Banes According to the Garou, Banes are part of the vast menagerie of spirits that serve the Wyrm. Their forms are legion, each reflecting an aspect of that cosmological force. Most are grotesque, but many are subtler. Destruction, deception, and corruption take many forms, and if inhuman beauty and lustful seduction serve the Wyrm’s needs, such is the face Banes present.
Some Banes are avatars of principles such as hate, disease, or famine; others are focused, destructive entities. They range in power from petty distractions to unearthly forces of devastation and can be found anywhere the Wyrm’s influence extends. Banes are attracted to dark, destructive impulses and emotions, and they gather in the Umbra where such emotions bleed through from the mortal world, awaiting an opportunity to slip past the Gauntlet and possess a fleshly host. They are, inherently, of the Wyrm, and annihilation is the only sure way to rid an area of their influence.
That’s key: Physical hosts
invite Banes to possess them, whether consciously (“I want revenge!”) or unwittingly, as with an individual in the throes of despair. Banes don’t spontaneously appear.
Similarly, the presence of Banes amplifies negative emotions. Banes don’t
cause the emotions they intensify, but their presence makes them worse.
A Bane may inhabit a brutal captain of a private military contractor, one who sees bullying and violence as a path to power; or a Bane may inhabit a grieving father, driven by sorrow to cruelty against “the wrong child” who survived an accident. Occasionally, Banes may possess even lower-order creatures, such as by being drawn to an animal kept captive in wretched conditions, or an animal forced into starving retreat by the vanishing of its habitat.
What Do They Want: Banes are generally sophisticated enough to have their own ambitions, which often come at the overlap of what they exemplify (greed, hunger, pollution, etc.) and the intentions of any greater spirit entity they may serve. Banes are also often nasty and cunning, and may intentionally twist their purposes toward something that benefits them individually. For example, a Bane of famine may seek to starve other Banes of spiritual nourishment, even as they possess a host to set a wheat field alight or spoil the food at the church pantry.
Storytelling With Banes Narratively and thematically, Banes always represent something — they amplify, facilitate, aggravate, and sour what is already there. Which is to say that Banes aren’t
responsible for human evil. Tragically, many of a Bane’s victims haven’t even done anything overt to earn their fate. As such, Banes should be symptoms and exacerbating factors in mortal problems rather than their initiators. A serial killer may attract a Bane interested in perpetuating violence and preying upon the bereaved, but a person won’t become a serial killer because a Bane “made them do it.”
Of course, many Garou don’t grasp this mechanism, which sometimes puts werewolf packs in a mode of perpetually fighting Banes as symptoms while neglecting a root cause they fail to see, especially those Garou who seek Glory.
Reasoning or negotiating with a Bane can be very difficult, given that what they want is so often antithetical to what the Garou want. Indeed, the only way many Garou can handle the threat Banes represent is through violence. To hear some werewolves tell it, this is fighting fire with fire, but more nuanced Garou worry that if the only tool they have to solve problems is Rage, then every challenge becomes one that will be solved only by tearing things apart.
As the Garou interpret things, all Banes are Wyrm spirits, but not all Wyrm spirits are Banes. For example, a spirit of natural decay and a spirit of timeworn entropy are spirits that serve the Wyrm’s role but aren’t (necessarily) Banes. Wise Garou know the difference between spirits of the Wyrm in its proper order versus spirits of the Wyrm rampant or ascendant. PITY THE VICTIMS Because Banes that manifest in the physical world possess otherwise mundane hosts, there’s frequently an element of tragedy to combating Banes. The possessed individual frequently shows no mercy, but the circumstances that made them vulnerable to Banes might not have been of their own doing. The desperately hungry inhabited by Scavenger Packs, those who lash out in desperate fear who become possessed by Psychomachiae, the list goes on — sometimes the unfair state of the world itself all but guarantees an unfortunate individual will meet an even more unfortunate end.
Then again, some people are so fucking mean for its own sake, they’d even invite the Bane inside them if they knew Banes existed.
ENVIRONMENTS Given their nature, Banes are valuable to establish tone, suggest action to players, and perform environmental storytelling about a location. A shopping center that looks unremarkable at first glance may warrant a second when its Umbral counterpart is a looming, obsidian-clad monstrosity around which Banes of greed and consumption wail and fly. Alternatively, Banes taking the form of bubo-covered shopworkers or blood-sucking tumorous masses imply very different threats in the physical realm.
