural areas. Many Thunderwyrms follow trends in their attack patterns: only coming out during storms, for example, or repeatedly stalking favored locations. The marks they leave on the ground strongly resemble the patterns left by tornadoes. While their digestion-trails are badly Wyrm-tainted, they leave no chemical digestive residue in the soil for scientists to examine.
Thunderwyrms are perfect for stories where “something” is beginning to terrorize a small farming community, or isolated desert town. If the Garou don’t step in, a hungry Thunderwyrm — or its newly hatched brood — might devour the entire settlement.

Skull Pigs
 **Attributes:**
Strength 7, Dexterity 4, Stamina 8
Charisma 0, Manipulation 0 (2-4), Appearance 0
Perception 2, Intelligence 1 (2-5), Wits 3

 **Rage** 5
Body Slam
 **Image:**
Skull Pigs resemble huge, somewhat emaciated wild boars that stand six feet at the shoulder and are almost seven feet long. Their bristles are coarse and malformed and they stink of grave-rot. The deathly pale flesh covering their skulls is so thin, and the bone structure so distinctive, that it’s easy to get the impression that they have no flesh to their heads at all. Despite their deathlike appearance, they obviously possess a wiry strength.
 **Background:**
All of the Changing Breeds know that the War of Rage brought about the Grondr’s extermination. So enraged were the members of one of the last Sounders (packs) of Grondr, by the Garou’s slaughter of their Breed that their lust for vengeance and their hatred of the Garou attracted the attention of Lord Steel, the Maeljin Incarna of hatred. He offered these Grondr the chance to survive the werewolves’ onslaught and for them and their descendants to strike back against their enemies. The wereboars accepted this foul deal and they and their descendants became agents of the Wyrm.
 **Storytelling Notes:**
Even the unintelligent Skull Pigs will attack Garou, though they ignore humans who are not obviously easy prey. Most humans either do not remember seeing a Skull Pig, or believe that they have seen a normal, if often terrifying wild boar or feral pig. They inflict Delirium the same as seeing a Garou’s Crinos form.
Ordinary Skull Pigs have keen senses and are skilled and ever-hungry pack hunters. They can smell weakness, and make a special effort to prey upon the weak. Intelligent Skull Pigs revel in tainting the land and corrupting or killing other Changing Breeds, especially the Garou. Despite now being creatures of the Wyrm, intelligent Skull Pigs retain a faint racial memory of the destruction of their kind at the hands of the Garou.
In addition to becoming intelligent, Skull Pigs who devour Wyrm-tainted remains also gain the ability to imitate perfectly sounds and voices. They use this ability to trick humans and members of the Changing Breeds into thinking that an ally or comrade is calling for help. The pigs then lie in ambush when their victim comes to help. Skull Pigs can use their hooves to dig tunnels, and the intelligent members of their Breed occasionally construct large warrens to act as traps. They collapse these tunnels upon enemies who enter attempting to slay the Skull Pigs.

Bloodbats
 **Attributes:**
Strength 3, Dexterity 7, Stamina 4
Charisma 0, Manipulation 2, Appearance 0
 **Abilities:**
 **Rage** 5
Bite (Strength + 1 aggravated)
Bloodbats prefer wild, shadowy places where they can hide in the dark, swooping out to attack their prey. They create a cacophony of sounds to distract their prey, then send them fleeing with a terrifying shriek, and swoop down to pick off stragglers.

### Nope, Doesn't Work

 Finally, demons are entirely immune to possession of any kind.

## **Fomori Powers**

A newly possessed fomor typically has one of the following powers (or often two, with one being Immunity to the Delirium). The average fomor has three; some of Pentex’ most dangerous creations have four or five. While it’s very easy to add a simple “build” of three powers to a generic template, the most dangerous fomori still maintain some semblance of their former lives. Any set of statistics for an ordinary human can be transformed into a fomor with the addition of a few fomori powers.

**• Addictive Presence:** Addictive Presence requires the Enticer to spend a scene interacting with a target, and then to spend a point of Willpower and roll Manipulation + Subterfuge against the target’s Wits + Primal Urge (difficulty 6 in both cases). If the Enticer wins, then the subject is addicted to his presence, and will go to extremes in order to be with the Enticer again; once per week, the target may make another roll to attempt to break this addiction.

**• Animal Control:** The fomor can emit a highpitched wailing only animals can hear. This summons a few of the most weak-willed or diseased animals in the area. The fomor can then command her animal minion to do anything it could normally do, albeit with purpose and almost human intelligence. For example, dogs can bite humans, rats can follow people unseen, or a cat can leap on someone’s face to scratch out his eyes.

System: Spend one Willpower and roll Manipulation + Animal Ken (difficulty 6). If successful, the fomor can force one animal per success anywhere within 120 yards to do as he bids. The command must be simple, and it can’t be longer than five words. The effects last for one scene.

**• Armored Hide:** The fomor has tough skin that’s resilient to harm. It might be a leathery hide that soaks damage, reptilian scales that deflect attacks, or an oozing discharge that causes weapons to slide off it.

System: The fomor has an additional three dice for soaking lethal and bashing damage. The freak can also use those dice to attempt to soak aggravated damage (difficulty 8.)

**• Armored Skin:** This ability is common among fomori.

System: The creature can soak and heal lethal damage as if it was bashing damage.

**• Barbed Tongue:** Barbed Tongue functions as a hybrid of both Lashing Tail and Frog Tongue, being capable of both capturing targets and inflicting damage with its sharp tip at the fomor’s discretion. Particularly old or vicious Toads may also possess Venomous Bite, which can be applied with their tongue.

**• Berserker:** The fomor understands rage and wrath as well as any werewolf, though he’ll never understand how to temper passion with wisdom. Drawing on his inner anger, the freak channels it into vicious attacks against Garou. Some rare fomori harness that rage to fuel other supernatural powers. Fomori contaminated by Pentex are often well-acquainted with the company’s products that encourage frustration and wrath.

