Spirits

Garou may encounter an infinite variety of spirits (minor or mighty, hostile or friendly) and the Storyteller is encouraged to create a wide range of spirits to suit her chronicle.

### **Spirit Traits**

Spirits have different characteristics than creatures native to the physical world. Each spirit has four Traits: Willpower, Rage, Gnosis, and Essence. Spirits also have abilities defined by their nature, called Charms. A spirit’s Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower ranges from 1 to 10, as for werewolves, but spirits have only dots in these Traits, not points that can be spent for extra actions or successes.

• Willpower: Willpower covers many “physical” actions — striking an enemy, flying through the Umbra, or clambering through the webs that hold the Umbra of cities in bondage. Spirits use Willpower for any action that would normally use the Dexterity or Stamina Attributes.

• Rage: A spirit’s Rage covers actions that need power rather than finesse — holding an opponent in a clinch, breaking through doors and weak walls, and harming opponents. Spirits use Rage for actions that would otherwise involve the Strength Attribute.

• Gnosis: Gnosis allows a spirit to perceive the world around it, communicate with other spirits, and think quickly in strange situations. Spirits use Gnosis for actions that would otherwise involve the Social or Mental Attributes, and for many Charms.

• Essence: A spirit’s Essence usually equals the sum of its Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower, though the Storyteller should adjust it up or down for particularly hearty or frail spirits. Essence represents the spirit’s Health, and its energy reserves for powering Charms.

**Spirits in Combat**
Fighting spirits is much the same as fighting anything else for the Garou, and they use the same Traits as in the physical world. Spirits, on the other hand, use their Willpower to attack and Rage to damage on a successful hit. When damaged, spirits soak with Willpower (possibly enhanced by the Armor charm). Spirits with high Willpower can also use it to dodge, but they must split their dice pool if they want to dodge more than once, or to attack and dodge.

#### **Incarnae**

Some spirits have power beyond understanding. These include tribal totems, Incarnae, Celestines, and members of the Triat; even the weakened Wyld remains one of the fundamental forces of the universe. Traits as used in Werewolf aren’t sufficient to describe such spirits. While Garou may encounter an avatar of one of these spirits that uses the spirit Traits above, the avatar is merely a shadow of the greater spirit.

### **Charms**

Spirits have a number of powers called Charms at their command. Some are spiritual reflections of werewolf Gifts, while others are powers that a spirit could teach a Garou — with sufficient cause.

The following Charms are a starting point for Storytellers. Many Charms can reflect a whole host of different phenomena that happen to have the same effects. The Blast Charm, for example, could represent thorns shooting from a nature spirit, shards of glass thrown by a glass elemental, or electrical discharge from a lightning spirit. Be creative when assigning Charms to spirits.

#### **Common Charms**

All spirits have the following Charms. They’re notable only in their absence — a spirit that’s weakened or being punished may not be able to use one or more of these Charms.

• Airt Sense: The spirit has a natural sense of the “airts” (directions) of the spirit world, and can travel about without much difficulty. The spirit can create or find spirit tracks at will. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis if it has to locate a particular place or individual in the Umbra. Even spirits aren’t infallible, and a botch can lead them to an unforgiving Realm.

• Materialize: The spirit takes physical form on Earth. The spirit’s Gnosis must be equal to or greater than the area’s Gauntlet rating. The spirit appears the same in the material world as it does in the Umbra. The spirit uses its Traits in the same way as it would in the Umbra, rather than having Attributes and Abilities. Materialized spirits do possess health levels like other corporeal beings. If a spirit dies in the material world, it returns to the Umbra and enters Slumber, just as if the spirit had lost all of its Essence in the Umbra. Most spirits won’t use this Charm except in extraordinary circumstances; the modern world is far from welcoming to their kind.

• Realm Sense: The spirit can sense what transpires in its Domain both in the Umbra and on Earth. Sensing a specific area requires a successful Gnosis roll. Though this Charm is usually associated with Naturae (woodland spirits of Gaia), most spirits bound to an area possess this ability. Spirits without direct ties to a location on Earth may have this Charm, but are only able to sense their dens in Near-Umbral Realms or home Domains.

• Re-form: The spirit can dissolve its body in order to travel through the Umbra to their home Domains. It takes a spirit a full turn to try to re-form. The Storyteller must roll the spirit’s Gnosis successfully for this Charm to succeed. Spirits use this Charm to flee their enemies.

#### **Specialty Charms**

These Charms are commonly possessed by a wide variety of spirits.

• Armor: By spending two points of Essence, the spirit gains a soak pool equal to its Gnosis for the remainder of the scene.

• Blast: The spirit can attack from a distance — breathing fire, unleashing ear-splitting sound, hurling shards of glass, or spitting razor-blades. The Storyteller spends a point of Essence and rolls the spirit’s Rage as a damage dice pool, dealing aggravated damage. The spirit does not need to roll to hit, and the attack cannot be dodged.

• Cleanse the Blight: The spirit can purge spiritual corruption in its vicinity. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis; the difficulty depends on the strength of the Blight. Most spirits can only use this Charm in an area that reflects their nature.

• Control Electrical Systems: The spirit exerts control over an electronic device. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (difficulty 3–9 depending on the system’s complexity). The spirit can shut the system down, control it as though it were standing at the controls, and even overload the system.

• Create Fires: The spirit can create fires. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (difficulty 3 for a torchsized flame, 6 for a bonfire, or 9 for an inferno). Without a source of fuel, the fire only burns for one turn.

• Create Wind: The spirit can create or quell winds. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (difficulty 3 for a strong breeze, 6 for a storm, or 9 for a tornado).

• Illuminate: The spirit can light an area reaching to 20 yards (20 meters) from its body, or change the color of lights in the area. Doing so doesn’t normally require a roll.

• Flood: The spirit can raise the natural water level in an area. The spirit spends a point of Essence to flood an area. The size depends on the power of the spirit — a Jaggling using this Charm could flood several blocks or a small town, while a Gaffling could flood a building or a city block. Flooding a larger area could require the spirit to expend more Essence.

• Freeze: The spirit drastically lowers the temperature of its immediate area. Reduce the spirit’s Rage by one for the remainder of the scene. Everyone in the area suffers the spirit’s new Rage in dice of aggravated damage. Using this Charm may have additional effects, at the Storyteller’s discretion.

• Healing: The spirit can heal physical beings. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (6 to heal lethal damage, 8 for aggravated). The target heals a number of health levels equal to the spirit’s Gnosis. A spirit can only use this Charm once per scene per target.

• Open Moon Bridge: The spirit can open a moon bridge to a desired location. This charm can operate anywhere, and does not need a caern present. The moon bridge has a total potential distance of 1000 miles (1600 km).

• Peek: The spirit can look into the physical world from the Penumbra.

• Shapeshift: The spirit can look like anything it desires. This Charm only changes the spirit’s form, not its abilities or powers. The Storyteller must roll the spirit’s Willpower if it tries to appear as a specific being.

• Shatter Glass: The spirit can break all of the glass in the area. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (difficulty 6).

• Short Out: The spirit can short out electrical systems, damaging the circuits. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (difficulty 6).

• Swift Flight: The spirit can fly at three times the normal speed, up to 60 + (Willpower x3) yards or meters per turn.

• Tracking: The spirit can follow its prey unerringly, though it must spend a point of Essence to do so.

• Umbraquake: The Umbra shakes with such force that everyone standing is thrown to the ground. Everyone in the area suffers half the spirit’s Rage in dice of bashing damage.

• Updraft: The spirit can lift a man-sized creature into the air with a gust of wind. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Willpower (difficulty 6).

#### **Bane Charms:**

The Wyrm grants these Charms to its minions. Creatures allied to Gaia cannot (and would not) learn Gifts related to these Charms.

• Blighted Touch: If the spirit deals damage on an attack (including using the Blast Charm), the target must make a reflexive Willpower roll. If she fails, her negative characteristics dominate her personality for the next few hours. If she botches, the change is permanent.

• Corruption: The spirit whispers a suggestion to the target, and the target acts upon it. The Storyteller rolls Gnosis (difficulty of the target’s Willpower). This Charm can be used across the Gauntlet.

• Incite Frenzy: The spirit can cause a werewolf to enter a frenzy. The Storyteller rolls Rage (difficulty of the target’s Willpower). Any success causes a frenzy; six or more successes causes the werewolf to fall into the Thrall of the Wyrm. All normal frenzy rules apply.

• Possession: The spirit may inhabit a living being or inanimate object. The Storyteller rolls Gnosis (difficulty equal to the victim’s Willpower, or 4 for an object). The possession takes the time indicated:

Successes Time Taken

1 six hours

2 three hours

3 one hour

4 15 minutes

5 five minutes

6+ instantaneous

The spirit can take no other actions. If it does, or is engaged in spirit combat, the link is broken. A spirit that possesses a human can warp and change the victim’s body, making a fomor (see p. 428 for more on fomori). Possession is permanent.

#### **Weaver Charms**

These Charms are granted by the Weaver. A spirit with one of these Charms can use Airt Sense to travel via the Pattern Web.

• Calcify: The spirit binds a character into the Pattern Web. The Storyteller rolls Willpower, contested by the target’s Rage. Each success subtracts one dot from a Physical Attribute of the spirit’s choice (or Essence in the case of spirits). When the target’s Essence or Attributes drop to zero, the target is held in the Pattern Web. Werewolves must be freed by their packmates, while Wyld energy can disrupt the Pattern Web to free spirits.

• Solidify Reality: The spirit extends and strengthens the Pattern Web. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis. Each success increases the target’s Essence (or effective health levels) by one per success. The effects last for a day. A target can only benefit from one use of this Charm at a time; all further uses before the effects wear off automatically fail.

• Spirit Static: The spirit increases the Gauntlet in an area by one. Up to three spirits may work in concert (increasing the Gauntlet by three). The spirit must remain in the same area and is distracted, reducing all of its dice pools by 2.

#### **Wyld Charms**

• Break Reality: The spirit can change something’s Umbral form: turning water into acid, turning part of a wall into a door, or even changing a couch into a steak dinner. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (difficulty depends on degree of change), with one element of the target changing with each success. On a failure, the spirit loses a point of Essence. On a botch, it loses a point of Gnosis as well.

• Disorient: The spirit can alter landmarks and directions. The Storyteller rolls the spirit’s Gnosis (difficulty 6 or the Gauntlet rating, whichever is higher).

### **Spirit States**

The Umbra is unlike the physical world in a number of ways, and spirits are unlike physical beings. As such, different rules apply.

