| 1 | %% Image and caption selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1325620146062268900 |
| 2 | %% Please do not change or remove either without starting a new thread. |
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| 4 | [[quoteright:336:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Black_Furies_5985.jpg]] |
| 5 | [[caption-width-right:336:''[[ArcWords When will you Rage?]]'']] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | ->''Choose no life. Choose no career. Choose to live at the Caern. Choose a totem. Choose a fucking big klaive, choose breeder banes the size of washing machines, Black Spiral Dancers, weaver spiders and corrupted naturae spirits. Choose no sleep, high rage and mental instability. Choose between dedicating jeans or boots. Choose no friends. Choose challenging a Sept elder for your fucking right to exist. Choose the Umbra and wondering why the fuck you are slogging through arse deep Wyrm toxins on a sunny morning. Choose walking through a Scab looking at brain dead, spirit-stunted homids, fisting fucking junk food into their mouths. Choose being butchered to pieces at the end of it all, giving your last in some miserable Wyrmhole, nothing more than a legend to the selfish, fucked-up, Weaver-ridden spawn replacing the beloved defenders of Gaia. Choose your future. Choose to Rage.'' |
| 8 | -->-- '''Damien Moore''' |
| 9 | |
| 10 | ''A Storytelling Game of Savage Horror.'' |
| 11 | |
| 12 | The second tabletop roleplaying game in the classic [[TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness World of Darkness]] line and the second or third most popular. First published in 1992, it supposedly existed in the same universe as its predecessor, ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'', but their vastly incompatible cosmologies, histories and themes were among major factors that forced authors to make crossovers between the TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness games entirely optional. In the morally-gray area that was the World of Darkness, ''Werewolf'''s protagonist faction (the Garou Nation) was one of the more outright heroic--after all, fighting to save the world from the corrupted personification of entropy is difficult to put a negative spin on. Even so, they are still very often monsters in their own right. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | The big thematic difference between the two games is that while in ''Vampire'' the main source of {{angst}} and tragedy is your character's personal condition, in ''Werewolf'' it is the condition of the world. The Earth itself is threatened on two fronts: choked by [[HumansAreBastards human evil and callous indifference]] and crumbling under the unseen but relentless assault of [[EldritchAbomination an insane embodiment of destruction and corruption]] from the SpiritWorld named the Wyrm, a primordial force of entropy driven insane by the machinations of the Weaver's stagnating order and the indifference of the Wyld's creative chaos. As Garou (as the werewolves call themselves), you have the power to fight against an enemy that the mundane humans cannot even perceive. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | ...except that it is already too late. Your ancestors screwed up too badly. The Wyrm has its tendrils deep into humanity, ranging from pollution to bigotry to child abuse. The enemy is too strong. [[WeAREStrugglingTogether You can't stop fighting with your allies]]. And [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the titular Apocalypse is inevitable]]. Only the heroes of mythic proportions can have any hope of limiting it to merely TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt instead of annihilation of all existence. But no matter how dim your chances of victory you must fight on, and therein lies the game. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Garou are born into one of three breeds: Homid (werewolf & human parents), Lupus (werewolf & wolf parents), or a Metis (a forbidden union of two werewolf parents, which is sterile and has an inherent flaw of either a physical, psychological, or spiritual nature); non-Garou children of at least one Garou parent are [[{{Muggles}} mundane]] Kinfolk (who themselves have a rare chance of having Garou children). The lunar phase under which the Garou is born determines their Auspice (class) and their spiritual power: TheTrickster Ragabash (New Moon), the spiritualist and crafty Theurge (Crescent), the well-balanced Philodox (Half), TheBard Galliard (Gibbous), and BloodKnight Ahroun (Full). Further, the Garou are split into Tribes based on their ancestry, of which thirteen remain: |