System: The fomor has five Rage points and can use them like Garou. However, the fomor is also vulnerable to frenzy. Some fomor powers require Berserker as a prerequisite, most notably in cases where the fomor needs Rage to empower an ability.

**• Bestial Mutation:** The fomor can shapeshift into the form of a hideous beast. Each fomor’s bestial shape is different, but none are pleasant to see (or smell or hear, for that matter). No one would ever mistake one for a natural creature — these are the things nightmares are made of. Distinctive freaks can be identified through their odious aromas, unnatural hues, horrific hides or scales, or even sanity-shattering emanations from various orifices. (In other words, let your imagination mutate and go wild.)

System: Shapeshifting takes the same time as it does for Garou (using Dexterity + Primal-Urge, though few fomor learn that skill.) The freak gains two additional dice for Physical Attributes, but the creature’s Appearance in its Bestial Mutation drops to 0. Many of these freaks also have the Power: Claws and Fangs or the Extra Limbs power.

**• Blood Gorge:** This power doubles the size of a vampire’s Blood Pool, but causes her to fail all hunger frenzy rolls, and to automatically fail any Humanity rolls she makes.

**• Body-Barbs:** The fomor has razor-sharp growths of bone blades protruding from her joints. The size, shape, and number of these barbs varies from one freak to another.

System: If the fomor succeeds in an attack using her body-barbs, the attack does an additional two dice of damage. Most barbs are in some way attached to the arms or legs, adding damage dice to a punch or kick attack. (This power can be “bought” up to three times for additional levels; each level adds another two dice of damage.)

**• Body Expansion:** The fomor can extend up to three times normal height. The freak can take giant steps or grab humans in its meaty mitts. Unfortunately, the fomor’s internal organs don’t adapt well, since there isn’t enough air in its lungs or blood in the its veins to stay healthy. Its bones also become brittle.

System: Spend one Willpower and roll Strength + Athletics (difficulty 6). Hand-to-hand attacks from the expanded fomor inflict Strength + 4 damage. The fomor can also add 10 yards to its running speed per turn. If the freak botches a soak roll, his brittle bones break, causing one Health Level of damage.

**• Brain Eating:** The fomor can temporarily reduce a victim’s Intelligence (or any Mental Attribute) by gnawing on that person’s skull. However, cracking open the skull isn’t absolutely necessary.

System: The fomor must touch the target; this requires a Dexterity + Athletics roll. If the roll succeeds, the fomor spends one Willpower on the same turn and rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 6); the target can resist with Willpower (difficulty 6). A successful attack means the fomor can temporarily remove one point from one of the victim’s Mental Attributes. This doesn’t inflict physical damage, although it heals at the same rate as aggravated damage.

**• Burning Blood:** A Bloodbat’s acidic ichor can burn even Garou flesh. In addition to making the Bloodbat’s bite deal aggravated damage, anyone who successfully bites a Bloodbat suffers three dice of aggravated damage as caustic fluids burn her mouth and throat. Damage from this power (including a Bloodbat’s bite damage) is always soaked at difficulty 9.

**• Cancerous Carapace:** The fomor has an unappealing and repulsive skin condition, eliciting stares from rude people and uncomfortable questions from ruder ones. This might include growths, blotches, warts, cold sores, suppurating wounds, or other disfigurements. Clothing and cosmetics can decrease their visibility, enough so that they can blend other with normal people who have such afflictions (resulting in an Appearance of 1). Once enraged, however, the fomor’s affliction blooms into a full-body carapace of undeniably unnatural cancerous sores and tumors (and effectively lowers Appearance to 0).

System: The fomor can spend one Rage to harden her skin with hard, scaly growths for one scene. This natural armor gives the fomor an additional two dice for soaking damage from physical attacks. This power cannot be combined with Armored Hide; it’s an alternative that’s relatively concealable.

**• Cause Insanity:** The fomor can shatter sanity and twist minds. The exact method depends on the freak’s perverted proclivities. Some gibber and blather in the Wyrm’s true language; others project illusions that distort and distend their bodies into blasphemous, atavistic forms. Fomori with Gnosis (from the Power: Spirit Ties) may even allow a mortal to peer through the Umbra into the depths of a Hellhole. No matter what the method, it inevitably leads to madness.

System: The target must be within line of sight; the fomor needs to engage the target, either through conversation or combat. Spend one Willpower point and roll Willpower (difficulty 8). — One or two successes inflicts a minor phobia for one scene, determined by the Storyteller. — With three or four successes, the victim gains an elaborate delusion or minor phobia for one hour or one scene (whichever is longer). — With five successes, the victim has a full-blown freak-out for one day. If the victim is a player character, that victim might go on a walkabout instead for one scene while under the control of the Storyteller. When it’s over, the victim has no memory of that time.

**• Chameleon Coloration:** The fomor can change color, blending into her surroundings. This may manifest in a single hue, an inky shadow form, or even a pattern that blends into a background.

System: Changing color requires a turn to activate. Anyone attempting to spot the fomor must roll Wits + Alertness (difficulty 7). A variation on this power, Shadowwalking, allows the fomor shift her skin to a shade of gray or black so she can walk in shadows; the mechanic is the same. At the Storyteller’s discretion, blending in someplace tricky may require a Wits + Subterfuge roll. (A single hue would need one success; a brick wall three; a complicated pattern is possible with five successes.)

**• Claws and Fangs:** The fomor has natural weapons similar to a Garou’s claws and fangs. They don’t necessarily manifest as teeth and talons, however. The monster may have porcupine quills, bone spurs, a jagged proboscis, or stranger, even prehistoric varieties of natural weaponry.

System: The fomor can perform the Claw and Bite maneuvers; each attack inflicts Strength +1 aggravated damage. Whatever form these natural weapons take, they cannot be easily concealed, making the prospect of blending in with human society impossible.