• Communication: Spirits “speak” via shared thoughts and feelings, rather than what humans consider a language. Some spirits, such as the servants of tribal totems, can speak the Garou tongue or other human languages. The Gift: Spirit Speech is required to speak with and understand spirits in their own language. Gifts that deal with spirits do not need the user to understand spirit speech — the power of the Gift transmits the Garou’s intent without needing to translate his words.

• Movement: Spirits can fly or float up to (20 + Willpower) yards or meters per turn, and can float in place if they wish. In the Penumbra, the distance between any two points is the same as it is in the physical world; further into the Umbra the concept of “distance” and “time” can both warp in unpredictable ways.

• Slumber: Spirits regain Essence by entering an inactive state called Slumber, during which it floats in a secluded part of the Umbra. A spirit slain in the Penumbra fades away into the Umbra after several minutes. A Slumbering spirit can be bound through a rite without regard for the spirit’s willingness. The spirit in a fetish is always in Slumber — the user activates the fetish’s powers, not those of the spirit.

## **Gaian Spirits**

### **Naturae**

The spirits a Garou is mostly likely to encounter are nature spirits. Long ago, the Umbra was filled with active spirits, and every stream, every tree, every stone, every thing had a living spirit connected to it. Now, the Umbra is largely barren and featureless. Only a few nature spirits still exist, and most of them are in Slumber.

All spirits listed here possess the Charms of Airt Sense and Re-form in addition to those listed.

#### **Animal Spirits**

Animal spirits look like an ideal of the species they represent. There are far too many varieties of animal spirits to list here; many others have disappeared as species have become extinct.

In addition to teaching Gifts to select Garou, many werewolves find it wise to appease animal spirits after hunting their kind for food. Most Garou, particularly Wendigo and lupus, believe that animal spirits have totem Incarnae, called Animal Fathers. The Animal Fathers watch their children from lodges in the Near Umbra. Werewolves who don’t show proper respect to animal spirits may draw the ire of an Animal Father, who can prevent births of that animal in the physical world.

The following are some sample animal Gafflings:

**Deer**

**Falcon**

**Snake**

**Wolf**

#### **Glade Child**

The spirits of trees, Glade Children appear as robed luminescent figures. A Glade Child’s appearance depends on its tree’s location in the physical realm. In a forest, the spirit appears majestic and powerful; near a busy intersection, the spirit will seem grimy and waiflike. This extends to the information it can impart to the Garou — the more a tree has become tainted, or the more tightly it is woven into the Pattern Web, the less reliable its information becomes. The spirits of deciduous trees are bright-eyed and watchful during the summer months, becoming sluggish and harder to rouse in late fall and winter.

**Willpower 7, Rage 3, Gnosis 8, Essence** variable (20 for a sapling, 35 for a mature oak, 50+ for an ancient redwood)

**Charms:** Cleanse the Blight, Realm Sense

#### **Lune**

The most common of Luna’s Jagglings appear as shimmering ribbons of light outlined in gold or blue. They communicate empathically, spiraling or undulating more rapidly as they become excited. Most Lunes are positively disposed toward Garou, as long as the werewolves don’t get too bossy. Lunes can open moon bridges at will, and they may create moon bridges for Garou who petition them. During the full moon, however, there’s no guarantee where the moon-mad spirit’s pathways will send them.

**Willpower 8, Rage 4 (8 during the full moon), Gnosis 7, Essence** **19–23**

**Charms:** Open Moon Bridge

#### **Stormcrows**

The most common of Grandfather Thunder’s spirit servants, Stormcrows are the totem’s eyes and ears. They are connected to him at all times, and they often serve as pack totem avatars for Thunder.

**Willpower 9, Rage 7, Gnosis 6, Essence 22**

**Charms:** Create Wind, Tracking

#### **The Wendigo**

A blue humanoid with great claws and fangs, the Wendigo has fiery eyes and black stumps for feet. The Wendigo runs through the sky on missions of vengeance, tracking its prey. If it succeeds, it eats its victim’s heart; if thwarted, the Wendigo eats the heart of the one who summoned it. This is the spirit summoned with the Wendigo Gift: Call the Cannibal Spirit.

**Willpower 7, Rage 10, Gnosis 5, Essence 32**

**Charms:** Blast (Ice), Create Wind, Freeze, Materialize, Tracking

#### **The Wild Hunt**

The Wild Hunt is the personification of fury and an instrument of Stag’s vengeance. The Fianna can call upon it when in dire straits from a Wyrm menace. It is not called lightly, for the Garou can get caught up in the Hunt and consumed by it. The Huntsman and his pack are a morass of wild spiritual energy rather than specific entities.

The Huntsman appears as a tall, stag-antlered man following his hounds.

**Willpower 10, Rage 10, Gnosis 5, Essence 40**

**Charms:** Armor, Materialize, Tracking

The Hounds are Gaffling servants of the Huntsman, who usually travel in packs of nine (although there may be as many as three times that number), sport black coats and eyes of cold green fire. They can easily pace a Garou in Lupus form, and are tireless.

**Willpower 6, Rage 7, Gnosis 2, Essence 18**

**Charms:** Materialize, Tracking

### **Ancestor-Spirits**

Garou serve their tribe and Gaia, and not even death can end their service. The spirits of the long-dead wait in the Umbra, watching over their descendants. Some can aid the living, lending their knowledge, wisdom, or even their expertise in combat.

Most ancestor-spirits reside in their tribe’s Umbral homeland. A few might exist near their sept’s caern, while some are bound to powerful fetishes. Garou can bargain with an ancestor-spirit for aid or Gifts, much as with other spirits — though an ancestor is likely to be favorably disposed to her descendants, assuming they’ve not brought the bloodline into disrepute. The Ancestors Background allows a Garou to call upon his ancestors, allowing an ancestor-spirit to possess his body temporarily, granting him that ancestor’s skill and knowledge.

It’s fair to question whether ancestor-spirits are really the spirits of dead Garou. Some believe them to be the spirits of the departed, while others believe that they are a combination of the memories and personalities of the departed werewolves wrapped around an ephemeral spiritual core — the spirit of the Garou has returned to Gaia to be reborn, but her personality lives on. While a werewolf’s opinion on her ancestor-spirits says a lot about his views on the spirit world, the answer doesn’t alter the very real impact of ancestor-spirits in Garou society.

Some rare humans can leave ancestor-spirits, especially Kinfolk. These ancestor-spirits aren’t as powerful as the ancestors of Garou, because humans don’t share the werewolves’ spiritual might when alive. Even so, it is a mark of honor for any being to become an ancestor-spirit on passing.

Ancestor-spirits vary greatly in ability, depending both on their power before death and their strength of will. The following is a sample Garou spirit:

**Willpower 6, Rage 8, Gnosis 7, Essence 21**

**Charms:** An ancestor’s Charms relate to their tribal, auspice or breed Gifts. For example, an Ahroun may possess the Armor Charm, a lupus might have the Tracking Charm, and a Glass Walker may have powers similar to an electricity elemental or a Net-Spider.

### **Elementals**

Elementals are spiritual manifestations of the “classical” elements: the core substances that make up all things.

For centuries, the only elementals known were of the four classical elements: earth, fire, air, and water. In recent times, Garou have discovered spirits that look like elementals but that embody other substances — Glass Walkers frequently traffic with glass and plastic elementals, while the spread of industrial society spawned electricity and metal elementals. No werewolf has yet discovered a spirit related to an element from the periodic table; fluorine elementals remain the stuff of horror stories for chemically-minded Garou.

Elementals vary wildly in power, from the minor Gafflings in a candle-flame to the Incarna-like power of the water in an ocean. The following Traits apply to minor elementals:

#### **Earth Elemental**

These spirits often appear as collections of rocks connected in a vaguely humanoid form, or simply as a moving bulge in the ground.

**Willpower 9, Rage 4, Gnosis 5, Essence 20**

**Charms:** Armor, Materialize, Umbraquake

#### **Air Elemental**

Air elementals are invisible unless passing through a field of dust or fog, but can be easily heard or felt.

**Willpower 3, Rage 8, Gnosis 7, Essence 18**

**Charms:** Create Wind, Updraft

#### **Fire Elemental**

These mercurial spirits typically manifest as a swirling column of flame.

**Willpower 5, Rage 10, Gnosis 5, Essence 20**

**Charms:** Blast (Flame), Create Fires

#### **Water Elemental**

These elementals can appear as individual pools of water, a “thickening” in a larger body of water, or even a transparent humanlike form.

**Willpower 6, Rage 4, Gnosis 10, Essence 20**

**Charms:** Cleanse the Blight, Flood, Healing

#### **Glass Elemental**

Glass elementals appear as a humanoid form made up of numerous shards of glass.

**Willpower 4, Rage 7, Gnosis 7, Essence 18**

**Charms:** Blast (Glass shards), Materialize, Shatter Glass

#### **Electricity Elemental**

These spirits can appear as arcs of electricity, St. Elmo’s Fire, or ball lightning.

**Willpower 6, Rage 7, Gnosis 5, Essence 18**

**Charms:** Blast (Lightning), Control Electrical Systems, Short Out

### **Enigmatic Spirits**

Garou typically deal with spirits tied to concrete entities in the physical world. As such, they’re inherently understandable — though a mountain can’t speak, it’s fairly easy to envision the spirit of a mountain and hear its voice. A few spirits instead relate to abstracts; lacking a frame of reference, many werewolves find them difficult to comprehend. Some Garou have overcome these obstacles, and all were richer for their efforts.

#### **Chimerlings**

Chimerlings are Jagglings of the totem Chimera. They are Enigma given form, changing shape as they choose. They haunt dreams, passing on messages that often don’t make sense until after the prophecy has come to pass. Some Garou seek out Chimerlings and find them at the end of dream-quests, where the spirit is willing to teach Gifts to those who understand its lessons.

**Willpower 3, Rage 5, Gnosis 10, Essence 18**

**Charms:** Shapeshift

#### **Englings**

Englings are Jaggling spirit-servants of Gaia herself, spirits of Gnosis that Garou hunt during moots. Once caught, werewolves thank the Engling for giving itself to strengthen the Garou. If the ceremony is performed properly, the participants regain all their Gnosis, and the Engling re-forms elsewhere in the Umbra (see Sacred Hunt, p. 146).

**Willpower 5, Rage 1, Gnosis 10, Essence 16**

**Charms:** No special Charms

#### **Curiosi**

Spirits of curiosity, Curiosi are small Gafflings that flit about the Umbra seemingly at random, though they seem attracted to werewolves and other Umbral travelers. Each Curiosus appears as a nested set of brightly-colored filigreed spheres, each spinning inside the next. Each spirit is a puzzle that a suitably-minded Garou may be able to solve, if he can keep the spirit around for long enough — which usually requires spending a point of Gnosis. Solving the puzzle is a Perception + Enigmas roll (difficulty 9); if successful, the werewolf gains both a point of Gnosis and a point of Willpower per success.