| 19 | * Black Furies: A [[DoesNotLikeMen militant misandrist]] AmazonBrigade who are most aligned with the Wyld. The only men among them are their own Metis children. |
| 20 | * Bone Gnawers: Urban werewolves who choose to be homeless and adhere to democratic ideals as they do not see themselves superior to others. |
| 21 | * Children of Gaia: The most egalitarian of the tribes who see themselves as peacekeepers and mediators; may tend towards {{Church Militant}}s. |
| 22 | * Fianna: Celtic and European Garou who lay claim to the first ever Galliard and claim to have historically developed the Garou language; they have significant ties to TheFairFolk. |
| 23 | * Get of Fenris: Nordic {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s; sometimes loud and belligerent (and with [[PoliticallyIncorrectHero a tendency towards Nazism]]), but not to be crossed. |
| 24 | * Glass Walkers: Urban Garou who are most aligned with the Weaver, incorporating human technology into their culture moreso than any other tribe; they have changed names throughout history[[note]]Warders of Apes, Warders of Men, Tetrasomnians, Iron Riders[[/note]] as humanity has developed technologically. |
| 25 | * Red Talons: A savage all-wolf tribe that is militantly misanthropic. They are also attuned with the Wyld, moreso than the Black Furies. |
| 26 | * Shadow Lords: European nobility with less-than-scrupulous methods. Seconds-in-command to the Silver Fangs, with TheStarscream tendencies to usurp them and become the new rulers of the entire Garou Nation. |
| 27 | * Silent Striders: Travelers, messengers and necromancers with vaguely jackal-like traits who have been exiled from their ancestral home of Egypt by an ancient and powerful vampire. |
| 28 | * Silver Fangs: The traditional ruling tribe who pride themselves on their ancestry and almost exclusively take Kinfolk with royalty (or those with good character); RoyalInbreeding has resulted in endemic mental illness. |
| 29 | * Stargazers: Ascetic monks and astrologers from the FarEast who do not involve themselves in the affairs of the other 12 surviving tribes, and instead align themselves with the Beast Courts of the Emerald Mother. |
| 30 | * Uktena: {{Magical Native American}}s who delve for new secrets... sometimes from dubious sources. They also welcome other indigenous peoples into their Tribe, particularly those who have become refugees from their ancestral homelands. |
| 31 | * Wendigo: Native American {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s with a dim view of non-Natives. They see themselves as the purest of all Garou. |
| 32 | Three other tribes have since gone extinct: |
| 33 | * Bunyip: Garou who were adept at traveling the Umbra that they made it to Australia and took on the Aboriginal Australians and thylacines (the Tasmanian tiger) as Kinfolk. European Garou who came with the European colonizers wiped them out, being fooled into thinking they were not fellow Garou by the Ananasi. |
| 34 | * Croatan: A third Native American Garou Tribe who excelled at purifying Wyrm taint but were remarkably stubborn. They collectively sacrificed themselves to prevent an aspect of the Wyrm from taking hold during the European colonization of the Americas. |
| 35 | * White Howlers: Garou who settled in Scotland and took the Picts as Kinfolk, only meeting other Tribes during the last Ice Age. When the Roman Empire conquered Scotland and brought the Wyrm with them, the White Howlers sought to take the fight directly to the Wyrm only to be corrupted into the EvilCounterpart Black Spiral Dancers. |
| 36 | Other sub-tribes and groups have also cropped up throughout Garou history: the Siberakh of Siberia who are the result of Silver Fang experiments to crossbreed with Wendigo kinfolk to try to eliminate the genetic disorders resulting from centuries of inbreeding, Ronins who have been exiled from Garou society for violations of Garou law, local groups such as the Hakken of Japan and the Boli Zousizhe of China who have diverged greatly from their original tribes, and the Skin Dancers who are Kinfolk who through a forbidden rite of [[HumanSacrifice werewolf sacrifice]] became werewolves themselves. The 20th anniversary books also introduce the Singing Dogs of New Guinea, a tribe that currently numbers only four and has lived in isolation for generations. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | And of course [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent there are other shapeshifters]] mucking about, each with their own roles in the world (until the werewolves wiped out most of them and lost them as allies in the fight to stave off the oncoming apocalypse): the Ajaba were-hyeneas, the Ananasi were-spiders, the Bastet werecats, the Corax were-ravens, the Gurahl were-bears, the Kitsune were-foxes, the Mokolé were-crocodiles/were-monitors(/were-dinosaurs), the Nagah were-snakes, the Nuwisha were-coyotes, the Ratkin were-rats, and the Rokea were-sharks (you heard us right). And that doesn't include the werebeasts that went extinct from aforementioned Garou genocides: Apis were-aurochs, Camazotz were-bats, and Grondr were-boars. |
| 39 | |
| 40 | Publication of ''Werewolf: The Apocalypse'' ended in 2004 with the cancellation of the entire TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness, and it was followed up with a new game with a new setting and completely different cosmology: ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheForsaken''. An updated, revised edition of ''Werewolf: The Apocalypse'' came out in 2013 to celebrate the game's 20th anniversary. A fifth edition of the RPG, to go along with ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeFifthEdition'', [[https://www.huntersentertainment.com/single-post/werewolf-the-apocalypse was announced in December 2019]] by Hunters Entertainment, in partnership with Creator/ParadoxInteractive, the current owners of the World of Darkness, though this edition was seemingly cancelled following a consolidation of the brand in late 2020, with a new version of the book in the works at Paradox itself. This edition would finally see the light in August of 2023. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | A video game called ''VideoGame/WerewolfTheApocalypseEarthblood'' was announced January 2017, developed by Creator/CyanideStudio and published by [=NACON=] with a release date of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJKHn2ugRNI February 4, 2021]]. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Different Tales [[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1342620/Werewolf_The_Apocalypse__Heart_of_the_Forest/ released]] ''VideoGame/WerewolfTheApocalypseHeartOfTheForest'', a VisualNovel with RPG elements, on October 13, 2020. |
| 45 | |
| 46 | ---- |
| 47 | !!This game features examples of: |
| 48 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 49 | |
| 50 | [[folder:A-F]] |
| 51 | * AbnormalAmmo: Any kind of bullet or arrow that has a spirit bound into it. Also, Glass Walkers are particularly fond of creating weapon fetishes out of firearms, and some of the resulting weapons can shoot things like lightning bolts or clouds of shrapnel. Silver bullets naturally come up a lot, though not usually for [=PCs=]. |
| 52 | * AchillesHeel: Every tribe has one, though they're generally neither combat-related, nor mechanically codified (unless the GM uses optional flaws) and more of a roleplaying challenge, such as the Uktena's curiosity and the Black Furies' intolerance of men. They're also based around one-dimensional tribal stereotypes, which isn't necessarily a good thing for roleplaying. |
| 53 | * AdaptationalHeroism: |
| 54 | ** The Red Talons' fanaticism was massively toned down for the 20th Anniversary edition. They're still exclusively Lupus with a hatred of cities, but the "All apes must die!" faction is now a stark minority within the tribe, and one that's considered foolish at best by other Red Talons. This change was necessary because they were by far the least popular of the Tribes, and many storytellers forbade them as player characters because they were all but impossible to integrate into a Homid-centric campaign. |
| 55 | ** Fenris from Myth/NorseMythology is a ravening beast whose escape from imprisonment will be one of the signs (and main causes) of the end of the world. In ''Werewolf'' he's a harsh but courageous spirit who is one of the greatest champions opposing the end of the world. |
| 56 | * AnAesop: Several tribes learn important thematic lessons in one Time of Judgment scenario. |
| 57 | ** After centuries of hostility, the Black Furies and Get of Fenris finally learn how to work together against the Wyrm. The aesop in question is that it's important to cooperate with others when faced with a common problem. The Black Furies get a second one in Time of Judgment, where they accept their second-class male metis as equals on their mission. |
