Garou Culture The very phrase is almost — almost — a misnomer during this age of Apocalypse. So much of what the Garou once had is gone, so many customs and traditions neglected or collapsed or consciously abandoned as ineffectual. After all, some werewolves ask, if they were worth observing, wouldn’t they have helped the Garou avert the Apocalypse?
The Litany Much of the Garou’s history is oral, more within the realm of legend and even self-mythology than a true history. Given the animistic perspective of Garou, when one says, “the mighty Silver Fang rode upon Falcon’s back,” that might literally mean a werewolf rode an enormous falcon in a legendary time, or it may mean that a falcon-spirit carried the werewolf, or even that Falcon himself transported the werewolf through the Umbra.
So it goes with the Litany, a code of Garou custom that’s equally as impressionistic and open to interpretation as the animistic lens through which werewolves see the world. Many — probably most — Garou know the Litany in some form, whether verbatim as presented here, via a series of parables, or perhaps even as a series of lupus-scratched warning glyphs on a pile of stacked stones at the edge of the Schwarzwald. Even if they don’t know a single word of it, Garou of all but the most isolated packs surely find themselves influenced by the Litany in some capacity.
The philodoxes are great interpreters of the Litany, and it often falls to them — especially when werewolves of many packs and backgrounds come together — to render judgments upon transgressors, thus shaping the sort of social justice that informs the customs of werewolves worldwide. Galliards sing great songs of Renown gained in observation of the Litany; ragabash chide its failings with the intention of making it stronger or clearer. The Litany belongs to all Garou.
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Tenets of the Litany
• Combat the Wyrm Wherever It Dwells and Whenever It Thrives
• Respect the Territory of Another
• Accept an Honorable Surrender
• Submit to Those of Higher Station
• Respect Those of Lower Station, for All Are of Gaia.
• The First Share of the Kill for Greatest in Station
• Eat Not the Flesh of Humans
• The Veil Shall Not Be Lifted
• The Leader May Be Challenged at Any Time During Peace
• The Leader May Not Be Challenged During Wartime
• Take No Action That Causes a Caern to Be Violated
Living by an inflexible code that’s actually flexible when someone powerful decides it should be has a dark side. The Litany is an imperfect set of rules by which to wage a guerilla war of resistance during an ongoing Apocalypse. Those rules mean different things at different times to different werewolves, and the oral tradition of the Garou is rife with the Litany being used to justify self-dealing or even atrocity. Young Garou find themselves targeted by elders who wield the Litany as a weapon to bully them into action or shame them into forbearance, as needed by the gray-furs whose failures brought the world to this point in the first place. Veteran Garou see demands to honor the Litany as an accusation against them, and they cite the folly of holding to tradition for tradition’s sake.
Also, given the nature of Garou society, certain aspects of the Litany can emphasize the worst aspects of that society. The tenet
The Leader May Not Be Challenged During Wartime is practically an invitation to authoritarianism, because when you’re Garou,
it’s always fucking wartime, and
Submission to Those of Higher Station gives quislings a reason to just follow orders given by more Renowned Garou. For all of the self-glorifying tales that old Garou tell around the fires, younger werewolves note that the Garou Nation didn’t collapse because the Litany was so goddamn perfect.
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Changing Ways
Werewolf society is ever at risk of fundamentalism and authoritarianism, relying as it does upon outsized personalities to rile up its packmates “for Gaia and glory” to send them charging furiously into battle, and to deride as corrupt anyone who doesn’t heed their Gaia-baiting. An increasing number of Garou see this behavior for what it is, however, and in many cases realize that its intractability is part of the Garou’s failure to avert the Apocalypse and defend Gaia. Tonight, Gaia needs more than murderous maniacs… which is one of the tragedies of the Garou, in that they are so prone to Rage. Rage cannot solve every problem, however, so each Garou needs to find how they can best fulfill their spiritual charge — or whether they must abandon it.