Careful observation and meditation can reveal that the Curiosus is fascinated by physical beings, and that it will watch them for as long as they watch it.

**Willpower 5, Rage 3, Gnosis 9, Essence 17**

**Charms:** Illuminate

### **Epiphlings**

Each Epiphling embodies an idea or concept. Common Epiphlings include those of peace, envy, lust, death, and speed. Although Epiphlings are easier for Garou to understand than Chimerlings, most Garou aren’t sure where these spirits reside in the spiritual hierarchy. The Stargazers, who have studied this kind of spirit more than other tribes, suggest that Epiphlings are the spirits of pure thought and platonic ideals made manifest. Some clearly spawn from strong emotions and powerful thoughts in the physical world, while other Epiphlings seem to spring into being deep in the Umbra. Besides learning Gifts from them, Garou often bind Epiphlings into fetishes — especially those that deal with thoughts or emotions. Each Epiphling is a unique spirit, and the Storyteller should create appropriate Traits. Most of these spirits that Garou encounter are Gafflings, but some werewolves have encountered particularly powerful concept-spirits that ranked as Jagglings and, rarely, even Incarna.

### **Pack Totems**

The binding force that holds a pack of werewolves together is their association with a totem spirit. Although a pack of werewolves chooses the totem that they feel best represents them, a quest to find a totem also gives the spirit a chance to decide whether it really wants to adopt the Garou. It’s for this reason that totems often refer to their packs as their “children.”

Totem spirits are almost universally Incarnae. While many are animal spirits, a number of packs hold to mythological beings, elemental forces, and even stranger spirits as totems. When a spirit chooses the pack, it sends a totem avatar — a Jaggling—to attend to the pack. The devotion of the Garou gives the totem and its representative power, and their actions further the totems’ goals. In return, the totem empowers them to carry out its goals in a direct fashion.

#### **Background Cost and Traits**

Players use their pooled points in the Totem Background to “buy” the totem spirit that has chosen their pack. Each pack can only be affiliated with one totem. Each totem in this section lists the benefits that the pack gain when accepted by it; unless the totem’s description says otherwise, all bonuses and penalties apply as soon as the totem accepts the pack.

Example: Ali’s pack has just been accepted by Falcon. Each member of the pack immediately gains two points of Honor Renown. Every scene, one member of the pack adds three additional dots to her Leadership until she passes it on to another packmate. Any member of the pack can draw on the totem’s pool of four Willpower points — at least until they’re all expended.

Players can enhance their pack’s totem by spending experience points to increase their characters’ Totem rating, per the Background’s description (p. 140). Totem spirits can also teach Gifts relating to their affiliation and powers. Some totems allow their children to use a particular Gift without teaching it to them, channeling the spirit’s power directly.

A totem does not just grant power to a pack; it also has restrictions that the werewolves must follow. These constraints on the pack’s behavior form part of the totem’s Ban. If the pack members don’t follow the Ban, their totem will cut off assistance. In this case, the werewolves lose all of the benefits of their totem, including access to extra Willpower, Gifts, and Traits, until they undertake a Rite of Contrition to appease their totem. A pack who repeatedly offends their totem may find that the spirit abandons them entirely.

## **Banes**

Banes are Wyrm-spirits, a collective name for the vast menagerie of spirit-minions at the Wyrm’s command. Their forms are legion, each reflecting something of the particular aspect of the Wyrm that they serve. Most are foul of form, embodying the Wyrm’s taint, but even this is no certainty. Destruction, deception, and corruption take many forms throughout the world, and if inhuman beauty and seemingly sweet seduction serves their Master’s needs, some bane will surely reflect those “virtues.”

Some Banes are avatars or personifications of principles like hate, disease, or murder; others are simply random destructive entities. They range in power from niggling distractions to unearthly forces of devastation, and lurk throughout the Umbral Realms in any locale they can survive. Banes are perhaps the Garou’s greatest and most numerous enemies.

Banes are, inherently, of the Wyrm, and annihilation is the only sure way to rid an area of their influence. Banes are attracted to dark, destructive impulses and emotions, and they gather in the Umbra where such emotions dominate the mortal world, attracted to the negativity despite the Gauntlet that separates them from it. The presence of Banes distills and reinforces negative feelings, but they are often not the sole cause of them. Instead, Banes are attracted by already-existing negative emotion, gathering around the person manifesting them like sharks drawn to blood. They feed on these destructive emotions and use the energy to strengthen them, spawning even more negativity in their target. Thus sorrow becomes depression and depression, desperation. Frustration becomes anger, which erupts into a homicidal rage. Titillation grows to obsession, and the boundaries between emotional ups-and-downs and true sociopathy are quickly crossed. Unless something intervenes, interaction with Banes can be devastating — even deadly — for the humans they attract.

### **Creating Banes**

Banes often materialize in horrifying shapes that cause an effect similar to the Delirium in most humans. Some take particular delight in assuming the most terrible and disturbing forms possible in order to engender the greatest fear. Others prefer more insidious forms, the better to reinforce lust, guilt, anger, greed, or any one of the vast range of negative emotions humans heap upon themselves.

Most Banes have the Possession Charm, along with a specific power or set of powers that are based around the concept they embody. A spirit of murder might have the Blast Charm or Corruption, for example. The powers vary wildly from one Bane to the next. Some are able to control or influence emotions, and some have the ability to immunize humans to the Delirium temporarily (allowing them to face werewolves). Some even have the ability to spread living corruption throughout the Tellurian. Many Banes prefer to encourage humans to do their work for them, rather than act directly themselves. It’s easier for Banes to encourage and manipulate humans who are already morally compromised in some way than it is to control someone with strong beliefs about right and wrong.

The Storyteller should let her imagination run wild when creating Banes, as long as their powers reflect the concepts or vices they represent. Bane powers should have some kind of activation requirement, like spending Essence or making Gnosis rolls. Most Banes have powers focused on corruption, destruction, or mutation, and werewolves who fight them risk body and soul.

### **Storytelling with Banes**

It’s easy to fall into the trap of crediting Banes with every form of human evil, but they’re not. In fact, they’re not the source of human evil at all. They’re just an insidious amplifier, playing up the darkness that already exists in humanity’s souls. Banes look for darkness that already exists and try to make it worse. They’re parasites, and are better suited to drawing out what already lurks in the human heart than creating it whole cloth. Humans are a breeding ground for negative emotions. Why go to the effort of introducing cruelty, hatred, or shame to barren ground when they can just fertilize the seeds of those emotions which already lurk in someone’s psyche?

Since, as with all spirits, a Bane is literally defined by its purpose, there are damn few repentant or morally gray Banes. Even if a Bane can be somehow purified, the spirit becomes reformed in both senses of the word. Corruption defines Banes — it shapes their forms, their powers, their sense of purpose. As spiritual representations of archetypes, they are relatively one-dimensional (Gafflings and Jagglings, at least; the higher the spirit on the celestial food chain, the more independent personality it is likely to have). With Banes, the key element is the symbolism inherent to the spirit world, not the anthropomorphization of a more humanlike enemy.

Banes can be extremely effective as a representation of the unyielding, unreasoning enemy that the Garou face. A swarm of almost hive-minded Banes is a terrible enemy that cannot be placated or reasoned with, only avoided or destroyed. However, they are also an extremely useful tool for a Storyteller to use when coloring the atmosphere of her setting: a very visual, symbolic, and dangerous cue that the situation is far worse than it looks. An elementary school may peaceful enough on the outside — but when the Garou step sideways, and are nearly torn to pieces by a Bane swarm that’s grown fat and strong on the premises, the players become much more alert to the gravity of their situation. Throw in some interesting symbolism (the school’s Bane population looks like wizened children with the mouths of dogs or like animated books with rabid jaws that leave its victims stupefied) and the tone is set.

Storytellers are encouraged to create Banes to suit their chronicle; simple Banes of any negative emotion can be created using a few simple steps. In addition, samples of a variety of more complex Banes of varying types and power levels are offered. Feel free to customize the suggested Bane breeds, or to create your own using the following sidebar.

**Making a Basic Bane**
See also p. 365-368 for detailed information about

spirits when using this simplified guide to creating Banes.
 **Step Two: Traits**Divide points between Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower to represent the Bane’s strengths. For a Gaffling Bane, divide 9 to 18 points between the three categories, depending on how you perceive its relative strength. For a Jaggling Bane, divide 19 to 30 points. Encountering spirits with more than 30 points should be a deadly situation for even the most prepared group of Garou; use caution in matching your players’ characters against such lethal spirits.
 **Step Three: Essence**
In general, a Bane’s Essence is roughly equal to the combined value of its Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower; many, however, may have grown significantly more
 **Step Four: Charms**
 **Step Five: Image**
As manifestations of the ideals of negative emotions or actions, Banes’ physical forms reflect their base nature. Create a description which embodies the essence of the emotion your Bane represents. Don’t forget to include auditory and olfactory descriptions; Garou in Hispo or Lupus forms rely on sound and scent as much as or more than they do sight.

### **Sample Bane Breeds**

#### **Abliphet**

These city-dwelling Banes appear to be a hideous fusion of Weaver and Wyrmish forces. They make their lairs atop tall buildings designed for human habitation: apartment blocks, tenements, and even the occasional run-down hotel are the normal hunting grounds of Abliphets. They extend spiritual tendrils down through the hidden ducts and vents of the building and slowly turn the building they’ve chosen as their prey into a hotbox of tension, despair, and rage. No one in such a cursed building can keep a dark secret to himself; no one can keep their mind off the failings of their neighbors; but equally, none can bring themselves to take the building’s problems outside of its borders. Once the building has collapsed into a spiritual Wound or self-destructs in an orgy of domestic violence, murder, or arson, the Abliphet moves on to find new prey.

Rage 9, Gnosis 9, Willpower 6, Essence 25-35

Charms: Airt Sense, Blighted Touch, Control Electrical Systems, Domain Sense, Everybody’s Secret\*, Illuminate, Shatter Glass, Short Out

\*Everybody’s Secret: This Charm is similar to the Shadow Lord Gift: Whisper Catching, save that it encompasses every secret event or exchange to occur within a building. The echoes of domestic violence, perversion, and hate slowly work their way through the building’s ducts and corridors. Eventually, everyone who lives in the building knows the secrets of everyone else: perhaps they drift under a door, or through an air conditioning vent, or rattle about in an old elevator as it carries tenants up through the building’s black throat. Speaking of the secrets of a building learned through Everybody’s Secret is extremely difficult, requiring a point of Willpower and a Willpower roll (difficulty 9); failure causes the desired words to die in the tenant’s throat, and a certainty to fall down around him that it’s just not the business of anyone from outside the building.