The infinite variety of Banes means that new types may emerge for specific tasks or arise naturally from new atrocities. Use the Banes detailed here, but also use them as a guideline for creating Banes that specifically suit your chronicle. The important thing is not strict accuracy or humanization of a concept but to ensure that the new Bane has characteristics and powers that reinforce its malignant role.
DIRECT CONFLICT Many times, werewolves face Banes in the physical world in the form of their hosts. Killing or destroying a host doesn’t destroy the Bane, it simply looses that Bane from its fleshly mooring. Unless pursued, the Bane almost certainly escapes into the Umbra. Of course, if other suitable vessels are nearby when its possessed body is destroyed, the Bane may seek to inhabit one of them, meaning the (physical) fight is probably not yet over…
Patron Spirits and the Spirit Hierarchy As near as they can figure it, many Garou believe that Banes are frequently among the jaggling ranks of the spirit hierarchy.
Most Banes are associated with some greater spirit, at least in the context that Garou understand things. Banes themselves seem to possess enough sentience and autonomy to pursue their own ends, but they frequently do the bidding of more powerful spirits — which is, in fact, the only indication werewolves have of some of the motives among the more enigmatic spirits. Chances are, if you’re ordering a Bane around, you’re not doing so to the benefit of anyone else.
Spiritually attuned agents of Pentex (see p. 268) also often put Banes to use, or their efforts result in Bane infestations of afflicted areas. In this case, Banes may be subservient to Pentex’s Patron Spirit, Fly, or they may have a more complex relationship among the greater spirits that command them.
The Garou have dealt with the following types of Banes frequently enough to afford a generally recognized name to each category. The Banes in question probably don’t know themselves as such, but the types suffice for Storyteller utility and common parlance around the caern-fires.
Asklepian Asklepians are Banes of epidemics and pandemics. They arise amid disease outbreaks, feeding and breeding off the misery that arises and sapping the will of the community to fight the outbreak. They themselves spread disease, making each compromise more difficult, each carrier more virulent, and the plague itself more deadly.
Possession / Manifestation: In the physical world, an Asklepian afflicts an infected host, probably one displaying advanced symptoms of the pandemic. In the Umbra, Asklepians take the form of great fleas covered in spikes, on which are impaled various animal-spirit corpses and spirits of healing. Their jaws drip virulent fluids, and they are capable of incredible bursts of speed, leaping from place to place as fast as the diseases they represent travel.
ASKLEPIAN SPIRIT Power: 2–6
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl +2, Stealth +2
Notes / Other Traits: Birthing Bite: In the Umbra, the bite of a Power 2 or higher Asklepian on the spirit-form of a Garou generates a full-grown Asklepian that bursts from the spirit-flesh of the victim after a turn (inflicting a level of Aggravated damage in the process). The newly generated Asklepian is one Power level below its parent and joins in the assault as soon as it bursts free of the victim, starting with the next turn.
ASKLEPIAN-POSSESSED HUMAN General Difficulty: 3 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 3, Social 4, Mental 4
Secondary Attributes: Health 5, Willpower 5
Exceptional Dice Pools: Persuasion (Garner Sympathy) 6, Subterfuge (Hide Symptoms) 6
Notes / Other Traits: Infection: In the physical world, Asklepians are highly contagious. They rarely attack outright, but do try to get close to their victims and infect them in hopes of spawning another Asklepian. Anyone whose character spends more than a few minutes within reach must win a Stamina + Medicine test against the Asklepian’s Power or have their character be infected. Symptoms vary, depending on the physical contagion, but whatever the disease, the victim also becomes a carrier for a larval Asklepian. The larva can be seen only in the Umbra, where it can be removed with a Composure + Medicine test by someone able to perceive both worlds at once (such as through the Gift Penumbral Senses, p. 147). As long as it remains attached, the victim experiences a debilitating hopelessness over their progressing illness and cannot restore Willpower through normal means. If they die from the illness, the larva transforms into a new Asklepian, completing the circle of (hideous) life. A possessed Asklepian takes damage as does a human.
Bitter Rages Bitter Rages fester where emotion runs unchecked, particularly among the Rage-driven Garou by feeding on anger and, in turn, provoking it. It seems they’re most frequently encountered among supernatural creatures who can succumb to frenzy — notably the Garou, but apparently also among the deathless blood-drinkers known as vampires. It’s not impossible for them to torment other creatures, as well, however, from humans to animals.