**• Clear Scent:** The Fomori may spend one Gnosis point per scene to hide its Wyrm-taint from detection.

**• Corpse Hide:** Corpse Hide allows the vampire to soak damage at a difficulty two lower than normal.

**• Darksight:** The freak has an innate affinity to see in darkness.

System: No roll is required, but if the fomor is surprised by an extremely bright light, she’s blinded one turn for every dot she has in Perception. The power even works in the complete and utter absence of all light.

**• Deception:** The fomor can mask her own Wyrm taint for a turn. With a touch, she can even mask or falsify another’s corruption, but only if she has a talent for subterfuge.

System: The fomor must touch her target; roll Dexterity + Athletics. If successful, spend one Willpower on the same turn and roll Wits + Subterfuge (difficulty 7). A fomor masking her own Wyrm taint needs one success; masking someone else’s corruption (such a vampire’s low Humanity or a Black Spiral’s true nature) takes three; falsifying corruption (making a heroic Silver Fang smell “of the Wyrm”) requires five. Any supernatural creature can see through this deception with a contested Perception + Occult roll; add three successes if a Garou’s Gift, vampire’s Discipline, or mage’s magick can be used to perceive or interpret the supernatural.

**• Dentata Orifice:** The fomor has a second, concealable mouth. The most common manifestation of this power is in the palms of the hands, the belly, or in place of a bodily orifice. When retracted, the dentata orifice is not visible — a fold of flesh hides the teeth, although the mound of skin that hides it usually looks disturbingly unhealthy.

System: When the fomor succeeds with a Grapple maneuver, he can immediately attempt an additional bite attack (as long as thick clothing doesn’t separate his second mouth from the victim). Until the victim escapes from the grapple, the fomor can continue to make a bite attack each turn in addition to its attacks against other victims.

**• Disguise:** Sons of Typhon can hide their true appearance. They look exactly as they did before they were possessed. They can drop the disguise if they so choose, but few rarely do.

**• Echoes of Wrath:** The fomor can incite an emotional outburst from a human victim. Some of these monsters fall to the Wyrm by falling prey to a sin or addiction. Pentex subsidiaries in particular excel at enabling such behaviors in their most weak-willed consumers. Under the right conditions, these monsters can elicit similar behaviors from humans lacking in humanity.

System: This can be attempted once per scene. The fomor rolls Presence + Intimidate; the freak’s opponent rolls Willpower (difficulty 6). If the fomor gets more successes than its opponent, that opponent spends one turn for each additional success unable to do anything other than ineffectually acting out on one of the victim’s dysfunctional emotions. If the subject has been indulging in a product produced by the Pentex Corporation within the last scene, the difficulty of subject’s Willpower roll might be one or two points higher.

**• Ectoplasmic Extrusion:** The fomor can create up to four ectoplasmic tentacles that can be used to reach out, grab objects, hit objects, smack people, or smother living things. Each appendage can reach up to five yards.

System: Spend one Willpower point and roll Stamina + Occult (difficulty 6) to create tentacles. The fomor adds three to her Strength for any roll involving lifting or Feats of Strength. To attack with tentacles, roll Dexterity + Brawl (difficulty 8); they collectively inflict Strength +2 damage. Any harm inflicted with a grapple can be inflicted with tentacles.

**• Empathy:** With a Wits + Empathy roll (difficulty 5) the Heart Eater can discern not only whom an individual loves passionately, but if the object of the target’s desire feels the same way. By consuming an individual’s heart and brain and spending two Gnosis points, the Heart Eater can perfectly impersonate the victim. They instinctively mimic the victim’s personality, mannerisms, and even habits, and have access to the victim’s memories. This access is instinctive rather than deliberate, however. The Heart Eater can’t “rifle around” in the victim’s memories selectively. Instead, memories arise and present themselves as necessary for the Heart Eater to maintain its masquerade.

**• Exoskeleton:** The fomor has a hard, gnarled, ossified carapace sporting bizarre ivory growths.

System: The exoskeleton grants the fomor +3 Strength and +3 Stamina. If this raises an Attribute above 5, the creature’s appearance is so impossible that seeing it incites the madness of the Delirium.

**• Extra Limbs:** The fomor has one or more additional limbs, often manifesting as masses of tendrils. These limbs may jut at unnatural angles, or they may be extensions of the creature’s tongue. The creature might have methods of concealing some of these extra appendages, such as a pouch, throat sack, or tentacle gut.

System: The fomor has an extra three dice for grapple attempts. It might be able to make those attempts at a longer range, depending on the form those limbs take. Tentacles replacing existing appendages may have the same sensory capacity and might perform some of the same functions.

**• Extra Speed:** The fomor can outmaneuver a normal human.

System: The fomor can take one extra action per turn without splitting her dice pool. This also allows her to multiply her normal speed by 1.5.

 Jog
 Run

**• Eyes of the Wyrm:** The fomor has unnatural eyes that can terrify victims. Something about them is grotesque and outré. They might have strangely colored iridescent irises, irregularly-shaped pupils, a disturbing ability to bulge out, or a propensity to weep viscous fluids. The creature can dilate or otherwise distort their eyes at will, demonstrating the sorts of nauseating and repulsive manifestations the Wyrm bestows. Eyes are the windows to the soul, as the saying goes, but these lay bare the spiritual corruption that burns behind them.

System: The fomor’s eyes appear normal until this power is activated. An opponent who looks the freak in the eyes must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 8) or remain immobilized in horror for (five turns minus Wits rating; minimum of one turn).

**• Fiery Discharge:** The fomor can spew a fiery fluid from one of its existing orifices or a new one created through mutation. The fluid could be any variant of a natural discharge. Whatever form the discharge assumes, it burns. An additional mutated gland secretes and forcefully expresses this fluid, but readying it before each burst takes time.