Image: An Abliphet is a massive Bane: A huge, jellylike, white-and-purple thing squatting at the top of a building. If possible, Abliphets lair in attics or storage spaces, but in a pinch they will squat on the roof, open to the elements. Most of the Bane’s substance takes the form of long, pulsing veins, bladders, and tubes dangling down through the substance of the building. They choke its Umbral ducts and pipes writhe invisibly along the walls of its elevator shafts. It is through these pipes and arteries that it conducts the building’s dirty secrets after processing them in its main body.

Background: No one is quite sure where Abliphets come from, but they’re among the most destructive Banes of the modern urban environment. The Hakken of Japan are well-acquainted with these horrors, where they exist in unparalleled numbers, finding the nation’s ant-hive overcrowding much to their liking.

Storytelling Notes: Abliphets are good for running the Werewolf equivalent of a haunted house story, or a combat raid. Finding out about the Bane’s presence is only the beginning of a pack’s troubles; running the gauntlet of the thing’s environment-manipulating Charms to actually reach it is a job in itself. In worst-case scenarios, an Abliphet may act as a central misery-focus to attract lesser Banes, and a pack may find itself stumbling into a run-down tenement full of spiritual shock troops and even some fomori.

#### **Bitter Banes**

Bitter Rages exist for the sole purpose of driving Garou mad. They feed on Rage, and in turn they fuel that Rage, pushing their prey into frenzies of ever-increasing proportions. In many ways, they are the spiritual equivalent of a rabies attack. While these Banes prefer to target Garou and other Changing Breeds, they can also affect humans and even animals who come too close to Wyrm-infested areas. Even creatures which normally don’t possess Rage gain the powers of spiritual anger when ridden by these Banes, including the ability to regenerate and to frenzy.

**Rage 8, Gnosis 6, Willpower 8, Essence 22-60**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Possession, Raging\*, Reform

\*Raging: Each Essence Point that the Bitter Rage spends increases its target’s Rage. In the case of creatures who normally cannot Rage, the cost is two Essence Points. The increase is usually gradual and occurs over a number of days, but a Bitter Rage can force the issue if it so desires, and send any possessed target into an instant frenzy.

**Image:** In the Realm, Bitter Rages are invisible, making them decidedly difficult to detect. Even in the Umbra, they’re difficult to perceive, taking the form of an amorphous cloud of buzzing gnats that disperse quickly if attacked.

**Background:** Bitter Rages are something of an exception among Banes; they are in the minority that do not permanently possess hosts and turn them into fomori. They can be driven out, although it’s a difficult task. Once in possession of a host, the Bane fuels the target’s Rage constantly, increasing it above the normal maximum and into insanity. The pain of possession grows from the equivalent of a minor headache to gut-wrenching sensory overload, where even a whisper seems like a jet engine and moonlight burns the eyes. Victims inevitably succumb to a frenzy that can’t be stopped as long as the victim is conscious. Only complete exhaustion slows these wretches down, and then only until they’ve recovered enough to start attacking everything in sight again. Bitter Rages are only vulnerable in the Umbra, and are notorious for running away as soon as they are located.

**Storytelling Notes:** Bitter Rages are the equivalent of a disease, and they seek to cause as much chaos as they can. These Banes prefer to simply cause trouble and leave the Garou they’ve infested to kill everything in sight. Should a Bitter Rage use all of its own power, it can use its host’s own Gnosis to fuel her Rage. Many Galliards tell cautionary tales of encounters with these Banes in order to teach young cubs the dangers of losing control.

#### **Crimson Pestilent**

Crimson Pestilents are Banes of sickness, parasites, disease, and dysfunction. Their deepest delight is to witness flesh in revolt against itself, and so they congregate where humans breathe in toxic chemicals, re-use needles, drink from parasite- or mercury-tainted waters, and drink irradiated water. They revel in sudden flare-ups of Ebola and evangelize cancers. Moreover, when they find a human afflicted with the marks of the Wyrm, one whose flesh is sick and fighting against itself, they set the terrible red tendrils of their power upon that person, and empower the sickness.

Rage 6, Gnosis 3, Willpower 8, Essence 17

Charms: Airt Sense, Awaken the Blight\*, Blighted Touch, Materialize, Swift Flight

\* Awaken the Blight: A Crimson Pestilent may spend two Essence to use this Charm on a person afflicted with some manner of disease. The Bane makes a contested roll of its Rage against the target’s Stamina; if the Bane wins, whatever ailment the target suffers from flares up, and their next roll to resist or recover from the effects of the ailment suffers a penalty equal to the Bane’s Gnosis. A fever might spike to life-threatening temperatures, while a cancer metastasizes and spreads like wildfire throughout the body.

**Image:** Crimson Pestilents appear as winding red fogs from a distance; upon closer inspection, one sees them as composed of millions of hair-fine blood vessels, all twisting and writhing around one another. Background: Crimson Pestilents are a new menace, first sighted in the 1960s. They were extremely rare until the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, when their numbers swelled, now they fester throughout the world. Black Spiral Theurges believe they are the breath of the Wyrm, exhaled into the world.

**Storytelling Notes:** Crimson Pestilents are particularly loathsome Banes, striking as they do at the weak and the wounded. They’re best used as a reminder that the Garou must remain vigilant, and that in the final days, even a hospital or medicine lodge may be part of the battlefield.

#### **Drattosi**

Drattosi are hideous creatures that live in huge radioactive pits within the Umbra. They act like gigantic mockeries of antlions, preying on whatever Umbral traveler is unfortunate enough to stumble into their mephitic traps.

**Rage 7, Gnosis 8, Willpower 5, Essence 20-30 +whatever it has absorbed lately**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Consume Essence\*, Illusory Desire\*

\*Consume Essence: This Charm allows the Drattosi to eat another spirit and take its victim’s Essence into itself. A spirit consumed in this manner will not Reform. The Drattosi attacks with Rage as usual, but drains one Essence point into itself per success. Surplus Essence fades at a rate of spirit or Garou’s Gnosis, although it requires two successes to drain away a point of Gnosis.

\*Illusory Desire: The Drattosi must make a resisted Gnosis versus Willpower roll to pluck an appealing image from a potential victim’s mind, then spend two Essence to create the illusion. This power may be used on more than one victim, but only one victim’s mind can be read at a time.

**Image:** The Drattosi are rarely seen — a Drattosi crawls from its lair in the bottom of its pit only to feed. They vaguely resemble gargantuan crustaceans with thorny projections covering their reddish-black carapaces. They have multiple limbs with sharp spines which they use to skewer their prey. Their bodies are often steaming from the heat of their surroundings.

**Background:** The Drattosi live in pits within the Penumbra, which they conceal with their illusions. These Banes prefer to create illusory creatures or objects as bait, pulling the most appropriate lure from their potential victims’ minds. A victim is typically allowed to get all the way up to the image before the Drattosi emerges to attack. The Drattosi are intelligent predators. They can communicate intelligibly with Garou and spirits, but rarely bother to do so. They are often very knowledgeable about all goings on within the area, even in the physical world corresponding to their Penumbral lair, but it is quite difficult to wring such information out of them.

**Storytelling Notes:** The Wyrm has many servitors who embody deception and false promises; the Drattosi are simply another variation on this theme. Although they are a bit too one-dimensional to be the center of a story, they can provide valuable life lessons to Garou who take the convenience of Umbral travel for granted.

#### **Dream Makers**

When the Triat was young and the universe was still whole, these Banes served to create the world, working as servants of both the Weaver and the Wyld. What exists now is but a faint echo of the power these dark spirits once represented, the power to shape an entire universe at the whims of their masters. They still serve today, but the masters they serve are somewhat different than the ones they were created to please.

**Rage 10, Gnosis 10, Willpower 10, Essence 50-300**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Armor, Alter Reality, Break Reality, Blighted Touch, Calcify, Cleanse the Blight, Corruption, Create Fires, Create Wind, Disorient, Flood, Freeze, Frozen Breath, Healing, Ice Shards, Lightning Bolts, Materialize (only when the Master permits), Reform, Shapeshift, Solidify Reality, Tracking, Umbraquake, Updraft

**Image:** They can appear as the Hollywood image of the genie, complete with earrings, turban and pointy slippers, or as a perfectly normal person. Most recently, there’s been something of a trend among Dream Makers to appear as angels — if you can’t trust an angel, whom can you trust?

**Background:** What better way to win converts than to give them what they want? Dream Makers have always been around, although their names have varied. By whatever title they choose, these Banes exist to corrupt the bitter and the angry, granting them their desires and aiding their quest for achieving power. There are complications, of course. The Dream Makers are bound outside of Gaia’s Realm, forbidden by their very nature to enter the physical plane unless invited in. These Banes are very powerful and capable of incredible malice, though they can only act on the desires of humans. Once a “master” is chosen, the Dream Makers act to fulfill their every whim, but all the while they have their own agenda. Each one works to wheedle a special wish from its ruler, a wish for the permission to Materialize in the Gaian Realm. If the remaining Dream Makers are ever freed, the power they still wield would be great enough to cause incredible disasters. There are ancient legends among the Garou which state that these very Banes are destined to destroy all that they created.

**Storytelling Notes:** These are bad Banes to encounter, at least if you aren’t their master. A Dream Maker is the traditional djinn, the demon who grants every wish, no matter how petty. They cannot accomplish anything without their chosen master’s wishes, which is what has stopped them from destroying everything. Each is bound to a master until that master dies or is foolish enough to wish them into the Gaia Realm — a feat that has not yet been accomplished, though several have come dangerously close before being stopped. The Dream Makers are capable of virtually anything, though some requests might take a great deal of time to accomplish. Most terrible of all, they choose masters they know are capable of almost anything: the morally dead and the emotionally warped.

#### **Gray Masses**

The Wyld has its own ways. Life grows even in the face of death, a part of an endless cycle that isn’t meant to change. Fungi are a part of that cycle, decomposing the dead flesh of plant and animal alike and leaving rich fertilizer behind — but Gray Masses are different.