| 58 | ** The Shadow Lords have a reputation as manipulators. Under the Margrave's leadership, the Shadow Lords use their persuasion and politicking skills to unify different Garou tribes. The aesop is that if you're good at persuasion and manipulation, use your people skills for ''positive'' ends. |
| 59 | * AgeOfReptiles: The Mokolé claim to be descendents of the Lizard Kings, true were-dinosaurs (and were-pterosaurs and were-plesiosaurs) who discovered the malleable world of dreams and imagination that existed between the physical and spiritual worlds that they dubbed Mnesis (which became the basis of the GeneticMemory the modern Mokolé possess). They used the ability to dream and think things into reality to create the Dragon Empires of the Age of Kings, with a race of humanoid lizards produced through their own interbreeding in the humanoid Drachid form as their subjects. However, their hubris led to their demise at the hands of their own drachid subjects and the Great Wonder-Work which ''was'' the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. Modern Mokolé have only a fraction of the abilities the Lizard Kings had, with the Drachid form being one lost to time, and the modern version of Mnesis doesn't reach back to the Great Wonder-Work. |
| 60 | * AllMythsAreTrue: Quite a few bits of myth, legends and folklore are tied back to real events involving the Garou, one of the other werecreatures or the spirits they interact with. One very strange example has, of all things, Goldilocks and the Three Bears being brought up in the Gurahl Breedbook as a heavily corrupted version of a parable about the origins of the conflict between the werebears and werewolves. |
| 61 | * AllOfTheOtherReindeer: Many metis are treated as outsiders by homid and lupus Garou. Metis may simply be disliked, expected to work harder for status, or in the most warlike tribes, abused and neglected by their fellow Garou. |
| 62 | * TheAllSolvingHammer: This has historically been a problem for the Garou. They are Gaia's warriors, and therefore they tend to want to solve ''everything'' by turning it into a glorious battle to the death, even if there's another solution and even if fighting is ultimately futile. In the modern day, the craftier Tribes like the Glass Walkers and Children of Gaia try their best to subvert this. |
| 63 | * AlternateLandmarkHistory: A close variant in the ''Caerns'' sourcebook. The Trinity testing site in New Mexico is one of the holiest caerns of the Black Spiral Dancers. The impact crater receives no human visitors, and the Black Spirals use the crater as an amphitheater for large gatherings. The [=McDonald=] ranch house, where the atomic bomb's core was assembled, is now the home of White-Eyes-ikthya, a Trinity Hive elder. In real life, the Trinity testing site and the [=McDonald=] ranch house are a historical landmarks that receive thousands of visitors each year. Trinity's ground zero crater was bulldozed in 1952. |
| 64 | * AlwaysChaoticEvil: Averted in several circumstances. The Wyrm can taint or corrupt or possess, but true service to the Wyrm has to be a ''choice'', even if it's a coerced one. Many willing servants of the Wyrm can repent, albeit at great cost. |
| 65 | ** Even fomori aren't necessarily always evil, as a good person who just happens to be unlucky enough can still be possessed by a Bane and spend the rest of their short and tortured existence resisting the Wyrm. |
| 66 | ** Balefire Sharks and some types of fomori are almost always loyal Wyrm servants, because any who do decide to go against the Wyrm die almost immediately as the Wyrmish powers keeping them alive are withdrawn. |
| 67 | ** Most of the beings who have walked through the Black Spiral Labyrinth have been changed so irrevocably that they can't even contemplate opposing the Wyrm. However, exceptions do exist. ''Caerns: Places of Power'' tells the tale of Anhai, a Uktena metis who defected to the Black Spiral Dancers. She reasserted her loyalty to her natal tribe at the last minute when she refused to lead the Black Spirals to a Uktena caern. Also, the 20th anniversary edition of ''Umbra'' describes a Black Spiral Dancer who seeks to sever his ties to the Wyrm in Erebus. |
| 68 | ** ''Rage Across Russia'' suggests that even Zmei (Wyrm dragons) are capable of redemption. The book states that Shazear can be turned away from the Wyrm back to the Wyld. |
| 69 | ** Other cases are more ambiguous. ''Caerns: Places of Power'' leaves it up to the storyteller whether White-Eyes-ikthya is a loyal Black Spiral Dancer or a Uktena deep cover agent. |