Possession / Manifestation: Although a Bitter Rage doesn’t outright possess a host in the physical world, it can latch onto a subject, agitate them, and drive that individual to ever-greater irrational aggression, almost like rabies. In the Umbra, Bitter Rages appear as clusters of explosive spiritual energy, akin to visible static electricity. If encountered there, the Bitter Rage doesn’t put up much in the way of a physical fight but instead tries to foment anger and distrust among the pack, communicating through flashes of memories that remind the Garou of past disagreements and resentment.
BITTER RAGE SPIRIT Power: 2–4
Exceptional Dice Pools: Insight (Sore Spot) +6, Persuasion (Provocation) +6
Notes / Other Traits: Provoke: Unlike many other Banes, Bitter Rages can influence victims in the physical world while they themselves are still in the Umbra. The victim suffers what amounts to a frenzy with a duration of the Bitter Rage’s cruel whim — some hosts have frenzied themselves into starvation, whereas others have suffered torment just long enough to have their pack turn against them and tear them asunder. A victim of a Bitter Rage must win a Willpower test against the Power of the Bitter Rage each scene or enter frenzy. The Storyteller decides on the exact moment in each scene, but it usually coincides with a slight or provocation, real or imagined. The frenzy lasts until the Bitter Rage is sated on carnage, which is entirely up to the whim of the Bane (and the Storyteller), but the spirit can also be dislodged with a critical win on the Willpower test or by defeating it in the Umbra.
Dissonant Gestalt Dissonant Gestalts are Banes of indoctrination and pluralistic ignorance. They spawn when people in an organization turn a blind eye to its ills, when ideals and accountability fail in the face of a naked pursuit of power. They are community turned rancid, the urge to conform that lets citizens ignore atrocity, soldiers perform genocides, and cults commit mass suicide.
The difficult part of dealing with a Dissonant Gestalt is expelling the Bane while minimizing the suffering of those who were taken in by the malicious happenings that spawned it.
Possession / Manifestation: In the physical world, a Dissonant Gestalt may possess an individual made arrogant by employees or supporters looking up to them and refusing to hold them accountable for misdeeds. They possess managers, priests, minor celebrities, extremist group leaders, and anyone else with a following who can propagate aberrant behavior where it’s wrongly believed to be supported or accepted.
In the Umbra, Dissonant Gestalts take the form of great fungoid masses that slowly pull themselves forward on writhing tendrils. They may briefly puppeteer others, turning them into extensions of the atrocities it cannot implement without them. But without such guardians, the Dissonant Gestalt is more vulnerable than its bulk would suggest.
DISSONANT GESTALT SPIRIT Power: 4–8
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl (Puppeteer) +2, Intimidate +4
Notes / Other Traits: Puppeteer: In the Umbra, a Dissonant Gestalt can take control of an opponent by winning a Brawl test against them, their tendrils piercing the victim and turning them into the spirit’s puppet. A puppeteered victim acts on the Gestalt’s behalf but does not use Gifts or take any action that requires a Rage check. A Dissonant Gestalt can puppeteer up to its Power in victims at any one time. Severing the tentacles requires winning a Brawl test against the puppeteered victim, at which point the victim is released and can act normally the next turn. Once freed, a victim cannot be puppeteered again in the same scene.
DISSONANT GESTALT–POSSESSED HUMAN General Difficulty: 4 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 4, Social 6, Mental 6
Secondary Attributes: Health 5, Willpower 6
Exceptional Dice Pools: Intimidate 8, Leadership 7, Subterfuge (Shift Blame) 8
Notes / Other Traits: Domineer: Hosts possessed by a Dissonant Gestalt find their ability to dominate and delegate is supernaturally magnified. To their subordinates they appear as inviolable avatars of whatever ideal or purpose they represent, and the followers or employees readily perform whatever atrocity or self-sacrifice they are ordered to commit. Even those who come from outside its sphere of formalized influence find the host’s word hard to dispute and agree to simple requests (involving little to no danger), unless they can resist the spirit’s Power with their Composure + Wits.
Drattosi Drattosi are Banes of pollution, environmental despoilment, and natural ruin. Rare in times of Garou legend, they are terrifyingly common in the era of Apocalypse. Invariably toxic, Drattosi might appear as a sludgy oil slick on a beach, a festering heap of urban garbage in a decaying city, a streak of radioactive slag, or the like.