**Rage 0, Gnosis 4, Willpower 2, Essence 10**

**Charms:** Blighted Touch, Corruption, Possession, Sporing\*

\*Sporing: The Gray Masses’ primary agenda is to make more of themselves, and they begin to multiply when they find a host. Each Essence point spent by a Gray Mass allows the Bane to create another of its kind. Each of these new Banes is as powerful as the original, and will also produce offspring once it finds a host. Without a host, a Gray Mass is little more than a spore, virtually powerless to accomplish any task. Most of the Essence in a Gray Mass goes to creating more copies of itself. Each of these Banes is capable of producing eight or nine more just like itself, and each of these in turn is capable of creating a new fomor from its host and still more of the Banes that transmit them.

**Image:** The Gray Masses have no real spiritual presence, as tiny as they are. It’s only when they manifest through their hosts, the Gray Men (see above) that they become obvious.

**Background:** Once they broke down the dead, recycling the dead mass of the spirit world and making it anew in the name of the Wyld. Now the Gray Masses are creatures of the Wyrm, and they ignore the dead to infest the living. In the Umbra these corrupted spirits are little more than a nuisance, a bad smell that festers as it waits. But these fungal Banes slip easily into the physical, normally carried along by whatever else breaches the Gauntlet, unnoticed because they are small. When they reach the Gaia Realm, however, they grow at a frightening rate.

Within hours of arriving, the Fungal Masses — which Materialize as spores identical to those passed by regular fungi — find a host and make themselves at home. Within a day, they produce more spores, carrying their entropy as far as the winds permit and starting the cycle again. Their purpose is simple enough: replace the life that exists with their own form of life — a Wyrm-tainted, fetid growth that is far more virulent than most diseases.

The Gray Masses have no allies, even among other Banes. More than 99% are destroyed by spirits, shapechangers or other threats. But when the remaining one percent gets through, the results can be horrific.

What happens to a Garou infected by the spores? Can the werewolf's regeneration fight off or delay the infection? Nobody knows for certain.

**Storytelling Notes:** The parasitic nature of most fungi is key to using the Gray Masses effectively. The vivid image of a living thing caked with their horrific presence can be very effective. These Banes are fast-growing and voracious; they have no subtlety, only a need to consume and pervert whatever living matter they touch. Though the Possession these Banes create is not as strong as most — the hosts still have their own memories and agendas — the effects are still powerful. Entire communities or forests can be overwhelmed by these Banes in a matter of days.

Obviously, the Gray Masses and the Gray Men should only be encountered rarely. There are Gifts and rites that can counter the effects of the Masses’ possession if performed soon enough. A pack might encounter one of the older and far more powerful Gray Men who has survived long enough to re-develop a real sentience, and changed into something far, far worse than a walking infection. The Gray Masses are such a threat that the pack might even find itself fighting alongside a band of Black Spiral Dancers to end the menace — a sobering prospect indeed.

Gray Men
**Fomor Powers (pp. 429-439):** Fungal Touch, Immunity to the Delirium

#### **Halassh**

Heavy-hitting shock troops of the Wyrm, Halassh are straightforward killers. Pentex and the Black Spiral Dancers both make frequent use of Halassh as spiritual muscle; they have few other uses, but then, muscle is useful enough.

Halassh rarely attempt to manifest unless bid to do so; they prefer to hunt other spirits, disdaining mortal prey.

**Rage 8, Gnosis 2, Willpower 8, Essence 18**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Armor, Dissolution\*, Materialize

\*Dissolution: The Bane may pay one Essence when attacking a target to coat its claws or fangs with a hideous spiritual acid. The difficulty to soak such an attack is 9.

**Image:** Halassh are hulking terrors, broad-shouldered, bare-skulled, with huge claws and fangs and wild, staring eyes. Their pale hides seem pitted and acid-scarred, and they stand nearly as tall as a Crinos Garou does.

**Background:** Halassh are spirits of powerful corrosives, spilled carelessly. Pentex entices the spirits to guard its installations through haphazard disposal of dangerous chemicals; the Black Spiral Dancers simply summon and bind the things. The spirits have no particular great agenda; they simply hate anything that is pure, and seek to rend it with their claws and fangs.

**Storytelling Notes:** Halassh are heavy line-breaker troops compared to the “standard infantry” of the Scrag. They exist to provide combat challenges — nothing more, nothing less — although the hideous wounds they inflict may also pose a challenge for the healers of the Garou nation.

#### **Harpies**

Silent stalkers of human and Garou alike, Harpies circle the sky, scanning for any sign of dissension and jealousy upon which to feed. Unhealthy rivalries soaked with envy attract the Banes, who then find an adequate place up high and out of sight in which to build their nests. From their vantage points, they spy on the goings on about them, leaving their nests to steal small items of value . The trinkets end up back in their nests, where the spirits wait for opportune moments to place them in strategic locations to implicate others in the theft, sowing distrust in even close relationships.

**Rage 5, Gnosis 7, Willpower 10, Essence 22**

**Charms:** Incite Rage, Innocuous\*, Materialize, Peek

\* Innocuous: Harpies excel at hiding in plain sight. By spending one point of Essence, witnesses overlook a Harpy and its nest. This Charm doesn’t make the Bane or its taint invisible, but rather keeps anyone from noticing it. Only those specifically looking for something out of place will have a chance of seeing the spirit, and even then an observer must succeed at a Willpower roll (difficulty 9) to overcome the effects of the charm. The effect lasts for one scene.

**Image:** Harpies appear as falcons with mangy green feathers that never sit flat. Thick overgrown talons clasp at their perches as they constantly shift, never quite able to hold their balance. A Harpy’s eyes glow brilliant toxic green in the darkness, shining with malicious intelligence. Their nests are crafted from branches and leaves of nearby foliage, gnawed from still living limbs. The bark twists and withers from the agony of its final moments of life, looping in with other dead branches to create a woven wall. Such nests hide various tokens of import that the Harpy has stolen; letters, thumbdrives, talens, and the occasional fetish have all found their way into a Harpy’s talons.

**Background:** Carved from the essence of captured Falcon spirits, Harpies are terrors for Garou to behold, especially the Silver Fangs. Harpies prefer to nest high in the Umbra above septs or on the top of office buildings where they watch for victims. Pentex employees have fallen to the corrupted falcon spirits more than once, and the corporation finds the Banes to be a nuisance at best. Black Spiral Dancers, however, take a wicked glee in observing a sept over which a Harpy has nested. The birds steal whatever they can from the Garou, taking utmost caution when doing so. They then place the valuables with others, inciting blame for theft. When tempers start to flare within the sept, the Harpy waits for an opportune moment to throw as much of the sept into chaos as it can. The Bane is fond of turning Garou against their elders, and its favorite targets are the strict hierarchies of the Shadow Lords and Silver Fangs.

**Storytelling Notes:** Harpies target any sept that has dissension boiling within its boundaries. Items go missing, Garou blame one another, and Harpies are patient enough that the descent into chaos can take weeks or even months. If a pack has been doing particularly well and is basking in its success, a Harpy might start turning others in the sept against them, especially the younger packs. A packmate could find himself framed for numerous thefts, leaving it up to his fellows to clear his name and find the true thief.

#### **Nexus Crawler**

Few of the Wyrm’s minions are as fearsome or powerful as the dreaded Nexus Crawler. Some Theurges believe that these alien things come from well outside known reality. A Nexus Crawler’s very presence corrodes and decays the fabric of reality around it.

Rage 10, Gnosis 10, Willpower 6, Essence 30-100

Charms: Airt Sense, Materialize (which grants 12 health levels), Re-form, Warp Reality\*

\*Warp Reality: As beasts of raw entropy, Nexus Crawlers may alter reality with a successful Willpower roll (difficulty 7). One success allows fairly minor alterations: it may create a hazy, blurry illusion, light a small fire, change an individual’s facial features, or drop the temperature in a small area. With three successes, a Crawler can cause more drastic changes to the environments or specific targets. These changes include turning a stone floor into a viscous liquid, transforming any steel object into silver, changing a foe’s sweat into a corrosive acid, creating an illusion that affects any two senses, or darkening a city block completely. The Crawler may also hurl bolts of raw entropic energy that inflict three dice of aggravated damage. (Roll Willpower to attack, and use normal ranged combat complications.) If the Crawler gains five successes, it may cause truly spectacular effects. It can turn a person’s bones into swamp muck or rotten wood, change the air into carbon monoxide or mustard gas, remove a target’s entire face (and all sensory organs), create a full-sensory illusion, or turn everything in a room-sized area into silver. Entropic bolts of this power level inflict six dice of aggravated damage.

**Image:** In its natural state, a Nexus Crawler appears as a black shimmer in the air, a warbling vibrato drone, a feeling on the skin like fingernails scraped across a blackboard, and a miasmic scent reminiscent of an infected wound. If necessary, it can manifest in a loathsome and horrifying avatar.

**Background:** Nexus Crawlers are sapient, after a fashion. While they are self-aware, their thought processes are alien — even for one of the Wyrm’s servants. Other minions are ill at ease around Nexus Crawlers, and they tend to avoid them under normal circumstances. When in combat, Nexus Crawlers rarely use tactics that make any kind of rational sense, and they do not often display logic. This fact alone may have helped werewolves survive encounters with Nexus Crawlers.

**Storytelling Notes:** Nexus Crawlers are effectively forces of nature. They are more akin to tornadoes or earthquakes than to other Banes. Should they so choose, Nexus Crawlers can assume a truly vile, repulsive, and terrifying physical form. Humans will run in terror at first sight, as if they have been affected by the Delirium. Upon first sighting the thing, players of Garou roll Willpower, lest the characters fly into a fox frenzy. The Nexus Crawler bristles with a host of appendages and weaponry, including mouths with row upon row of needle-sharp teeth and additional arms covered with venomous barbs.

#### **Nihilach**

The Nihilach, blessedly rare, figure prominently in the tales of modern Garou. Pessimists hold that these Banes are spirits of the Apocalypse itself, manifesting to pave the way for the coming of the Wyrm. Others hold that they are the talon-tips of the Corrupter, gaining its first all-destroying hold upon Gaia directly. The Silent Striders know the truth, but do not speak it. It is no better than the rumors.

Nihilach appear at portentous moments in the war against Gaia, usually moments when a significant piece of the Mother is about to die. First, they stand and watch, impassively surveying the course of events; and then they move in to fight. That is the only mercy of the Nihilach — that they eventually condescend to do battle with Gaia’s warriors. These great Banes are terrible, all-consuming forces in battle, and many brave Garou cannot even muster the strength to raise a claw against them.

Nevertheless, those that do fight discover that the Nihilach are not invincible. In that fact alone, the Garou strive to find hope.