Social Structures Among Garou Both humans and wolves are gregarious creatures, so it comes as no surprise that werewolves are also that way, despite the Garou predilection for tremendous physical violence. By turns, Garou can be caring, supportive, protective, and even dependent on one another. Just don’t get on their bad sides — and with the numerous forms they can take, they have many bad sides.
Kin As traumatic as it can be to discover that one is a shapeshifter, the sympathy of other werewolves may seem like strange comfort, but any port in a storm. Kin aren’t always pleasant, but most Garou understand the state of their kind, and they ultimately welcome another once they feel that they can trust the other’s nature — itself no mean feat. Many Garou are more than happy to make room for another packmate. That said, not all Garou share that perspective; some view other werewolves as rivals for prey or challengers over status.
The Pack As the basic Garou social unit, the pack is critical to the success of werewolves in almost any initiative, from the spiritual to the mundane. Werewolves fight as a pack, protect packmates, and perform Rites as a pack. Going into the Umbra, in particular, is a Rite performed most easily as a pack.
Packmates in particular offer support through the various favors of the spirit world. Many packs exalt the auspices, noting the synergies between the Gifts offered by various moon-signs and how they might best heighten a pack’s prowess in combat or otherwise under duress.
PACK STRUCTURE As werewolf communities seek to shift and adapt as best as possible in the face of the Apocalypse, the internal workings of packs vary vastly according to locale and context. Packs usually form around a purpose or even to thwart a specific enemy or environmental threat. In some cases, revered elders declare the creation of packs and even their members. The most common case, though, is that Garou who find each other and depend on each other usually have no shortage of problems to address or foes to assail, and that becomes the impetus to stick together. Surviving against hunters from federal organizations, being drawn by a strange spirit, or just navigating territory brutally exploited by an energy company are all reasons to stand strong as a pack.
The pack leader is the general authority figure to whom other members of the pack look for guidance or decision-making. A leader may emerge, be elected, or have the duty passed on to them by a leader who chooses to step down — all generally as a result of the purpose a pack chooses for itself. For example, a war pack might have a leader chosen by combat, whereas a pack of saboteurs might put the best strategist in charge, and a pack devoted to plumbing the Umbra’s mysteries might always want a theurge as leader. It’s a somewhat fraught position, as Garou culture can reward domineering personalities and authoritarian perspectives, an ugly aspect of a Renown-based society. Declaring a leader may take the form of a social Rite the pack observes (see p. 187), or it may be informal in the extreme — “Fuck it, follow me and I’ll get us back to the caern alive.”
The Sept When multiple packs cooperate to defend and cultivate a given caern, they form what’s known as a sept. Every caern is unique, even apart from being a locus of the physical and spiritual. It may have been a caern protected since before the Apocalypse began, or it could be especially meaningful to a specific tribe, or have a fearsomely puissant spirit associated with it. In this age of Apocalypse, the greatest and the most humble caerns alike have septs supporting them, whether the sept consists of one pack or a half-dozen.
As one might expect, the inter-Garou politics surrounding septs are often fraught and confrontational. The inherent Rage of the Garou keeps packs on edge, even as savvy philodoxes and wise theurges argue for the most pragmatic efforts to protect them.
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Septs in Stories
Werewolf: The Apocalypse assumes that many packs eventually come to protect a caern or other territory of their own, the better to give the players’ characters a sense of investment in their immediate locale. In particularly cosmopolitan places, the characters’ pack might well be part of a greater sept — or at odds with one, owing to anything from old hostilities between predators to violent disagreement about how best to tend the caern.
Septs are also destinations to which Garou can travel, thus taking them out of their home territory and putting them on unfamiliar ground — both socially, among the sept’s protector werewolves, as well as geographically, in a physically different and potentially unknown place. A sept’s territory might be a destination for a moot (see below) or simply a place to meet other Garou and spirits. And the journey itself can mark an opportunity for unforeseen challenges and conflicts.
Septs are high-value targets for spiritually aware antagonists, because destroying caerns deprives the Garou of important resources Even better (from the antagonist perspective) is usurping a caern or sept, because not only does it deprive the Garou of such a place of power, it provides that resource to the enemy, whether it’s in the middle of Manhattan or the Serengeti.
