Legends of the Garou: Thrown to the Wolves

  Easy now. Just keep taking deep breaths. Slow down if you can. That's it. Try to relax. Try not to think too hard about the last half hour. Keep calm.
  That's right. I'm a friend. I'm a... cousin, really. And I'm here to help you last out the night. I think we've got a minute before we're going to have to get away from here, so just keep breathing slowly and try to calm down.
  You might have known this was coming. Was it the dreams? Sometimes it's the dreams — dreams of running on all fours, smelling blood from miles away, the moonlight. .. Or maybe it was the other kids. Did they treat you differently, like they could somehow see something dangerous about you? That'll happen, too. And it all got worse as you got older. Once you started getting into your teenage years, the dreams got worse, and you started to feel something bottled up inside you. Your classmates avoided you. Maybe teachers thought you were acting funny, and they started asking if you were on drugs. And the pressure inside kept building.
  Yeah, I know the story. Particularly the next part. You got pushed too far. Something inside you snapped. The next thing you knew, you were covered in blood, standing in a pile of guts and flesh and bone that used to be a person — or people.
  It's okay! It's okay.... This time, it's okay. The people here were trying to kill you. It was you or them. You did good. You just need to learn a little more control.
  Yeah, you guessed it. This happened to me once, too. And I was scared just like you.
  Come on, it's time to go. Huh? Oh, yeah, right. Sorry.
  My name's Evan. And the spears are for self-defense — for times when the weaponry Mother gave me just isn't enough.
  Let's move.

Wolves in the Fold

  I think we might be safe here for a while. I've got a friend covering our tracks. I've got to hand it to you — I was afraid I'd have to drag you along with me. You've got good instincts. Time for you to find out where they come from.
  No, we can't go back. Your old life's dead — and if they catch us, there's a fair chance that your new life won't last much longer. They'll probably have silver this time.
  You don't know why you just shuddered when I said that, do you? Or maybe you've guessed by now?
  You've just gone through your First Change.
  You're a werewolf.
  You want to deny it? It sounds crazy, I know. Werewolves don't exist — that's just common sense, right? But think about it. Why are people still scared of the dark? Why do they still kill wolves? Why do they have to have their camping gear and SUVs and bike paths and carefully controlled parks?
  Because something inside them knows. They know we're out here. You knew, too. Even though all you can think right now is, "This freak with the spears is completely fucking nuts," part of you understands I'm telling the truth.
  Don't want to believe me? Look at your hand. Nails are a little long, aren't they? You're really nervous right now, and it's showing. Relax, calm down a little — there you go, back to normal. And try to keep calm. If you change right now, you aren't going to have a lot of control. The control comes later.
  Good. All right, here's the story.
  Whatever you've seen about werewolves on TV or in the movies — most of it's pure garbage. People tell these horror stories about people who turn into murdering animals, but they don't understand where exactly they came up with the idea. So they get a lot of it wrong. To them, werewolves are these solitary monsters that act like — well, they don't act like wolves, I'll tell you that. But people think a werewolf is some kind of person that turns into a wolf when the moon is full and goes on a mindless killing spree. Now, I'd be lying if I said that has no basis in fact — yeah, fact — but humans don't understand that werewolves aren't cursed humans. We're not really human at all, although we're often born from human — or wolf — mothers or fathers. We're our own people. We're the Garou.
  Right. I can tell your subconscious recognizes the word. You already understand some of the language we speak when we're wearing wolf skins — it's an inborn gift from our Mother. She's given us a lot of gifts to help us. And the one that kept you alive when you were attacked, the one that makes us monsters, the one that makes us warriors — that's the one that's hardest to deal with. Unless I miss my guess, tonight was the first time you found out you had that gift — that you were capable of Rage.
  Yeah, you can hear the capital letter, can't you? It's like the way people stress the difference between "a god" and "God." Everyone gets angry. Hell, these days, with people living so close-packed that they don't have any personal space to retreat to, anger's a lot more common. When the temperature rises in the big concrete cities, they start killing each other over lost tempers a lot more often. And that's nothing compared to what's beating inside your heart. It feels like fire, doesn't it? That's a special gift we have — a gift or a curse, depending on how you look at it. If there's one thing the movies get right, it's that it doesn't take much to make a werewolf angry enough to kill you.
  Well, the movies also get the silver thing right, but more about that later.
  Your First Change was a bloody one — they always are. When I changed for the first time, I was running for my life, same as you. But when the change came over me, I stood and fought. And I killed. That's usually how it goes. You're born with Rage, although you don't know it — and it keeps on building up inside you as you get older, until something happens to make it all explode out of you. I know Garou who were beaten — or worse — as children, until they finally couldn't take it any more. The first blood they drew as werewolves was that of their abusers. It could even have happened at school, if you were cornered and attacked. And that's when the killing fever — the frenzy — rides you. There's no more serious thing than a frenzy. When your Rage overpowers you, you can't control yourself. All you want to do is flee or kill. You could kill anyone, even your family, while in that state. That's where the root of the legend comes from. You were lucky — when your First Change hit, the only ones around you were enemies.
  Yes, we have enemies. I said we had gifts from our Mother, right? We have supernatural speed, strength, stamina — we can take a bullet to the heart and keep fighting, tear apart a car without breaking a sweat, even call on the power of the Earth itself to strike down our foes. The Mother wouldn't have given us all these things if we didn't need them. We're Her warriors, born and bred. You, me — we were designed to kill. There's a war raging, a war that stretches across the whole globe and beyond. And vicious killing machines like you and me — we're the good guys. Our enemies are far worse.
  Okay, I'm losing you. Let's see if I can put this a little more clearly.