System: This attack requires a Wits + Athletics roll, and normal modifiers from Firearms attacks apply. The attack can be made once every other round; the Berserker power does not allow additional attacks with the discharge. Each success on the attack roll not only increases the chance to hit, but also defines the range of the attack in yards/meters. Damage is aggravated, but it can be mitigated by Gifts like Resist Toxin.

**• Footpads:** The freak has soft pads on the bottom of his feet, allowing him to move quietly.

System: Lower the difficulty of all the fomor’s Stealth rolls by 2.

**• Frog Tongue:** The freak’s tongue violently projects from his oral cavity, adhering victims to its extended lingual length.

System: The fomor rolls Dexterity + Athletics to attack a target up to two yards away with her long frog tongue. Grappling maneuvers are possible; damage is equal to Strength. Pulling a grabbed target adds a two dice bonus to the fomor’s Strength dice pool.

**• Fungal Touch:** The inside of the fomor’s body is a breeding ground for a communicable toxic fungus.

System: The fomor can infect an opponent with a touch (a successful Dexterity + Brawl roll) or when the fomor is touched. The victim resists with a Stamina roll (difficulty 7); if the roll fails, the victim loses one point from each Physical Attribute, as well as the Appearance Trait. The effects last for one day, but can be cured with a healing Gift (such as Resist Toxin or Mother’s Touch) or a healing talen or fetish. As an alternative, the fomor can exude the toxin from her skin; when this happens, all dice pools for melee attacks against the toxic fomor are reduced by two.

**• Fungal Udder:** The fomor’s body produces a substance that can sustain fomori, Black Spiral Dancers, and other Wyrm-tainted creatures. The creature can consume toxic waste, cardboard, or some other inedible substance, converting it into a disgusting (yet edible) milk, meat, or fat its dependents can harvest. After a day, the substance degenerates into something so foul even the creatures of the Wyrm cannot derive sustenance from it.

System: This power works like the Bone Gnawer Gift: Cooking; it can be used once per day with no Gnosis cost. Each success creates enough food to sustain one Wyrm-tainted creature for one day. The creature also has an anatomical extremity that can exude or extrude this food substitute. Whether it’s milked into a container or sucked directly from the appendage depends on the nature of the mutation. Another fomor who suckles at a fungal teat gains an extra point of Strength, Dexterity, or Stamina for one scene; suckling a teat takes one round.

**• Gaseous Form:** The fomor can boil his body into a gaseous state within seconds. The gas retains its integrity, even in a strong wind. Its stench is redolent of sulfur, urine, excrement, or another odious aroma.

System: The freak must spend a point of Willpower to become gaseous. The transformation takes one turn, and the fomor cannot remain gaseous for more than a scene. Changing back sooner requires a second point of Willpower. It can move wherever a gas might drift of its own volition. However, the fomor cannot be inhaled.

**• Gifted Fomor:** The fomor can learn Level One or Level Two Homid, Ahroun, or Black Spiral Gifts. The Gift’s effects always appear twisted or warped in some way. For instance, a fomor using Persuasion might appear to be brainwashed and speak in tongues, speak through chittering insectile mandibles hidden within her mouth, influence onlookers with the double-irises of her hypnotic eyes, or possess the fanaticism and determination of a religious cultist.

System: Each Gift counts as a separate power. If the Gift requires Rage or Gnosis, the freak can spend Willpower instead (unless it has somehow acquired Rage or Gnosis).

**• Hazardous Breath:** The fomor can spew a cloud of harmful halitosis on anyone within reach.

System: Inflict one Health Level of damage with a successful Dexterity + Brawl roll (difficulty 7). This can be used once per scene for each point of Stamina the fomor has. However, the cloud can’t extend farther than the fomor can reach.

**• Hazardous Heave:** The fomor must have Hazardous Breath to gain this power; treat this as buying a second power.

System: Like Hazardous Breath, but the spewed substance is caustic, inflicting two Health Levels of damage each turn until the substance is washed off or the subject dies. The fluid might resemble napalm, gasoline, or toxic waste.

**• Hell’s Hide:** The fomor’s skin has a slightly reddish tint. It’s highly resistant to heat, fire, and radiation.

System: Gain three additional soak dice only usable against damage from heat, fire, or radiation (which is normally non-soakable).

**• Homogeneity:** The fomor can inhibit or even cancel the power of a supernatural creature nearby.

System: The fomor spends one Willpower point and rolls Manipulation + Intimidation (difficulty 7). The freak chooses one supernatural creature within five yards. The target can resist with a Willpower roll (difficulty 7). If the fomor wins this contested roll, each success subtracts one die from the next dice pool to activate a supernatural ability, such as a vampire’s Disciplines, a Garou’s Gift, a mage’s Spheres, and so on.

**• Immunity to the Delirium:** This is the most common and arguably the most useful power a fomor can have. Nearly all Banes suppress the Delirium in their victims, and it seems to be a recurring side effect in fomori created by Pentex products. As a freak’s humanity and cognitive skills degenerate, the parts of the brain trigged by the Delirium begin to deteriorate as well.

System: Delirium doesn’t affect the fomori with this power, just as it doesn’t affect Garou or their Kinfolk.

Storyteller’s Note: The rare fomori who do not possess this power act even more irrationally than their insane allies, acting based on the delusions and rationales they experience during Delirium. As with humans, these reactions are based on the fomor’s Willpower. The Delirium doesn’t prevent the fomor from using all his powers when reacting to this fantasy.

**• Infectious Touch:** The fomor can infect a victim with sickness through touch. This requires flesh-to-flesh contact. Mystical healing can remove the disease’s debilitating effects, but the victim may feel miserable for weeks.