**Rage 10, Gnosis 4, Willpower 9, Essence 30-50**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Armor, Blast, Blighted Touch\*, Materialize, Re-Form, Yawning Void\*

**\*Blighted Touch:** The Nihilach’s version of Blighted Touch is different from that of other Banes. Rather than bringing the worst elements of the target’s nature to the fore, this Charm instead induces a deadening lassitude and crippling depression. Effort seems futile, dreams unattainable, and the world a sick and pointless joke at best, a gauntlet of needless indignities as prelude to meaningless nothingness at worst. A botch attempting to resist this Charm is capable of sending a Garou spiraling directly into Harano.

**\*Yawning Void:** This Charm stands as the most fearsome of the Nihilach’s powers. It activates reflexively by paying one Essence whenever something dies in the Nihilach’s presence, be it a discorporate spirit or a murdered Garou, and the death need not be at the Nihilach’s hands. The billowing emptiness of the Nihilach’s body unfolds into a sheer, sanity-scraping void that draws in the soul of the slain. Anything swallowed by the Yawning Void is gone forever. A Garou hero will not persist as an ancestor spirit, nor be returned to Gaia’s embrace and reincarnated. He, like anything else swallowed by this Charm, will simply cease to be.

**Image:** Nihilach look like very little, in a way. They’re null impressions on the world around them, a shadow that drinks light, understood as impressions rather than details. They’re tall, standing higher than a Garou in Crinos, and when they act, there is the understanding of long, painfully thin limbs. Nothingness hangs about them like a shroud, and that shroud gives the impression of a wide, powerful body. A Nihilach cannot properly be said to have a face, but those looking where a face should be often glimpse impressions of those they have known in the past, individuals they associate with memories of loss and regret. Nihilach are silent, making no noise as they stand and watch, nor when they swoop in to attack.

**Background:** The Silent Striders, with their greater understanding of the Dark Umbra, understand what the Nihilach are. They’re Banes of Oblivion, the annihilation that waits beyond the hunger of the Wyrm, when the Destroyer has eaten even itself. That they are beginning to appear in the Umbra and upon the face of Gaia is the direst of many dark omens in these final days.

**Storytelling Notes:** The presence of the Nihilach is an existential threat, a whispered promise that there will be no world beyond the Apocalypse, no recovery, no new age to rise from the ashes of the old. They challenge both the martial prowess and the convictions of the Garou, and best brought forth at the climax of a chronicle, to underline the import of whatever disaster the Garou fight to avert. To win a battle where a Nihilach took the field is to have definitively prevented Gaia from moving deeper into the final night from which there is return, and that is an act worthy of celebration.

#### **Nocturna**

The Nocturna, also known as a Nighthag, is a defiler of hopes and dreams. These Banes wander the Umbra in search of particularly potent dreams or noteworthy dreamers. When they’ve found an appropriate sleeping victim, they poison that individual’s sleeping hours, twisting his dreams into visions of despair and distrust.

A dream of success and wealth might suddenly become a nightmare of ruin and failure due to the betrayal of a loved one. The common refrain of these dreams is the downfall of the sleeper, always at the hands of a trusted friend, lover, spouse, parent, packmate, or other close ally.

**Rage 6, Gnosis 7, Willpower 5, Essence 18**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Dream Warp\*, Materialize, Peek

\*Dream Warp: The Nighthag spends one Essence to corrupt a dream with the intent of disturbing the sleeper and driving a wedge between her and one of her loved ones. The target does not regain Willpower from this troubled sleep.

**Image:** Nighthags appear as beautiful women with long tangled hair, wickedly hooked claws, and a mouth full of pus.

**Background:** The Garou believe Nocturnae to be tiny fragments of the nightmares of the Wyrm itself, shaken loose from its dark dreams to roam the Umbra. Nighthags tend to form a particular attachment to a single victim, revisiting him repeatedly until she destroys a relationship with one of her loved ones, egged on by mounting fatigue and paranoia. If a Nocturna’s target steadfastly refuses to give in to the dire portents of her dreams, the Bane eventually grows frustrated; one night it will materialize and kill whichever loved one its victim seems most loathe to abandon, and then frames her for the crime.

**Storytelling Notes:** While Nighthags present little direct threat to the Garou in a physical confrontation, they rarely bother with mere violence. Garou are a special prize for a Nocturna. A werewolf living outside the safety of a caern is a boiling cauldron of Rage and hair-trigger instinct at the best of times, and given to believing in dream-omens in a way most modern people aren’t. If the Garou themselves seem unlikely to fall for a Nighthag’s manipulations, then their Kinfolk make even more inviting targets.

#### **Ooralath**

Ooralath prowl the desolate places of the Umbra, and where one is found, many more are just within a stone’s throw. Mindless Banes for the most part, the Ooralath are nonetheless adept hunters. They almost always attack with the tactical advantage, outnumbering their prey and striking from cover. Even Garou packs must test their teamwork to the limit to resist an attack by the Hounds of the Wyrm.

**Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Perception 3, Intelligence 1, Wits 1**

**Abilities: Athletics 4, Brawl 4, Dodge 2, Primal-Urge 4 Rage 5, Gnosis 3, Willpower 7, Essence 15-50**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Armor (four soak dice, no Essence cost), Burrowing\*, Embody\* (cost: none, this Charm is permanent for the Ooralath)

\*Burrowing: The Ooralath can tunnel through the ground, whether Umbral or physical, as if it were a fish through water. The cost is one Essence per turn.

\*Embody: This is almost identical to the Materialize Charm, save that the spirit does not build a physical body; instead, the spirit may take on a “more suitable” combat form in the Umbra by spending Essence to build a body, just as if it were creating a physical form.

**Image:** The Ooralath are shaped something like bipedal hounds, but run hunched over, like strange hunting dinosaurs. Their bodies are almost entirely composed of thick, serrated carapaces. When they run, the clacking of their claws and armor plates precedes them — they make no other sound.

**Background:** The Ooralath once had another name, but that name has been long lost. They were once devoted servants of the Weaver, but have been universally corrupted into Banes. Their near-mindless perseverance, once the trait that allowed them to accomplish great works, is now their most fearsome trait. Once a pack of Ooralath has scented its prey, nothing short of total destruction will slow it. The process of corruption has had an interesting side effect on the Ooralath — their Weaver nature has been changed into static physical forms in the Umbra. They cannot Materialize, but if dragged into the physical world by other means, their forms are as physical as any mortal’s.

**Storytelling Notes:** The Ooralath are implacable, virtually mindless hunters. Although they have no individual creativity or cleverness among them, the hive-mind that each pack shares makes them brutally efficient, and their pack tactics can embarrass (or exterminate) disorganized werewolf packs. Garou facing down the Ooralath had better learn the value of strength in unity, or the Hounds of the Wyrm will tear them to shreds.

The Ooralath are especially fond of preying on lone travelers, and have a decided taste for Net-Spiders. They remain hidden within the ground, then burst forth simultaneously, falling on their prey and ripping it to shreds.

#### **Phantasmi**

For some fomori, even death is no escape from the pain of servitude. The Wyrm sees to that. An unfortunate few of the damned once-humans suffer a greater agony when they die under Garou talons. For them, the Corrupter has a special fate in mind: a destiny of pain and revenge.

They become the Phantasmi.

**Rage 10, Gnosis 6, Willpower 5, Essence 21-50**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Materialize (Cost 26, Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 6, Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Dodge 3, Melee 3)

**Image:** Though they have no bodies of their own, the Phantasmi assemble their own forms from the remains of anything created by humans. Any junk at hand becomes the raw material for their bizarre new “bodies.” Metal flows at their command, and glass and plastic warp into forms almost like the ones these wretched spirits had in life.

Almost.

The materials these Banes use to build their material forms can make a substantial difference in how they can attack an enemy. In some areas they are little more than paper and stray wires, in others they might be formed from toxic sludge spilled across the ground. Whatever debris is available is what the Phantasmi must recreate itself with, so the mode of attack can be anything from claws and solid blows to a liquid attack that oozes into the Garou’s throat and lungs.

**Background:** Locked forever in the place of their deaths, these angry spirits are left without form, unable to escape the Wyrm’s hold on their very souls. These Banes are something like a psychic booby-trap left for the werewolves — and the Phantasmi’s bottomless thirst for revenge against the creatures who killed them makes them very efficient killers. However, they are hardly versatile; they are completely unable to commit any acts of their own volition until members of the Changing Breeds come within range of the places they died.

**Storytelling Notes:** Phantasmi are a reminder that every action has consequences. These creatures are similar to wraiths, but without as much free will. They are captured forever in the place where they died, or in the rubble that is left of that place. They wait, unable to take any actions until their enemies come to them. They are particularly effective when used at the site of the pack‘s previous battles, so that the players can slowly realize that they are facing down their previous enemies, back for more.

#### **Psychomachiae**

Psychomachiae are spirits for whom negative human emotions — terror, hatred, despair, and the like — are ambrosia. These Banes seek out and possess disturbed and depraved individuals, urging them to act out base impulses and dark fantasies.

**Willpower 7, Rage 10, Gnosis 8, Essence 25 (+1 per death inflicted by its host, not counting deaths the Psychomachia causes directly)**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Corruption, Materialize, Possession

**Image:** Physical manifestations are always extremely vicious. They come equipped with razors, fangs, scalpels, clamps, and other instruments for inflicting pain and death. Psychomachiae smell of death, anger, and hatred, melded into a miasma of twisted rage.

**Background:** Psychomachiae are servants of the Urge Wyrm, and summoned by emotional conflict. They seek out those who are in the throes of heart-wrenching crisis, feeding on their internal battles and constantly nudging them deeper and deeper into the darkness.

**Storytelling Notes:** A Psychomachia can’t possess just anyone and drive him to corruption, but he can possess an already depraved individual easily and give him an extra push. While they can flock to anyone in emotional anguish, they tend to swarm around locations full of soul-rending chaos: war zones, crisis centers, maximum security prisons, and locations where abuse of children, senior citizens, or animals is taking place.

#### **Raptor**

Raptors are Banes that feed off of pain and lust — not affection or simple sexual desire — but a twisted and desperate need for dominance and conquest. Their targets of choice are those who view others as mere objects existing for their own gratification. The Bane whispers across the Gauntlet, urging humans to act on their desires, and enhancing them with an aura of false confidence and persuasiveness. The Raptor picks a particular human as its “special project” and doesn’t let go, riding a wave of one-night stands, abusive relationships, and broken hearts to the Raptor’s desired conclusion: rape, depravity, and murder. It moves on once the host is a hollowed-out shell, leaving behind a shadow of a human being, something moving through a routine of abuse in the hopes of reigniting some feeling in the burnt-out cinder that used to be his soul.