Born to Power

  I said the word "supernatural" before. It's an interesting word for what we are. It means "beyond nature," right? Well, that's sort of accurate. We aren't really literally beyond nature, of course. It's just that humans have a limited perception of what nature is. All they see is the physical side of things. Oh, sure, they keep trying to reach for some greater cosmological truth — just look at those New Age types, all convinced they're reincarnations of Ramses and Cleopatra. Or look at the churchgoers who are convinced that if they do exactly what the priest says, they'll go directly to Heaven where they can look down on all the people they hate in Hell and laugh. But they're not looking in the right place. Humanity wants the quick fix. They suspect there's something bigger than them in the world, but they want to be told exactly the right words to say and the right things to wear so that they can get instant gratification or enlightenment. And the more they look for the quick and easy way to something sublime, the farther they get from actually touching it.
  We're a little luckier than they are. We're born with a portion of the world's soul in our bodies. That's where our power comes from — we are nature. We're spirits made flesh. We're creatures of the two worlds — man and beast, flesh and spirit.
  It's this way from birth. You weren't born human, even though no doctor, no blood or DNA test could tell the difference. There's no gene to express what makes us what we are. For all anyone could tell, we're normal human children. Or wolf cubs, for that matter. That's an important thing. We Garou can't mate with each other — well, we can, but it's like incest. Our blood's too potent, too powerful to produce healthy children if we mate with each other. We have to dilute it with the blood of humans and wolves if we want a healthy generation of cubs. We can't just bite somebody and make them one of us — and it's for the best that way. Because we need humans and wolves to pass on our line, we have to protect humanity and wolves alike for our own good as well as theirs. And believe me, if it weren't for that, humanity might have died out long ago. There are too many of us who see humans as the enemy.

The Moon-Kissed

  Now, the way I've been talking, you might assume that all of our power comes from some sort of invisible supernatural gene. It doesn't work that way. Like I said, we're tied into the entire world, both physical and spiritual, and those connections take a lot of forms. We draw some of our power from our birthright, sure. But it's not always who you're born to. Sometimes it's when you're born that makes a difference.
  You know the legends about the full moon — that's when werewolves change, right? Well, there's a full moon tonight. I can feel it pulling on my blood; you can feel the same thing, can't you? The full moon's a warrior's moon. As the moon waxes and wanes, so does our Rage.
  That connection to the moon's with us from birth. Luna — the spirit of the moon — kisses each one of us as we're born and gives us our anger. The more of her light in the sky on the night of your birth, the more Rage you carry within you. Forget astrological signs and planetary influences. The phase of the moon is what marks our destiny. I was born under a half moon: the judge's moon. I was born half in light, half in shadow, so it's my task to keep the laws, to see both sides of every problem.
  They didn't get a chance to tell me what your moon affinity is before I left. Maybe you're a Full Moon child. That would be lucky, on a night like tonight.
  Who are "they"? "They" are the werewolves who guard this portion of the land. They're your relatives, your godparents: your tribe.