System: The fomor must succeed with a Dexterity + Melee roll; the victim can attempt to dodge it (but not parry or block) using Dexterity + Athletics. The fomor only needs one success to infect a victim. Regardless of whether the “touch attack” inflicts damage, the fomor expends one point of Willpower the same turn. The victim can then resist the infection by rolling Stamina + 3 (difficulty 8). The victim takes six Health Levels of aggravated damage, reduced by one Health Level per success on the resistance roll. The damage heals at the rate of one Health Level per week. Mystical healing (such as Mother’s Touch or even Resist Toxin) can remove the immediate damage; however, the victim will feel miserable for a week for each level of damage inflicted. During this time, the victim takes a two-die penalty to all physical actions. A victim cannot be affected by more than one Infectious Touch at a time.

**• Invisibility:** The fomor is so twisted that light actually warps around her when she uses this ability. As long as she concentrates her will and doesn’t attack anyone, she remains unseen.

System: The fomor spends one Willpower roll and rolls Wits + Stealth (difficulty 7). Anyone specifically searching for a hidden fomor can attempt to contest this with a Perception + Alertness roll (difficulty 8). Sense Wyrm doesn’t require a contested roll, but it can’t pinpoint the fomor’s exact location. The power’s effects last until the end of the scene, or until the fomor enters combat.

**• Lashing Tail:** The fomor has an appendage similar to an extra limb; however, this lashing tail cannot be manipulated in precision interactions.

System: The tail has a six-foot reach, requires a Dexterity + Melee roll to connect (difficulty 8), and inflicts Strength +2 damage.

**• Malleate:** The fomor secretes a venom that can melt a living victim’s body into a malleable mass. The victim can be stretched like taffy, kneaded like dough, or molded like clay. The victim can still fight back until he’s incapacitated, at which point he becomes a pitiful puddle of miserable, mewling goo.

System: The fomor must inflict damage to the target with a natural piercing attack (fangs, stinger, etc.) and spend one Willpower point. If the fomor has no such natural weaponry, his bite inflicts Strength –1 damage (difficulty 5). Each turn after being bitten, the victim suffers one Health Level of aggravated damage that cannot be soaked. The venom does damage over time, inflicting one point of damage each turn for each success the fomor initially rolled. With each level of damage, the victim becomes increasingly malleable. When the victim is Incapacitated, that victim is a pile of goo with no fine motor skills. Once those Health Levels heal, the victim returns to normal. The Gifts: Resist Toxin, Doppleganger, and Adaption allow Garou to resist this power.

**• Maw of the Wyrm:** The fomor can distend his mouth to swallow an object or creature in his grasp; the victim can be up to the size of a human being. If the fomor devours a living creature, the victim begins to suffocate (see Suffocation); if the victim dies this way, he’s digested as food. All indigestible objects are excreted within a day.

System: The fomor must first succeed with a grapple attempt. Once each turn for the next two turns, the fomor can attempt an additional Dexterity + Melee check; this is resisted by the victim’s Dexterity + Athletics roll; if the victim succeeds on any of these rolls, he escapes. If the victim doesn’t escape within three turns, he’s devoured whole. The fomor can choose to let go of a victim before swallowing him whole; the victim can choose to attack instead of attempting to escape.

**• Mega-Attribute:** The fomor has enhanced Strength, Dexterity, or Stamina.

System: This power can be taken up to three times. Each time, the fomor gains an extra three points in a different Physical Attribute; Strength is the most commonly enhanced attribute. If an attribute is raised higher than 5, the fomor is obviously supernatural, inciting the Delirium in any who see her. No attribute can be raised more than once this way or raised above 10.

**• Mind Blast:** The fomor can assault a victim’s mind with mental energy, crippling him with pain.

System: The fomor spends on Willpower point and rolls Wits + Alertness (difficulty 8); this is resisted by the victim’s Willpower (difficulty 6). For each success, the victim cannot act for one turn because he’s wracked with pain.

**• Molecular Weakening:** The fomor can tear at the bonds holding matter together, whether using melee or ranged attacks.

System: The fomor must first successfully hit the target with a touch attack; this is usually a Dexterity + Melee roll that the victim can dodge (but not parry or block.) The fomor then spends one Willpower and rolls Perception + Medicine (if the target is organic) or Perception + Repair (if the target is inorganic); the difficulty is 8 either way. If this second roll succeeds, damage is doubled.

**• Nimbleness:** The fomor is remarkably dexterous, keeping her balance while performing feats that would throw anyone else ass over teakettle. This supernatural ability almost seems to defy the laws of physics; however, anyone attempting to post footage of these agile actions to the Internet will only capture crappy blurred footage. Truly impossible feats may trigger Delirium.

System: The fomor adds two dice to all rolls associated with climbing, jumping, and balance.

**• Noxious Breath:** The fomor releases poisonous fumes into the air. Those nearby are filled with inexplicable cravings. The fumes weaken the lung tissue (or stomach lining) of those who breathe it.

System: The fomor rolls Stamina + Medicine (difficulty 6). Fumes waft within 20 yards of the fomor. Anyone within range must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 8) or get an irresistible urge for an unhealthy (but still consumable or inhalable) substance, such as alcohol or a cigarette (even if the victim doesn’t drink or smoke): the substance can’t be toxic, corrosive, or poisonous. Each target that fails this Willpower roll suffers one Health Level of damage. The damage is aggravated and can’t be soaked. (Some variants of this power have a different smell that induce overwhelming cravings for unhealthy food, such as a hunger for raw meat or burned bacon; the damage is inflicted to the stomach lining instead.) Noxious Breath can only be used three times in a scene.

**• Noxious Miasma:** The fomor can waft a noxious cloud of toxic spores at will, affecting anyone within arms’ reach (or a yard/meter, whichever is less).

System: The fomor can use this power once per scene; it requires a Presence + Subterfuge roll (difficulty 8). Each victim within range can oppose this roll with Stamina + Primal-Urge (difficulty 8). One roll is made against all victims within range. For each success by which the fomor’s roll exceeds its victim’s roll, the victim is immobilized for one round. (A point of Willpower can negate these effects for a round.) The resulting effects including coughing, wheezing, tearing up at the eyes, and gagging. Victims are immobilized and incapacitated, although they can defend themselves.

