Werewolf: The Forsaken
| Werewolf: The Forsaken | ||
|---|---|---|
| RPG published by White Wolf / Onyx Path |
||
| Rule System | Storytelling System | |
| Authors | Justin Achilli et al | |
| First Publication | 2005 | |
The New World of Darkness analogue to Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Dumps the bloody-minded eco-hippies metaplot for a much vaguer "border patrol on the shores of Animistic Hell" setting.
Backstory
In the ancient past, the worlds of Flesh and Spirit were one, creating a world/time called Pangaea. In this time, the mighty wolf-spirit Father Wolf kept the peace between humans and spirits, destroying either of those that got out of line. The moon-spirit, Mother Luna, became enamored with Father Wolf's strength and took a human form to lay with him, giving birth to the first werewolves, who helped their father in his quest. These beings were special in that they were neither spirit nor human, but somewhere in between.
But as Father Wolf battled terrible demon-gods, his strength began to wane, and the world began to sicken, for he could no longer do his duty. Following their lupine instincts, most of these first werewolves rose up to challenge their father to step down as leader of the pack. Though he was unable to stand down by his nature, his spirit ban forbade him from attempting to fight in self-defense against his children. Thus, the first generation of werewolves were forced to slay Father Wolf. His death howl tore Pangaea apart, raising the Gauntlet that formed a barrier between the worlds of Flesh and Spirit. The grieving Mother Luna cursed her patricidal children with weakness to her sacred metal, silver, and charged them to take up their father's mantle as defenders of humanity against the spirits. This oath has been upheld by the Forsaken ever since.
Werewolves and You
In contrast to their predecessor in the Old World of Darkness, all werewolves are the result of werewolf on human sex; werewolves mating together is a Harmony-shattering event that can spawn evil, werewolf-hating demons called Unihar, and werewolves don't mate with wolves (but, if they must, all that happens is a litter of normal wolf pups - you sicko!), for all that the Pure have their legends of a wolfborn werewolf Messiah.
As beings possessed of dual natures -wolf and man, as well as spirit and mortal- their morality replacement is Harmony, which represents how well they can strike a balance between the two aspects of their existence.
Most human/werewolf matings produce wolfblooded, which are basically the game's equivalent to kinsfolk; they're more resistant to Lunacy and that's about it.
Werewolves have five forms; human, wolf, near-human, near-wolf and "warform" (Garou, a humanoid wolf mixed with a walking murder-machine that is prone to going into Death Rage and trying to kill everyone around it). There's also a high-level power called Primal Form, which adds a "dire wolf" form that is... well, picture a wolf big enough to eat a human in one bite, and you got the idea.
Werewolves are protected by Lunacy, which drives humans mad with fear and blurs their memories if they survive the encounter.
The Many Enemies of the Uratha
These are the most common threats a werewolf will most likely face off against in its (nasty, brutish and short) life.
Spirits are everywhere. They define and promote aspects of existence and do so to monomaniacal fixation; they are NOT good guys, and even spirits of things like Joy or Love are dangerous if they're left to their own devices due to their complete disregard of anything not directly relating to their nature. The nature of the Forsaken's oath to Mother Luna compels them to guard humanity from their influence, and many spirits hate them for it.
Hosts are the shattered shards of the demon-gods that Father Wolf slew, which mostly exist as roving swarms of creepy-crawlies. Until they get strong enough that they can gnaw their way into peoples' living bodies and absorb their flesh to become grotesque half-human half-beasts. The two main ones are the Azlu (brain-eating spiders with razor sharp forelegs that can be as large as a fucking car and strengthen the Gauntlet with their webs) and the Beshilu (plague-spreading rats that gnaw through the Gauntlet, letting spirits pass through to the mortal world). The other ones are the Srizaku (flesh-eating locust swarms spawned by an Idigam that devour every plant, animal and person in sight), the Halaku (crows that eat peoples' eyes to turn them into their slaves for fuck-knows-why), the Razilu (snakes who your Storyteller gets to decide what the fuck they want), the Adarusharu (fear-eating wolves who can merge into giant multi-headed wolf-monsters), the Usudwirku (fungus-spirits that infect the victims of werewolves so they can drive wolves batty whilst the fungi-spirits take over their loci), and the Uglathlu (worm spirits who steal the bodies of utter scum so that they can create Wounds - basically, little pockets of Hell).
Finally, one of the most depressingly common enemies for werewolves are other werewolves. Squabbles over territory, pride, all that good shit is normal. But, there's two groups of werewolves who are pretty much always enemies to the Tribes of the Moon.