The Wolf's Blood

  Wolves run in packs — you knew that. They're social creatures, as are we. But our Rage keeps us from living among humans or wolves as if we belonged there. It wouldn't be safe for our husbands and wives, our children or friends even if we could. Like I said, we're at war.
  The only ones we can really rely on are each other. It's been that way since the First Days. And since the First Days, we've kept the traditions that, some say, were given to us by the Mother Herself.
  That's right. The Garou have been a society since before Christianity and before Egypt. We're part of a society that's kept most of the same laws since before humans learned to bake mud and straw into bricks.
  The war's been going on that long.
  They weren't always good laws, though. We've fought each other in civil wars, slaughtered humans who offended us, made war on our distant cousins. We've got rivers of blood on our collective hands.
  See, there's a reason humans still believe in us deep down somewnere after all these years. There's a reason why they laugh at the idea that we might be real, but have nightmares about our fangs and claws. They forget most of these nightmares. Most of them. But they still remember, deep down. They remember that long ago, even before the dawn of agriculture, wolf-beasts leapt from the forests to kill them when they grew too numerous. Our ancestors culled humanity, killing the young and the old alike to keep the population down to "reasonable" numbers. They called it "the Impergium."
  And humanity still remembers. I think that's why they cut down forests and kill wolves whenever they can. I think that might even be why they have families that are too large for them to support, why they kill more than they need to survive, eat more than they have to and throw away the rest. Somewhere in their subconscious, they're trying to survive as best they can — and fight back against us in the process. Even if they don't remember that we're real.
  We are real, though. We've been here almost forever. The tribes of the Garou have managed to hang on until the Final Days.
  Well... not all of them. Once there were 16; now only 13 remain. Thirteen tribes of us — well, 12 that still talk to each other, and a 13th that's decided to strike out on its own. The 12 that remain are the Garou Nation — your people.
  Yes, your people. They couldn't raise you among them — it was too important that you and all of us human-born Garou grow up in human society, so that we could understand humans. It's the same way with the lupus, the wolf-born; they have to grow up as wolves so they understand just what it is they're fighting for. When you were born, you were marked by a spirit whose sole job was to watch over you as you grew up and then to come and tell your kinsmen when you Changed that it was time. And it is time.
  But your relatives — your tribe — are under attack. The enemy chose to assault them and you at the same time; I guess they hoped to separate you from your tribe so they could capture you. They always capture if they have a chance. A young werewolf's worth much more to them alive than dead.
  No. Don't ask why. Not yet.
  If you think the guys who came to collect you were bad, you should see the people — the things — that your relatives are fighting right now. They needed their strongest to help defend their territory, and they couldn't be sure that a younger one could reach you in time. So I volunteered.
  No, I'm not one of your kin — at least not directly. We might be tribemates, but that remains to be seen. I was visiting the area on business. You see, I've got a mission of my own. Everyone has a purpose, and once we get you safely back to your kin, you can start finding out about yours.
  It seems a little fascist, huh? It's not like anyone ever asked you if you wanted to be born to a people in the middle of the war. But we need you; we need everyone we can get. The war is the dirtiest war you can imagine — you may even see your packmates slaughtered, tortured or worse. Trust me... it'll happen. But you can't ask for a nobler cause.
  I don't expect you to believe this, but you may soon find that your pack and your tribe become better friends, closer relatives, than you've ever had in your life. You'll never be able to walk among humans as one of them — the Rage inside you prevents that. You have a place to turn, though: Your pack and tribe are family. For most of us, our packmates and tribemates are the only ones we can rely on. They're the only ones who'll help us fight against the Enemy.
  Yeah, I know. I hear you. But listen, there are a couple of things you need to see firsthand before I can tell you more about them. If I tell you who's after you — us — and why right now, you won't believe me. Trust me. You need to see for yourself.
  Now's as good a time as any. Don't worry, I'll help you through this. Look into that window there. Not at the mannequins - look at your reflection. Focus on your reflection's eyes.
  Now stop focusing. Let go. Look beyond the reflection — again, not at the mannequins, but at the world behind the reflection. Look beyond yourself. Look beyond the background, into the whole three-dimensional world that's stretching out from that one.
  You'll feel something pushing against you. Don't fight it. Slide between the spaces. Go beyond the reflection.
  That's it. You're almost —