**Rage 5, Gnosis 8, Willpower 6, Essence 19 (plus up to 10 more if the Bane has fed recently)**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Corruption, Materialize, Sleaze Aura\*

\*Sleaze Aura: The Bane can lend the effects of the Gift: Persuasion (see W20, p. 153) to anyone who goes along with the suggestions it whispers through Corruption, so long as they continue following those suggestions.

**Image:** A Raptor looks like a great, fleshy flower atop an array of slim, well-toned legs of both genders.

**Background:** This Bane feeds from the lusts of its host, the act of consummation, and then the pain of the host’s victims when he casts them aside; it needs all three in order to feed. The more profound the victim’s residual sense of use or violation, the more Essence the Raptor gains. A regular one-night-stand with someone as worn-down as the host himself is worth only a single point, while ruining someone else’s life might be worth five all at once.

**Storytelling Notes:** Once, Pentex tried to bond Raptors to various products, including cosmetics and colognes. The Raptors refused to cooperate, and now despise Pentex-created Enticers. A Raptor will go out of its way to guide its host into an Enticer’s path, with the intent of using and ruining the fomor, even killing it, if possible.

#### **Rot Walker**

While not the mightiest or cleverest of the Wyrm’s children, the Banes known as Rot Walkers are among the most disturbing. They are spirits of decay: not of death, but of the corruption that follows, not of endings, but of unresolved conclusions left to fester. They are the Wyrm’s promise for the future, a world inescapable even in final dissolution: a world where there is no afterlife for valiant heroes, but only an eternity of shuffling footsteps and putrid meat.

**Rage 5, Gnosis 4, Willpower 7, Essence 16**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Armor, Blighted Touch, Carrion Walk\*, Lightning in the Meat\*, Tracking

\*Carrion Walk: This Charm is similar to Possession, but can only be used upon a corpse. Any corpse will do: a dead Pentex employee, a road kill raccoon, a slaughtered steer, and — on one horribly memorable occasion — a freshly deceased elephant can all host a Rot Walker. The cadaver must still have some flesh on its frame (so no possessed dinosaur skeletons), and it cannot already be possessed or animated by other means (putting vampires off-limits). A corpse animated by Carrion Walk uses the traits it had when alive, rather than the controlling Bane’s spirit traits, but uses the Bane’s Essence instead of a health track.

Carrion Walk puts a tremendous strain on the corpse being possessed; the necrotic energies of the Bane rapidly accelerate the process of decay, so that most possessed shells become flyblown horrors in short order. Few cadavers manage to last for more than a week before devolving into an immobile stew of bones and pulpy meat.

\*Lightning in the Meat: This Charm allows the Rot Walker to spend one Essence per day to re-animate the brain of a corpse possessed with Carrion Walk. There must be a brain present for this to work. While the body’s soul has long since moved on to whatever awaits beyond the veil of death, a residue of memories and personality still dwell in the wrinkles of the mind, and it is this shadow of the deceased that the Rot Walker resurrects, up until the body falls apart. The revived persona knows nothing of the possessing Bane, and may even believe itself alive at first. It is likely to try to head back to familiar surroundings, such as the house where its grieving family awaits. Some Rot Walkers resume control at this point; others prefer to simply let the lightning continue to drive the meat, watching the corpse and its loved ones go through the agony of decay, dissolution, and a second and final demise.

**Image:** A Rot Walker in the Umbra looks like a collection of rotting corpse-parts from a variety of different animals, bound together with gut and sinew. One might be a crude centaur made of the rotting lower parts of a horse, topped by a decaying human torso and a half-flayed cattle skull; another could be a dead hound, creeping along on a multitude of mismatched and rotting arms and legs.

**Background:** The Silent Striders were the first tribe to encounter Rot Walkers. When they speak of these Banes at all, they say that they were once lesser spirits of death that watched over the moment when spirit and corpse separated. Curious, they listened at cracks between their domain and the Low Umbra of the dead; whatever whispers came through to them changed them forever, filling their eyes with darkness and their forms with decay. Now they are harbingers of the world beyond the Apocalypse, a soulless land of ugly, senseless destruction; and of meat silently rotting beneath a red and wounded sun.

**Storytelling Notes:** Rot Walkers are opportunists, taking whatever corpse seems most interesting to them at any given moment, but they take especial joy in presenting the Garou with evidence of their handiwork. If a werewolf loses control and kills an innocent in the grip of Frenzy, a Rot Walker will ensure she meets her victim again, she may even go so far as to restore the victim’s control of the corpse, so she can ask the werewolf why she had to die. Rot Walkers also enjoy dragging dead Kinfolk out of their graves.

Uktena Theurges have catalogued the existence of a similar, weaker Bane known as a Meat Puppet, which animates only the remains of the young, such as dead children and drowned kittens. Meat Puppets possess Carrion Walk, but not Lightning in the Meat.

#### **Rust Spider**

Rust Spiders aren’t really a single variety of Bane. Instead, they’re the catch-all name that both Garou and Black Spiral Dancers use to refer to those cases where the spirit-servants of the Weaver — Pattern Spiders, Net Spiders, Chaos Monitors, and so on — are corrupted by the vile essence of the Wyrm, yet retain their basic shape and function.

Rust Spiders seem to serve two masters, rather than tumbling completely into the grasp of the Wyrm as most corrupted spirits do. That distinction is, in truth, what makes a Rust Spider a Rust Spider, rather than just another urban-conceptual Bane. A former Pattern Spider continues to weave according to the Weaver’s design.

A former Net-Spider continues to herd data packets to and fro across the networks where it makes its lair. Corrupted guardian spirits, such as Hunter Spiders, show the greatest deviance in their behavior, for they always allow Wyrm-tainted spirits free passage, and never treat them as enemies.

**Rust Spiders keep the traits they had prior to their corruption.**

**Charms:** Rust Spiders continue to use the Charms they originally possessed as Weaver spirits. In addition, they gain Blighted Touch and Darkweaving\*.

\*Darkweaving: This Charm more than anything else defines a Rust Spider. Darkweaving’s effects are permanent, and stain the spirit’s every works with an indelible trace of Wyrm-taint. When a tainted Pattern Spider reinforces the Gauntlet, it weaves in blackly glistening, Wyrmish strands of spiritual effluvia, which Banes find it easier to pierce (–1 to the local Gauntlet for Wyrm spirits only). When they work on the great Pattern Webs that span cities, the strands they weave act as efficient superhighways for Banes. When a Hunter Spider scans for enemies in need of destruction, they heed the distress cries of Banes and treat them as a summons of the Weaver. When a Net-Spider ushers data packets from place to place, it subtly taints them, imparting a negative tone to digital communications, or promoting data loss or corruption in vital transactions. The individual effect of this Charm upon any action is small, but the cumulative result is a spirit that remakes Gaia into the Wyrm’s image as efficiently and tirelessly as its brothers and sisters calcify the world into the Weaver’s design.

**Image:** The average Rust Spider closely resembles a Pattern Spider, or whatever sort of spirit it was before its corruption. Indeed, from a distance it might even be mistaken for one. Upon closer inspection, the spirit’s altered nature is unmistakable; its shining body is corroded and pitted, while unwholesome organic growths replace formerly mechanical elements. The overall first impression is that the spirit has contracted some form of biomechanical cancer, and its movements bear this out. They’re shuddering and jerky, lacking the elegant clockwork precision that is the usual hallmark of the Weaver.

**Background:** Some Rust Spiders are “naturally occurring,” appearing at the peripheries of blights, Pits, and other badly Wyrm-tainted areas of the Umbra. More often, Black Spiral Dancers create Rust Spiders through the Gift: Claws of Corrosion (see p. 121). This is often part of establishing an urban Pit, transforming the city’s spiritual antibodies into guardians and reinforcements for the spiritual power of the nascent Wyrm-caern. Because many Rust Spiders are non-aggressive if left alone, less-experienced Garou are sadly apt to overlook them, treating them almost as a background detail. Only those canny in the ways of the Wyrm are likely to recognize dense concentrations of Rust Spiders as a likely sign that a Pit is somewhere nearby.

**Storytelling Notes:** Rust Spiders work well as set pieces for urban stories, showing that the war for Gaia is bigger than a simple clash of Wyrm vs. Garou. Even the cold, terrible purity of the Weaver is a target for the Wyrm’s poisons as the Apocalypse looms. This is a particularly sobering threat for Glass Walker characters.

#### **Scrags**

Scrags make up one of the many races of warrior-Banes that serve the Wyrm. They are monsters of unrestrained rage and violence, serving not as corrupters, but as soldiers.

**Willpower 6, Rage 10, Gnosis 4, Essence 20**

**Charms:** Incite Frenzy, Possession

**Image:** Within the Umbra, they appear as semi-physical, ghoulish spirits with razor-sharp claws and fangs. Scrags seems to walk in a slouch, their arms nearly acting as forelegs. This slouch does not impede their movement in any way.

**Background:** Scrags manifest in a rather unique fashion. A Scrag cannot simply penetrate the Gauntlet; it must instead find a host and possess him. Unless the Scrag is somehow evicted (usually through an exorcism), the victim will physically transform into a Scrag within 48 hours. From the initial possession until the final transformation, the host will begin to exhibit many of the Scrag’s traits, including antisocial habits, a nasty disposition, a short and violent temper, and a consuming hunger for raw, bloody, red meat.

Once the 48 hours have passed, the physical transformation takes effect. The host becomes a lean, ghoulish figure with grayish skin, razor sharp claws and fangs, and a stench of ammonia and blood. Once the Scrag departs the body (for whatever reason), the host returns to his normal form, and he must face the carnage he caused. (What’s more, he retains full memory of his actions.)

**Storytelling Notes:** Scrags kill. They are, literally, spirits of murder. They live for the moment when a victim’s life ends, and they revel in the mayhem and bloodshed they inflict. Packs of Scrags often indulge in frenzies of death and dismemberment, expressing only a malevolently dark humor at their victim’s expense. While a single one may not be a match for a Garou, a pack of a dozen or more can be quite deadly.

#### **Scryers**

Scryers are a weak type of Bane whose only apparent purpose is to spy on targets for stronger Banes. They are rewarded with Essence, and thus their loyalty is absolute.

**Rage 2, Gnosis 7, Willpower 4, Essence 13-30**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Reform, Report\*, Scry\*

\*Report: This Charm allows the Bane to maintain a mental link to its Patron. This costs 1 Essence per scene.

\*Scry: This allows the Bane to “peek” into the material world and use the Gift: Scent of the True Form to observe those it sees there. This costs 1 Essence per scene.