The Pure are the werewolves who claim they're innocent of murdering Father Wolf, and so they hate Mother Luna for demanding they atone for a crime they never committed and hate the Forsaken even more for killing Father Wolf- and taking Pangaea away from them by doing so. They reject Mother Luna, which among other things means silver hurts them worse, and they want to tear down the Gauntlet between worlds so the spirits can take over, hoping that this will restore Pangaea and allow them to become rulers. Thing is, there's a lot more of these bastards than there are of the Forsaken (that is, the good guys), and the spirits like them more since they aren't interested in bossing them around like the Forsaken do.
The Bale Hounds, meanwhile, have taken one look at the shithole they live in and come to the conclusion that evil is winning, and they want to be on the winning team. So, they've allied themselves with the Maeljin - the Spirit Kings of Lust, Pride, Wrath, Envy, Avarice, Gluttony, Sloth, Deceit and Destruction - and work to make the world even more of an utter shithole, creating pits of hell that the werewolves call "Wounds". Even the Pure think these guys are fucking dangerous, so much so they have been known to team up with the Forsaken to kill the bastards. Mostly because if they had their way, there wouldn't be a Pangaea left for the Pure to rule.
But perhaps the most dangerous are the Idigam, the spirits who embody concepts that existed and faded away long before the world was fully formed. To survive, they became the incarnations of chaos and gained the ability to mimic the characteristics of anything mortal or spiritual. Between that and their unmatched ability to manipulate Essence, even Father Wolf was unable to slay them. Instead, they were sealed away on the moon where there was nothing for them to copy; Luna saw to that when she bound them in a prison as formless as they were. However, a relatively recent internecine war among the werewolves gave them an opportunity to escape back to Earth during the first manned moon landings. And they're VERY interested in making up for lost time now that they're back on Earth- as are the alien spirits that they've encountered and allied with during their banishment and the armies of minions they can create by corrupting other spirits with their Essence.
Other Shifters
A lot less focused on in this setting, but still present. There were two excellent books - Skinthieves, for "humans who change shape through magic" and "spirit-melded shifters" types and War Against The Pure for more "mythical shapechanger" types.
There's also the absolute atrocity known as Changing Breeds, which is basically every single fucking awful thing about Werewolf: The Apocalypse wrapped up in one shittastic package. Don't believe us? Take a look at these poor saps, who dared to try and dissect its awfulness chapter by chapter:
- http://destroythis.blogspot.com.au/search?updated-max=2014-07-31T18:46:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=7&by-date=false&m=1
- http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/kurieg/changing-breeds/
Needless to say, nobody talks about Changing Breeds.
2nd Edition
Like Vampire: The Requiem before them, the wolves got themselves a 2nd edition, and they got a hell of a lot more badass in it. Some of the highlights:
- Werewolves now only take Aggravated damage from damage roll-over, silver, and supernatural attacks. This means werewolves are a lot tougher to fight.
- Gauru form got massively beefed up. Among other things? Instant regeneration of all non-Agg damage. Combined with how tough werewolves can be, and it's almost impossible to kill a werewolf while it's in war form. But it also causes instant Death Rage any time it's used outside of combat so don't try and use it to cheese your way out of danger.
- Wolf-bloods went from just getting +2 Willpower to resist Lunacy to full-fledged immunity and at least one (and potentially more) of several possible supernatural powers, from shapeshifting to werewolf-like regeneration. Of course, it's now possible for werewolves to make Wolf-bloods with bad Lunacy rolls, so it's not all good news.
- Harmony acts a little differently, with 5 being the ideal score and breaking points either increasing or decreasing it based on which part of a werewolf's nature it places undue importance on. A Harmony of 4 or less is imbalanced toward the aspect of Spirit, and a Harmony of 6 or higher is skewed towards the aspect of Flesh; as all starting werewolves start at Harmony 7, they begin play imbalanced towards Flesh but not excessively so. Having a high Harmony locks a werewolf out of the Shadow and prevents them from shapeshifting without the use of Essence, while having a low Harmony effectively traps a werewolf in the shadow and causes him to reflexively transform when stressed. (In both cases, the triggers for Death Rage also become less specific as well.) Consequently, maintaining an ideal Harmony level requires a degree of finesse and a willingness to deliberately hit breaking points of one extreme as a way of countering the other. That being said, having it somewhat extreme isn't all bad. With a Harmony less than 3 or greater than 8, a werewolf doesn't need a locus to enter or exit the Shadow (respectively).
- Death Rage now has two stages- "soft rage" and "hard rage". "Soft rage" allows a werewolf to try and reassert control over himself, but "hard rage" is basically the classic Death Rage. The catch is that "hard rage" is contagious, so if one werewolf in a pack enters "hard rage" the others will either enter it shortly afterwards or run the risk of being slaughtered by their packmate.