Grey
Dialectical Hermeticist
This story is true.
That's the game, folks - a pack of modern werewolves whose duty it is to police the border between the spirit world and the mortal world, who must strive to maintain inner harmony between the wolf and the man. I'm thinking of running a game - five players only, perfect circle of Auspice and Tribe - once one of my current games ends, maybe sooner if I think I have time (for example, if a number of characters die horribly).
But I don't know how people feel about Werewolf - one of the best and most underappreciated games in the nWoD line. Which is why we have this thread. The awesome thing about Werewolf is that it's really, really welcoming in structure to new players, so if anyone wanted an introduction to nWoD or, indeed, to mechanics-supported roleplaying, this is a good way to do.
Everything we are and everything we were began in Pangaea. You already know what Pangaea was. You’ve heard stories of the Garden of Eden — that’s the best that humans could do trying to remember it. You catch glimpses of it in your dreams, and sometimes you smell something — maybe a whiff of a healthy plant, or something about the scent of your prey — and you almost remember.
The scents are the hardest to forget. You can’t remember it fully, though, can you? Nobody can. Only the first of our kind walked in Pangaea.
And they were the ones who had to destroy it.
Can you remember the scent? The world was lush and full of promise. Spirits could enter the realm of flesh easily, and animals and humans could walk into the cool spirit shadow of the world. Pangaea wasn’t the joining of continents that geologists talk about, but the world in its first form. Humans and spirits shared a common language, the First Tongue.We can’t remember whether Pangaea was a time, a place, or both.
All we can recall is that it was glorious, and it was lost.
When Pangaea was in full bloom, its beauty seduced the heart of the moon itself. Mother Luna — Amahan Iduth — grew enchanted with the world growing beneath her. She took the form of a woman of flesh and descended to earth. She walked among the jungles and swam in the seas. She was the most beautiful creature in the world, and she had countless suitors. The greatest and most valiant was Urfarah… and you know that name, don’t you? He was Father Wolf.
Pangaea was glorious, but it wasn’t a world of perfect peace and gentleness. It was a hunter’s world. The lion still hunted the lamb; the spirit still took what it needed from the world of flesh. Death was a part of this hunter’s paradise, and the greatest hunter of all was Father Wolf. He was a warrior of the Shadow Realm and the muddy world of air and earth. He roamed the boundaries of the physical world, keeping everything in its place. Spirits roamed into the world of the flesh, but not far or for long. Urfarah was all too ready to give chase when a spirit overstayed its welcome. When necessary, his teeth and claws pushed mortals and animals back into the relative safety of the flesh world if they strayed too far into the spirit world. His heart burned with supernatural strength and conviction, a righteous Rage that made him unstoppable. But he was the master of that Rage. He was first above us all, and greater than any other.
Father Wolf loved Luna as she rode across the skies, and was overcome with joy and love when he encountered her walking through the borderlands between the spirit world and the physical. He was not alone in either of these sentiments. For her part, Luna found Father Wolf to be valiant and wise, strong and handsome, and she loved him in return. They knew one another, and she gave him children of both spirit and flesh — the first werewolves. Although she wore a human body, Luna gave birth to the first werewolves as a litter of nine pups, a sign of their future fate.
From Luna our ancestors gained the power to change shape, just as she changes her own shape every month. From Father Wolf they gained senses, strength and speed that went beyond those of flesh-born wolves. From both parents they gained a measure of spiritual power, for Mother Moon was Queen of the Shadow Realm and Father Wolf was Lord of the Border Marches.
After giving birth, Luna returned to the skies and Father Wolf raised the First Pack. He taught the first Uratha the ways of wolf and man, flesh and spirit. He showed them the roads from the Shadow Realm through forest, mountain or desert into the world of flesh, down trails to the tribal homes of men.
Father Wolf raised the First Pack to aid him in his duties as guardian of the Border Marches. They took to these duties and helped bring order to the spirit world and the muddy
world. They were shepherds of human, animal and spirit. They culled any herd, tribe or pack that got too large or too dangerous, playing the role of first among predators.
Of course, some spirits and some tribes of humanity didn’t take well to this treatment. Some fought back, and through force of numbers, magic or strength, some wouldn’t die so easily. Father Wolf and his pack banished the worst to the far reaches of the spirit wilds, including mighty spirits, lesser servants of those spirits and tribes of men who worshipped dark powers and committed blasphemous crimes. Others, such as the Plague King and the Spinner-Hag, opposed Father Wolf when they could and fled when they found they could not take on his entire pack.
We were lords of the dawn world. Our great strength and our ability to take different forms allowed us to dominate any man or creature. Few predators could challenge us. No prey could resist us. Even the strongest mammoths and fiercest predators of that era were no match for a pack of werewolves.
It was a dark time to be human, but it was our age of glory, a golden age painted with the bright blood of our prey.
And like every golden age, it was doomed.
That's the game, folks - a pack of modern werewolves whose duty it is to police the border between the spirit world and the mortal world, who must strive to maintain inner harmony between the wolf and the man. I'm thinking of running a game - five players only, perfect circle of Auspice and Tribe - once one of my current games ends, maybe sooner if I think I have time (for example, if a number of characters die horribly).
But I don't know how people feel about Werewolf - one of the best and most underappreciated games in the nWoD line. Which is why we have this thread. The awesome thing about Werewolf is that it's really, really welcoming in structure to new players, so if anyone wanted an introduction to nWoD or, indeed, to mechanics-supported roleplaying, this is a good way to do.
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! This seems really fascinating.