**Image:** Scryers vary widely in form, but all are thin and fleshy, easily pulled apart if caught. Their eyes are the most distinctive parts of their bodies; although these may be beady, bulbous, luminescent, catlike, compound, or faceted, they are always unusual in some way. Subjects in the physical realm may only see a Scryer while it peeks at them by using Gifts such as Pulse of the Invisible or Umbral Sight.

Certain Garou with Gnosis of 7 or higher may feel an uneasy feeling of being watched when targeted by the Scryer’s gaze. This unease may become extreme after long periods of time. Garou without the Gifts necessary to find their tormentors may even be driven slowly mad by constant observation. The gaze of a Scryer may tickle, tingle, or even burn one who can feel it, though this is a sensation only and does no physical damage.

**Background:** A Scryer usually bonds to a particular Bane, exchanging a period of observation for Essence. Usually the patron grants the Scryer five to ten Essence for a given task, more if the observation takes place over an extended period of time. However, if the Scryer fails its master in some way, the master may remove five to ten Essence from the Scryer’s being, possibly destroying it for a time. Some other masters have devised ways to feed Scryers, and many Black Spiral Hives have several Scryers under the wing of their caern’s Bane totem.

**Storytelling Notes:** Scryers are an example of a Bane evolved to fulfill a specific task. They are highly specialized to perform their function, but have few capabilities apart from spying. There are indubitably many other breeds of similarly specialized Banes; the Storyteller is encouraged to create more such creatures to emphasize the manner in which the Wyrm can engineer entire spirit-forms for specific duties. These cowardly Banes have no means of attack, and use their Reform Charm to escape when detected.

#### **Shattered Hearts**

Raging through once pristine Umbral landscapes, Shattered Harts find sustenance in agony and misery. They prefer to feed from the pain of Gaian spirits that have been subjected to the desecration of once sacred land. Insane and violent, the Harts roam their hunting grounds, attacking anything that would end the misery in which they bask. When there aren’t any adequate victims, a Shattered Hart spends its time inflicting further injury on the weaker Banes and creatures in the area.

**Rage 10, Gnosis 8, Willpower 6, Essence 24**

**Charms:** Armor, Materialize, Smoke\*, Tracking

\*Smoke: By spending a point of Essence, a Shattered Hart can snort out a cloud of sulfurous smoke that shrouds the Bane in darkness. Increase the difficulty of all rolls to hit the bane by one, or two for Garou in Lupus form due to the stench. The Shattered Hart can see clearly through the smoke and suffers no penalties.

**Image:** A Shattered Hart resembles a stag spirit with an over-exaggerated muscle structure similar to a bull’s. Its hide is oil-slicked and reflects all light in a sickly yellow hue, regardless of the source. Stark white eyes gleam from under antlers that twist in a tight gnarl over its head; these overgrown antlers are covered in inch-long thorns. Wisps of smoke curl from the bane’s nostrils. They have no permanent places of rest, but wander their territory endlessly, always on the hunt for intruders.

**Background:** When the Wyrm’s minions capture a Stag spirit and carve out its Gaian essence, they create a Shattered Hart. With only emptiness inside, the spirits seek to fulfill themselves by wreaking the agony they faced back upon the world. Shattered Harts haunt Blights and Hellholes that exist in the wilderness. They feel at home anywhere Pentex has leveled forests or started a fracking operation. Rarely materializing, the banes stalk the Umbra, attacking anyone or anything it perceives as a threat to it or its territory. Only when they detect an overwhelming threat in the physical world will the spirit materialize to attack it. A Shattered Hart will lash out at any Garou, including the Black Spiral Dancers.

**Storytelling Notes:** Shattered Harts work well to add a new level of horror to Hellholes and Blights. All Garou go into such places knowing they’re going to face banes, but not necessarily banes crafted from Gaian spirits they revere. Black Spiral Dancers take delight in taunting Shattered Harts and leading them to packs or septs with large numbers of Fianna.

#### **Thinbones**

The Banes known as Thinbones are insatiable spirits of hunger, born in places of terrible famine. Unlike many conceptual Banes, Thinbones don’t hang around the places of their creation, but instead seek out places of richness and opulence — lands of plenty. It is here that they hunt, using humans to feed their own insatiable appetites and to amuse their bizarre whims. Thinbones are at least easy for the Garou to spot once they arrive in an area, as their victims’ deaths are usually strange enough to make local headlines.

Rage 7, Gnosis 7, Willpower 5, Essence 19 (up to 25 if possessing a host)

Charms: Airt Sense, Corruption, Materialize, Possession\*, Tracking

\*Possession: A Thinbone’s Possession Charm is different from that of other Banes. Thinbones are incapable of creating fomori through permanent possession, or of directly controlling the host. Instead, a possessing Thinbone consumes everything the host eats before it can nourish him. Once the host begins starving, the Thinbone uses its Corruption Charm to whisper suggested meals that might sate the host; each time the host partakes of such a meal, the Thinbone gains one point of Essence. Soon after, the gnawing hunger returns and the host’s starvation continues. Thinbones never suggest ordinary food to their unlucky host; instead, they recommend the host consume something he values. A devout Christian might be compelled to tear out the pages of his Bible and eat them, one by one, while a fashionista sits down and methodically eats every outfit and shoe in her closet. The strongest of Thinbones turn their hosts against loved ones, starving the possessed individual into a cannibal feast. Once the host starves to death, the Thinbone departs to begin the cycle anew.

**Image:** Thinbones look like tall, genderless, emaciated humans with elongated features dominated by an eternally gaping mouth. Their long, thin bones protrude through their flesh in places, whittled down to sharp points.

**Background:** Once uncommon, Thinbones have proliferated in the second half of the twentieth century. This puzzles many Garou, for famine has always been a great scourge of humanity. There seems no obvious reason for the sudden increase in this Bane’s numbers. Thinbones lust after the incredible power of caerns, but have no means of consuming them. They will target off-duty caern guardians if at all possible.

**Storytelling Notes:** As solo Banes, Thinbones present little physical threat to a mighty werewolf; instead, they are opportunities for the Garou to act as heroes, saving the unfortunates that Thinbones possess from a terrible, demeaning, prolonged death. On the other hand, Thinbones tend to target those in positions of privilege and plenty; certain Garou (such as Bone Gnawers and Red Talons) may not want to help the spirit’s victims.

#### **Wyrmholes**

The boundaries between matter and spirit mean little when a Wyrmhole is present. These rare Banes are an acute danger, for they can birth Banes into the material world by the dozen, releasing the newly physical spirits of pure malice onto whatever — or whomever — is handy.

**Rage 0, Gnosis 10, Willpower 0, Essence 50-200**

**Charms:** Gateway\*, Possession, Reform

\*Gateway: Gateway allows a Wyrmhole to use the Materialize Charm on other Banes, spending the necessary Essence itself to bring the creatures through. The cost of Materializing any Bane is the same as it would be for that particular Bane to Materialize itself; if the Bane cannot ordinarily Materialize, the Wyrmhole may choose the physical form’s parameters itself. When in a mortal host, the Wyrmhole must still keep track of its Essence; it regains Essence at a rate of one per day when embodied in a host.

**Image:** When met in the spirit world, Wyrmholes appear as swirling waterspouts made of thin, oily spirit “fluid.” As Banes pass through the funnels, the sides of the Wyrmhole swell like a snake swallowing an egg. When these powerful Banes possess mortal hosts, any changes are relatively subtle; the main differences are usually that the new fomor’s surroundings are always rich with static electricity, and the fomor’s eyes become swirling pools of dark indigo.

**Background:** There was a time when the Gaian Realm was one with the Umbra, before the Weaver spun its maddening webs across the universe and divided the physical from the spiritual. In response, the Wyld created spirit doorways to the Wyrm’s myriad lairs in the Umbra — all the better to let the creatures of Balance walk between the worlds as needed. Unfortunately, the Wyrm was no longer a force for Balance. Now the Wyrmholes are nothing more than powerful assets at the Corrupter’s fingertips.

In some cases, Wyrmholes form in the air, or in the water, leaving a portal for the Wyrm’s minions — a oneway door back to the Gaian Realm and the places tainted by humans. More often, they find a host, a person or animal that welcomes the power they bring and gains a certain amount of control over whatever spills forth from them. In times long past, there were few of these walking disasters, but they‘re growing more common all the time.

**Storytelling Notes:** Wyrmholes are extremely dangerous. Wherever they form, these rifts in the Gauntlet are open invitations for the Wyrm’s minions. When they possess a mortal, that human gains phenomenal power over the creatures drawn through its Gateway. The Banes summoned in this way are often inclined to obey the amalgam of Bane and flesh, because as long as the Wyrmhole is available, they can reenter the Gaian Realm without expending any of their own Essence. Those possessed by Wyrmholes are always willing victims, and sometimes develop further fomori powers as a result of the merger.

### **Wyrm Elementals**

The following elementals are the Gafflings of the Elemental Wyrms — Wyrm counterparts of each of the elements that are said to be made of the excretions of the Primal Wyrm. Like the Elemental Wyrms that spawned them, they have no mind; they are but physical substances. As such, they are used by other servitors and minions of the Wyrms for their own uses. The Black Spiral Dancers have named them, but they do not heed these names when called. They simply exist.

Wyrm elementals are found throughout the Umbra, although they tend to seek safety in numbers around Blights, Hellholes and other “safe zones.” As with most other elementals, particularly Gafflings, these Banes have little individual personality, and are downright dangerous in droves.

#### **Hoglings (Smog)**

These appear as thick clouds of noxious fumes rolling ominously over their targets. They are usually bluish in color, and the occasional facial feature is visible in their roiling forms.

**Rage 8, Gnosis 7, Willpower 3, Essence 18-40**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Create Wind, Reform, Updraft

#### **Furmlings (Balefire)**

These appear as sickly luminous blobs of napalm-like gel. They glow with an irradiated, flickering phosphorescence and dart about like insane fireflies.

**Rage 10, Gnosis 5, Willpower 5, Essence 20-40**

**Charms:** Airt Sense, Blast Flame

#### **H’rugglings (Sludge)**

Possibly the most nauseating Banes alive, H’rugglings appear as rotting piles of raw sewage, with a stench to match. They leave noxious slug-trails behind themselves, making them easy — if revolting — to track.

**Rage 3, Gnosis 5, Willpower 9, Essence 17-40**

**Charms:** Umbraquake

#### **Wakshaani (Toxins)**

These appear as sheets of purplish fluid with blotches, veins, and bubbling warts that continually shift and change. When attacking, Wakshaani rear up and wash over their prey like sails in the wind.

**Rage 7, Gnosis 7, Willpower 3, Essence 17-40**

**Charms:** Blighted Touch, Flood