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Notable Septs
Sept of the Green: Located in Manhattan’s Central Park, the Sept of the Green is warded by members of every tribe. It stands particularly strongly against not only the Wyrm but also the Weaver-spirits rampant in this North American metropolis.
Sept of the Wheel of Ptah: Among the last caerns reputed to support mysterious Umbral byways, this one can be found in Casablanca, Morocco. Travelers who have visited the sept note that these Umbral travel routes seem to have collapsed, and the sept there remains committed to restoring them — although exactly how they’ll do this remains unknown.
Sept of the Blood Fist: This sept, located in Germany’s Black Forest, has historically been associated with the Cult of Fenris, but once those werewolves fell to Hauglosk, the members of the sept left it undefended when pursuing hostile spirits into the Umbra. The multi-tribal sept that arose to hold it stands vigilant against the Wyrm, but its members also know that Cult werewolves are sure to return some night and attempt to retake what they believe still to be theirs.
Hell’s Hand Hive: The Black Spiral Dancers who hold this sept somehow managed to relocate it from its former place in the Amazon, where the caern had been compromised by packs belonging to the Garou Nation. Using the powers of baleful spirits, Black Spiral Dancers moved the physical portion of the caern to an unknown location, which remains connected to one of the Umbral lesion-sites that nourishes the Wyrm.
SEPT COMPLICATIONS Despite the strengths of their packs and the desires of their member Garou, septs aren’t panaceas, where itinerant packs can find everything they need in a convenient one-stop location. Each caern has particular types of spiritual resonance, and the werewolves who protect it usually adapt themselves to the site’s needs, rather than try to have the caern focus on theirs. Tribe and auspice wisdom offers its own interpretations of how a werewolf might best foster the spiritual connection and rebuild in the shadow of Apocalypse. Werewolf packs might visit an esteemed sept in a strange city and find themselves coldly rebuffed — and possibly never realize that an elder of the sept despises one of their own on principle, thanks to an old grudge.
Another aspect of the trouble surrounding effective safeguarding of caerns comes from a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because defending them can yield great Renown to Garou seeking to build their own legends, caerns invite the already well-Renowned into the septs that serve them, thus putting the most capable Garou in positions of reactivity and defense. At the same time, septs are rare and valuable. The number of remaining caerns of such size that multiple packs must protect them is dwindling. And many a new caern hasn’t been around long enough for a sept to be viable in its vicinity. These last locations are particularly worrisome, as the member packs of a sept that loses control of its caern suffer significant chagrin over the caern’s fall. Thus, fewer and fewer packs are willing to attach themselves to such septs, which in turn means the at-risk caerns in the greatest need of protection often go without, and so they disappear or become corrupt.
Moots and Other Meetings Some of the most momentous events in Garou society occur when multiple packs convene to address an imminent concern facing the werewolves. These convocations, known generally as moots, serve to bring many different packs and perspectives together, most often with the purpose of deciding on a course of action for a looming problem.
Not all moots occur to deal with crises. Some are lingering traditions from the times before the Garou Nation collapsed — formal opportunities for werewolves to get together, share knowledge, perform rites, acknowledge new Kin, and celebrate victories or mourn losses. Some are celebrations of great werewolves’ deeds, whereas others are solemn affairs commemorating the fallen. Almost all of them have an element of violence — as might be expected from the creatures of Rage who attend them — albeit violence in thought, directed toward an enemy, or otherwise turned toward a specific purpose. Not that a human onlooker would be able to discern the difference…
Spirits may or may not play a significant role in any given moot. Some moots may literally be held to honor the spirits and please them, whereas others may be held to decide the best way to “discourage” a power company from establishing a fracking operation in the region.