In both the Umbra and the physical world, Drattosi ambush passersby who stumble into the spirit’s demesne, ripping them to pieces and absorbing the resultant gore. Beneath their noxious bulk, they burrow themselves into the surroundings, excreting “lairs” like a crab’s shell made of toxic byproduct, adorned with refuse similar to that of the calamity they inhabit.
Possession / Manifestation: In the physical world, Drattosi manifest as heaps of animate rubbish, often incorporating organic matter. The heaps may manifest claws or long, ropy arms with which to drag nearby prey — and more refuse — into their mass to contaminate and decompose. In the Umbra, Drattosi constitute a cumbersome, overwhelming threat. They appear there as enormous, crab-like armored monsters, with claws capable of shearing through a werewolf’s body.
DRATTOSI SPIRIT Power: 4–10
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl +4, Intimidate +4
Notes / Other Traits: Armored Shell: The thick shell of a Drattosi in its Umbral form reduces any physical damage taken by 3 before any halving.
Giant Pincer Claws: The claws do +4 Superficial damage to Garou.
DRATTOSI-POSSESSED GARBAGE HEAP General Difficulty: 6 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 9, Social 3, Mental 3
Secondary Attributes: Health (Enhanced) 15, Willpower 7
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl (Grapple) 12, Stealth (Mimic Refuse) 6
Notes / Other Traits: Noxious Limbs: A possessed collection of refuse can manifest grasping limbs with surprising speed. A victim caught unawares (by failing a Wits + Awareness test against the manifest Drattosi’s Stealth) is automatically grappled, though the spirit is also capable of using brute force to subdue a more attentive victim. The grappled subject suffers a level of Aggravated damage each subsequent turn that they fail to break free of the grapple as their body rapidly decays, eventually turning into more refuse.
The pools above represent a large garbage heap. Adjust as desired for smaller (or potentially even bigger) Drattosi manifestations.
Furmlings Furmlings possess lesser creatures and drive them to naked aggression, seemingly burning them from within and, indeed, causing what amounts to fever in their host bodies. Host creatures are visibly ruddy, take on a patchy complexion, and have a listless nature. Possessed objects seemingly move on their own, like what might be described as “poltergeist activity.” Furmlings appear as sickly, luminous blobs in the Umbra, glowing with a flickering phosphorescence and darting about like turgid fireflies. The relative aggression of Furmlings leads to their use as belligerent scouts, especially by Black Spiral Dancers, who send them forth to gain information and goad other packs into battle.
In the Umbra, Furmlings are prone to evasion, attacking only if they have the numbers on their side. When they do, they hover out of reach of their attackers and manifest gouts of balefire, a greenish flame that poisons just as it burns.
FURMLING SPIRIT Power: 3–6
Exceptional Dice Pools: Firearms (Balefire) +2, Athletics (Dodge) +4
Notes / Other Traits: Balefire: +0 Aggravated damage.
FURMLING-POSSESSED ANIMAL General Difficulty: 4 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 4, Social 2, Mental 3
Secondary Attributes: Health (Enhanced) 8, Willpower 4
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl 6, Stealth 8
Notes / Other Traits: Overload Host: The Furmling can send its possessed host into overdrive, increasing a victim’s Physical pools by its Power. This amplification lasts for a single conflict (usually three turns) before the overloaded carcass collapses into a heap of abused flesh, sinew, and bone.
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Animal Hosts
When spirits possess “lesser” creatures — that is, corporeal, animal hosts of a lower order than humans — they almost always kill the actual animal first and quickly, as most animals don’t have the consciousness to realize what’s happening to them or to resist it. This habit means that the possessed animal is nothing more than a meat-puppet for the spirit consciousness of the possessor. (Use the Spirit statistics for possessed animals in the physical world.) Few are the Garou who genuinely enjoy animal cruelty, surely, but all things considered, ending the rampage of a possessed animal is probably the most compassionate and sensible thing to be done with it.
Gray MassesGray Masses are Banes of infestation and decay. They seem to be despised even by other Banes, and are frequently devoured or burned away by other spirits. Gray Masses are drawn to physical sites of filth, squalor, and ruin.
When a Gray Mass possesses a host, infestation can spread quickly, with the host becoming the vector of an outbreak that can incur dozens of casualties before anyone realizes what’s happening. They are particularly dangerous in isolated communities, and galliards know tales of human settlements and wolf communities wiped out by Gray Masses before Garou could destroy the blight.