Higher Reality

  You made it. Congratulations.
  Oh, sorry — I guess its a little much to take in all at once. Go ahead, take a long look.
  This is the Umbra — the spirit World. This is the other side of reality, the immaterial counterpart to the physical world. The spirits that fuel the world live here. Change something here, and you might change it in the physical world, too. Chop down the spirit of a giant tree, and the tree's physical body will die. That's why it's so important that we're the wolves that walk between the worlds, as my great-grandfather put it. Our war is raging in both the physical world and the Umbra; we have to be able to fight on both battlefronts.
  It kind of makes your skin crawl a little, doesn't it? Yeah, that's why most of our kind don't like to come into the cities unless they have to. The webs coating everything — that's what the world's coming to. Those Pattern Spiders — the metallic spider-spirits all over the place, the ones big as St. Bernards — they're the ones spinning the spirit webs, but they draw all their power from humans.
  That webbing is in the heart of every city and every town on the face of the planet. It's the mark of the Weaver. The Weaver is — well, she's one of the most immense spirits you can imagine. She's conformity, order, progress — she's repetition and organization. She's reason, science, dogma — she's the demon at every human being's heart that demands that the world be safe, and that it above all make sense. She's trying to bind the whole world in her webs, crazy old thing. Everything wild and primal and disorderly — she wants it locked down, curbed, tamed. But she's got so much power that it just might happen.
  And down that way — down toward that industrial plant. You see those greenish fires billowing out of those smokestacks? The ones that look practically radioactive? We'll come back to those; that's something particularly important.
  This is what we're up against, though. The Weaver's webs are out of control — and the Enemy... well, they're here, too. It's damn near impossible to even hold our ground against these odds, but we do have allies. The spirits of nature, of animals and plants and elements are on our side. That doesn't mean they're friendly, now — you can't exactly expect the spirit of a hurricane to genuinely have your well-being foremost in its mind — but they're on our side. If we need to, we can call, and if we prove our good intentions to them, they'll help.
  Here's the proof. You asked before about these spears, and I'll admit it seems stupid to bring a spear to a gunfight. Pretty useless in the 21st century, right? If they were just wood and metal and flint, I'd agree with you — but they're something more. Here — take this one.
  You can feel it, can't you? Something... alive inside the wood, right? That's because there is something in there — a spirit. A Garou warrior made this spear, crafted it from the finest wood and forged its head from the finest metal. And then he called on a spirit of the storm, using ancient rites and soft speech to propitiate it. He offered it tobacco and praise and song. In return, it agreed to live inside that spear, like a genie in a bottle, and lend its strength to him — or to any Garou who promised to use the spear well in defense of the Mother.
  That spear will tell you more than ten thousand words could about the friendship between us and the spirits, about the sacrifices that we're all willing to make to defend the Mother and Her creations against the Wyrm.

The End of the War

  Okay. Now it's time. You've learned what you are, you've seen the spirit world. It's time to learn why you've been chosen.
  Werewolves are monsters — I'm not going to argue the point. We are. We are also necessary. As I've said before, everything we are, we are because that's how the Mother made us. When I say the Mother, I mean Mother Earth, Mother Nature — we call Her Gaia. She is the entire planet — according to some, She's the entire universe. We can't tell for sure. All we know is that She's huger than we can measure. And yet, She's in very real danger. One of the three most powerful forces in... of the universe is gnawing at Her from the inside.
  That force... That's what I'm talking about when I say the Wyrm.
  The Wyrm — where do I start? The Wyrm used to be Balance, the dividing line between the Weaver's order and the chaos of a force we call the Wyld. While all three were in harmony, the universe was in balance. But the balance was shifted — corrupted. Somehow, the Weaver went mad, and in the process she drove the Wyrm mad as well.
  But the Weaver is still the Weaver, still the force of order. The Wyrm — the Wyrm became something else. It was devoured by its own pain and anger, and it became hate itself. It lies in a pit deep at the roots of the universe, where it thrashes in constant agony. Each horrible thought it has — each urge for revenge, each maddened desire to kill or seduce or destroy — each one becomes a spirit of corruption and is loosed on the universe. And these spirits feed on the evils they find in the world, and get stronger. Every murder, every rape, every beating — it all feeds the Wyrm's children.
  So, like any other entity, they try to make their food source thrive. They encourage humanity — and even us — to destroy and defile, because it strengthens them. It's hard for us to resist the urge to kill without a second thought, but we have to — otherwise we feed those spirits. As they get stronger, so does their father — until it'll finally be strong enough to break free and take his insane revenge out on Creation itself.
  Yes, it's real. Real as gravity or sunlight or thunder. I've never seen it myself, and I've never heard of anyone who has — but we know.
  The tales say it'll break its bonds and come into the world in physical form in the last battle — the final battle of the Apocalypse. And the signs show that the final battle is at hand. Look, up there — you can't see it in the physical world yet, but you can see it here. The Red Star — Anthelios. Some call it the Eye of the Wyrm; others say it's the Anti-Sun. It appeared only a year or two ago. And I think it's getting brighter. It's the harbinger of the final battle, of the end of it all.
  If the Wyrm does break free... It must be the size of a continent. The human race — and yes, our kind — has certainly fed it enough over the millennia. The thing is so vast that —
  ...
  Sometimes in my dreams, even in my visions, I'm looking down on a colossal mountain, sometimes even a mountain range, from far above. And as I'm watching, the mountain starts to move — it starts to slide up almost beyond my field of vision. I can see the great, dark, wet hollow beneath it — and then the light starts to reflect on that hollow. I start seeing color, this jaundiced yellow-green that's spread out wide across the underside of the mountain, — and then I see it, right in the center of the color.
  The pupil.
  I'm not ashamed to say that I start trying to scream when I see that. But that's what we're up against. That's the Wyrm — so huge, so invincible that there's just no point in trying to kill it. Teeth and claws just won't get the job done.
  But we're not trying to kill it. We're trying to beat it. There's a difference.