**• Numbing:** The fomor’s body becomes completely numb, feeling no pain. During this time, she feels no sensations. She can’t talk properly (as though her tongue is anesthetized), and she can cut herself without feeling anything. Some fomor become addicted to this release from suffering. For some poor bastards, feeling nothing is better than feeling pain, emotional or otherwise.

System: The fomor spends one Willpower point and rolls Stamina + Medicine (difficulty 6). The effects last for one scene. The fomor suffers no wound penalties and has three extra Health Levels. However, when this power wears off, the extra Health Levels disappear; if the fomor is below Incapacitated, she dies and melts into a dissolving pile of muscle and bone. Fortunately, she doesn’t feel a thing.

**• Phoenix Form:** The fomor can immolate himself, becoming a walking bonfire. The flames do not damage him, but they ignite anything they touch, including ammunition (which may explode) and any building the fomor enters.

System: The fomor spends one Willpower point and rolls Stamina + Occult (difficulty 7). The flames are considered a raging chemical fire (three Health Levels of damage; difficulty 9 to soak). The effects last one turn per success.

**• Poison Tumors:** The fomor is covered in noxious tumors that ooze a poisonous pus. When the fomor is hit by an attack, the tumors splatter everyone within reach.

System: The power is activated when the fomor is hit with an attack (even if the attack doesn’t inflict damage.) Victims within a yard/meter must immediately attempt to soak three dice of lethal damage (or five dice if the fomor is bitten.) If the fomor is attacked with a melee weapon, the attacker can attempt a Dexterity roll (difficulty 6) to avoid the splatter and the need for a soak roll. Anyone attacking from a distance with a firearm is safe, of course, but a fomor hit with bullets will still splatter pus on anyone within reach (or one yard/meter), whether friend or foe.

**• Rat Head:** Did you know rats have a collapsible skeletal structure that allows them to squeeze through holes about the size of their skull? The fomor with this power can wriggle through holes as small as 5% of its ordinary circumference. Like a tiny, mischievous rat, a human-sized fomor can squeeze through a hole about the size of a quarter.

System: The fomor rolls Dexterity + Athletics (difficulty 6). The effects last for one “slide” through a hole (until the fomor reaches an area wider than its original size). A failed roll means the fomor is stuck; this requires further attempts, but each successive attempt increases the difficulty by one. While squeezing like this, the fomor can move at half her normal running speed.

**• Regeneration:** The fomor recovers from injury at a supernatural rate, much like werewolves do. However, these wounds never fully heal. Flesh gives way to scars, bones knit in distended shapes, and particularly grievous wounds may result in permanent tumors, weeping sores, discolored flesh, or new mutations. A fomor who’s been through hell and lived to psychotically rant about it may end up looking very odd indeed.

System: The fomor heals one level of bashing or lethal damage each turn. Healing a level of aggravated damage requires a full day and the expenditure of a Willpower point.

**• Roar of the Wyrm:** The fomor can strike terror in the hearts of those nearby with a primal, guttural scream.

System: Spend one Willpower and roll Charisma + Intimidation; each opponent within thirty feet can resist this power with one success on a Willpower roll (or by spending a point of Willpower). Those affected behave as though in a Fox Frenzy: they must run as fast as they can away from the fomor. This fear lasts for two turns per success.

**• Sense Gaia:** The fomor can sense servants of Gaia in the nearby area. This requires active concentration.

System: Spend one Willpower (or Gnosis, if you’ve got it) and roll Perception + Occult. The difficulty is based on the strength on concentration of the “Gaia stench”; sensing an average werewolf is difficulty 6. The range is 20 yards. Each tribe has its own distinct scent, recognizable with three or more successes.

**• Sense the Unnatural:** The fomor can sense supernatural creatures present, such as vampires, werewolves, mages, and other spirits.

System: Roll Perception + Occult (difficulty 6). An additional roll of Intelligence + Enigmas (difficulty 6) may be required to identify the species of supernatural creature. The range is 20 yards. The Ragabash Gift: Scent of Running Water negates this power.

**• Shadowplay:** The fomor can manipulate shadows about himself, pulling them into a veil of darkness. Most people cannot see through this obfuscation, but the fomor using this power can see through it.

System: Roll Wits + Stealth (difficulty 6). The effects last one turn per success, unless the fomor spends a Willpower point, in which case it lasts for a scene. This affects an area up to about 30 yards in diameter. Seeing through this veil of shadows is someone is actively looking and using Perception + Occult; using a perceptive supernatural ability (such as a Gift using Perception or a vampire’s Auspex) adds one automatic success to this roll. Each success on the activation roll also adds a die to rolls involving Stealth or Intimidation.

**• Shambling:** When a Howling Shambler dies, it gets up one turn later and finishes whatever it was doing — making dinner, fighting a Pentex First Team, whatever. Once that task is accomplished, the Howling Shambler goes ambling off to find, kill, and eat anything with werewolf blood in it. The reanimated Shambler is nearly unstoppable. Its chopped off limbs keep crawling or rolling along with the rest of the body. Only burning, melting, or smashing it into a raw pulp of meat and gristle will stop it (in game terms, the thing must be killed with fire or acid, or have its health track filled with aggravated damage twice over; even then, the parts keep twitching and flopping until they’re burned).

**• Silent Aura:** Silent Aura creates an area of silence around the Shadowfiend. By rolling Wits + Stealth (difficulty 6), the Shadowfiend can negate all sound within a fifteen-foot radius. The whole area is entirely silent. The effect lasts for a one turn per success.

**•** **Siren’s Veil:** Siren’s Veil adds two to the fomor’s Social Attribute ratings, and allows him to roll Appearance + Empathy against a difficulty of a target’s Willpower to appear as their ideal mate, even radically changing the Enticer’s age, or making him appear as a different gender. If this roll fails, the Enticer simply appears to be a generic, attractive individual.