Possession / Manifestation: Gray Masses are harmless in the Spirit Wilds, where they’re apparently capable of nothing apart from traveling to the material world while attached to other spirits. They are near invisible, little more than noxious motes visible only when they gather in grand numbers.
Once in the physical world, they find a living host in an unclean environment to attach to and, thereafter, multiply. These victims are often diseased or otherwise contaminated, providing the “lesion” in which the Gray Mass thrives. Within days, one mote becomes thousands, and the resulting victim becomes the proverbial plague dog, spreading whatever foulness it was that attracted the Bane’s sympathies in the first place.
In combat, an individual Gray Mass isn’t particularly dangerous. They are defenseless in their spiritual form, and an individual infectee is no threat to a Garou. A great swarm of infected may pose more of a threat, as is the possibility of a Garou becoming infected.
GRAY MASS–POSSESSED WRETCH General Difficulty: 2 / 1
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 3, Social 2, Mental 2
Secondary Attributes: Health 5, Willpower 3
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl 4
Notes / Other Traits: Group Attack: Gray Masses can swarm their opponent, adding two dice (or 1 Difficulty) for each additional Gray Mass attacking simultaneously. They usually grapple their opponent, sometimes dogpiling them to effectively spread the Bane-strengthened contagion, other times to simply crush the life out of an opponent.
Infect: An immobilized victim must make a Stamina + Medicine test against Difficulty 3 or be infected. Infection effects vary, but regular humans are often turned into new Masses within a few days, whereas Garou are unable to regenerate Health for a number of days equal to the Bane’s Power, or until it is banished by supernatural means.
Ooralath Ooralath are Banes of a hive-mind sentience, acting as implacable, mindless hunter-trappers. Once they scent prey, they pursue it until destruction, tunneling through the groundscape and shifting spirit-geography to overcome obstacles. They seem not to cross the Gauntlet electively, but in this time of the Apocalypse, some septs have witnessed Ooralath apparently expelled, via caerns, from the Umbra into the physical world.
Many young Garou speculate that the Ooralath once served the Weaver, under a different name. Whatever their name once was, after the entire category of spirits came under (or went over to…) the influence of the Wyrm, the appellation has long been lost for reasons similarly unremembered. Indeed, the Garou, whose long memory preserves such legends, find it troublesome that none can remember exactly what happened to the Ooralath, and it seems yet another unacted-upon omen of the Wyrm’s ascendance in the era of Apocalypse.
Possession / Manifestation: An Ooralath possesses swarms, packs, or other groups of creatures, up to and including a mob of angry humans, and the entire collective moves and acts as one, with an uncanny synchrony. In the Umbra, an “individual” Ooralath is a pack of hunched creatures reminiscent of a bipedal hound covered in carapace. They are silent save for the clacking of claws and armored plates as they move. They prefer to engage there by burrowing into the Umbral landscape and waiting in ambush and erupting when prey comes close.
OORALATH SPIRIT Power: 4–6
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl +4, Stealth +2
Notes / Other Traits: Ambush: Ooralaths make lethal ambush attacks in the Umbra: A target failing a Wits + Awareness test against the ooralath’s Stealth is unable to defend against the initial attack.
Natural Weapons: +2 Superficial damage to a Garou.
Natural Armor: Reduce all damage received by 1 before any halving.
OORALATH-POSSESSED MOB OR SWARMGeneral Difficulty: 4 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 8, Social 4, Mental 4
Secondary Attributes: Health 16, Willpower 8
Exceptional Dice Pools: None
Notes / Other Traits: Mob: Pools represent a mob or swarm. For every two Health levels of damage sustained, reduce Physical and Willpower pools by 1. Above pools are for a small mob of humans or a large mob of animals. Larger mobs have additional Physical and Willpower pools and twice as many additional Health levels.
Psychomachiae Psychomachiae are Banes of terror and despair. These Banes, which magnify momentary impulses, are drawn to places and people suffering in misery. They push individuals teetering on the brink over the edge, or they goad those who have already fallen to keep going. They spawn in areas of mass hunger, crisis centers, prisons, and war zones. Even locations that are otherwise mundane may attract these spirits, thanks to the everyday cruelty that the Capitalocene engenders.