As well, moots might not be called for all members of all relevant packs. Tribes, not surprisingly, host their own moots, usually as a matter of much regional prestige, but just as frequently to plan a tribe-specific response to some Wyrmfoe or other crisis. Auspices are inherently somewhat less organized than tribes (which are themselves largely ad hoc communities), but they host their own moots to extoll the (worthwhile) traditions of the Garou and the nuances of their moon-sign’s methods.
And a moot can happen anywhere. It makes sense to hide it away from the superstitious eyes of humans, but certain sites hold specific meaning to the Garou and may justify a moot to commemorate or otherwise acknowledge these places. Caerns are the obvious choices here, but the site of a great victory on the Smoky Hills of the upland Great Plains might be a moot-site, as could a disused Metrô station where a pack of Rio de Janeiro’s Garou brought down a wicked elder vampire.
After the fracturing of the Garou Nation, certain packs have made it their interest to forever rove from moot to moot, passing along the decisions and information gained at one to the werewolves hosting the next that they reach. Such packs usually receive a warm welcome from the Garou community, but these visitations don’t always go well. Most werewolves are smart enough not to “shoot the messenger,” but no one likes to receive news of further disasters.
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Moots in Stories
Moots can serve a number of specific story purposes:
• Social Interaction with Other Garou: In many cases, the werewolves other werewolves see most often are their packmates, followed by other Garou who have an interest in the community or territory. Moots provide opportunities to introduce other characters, whether on a recurring basis or to deliver critical information and then move on. Social interaction can be cooperative, with werewolves sharing secrets and helping perform grand Rites, or it can be conflict, with secret agendas taking shape and alliances being undermined by bad-faith schemers.
• Violent Conflict with Other Garou: There’s no avoiding the fact that werewolves are violent creatures, and any gathering of them will almost certainly include some violence. For story’s sake, that can be good, as violence is conflict and conflict drives stories. Conflict with other Garou at a moot might be a formal, ritual duel to first blood or to the death, or it can be some full-on skullduggery shit where a pack of scumbag werewolves from far away sets an ambush for someone they’ve got a grudge with. The players’ characters don’t even need to be the primary combatants. Perhaps they have an opportunity to intervene against a combatant who’s cheating at a duel, or maybe they witness (and can circumvent) the scumbag ambush.
• Communicate Information: Garou live for getting an informational jump on foes, or being able to act first in other capacities. Moots can be a perfect time to catch up on whatever happened to old enemies, news of emerging or revived caerns, or which locations are at risk. Such stuff can come up as gossip among traveling werewolves, or even as part of what’s being discussed in the moot’s formal purpose. Storytellers, that’s your cue to have key characters drop hints… or attempt to occlude them.
Moot Perils For all the good they can bring, moots are first and foremost gatherings of werewolves, with all of the risks of Rage-fueled grudges and the re-litigation of past slights that one might expect from such volatile creatures. Hauglosk and harano are often on full display at moots, especially at moots called in response to dire circumstances — “If you don’t follow or lead on this, you’re obviously sympathetic to the enemy!” or “Five packs died the last time we tried this gambit, so it’s hopeless to take any action at all” and variants thereof are sure to be uttered around the drums and fires.
Similarly, duels, settling old scores, and other direct Garou conflicts come to the fore at many moots, as they may offer the only time that certain werewolves see each other and have the opportunity to redress grievances. Arguably, this opportunity is beneficial, as it gives werewolves a formal environment to make their umbrage known while surrounded by (ideally) wiser, more level-headed Garou, and well-acknowledged expressions of Renown can occur. Much better than the alternative, which is to run into a mistrusted rival while out and about some night, under the dark skies of a new moon, and find them eager to settle a bloody vendetta.
One often-neglected consideration when hosting a moot is the possibility of discovery. In eras past, it was easy to convene in what amounted to the middle of nowhere and have a war-rally moot or a spirit-sating debauch. But in these times of domestic spying and omnipresent drone surveillance, all it takes is one Garou on the authorities’ watch list to alert well-funded and well-equipped hunters to the occurrence of the moot — to say nothing of the unlucky, oblivious hiker or that pickup truck full of horny teenagers who accidentally discover the goings-on.