**• Size Shift:** The fomor can increase her size in a heartbeat. A fomor can take this power up to three times; this represents three different size categories.

System: Spend one Willpower (or Rage, if you’ve got it). The shapechange lasts for one scene. For each level of this power, the fomor gains one temporary Health Level and one temporary point of Strength or Stamina. Adding one level to a human makes it the size of a lion or pony; adding two makes it the size of a horse; adding three levels makes it the size of a rhino. The fomor maintains the same mobility and all its powers.

**• Skittersight:** The fomor can gouge out his eyes and roll them away, so that she can see through them from far away. This effectively blinds the fomor, but she can still use his other senses. Some fomori twist their optic nerves into feet so their eyes can run.

System: The fomor can pull out her own eyes with a Willpower roll (difficulty 8), though it hurts like hell. The eyes can roll up to a block away. Anything they see, the fomor will “see” in her mind’s eye. Other than that, the fomor has to use her other senses to perceive her surroundings. The eyes can stay separated for up to an hour, but decay after that. If the eyes aren’t returned, the fomor will regrow them a month later; a fomor with the Regeneration Power regrows them in a day.

**• Slither Skin:** The fomor can shed her skin and animate it. She then can give it simple instructions (no more than five words) before it runs off. The skin can walk, grab things, or attack.

System: Spend one Willpower and roll Dexterity + Athletics (difficulty 6); the effect lasts for one scene. After this wears off, the skin must return to the fomor, or it disintegrates. The skin can “walk” any distance from the fomor. It has one dot in each Physical Attribute and one Health Level. The skin doesn’t have any other inherent powers of the fomor (such as Body-Barbs). If the skin is destroyed, the fomor will regrow it after a month; fomor with the Regeneration Power can regrow it in a day. A fomor can live without her skin, but she’ll have one less Health Level and an Appearance of 0.

**• Slobbersnot:** The fomor’s skin is covered with warts that can secrete a thick, runny slime. The goo is almost frictionless. It can help the freak get out of a tight squeeze or a through a small space. However, slobbersnot dissolves almost instantly in sunlight.

System: Spend one Willpower point; the effects last for one scene. Any opponent’s difficulty to grapple or grab the fomor suffers a one die penalty. The fomor gains an additional soak die against blunt weapons (such as clubs or fists). However, anyone trying to track a fomor with this power reduces the difficulty of the tracking roll by three. Slobbersnot stinks.

**• Spirit Ties:** The fomor has an innate connection to the spirit world.

System: This power can be bought multiple times; each time, the fomor gains one point of Gnosis (up to a maximum of 5). The fomor can’t step sideways into the Umbra, but she can activate Bane fetishes.

**• Sting:** The Heart Eater can inject a paralytic toxin into its victim through the tips of its tentacles. Unless the target makes a Stamina roll against difficulty 9, they will be rendered unable to move for the rest of the scene. Injecting a dose of toxin costs one point of Rage.

**• Stomach Pumper:** The fomori vomits all that he’s recently eaten in a torrent of acidic stomach fluids.

System: This attack has a range of 25 feet. Each blast of regurgitation can cover a single foe; most fomori can’t spew like this more than three times a day. Roll Dexterity + Athletics to hit (difficulty 7); each successful attack does two dice of damage. The victim can spend a point of Willpower to avoid immediately stopping what he’s doing and retching uncontrollably for one round.

**• Tar Skin:** The fomor’s skin is coated with a thick, sticky substance like glue, molasses, or tar.

System: If someone attacks this fomor with a weapon, the weapon sticks in the fomor’s skin and cannot be retrieved until the end of the scene. Anyone who successfully hits the fomor with an unarmed melee attack gets stuck to the fomor, as if the freak was coated with flypaper. Escaping tar requires a contested roll: the fomor rolls Dexterity + Primal-Urge, while the victim rolls Dexterity + Athletics. Both can continue to use melee attacks or Gifts while they’re stuck together.

**• Terrifying Shriek:** A Bloodbat can unleash an ultrasonic shriek that instills primal terror in anyone who hears it. Spend a point of Willpower and roll Manipulation + Subterfuge. Everyone within twenty yards of the Bloodbat suffers the Delirium, even if they are normally immune. Reduce the victim’s effective Willpower by one for each success rolled.

**• Tongue of Typhon:** As Homid Gift: Persuasion.

**• Toxic Secretions:** The fomor’s bodily fluids can be transmogrified into toxic waste.

System: The fomor can buy this power up to five times, gaining an extra level in this power each time. The fomor’s fluids (blood, sweat, spit, and so on) inflict damage on anyone coming into contact with them. There’s enough fluid in the fomor that it actually sprays out of the body: a Garou biting or clawing the fomor will get splattered with it, as will anyone else in close contact. For each level of this power (up to five), the fluids inflict one die of damage, and they stick. The secretion inflicts damage over time: on the first turn, it does full damage; on the second, roll one fewer damage die; and so on, until no damage dice are left. Each turn requires a new soak roll. Secretion can also be involuntary: heat makes the fomor sweat, pain makes him cry, and so forth. Three levels of this power will melt clothing; four levels will melt rope; five levels will melt concrete.

**• Triatic Sense:** The fomor can mask his Wyrmcorrupted nature by concealing himself in the essence of the Wyld or Weaver; each of these variations is a separate power.

System: Any roll to use the Garou Gift: Sense Wyrm to detect the fomor becomes difficulty 9. There are two exceptions, however: A Glass Walker can attempt to see through the Weaver variant normally, and a Red Talon can attempt to see through the Wyld variant normally. A fomor masquerading as a creature of the Wyld or Weaver will also fool someone attempt to confirm this with Sense Wyld or Sense Weaver. Spirits are harder to fool; a Wyld spirit attempting to see through a Wyld mask (or a Weaver spirit seeing through a Weaver mask) rolls against a difficulty of 6.