Possession / Manifestation: In the physical world, Psychomachiae possess and distort beings already in the throes of misery — killers, bullies, and those who indulge maliciousness. They particularly relish those who have committed some great wrong in a fit of passion, and they whisper to such individuals to incite further crimes. These spirits may manifest pronounced bodily weaponry, such as large, clubbing hands; vicious teeth; or even a fist fused around a knife or razor, the better to thwart any chance of setting it aside. In the Umbra, their forms shift, based on the nature of the turmoil they last fed upon, but Psychomachiae are often adorned with razors, clamps, thumbscrews, and other instruments of inflicting pain.
PSYCHOMACHIA SPIRIT Power: 4–8
Exceptional Dice Pools: Melee +3, Insight (Violent History) +3, Intimidate (Repeat Trauma) +3
Notes / Other Traits: Exploit Trauma: In the Umbra, Psychomachiae try to discern any previous violations or atrocities in a subject’s history before attacking in ways that dredge up a victim’s past deeds or trauma. A victim who fails to resist the Bane’s Insight pool with their Composure + Resolve suffers Willpower damage equal, and in addition to, Health damage caused by the Bane for the rest of the scene. Weapons: The Bane can manifest any number of crude or refined implements of pain to accomplish this goal. Treat them as doing +2 Superficial Health damage.
PSYCHOMACHIA-POSSESSED HUMAN General Difficulty: 4 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 5, Social 5, Mental 5
Secondary Attributes: Health 6, Willpower 5
Exceptional Dice Pools: Melee 7, Intimidate 7, Subterfuge (Feign Innocence) 7
Notes / Other Traits: Subtle Possession: A victim possessed by a Psychomachia often shows no signs at first, as the spirit slowly eats away at the victim’s guilt until all that remains is the memory of atrocity and the desire to commit it again. The victim loses the ability to restore Willpower naturally and suffers one level of Superficial Willpower damage each night. Once the victim reaches Impairment, they accept the Bane (consciously or unconsciously) and become a violent incarnation of the urge to inflict suffering.
Weapons: Psychomachia hosts are usually equipped with some kind of sharp implement that deals +2 damage, or they can manifest similar tools out of their very flesh.
Scavenger Packs Scavenger Packs are Banes of desperation and starvation. They are common in slums, war zones, and areas suffering from famine or drought, and they take the form of packs comprising emaciated, possessed animals. Cunningly cruel, they have been known to possess a full pack of animals, then find starving humans — tempting them into possession by offering the animals as food — who are then, themselves, possessed.
Danger comes when an infestation of them occurs, or in the circumstances that spawned them. After all, deprivation severe enough to spawn a single Scavenger Pack is likely to spawn more, and probably arouses enough human misery to tempt the unfortunate into possession.
Possession / Manifestation: When encountered in the physical world, Scavenger Packs prey upon the vulnerable and weak while looking for a victim to possess. Scavenger Packs frequently possess scavenging animals, wretched and hungry, in addition to unfortunate humans. In the Umbra, Scavenger Packs are markers of material suffering and opportunistic scavengers. They sweep areas captured by other Banes, devouring isolated spirits and wounded combatants, or congregating around the Umbral echoes of the places that spawned them. They appear as vortices of tiny, swarming spirits, not unlike a cloud of ghastly gnats or flies.
SCAVENGER PACK SPIRIT SWARM Power: 4–8
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl +3
Notes / Other Traits: Mob: Pools represent a mob or swarm. For every two levels of damage inflicted, reduce the spirit’s Power by 1. Replenish: Each turn that no damage is inflicted on the spirit, it can attack and consume a local minor spirit instead, increasing its power by 1 until it reaches 9, at which time it splits into two Power 4 swarms. This feeding frenzy lasts only for a scene, after which time any remaining swarms burrow into the Umbral landscape to hibernate.
SCAVENGER PACK–POSSESSED WRETCH General Difficulty: 3 / 1
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 5, Social 2, Mental 2
Secondary Attributes: Health 6, Willpower 3
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl 7, Athletics (Pursuit) 7
Notes / Other Traits: Multiple Possession: A single Scavenger Pack can possess a number of victims equal to its Power. Each victim becomes a starving manifestation of the Scavenger Pack’s hunger, relentlessly pursuing anything the victim can devour — usually people or animals — by using their augmented strength to rake and bite. Survivors of these attacks frequently become hosts for the Scavenger Pack themselves, as it increases its Power for each victim fed upon.