Into the End Times

  You see now, cousin? We've got an impossible task ahead of us. Somehow we have to make enough of a difference to cut the Wyrm's feet out from under it. Somehow we have to make the world strong enough to survive the Apocalypse. We might all die in the process — it's a very real possibility. And it has to be done in our lifetime — no more waiting for our children to fix the planet.
  But there's the problem. I keep saying "us," and I know that I can't in good conscience order you to follow me. You have to join in the war of your own free will, or you won't be able to do the world any good. There's nowhere left that you'll be truly safe, I'm afraid — but you might escape for a while.
  I can't force you to follow me or to fight with your tribe. It's up to you.
  Well? What'll it be?

The Prophecy of the Phoenix

  Phoenix took me.
  Carried me in his claws.
  High above the world.
  So that I could see beyond tomorrow.
  And I looked.
  I beheld the future.
  I saw the decimation of our kin. Hunted beyond hunting, death beyond death, to the last one. There were no more children, or grandchildren, or fathers, or mothers. This was the first Sign Phoenix game to me, that the Children of the Weaver, the Humans, would give to us, the Garou.
  I looked.
  I beheld the future.
  I saw the Children of the Weaver birthing. A great tide of Humans, rising. I saw more and more, until Gaia groaned at having to carry them all. Their houses overrunning, their rakes raping, their hands clawing at the parched earth, trying to feed from Her. This was the second Sign of the last days, that Phoenix showed me, that the Humans would do.
  I looked again.
  I beheld the third Sign.
  So many. So many children. So many Humans. And they fell against each other, one to one, and the Wyrm brought forth corruption and gave each a measure. And the strange Fire I saw, out of control, the great Plume rising over the wilderness, spreading death wherever it shone in that dark and cold land.
  And I heard the agony of the Sea as She keened, for some drunken fool had poured a lake of black death out upon her.
  I turned my head away in disgust, but I could not help but look again.
  I beheld, then, the fourth Sign.
  The Wyrm grew powerful; its wings fanned the breezes of decay. It spread its diseases and they were horrible: the Herd became afflicted with diseases of the head and the blood. Children were born twisted. Animals fell sick and no one could cure them. In these final days, even the Warriors of Gaia could not escape the palsied talons of the sickness-bringing deathbird.
  A tear in my eye, I looked again, and the Phoenix showed me the fifth Sign.
  I saw other Plumes rising like death-spears toward the beautiful sky, piercing it, letting Father Sun burn and parch Gaia. The air grew hot; even in the darkness of Winter it was warm. The plants withered in the sun. A cry of pain and disease arose from the dying forests; as one the relations cried tears of mourning.
  Then, as though a veil were torn, the sixth Sign showed itself to me.
  In these last days, Gaia shakes in rage. Fire boils from the depths. Ash shrouds the sky. The Wyrm skulks in the shadows made by these...and rears to strike. The old ones are gone; the Guardians of the Pathways and the Crossroads are finished. In these final days, the sixth Sign will make itself known in the Packs that form. Each Pack will have unto itself a Quest, a Sacred Journey it must perform. Such is the will of Gaia.
  And I saw the sky turn black, and the moon was as blood.
  And the seventh Sign I glimpsed, though I could not look on it in full. But its heat I could feel.
  The Apocalypse. The final days of the world. The Moon was swallowed by the Sun, and it burned in His belly. Unholy fires fell to the ground, burning us all, twisting us and making us vomit blood. The Wyrm made itself manifest in the towers and the rivers and the air and the land, and everywhere its children ran rampant, devouring, destroying, calling down curses of .every kind. And the Herd ran in fear. And the Dark Ones, children of the Wyrm, crawled from their caves and walked the streets in daylight.
  I turned my head from the sight. Phoenix told me: "This is as it shall be, but not as it should."
  Phoenix left me then.
  Now, I cannot dream. I can only remember the Signs, each one in perfect detail. These are the last days. May Gaia have mercy on us.