**• Twisted Senses:** The fomor’s eyes (or other visual organs) can perceive wavelengths outside the normal spectra humans were meant to experience. Only creatures with this power can distinguish between unnatural colors or the secretive color languages used by certain Deep Umbral spirits.

System: The fomor can peer across the Gauntlet. Roll Perception + Occult against the appropriate difficulty for “peeking.” (The difficulty is the local Gauntlet rating when peeking from the physical world or Gauntlet +3 when peeking from the Umbra.) While this power is active, a fomor can also identify Garou in any of their forms. A Garou not in Crinos form appears to have the outline of his Crinos form surrounding him. Either of these abilities requires the expenditure of one Willpower point. The fomor can also identify Wyrm creatures on sight, regardless of deceptions employed. When using this ability, the fomor’s eyes glow unnaturally. When not using this ability, the fomor never blinks. Most fomor who depend on repeated use of this ability tend to spiral into insanity.

**• Umbral Passage:** The fomor can step into or out of the Penumbra, just as a Garou would.

System: The system is the same as for a Garou stepping sideways, but the fomor uses the Willpower Trait instead of Gnosis (unless he has the Spirit Ties power; then he can choose between the two). The fomor must travel alone; he can’t bring others with him, even other fomori.

**• Unnatural Strength:** The fomor’s muscles are excessively developed, granting her inhuman strength. In some cases, this hideous strength is an obviously supernatural ability or affliction. With enough mutation or hyperextension, the muscles might bulge in strange shapes, spasm violently, or twitch uncontrollably. The fomor might have no skin, making her muscles fully visible. Most fomor with unnatural strength are eager to abuse their Wyrm-granted gift in the most violent and impatient ways imaginable.

System: This power adds four dots to the fomor’s Strength Attribute. If the resulting attribute is more than 5, this ability is obviously supernatural and can never be concealed. If the fomor attempts a roll on the Feats of Strength table, she’ll go on a rampage for one scene after the feat has been achieved.

**• Venomous Bite:** The rabid fomor can secrete a mouthful of viscous, brightly–colored, poisonous foam, but he can only deploy it by licking or biting someone.

System: If the fomor inflicts at least one Health Level of damage with a bite, this poison inflicts Strength +2 aggravated damage; this cannot be soaked. However, the Gift: Resist Toxin prevents this poison damage.

**• Viscous Form:** The fomor can melt into a puddle of thick, viscous liquid that can move at will. This turgid mass of foul fluids undulates as it moves. It’s adhesive enough to slowly climb up walls or across ceilings. System: Changing form from solid to liquid requires one Willpower point; however, the fomor can’t remain liquid for more than one scene. Changing back sooner requires a second Willpower point. The liquid fomor has its usual soak dice, but is immune to kinetic attacks (such as claws and bullets). It moves at its usual speed and can move half as fast across vertical surfaces. It cannot attack in its liquid form.

**• Voice of the Wyrm:** The fomor’s tongue is long and serpentine, allowing him to speak one of the vile languages of the Wyrm rarely uttered outside Malfeas.

System: Everyone within hearing range (except Wyrm creatures) must attempt a Willpower roll (difficulty 8); on a failed roll, the victim loses half of his current (temporary) Gnosis points. This power can only be used successfully on a given victim once per encounter, although multiple attempts can be made. The tongue can also be used as a melee weapon; a successful attack inflicts two levels of aggravated damage.

**• Wall Walking:** The fomor’s hands and feet are sticky. The freak can run up sheer surfaces as quickly as running across flat ground.

System: Walking up walls doesn’t normally require a roll, but in combat or crisis situations, a Dexterity + Athletics roll may be required. Difficult surfaces (such as the rain-slicked side of a sleek glass skyscraper) may require a roll. At the Storyteller’s discretion, substances “slicker than snot” (such as wet ice) aren’t affected by this power.

**• Water Breathing:** Take this power once, and you can breathe underwater. Take this power twice, and you won’t need to breathe.

System: No roll is necessary, although the fomor may suffer from decompression when rapidly changing depth underwater.

**• Webbing:** The fomor has a gland about the size of a football on her abdomen, usually with an extra orifice above the navel. The organ can spew massive amounts of webbing, similar to that of a spider. With skill, the fomor can seal off apertures, capture prey, or lower herself from high positions. Without skill, she only knows how to secrete silky threads that coat her body like a web of armor.

System: The webbing has six soak dice and three Health Levels. The fomor can use it to trap prey. Victims must make a Strength roll resisted by the web’s Strength 8. The webs are almost an inch in diameter, but hard to see from a distance without a Perception + Alertness roll (difficulty 7). The range is as far as the fomor can reach. Some fomor with this power learn a Hobby Talent called Webmaking. Rolls are required for complicated creations, like the seal over a doorway or a ladder down from a ceiling. Even without this skill, the fomor can spew three levels of temporary armor that lasts for two scenes, although the armor takes three turns to weave.

**• Wings:** The fomor has a means of flight, whether that’s from retractable patagia under her arms, bloated gas bags that lift her up, proficient (yet painful) telekinesis, or some particularly unusual variety of demonic wingspan. Whatever form the wings take, the fomor can hover, glide, soar, or float.

System: The fomor can fly up to normal human jogging speed (13 yards/turn). With effort, the fomor can push her speed by adding her Dexterity score to her flight velocity for a short burst; this requires a point of Willpower (or Rage, if you’ve got it). Vertical movement is at less than one-quarter speed (3 yards/turn.)

**• Wrathful Invective:** The fomor can taunt an opponent into attacking, or at least increase the chance the focus of his attention will attack.

System: This power requires a Presence + Intimidate roll (difficulty 6). For the next scene, the fomor’s opponent takes a two-die penalty if he attempts to attack anyone other than that fomor. Wrathful Invective can only be used against one opponent; using it again in a fight changes its target. The power’s effects end at the end of the scene.