Scrags Scrags are drawn to physical violence, and they possess combative hosts who demonstrate hostility and aggression. Cruel guards, belligerent soldiers, and resentful laborers may unknowingly invite Scrags to possess them. As Banes, they are comparatively uncomplicated and probably occupy the lesser ranks of such jagglings.
Possession / Manifestation: In the material world, hosts possessed by Scrags turn gray, their teeth jagged, their hands claw-like; their first instinct is always toward horrible violence. In the Umbra, Scrags appear gray and ghoulish, with razor claws and fangs, slow to move. They prove dangerous primarily in numbers.
SCRAG SPIRIT Power: 3–5
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl +4
Notes / Other Traits: Weapons: Scrags in the Umbra are simple creatures, relying on their +3 Superficial damage claws and fangs to inflict harm.
SCRAG-POSSESSED HUMAN General Difficulty: 4 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 6, Social 3, Mental 3
Secondary Attributes: Health (Enhanced) 7, Willpower 3
Exceptional Dice Pools: Melee 8, Firearms 8
Notes / Other Traits: Apart from their supernatural resilience and grim mien, possessing Scrags have few other notable traits. They are usually armed, either with sharp implements or various firearms.
Scryers Scryers are gafflings that exist to spy on targets for stronger spirits that hold the Scryers in thrall; in some cases, the lesser spirits do so transactionally. They are Banes of surveillance, suspicion, mistrust, and paranoia.
Possession / Manifestation: Scryers vary widely in spirit form, but their “eyes” are the most distinctive parts of their bodies. They sometimes appear as fly-spirits with oversized eyes, or as vigilant bird-spirits, again with dominant eyes. Sometimes, a Scryer in its spirit-form is just a single floating eye. The eyes of physically manifesting Scryers can be beady, bulbous, camera lenses, compound, or digital, but they are always visually unusual and incongruous with the rest of its form. Their bodies may be animal, or may be possessed machinery, such as a drone, security camera, or even the peephole of a door in a “haunted house.”
Scryers usually serve other, more powerful entities, and tangling with them usually has consequences.
SCRYER SPIRIT Power: 1–3
Exceptional Dice Pools: Awareness +10
Notes / Other Traits: Hidden Observation: Scryers may observe the material world while remaining safely in the Umbra. As a result, they cannot be seen by their targets without the use of Gifts or other abilities that facilitate seeing into the Umbra from the physical world.
Wyrmholes Wyrmholes are sentient lesions in the Gauntlet. According to some galliards and theurges, the spirits that eventually became Wyrmholes were originally created by the Wyld in response to the creation of the Gauntlet, so spirits that may walk between the worlds would have passageways. These openings were subjugated by the Wyrm in its ascendant epoch, however, the better to extend its influence into the physical world.
A Wyrmhole that possesses a human is strange and dangerous. The host remains self-aware and seemingly in constant struggle with the Wyrmhole, itself practically “birthing” invasive spirits from “wounds” or other contortions of its ravaged bodies. The Wyrmhole itself is an incomprehensible entity. What invites them to possess a host is unknown, but such possession almost always ends with the host body being torn apart the same way the wound opens in the Gauntlet.
Possession / Manifestation: In the Umbra, a Wyrmhole takes the form of a turbulent, oily waterspout that may appear anywhere, even spiraling through the Umbral sky. In the physical world, a Wyrmhole appears on a liquid or semi-liquid surface, such as a slag pool or a body of befouled water.
WYRMHOLE SPIRIT Power: 8–10
Exceptional Dice Pools: —
Notes / Other Traits: Living Conduit: When a Wyrmhole wishes to breach the Gauntlet, it spreads and anchors itself against Umbral terrain, much of its form seemingly disappearing into nothingness. Anything that enters it is transported across the Gauntlet into the physical world. Wyrmholes are almost defenseless in this state, but they are often accompanied by Banes eager to cross the Gauntlet. Wyrmholes do not pull physical entities into the Umbra (though they may pull spirits out of their hosts and back into the Umbra, particularly unwilling ones), but they can serve as gateways. Anyone who braves a Wyrmhole can treat the local Gauntlet as 1 but needs to have a plan for the Banes almost certainly waiting on the other side.
Mindless: When attacked in the Umbra, Wyrmholes defend by using their Power pool, but they cannot themselves cause damage. Their entourage of Wyrm spirits, on the other hand, can. Any nonphysical interaction automatically fails, as the Wyrmhole lacks a mind to engage with.
Corrosive Form: Each Brawl attack against the Wyrmhole causes a level of Aggravated damage to the attacker.
Nexus Crawler Nexus Crawlers are immensely powerful Banes, each one a monstrous embodiment of entropy that dwells in the incomprehensible depths of the Umbra. They fulfill the functions of the Wyrm and reek of its malignance, but they are their own creatures, better compared to a natural disaster than to “conventional” spirits.
Nexus Crawlers are intelligent and capable of communication, but their thought processes are deeply alien. Even Wyrm-aligned creatures try to avoid them, and the reasoning behind Nexus Crawlers’ actions or goals behind their plots elude the wisest of Garou.
A Nexus Crawler’s presence corresponds with some significant tragedy that occurs near it, seemingly drawn by the collapse of “reality” and concentrated misery. It needn’t be human misery, and in fact probably isn’t even often human misery, but the emotion may accompany natural disaster or ecological breakdown. A Nexus Crawler might emerge from the ruined sheets of ice that calve from a glacier, or one may possess an amalgamated bulk of vehicles, machines, and spilled substances at the site of an industrial accident.
In combat, Nexus Crawlers are terrifying foes that would sorely test even the most accomplished packs. They lash out at their foes with monstrous limbs and resonances of the disasters that beckoned them, pull proximate disasters into their presence, and can even turn a Garou’s very bones into lethal silver.
Possession / Manifestation: In the Umbra, a Nexus Crawler might appear as little more than a black shimmer — almost an aurora borealis warning of disaster about to occur. However, at their incomprehensible will, they sometimes coalesce as great abominations of flesh and chitin, with dying heads of foes’ loved ones, great but fragile-seeming limbs with too many joints, scything tentacles and alien eyes, pustulent buboes and weaponized intestines, all arrayed without care for logic or physicality. When they manifest in the physical world, they form strange and complex automatons amalgamated of, well, whatever they can draw into themselves from the environment. The wreckage of a plane crash, the detritus of a strip mine with nothing left to yield, a seething stomach made from grinding girders in a desolate construction site — all of these configurations, and others, might be the form a manifest Nexus Crawler might take. Needless to say, when they manifest in the physical world, something has gone very wrong.
NEXUS CRAWLER SPIRIT Power: 8–12
Exceptional Dice Pools: Physical Pools +8, Mental Pools +4
Notes / Other Traits: Master of Chaos: In the Umbra, the Nexus Crawler’s chaotic nature comes to the fore as it engages opponents with increasingly alien, if effective, methods. It might transport a victim to a different part of the Umbra or rip open the Gauntlet to the depths of space or the Mariana Trench. It can turn a Garou against their own pack or switch the minds of the pack members around, leaving them in one another’s bodies. It can turn a foe inside-out or detach their still-living limbs from their bodies. The Storyteller is the ultimate judge on the effects of these bizarre attacks, but they all use the Mental pool of the Nexus Crawler, resisted by either Stamina, Composure, or Resolve + a relevant Skill. (Occult can always be used in place of this Skill, if higher.)
Corrosive Presence: Anyone close enough to fight a Nexus Crawler in the Umbra suffers a level of Aggravated damage each turn, in addition to any other effects or attacks.
Entropic Talons: +4 Aggravated damage weapons. Happy hunting!
NEXUS CRAWLER–POSSESSED HULK General Difficulty: 8 / 4
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 16, Social 7, Mental 10
Secondary Attributes: Health (Enhanced) 20, Willpower 10
Exceptional Dice Pools: See notes
Notes / Other Traits: Warp Reality: A manifested Nexus Crawler is able to bend reality in accordance with the disasters it embodies. It can turn the skeletons of hostile Garou into dried-out brittle sticks, change blood into oily sludge, or cause tumors to manifest catastrophically in its victims. Treat such attacks as +0 Aggravated damage attacks using the spirit’s Power against the Stamina + Occult of the target.
Weapons: +4 Superficial damage appendages. Note that if attacking with physical weapons, the Nexus Crawler often attempts to split its pool to cause the greatest amount of mayhem, and woe to the Garou who gains its singular attention. This also applies in spirit form, above.
Maddening Presence: Nexus Crawlers cause a Delirium-like effect in ordinary humans and animals. Creatures immune to Delirium suffer a level of Superficial Willpower damage per turn instead.