| 70 | * AllThereInTheManual: Curious example, as the series ''is'' mostly books. Do you want to play a Black Spiral Dancer? Do you wish to know their culture? Well, don't look at either tabletop Book of the Wyrm for it, instead, search for a [[{{LARP}} Mind's Eye Theatre]] Book of the Wyrm. For some reason, it has more text and information on the tribe than both of the tabletop books combined. |
| 71 | * AllYourPowersCombined: |
| 72 | ** Ananasa created spiders (and the Ananasi) by combining the energies of Wyld, Weaver, and Wyrm. |
| 73 | ** According to the 2000 Ananasi breedbook, Wyld created Gaia, who then accepted energies from Weaver and Wyrm. |
| 74 | --->"Gaia was the first of Wyld's children. She was bright and beautiful and vibrant. Just as with her creator, Gaia wanted things to change constantly, but she allowed Weaver to touch her, to give her form and function, and allowed Wyrm the same privilege. All things would die eventually, even Gaia herself. But Gaia was a powerful spirit, and her death would not come for a very long time." |
| 75 | * AnimalisticAbomination: In olden days, Banes would possess animals, creating bestial horrors that would be sent against the Garou as siege engines. This is where legends like the manticore come from. In modern days, human fomori are preferred because they're a bit less conspicuous. |
| 76 | * AnimalsRespectNature: Oh yes. Just about every single tribe and breed claims that humans are unique in that they don't respect their place within the natural order. Several also blame humans for [[ExplosiveBreeders breeding too quickly,]] which is a especially rich given that humans are actually among the more slow-breeding animals. [[note]]Humans being so plentiful has more to do with the fact that we're freakishly good at keeping our children alive until they reach breeding age themselves, but presumably "humans take really good care of their babies" wasn't as easy to spin into a villainous trait as "humans breed like vermin."[[/note]] |
| 77 | * {{Animorphism}}: It's a game where you play as a werewolf. It's sort of to be expected. |
| 78 | * AntiHero: The Garous as a whole. While their ultimate goal is a losing battle against absolute evil, they have been guilty of very bad things in the past, such as slaughtering most of the other werecreatures and one of their own tribes, and even in the present their HairTriggerTemper nature makes any Garou one bad Rage Roll away from another slaughter. |
| 79 | * ApocalypseHow: Class 2 is the most likely outcome if werewolves '''''win''''' the inevitable Apocalypse. Class X-4 (the entire Universe is destroyed/turned into Hell) is the price of losing. |
| 80 | * ArachnidAppearanceAndAttire: The Weaver is repeatedly described as having spider-like qualities. It weaves the Pattern Web, and most of its spirits are described as outright spiders or spider-shaped. The Anansi (werespiders) also believe that it created their mother Ananasa in its image. |
| 81 | * ArbitrarySkepticism: Some tribebooks have the Garou scoff at the existence of some of the more obscure werecreatures. Apparently despite being able to change into wolves themselves and knowing that others can change into ravens or big cats the idea that anyone could change into a snake seems silly. |
| 82 | * ArmouredClosetGay: According to the semi-infamous revised Children of Gaia tribebook, the Get of Fenris outwardly scorn gay people but tend to engage in "violent homo-stuff." |
| 83 | * AsLongAsThereIsEvil: All forms of human evil and cruelty empower the Wyrm-spirits (appropriately called Banes), many of which [[TheHeartless feast upon negative emotions]] and encourage them in turn. Extreme forms of environmental destruction also allow Banes to grow and multiply. The Garou Nation has two general approaches in mind for dealing with this. The first (the default one) advocates protecting and enlightening humans to keep them morally healthy. The second calls for exterminating excess human population (only a few werewolves seriously consider it -- although their number grows with the approach of the Apocalypse). |
| 84 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: Authority in Garou's society is either almost entirely based on personal prowess, or just ''mostly'' based on it. Being born into an influential tribe has its perks, but you still need to rise in rank by yourself, if you want any real power. There is a complicated system of formal challenges in place, to minimize casualties of constant struggle for dominance. |
| 85 | * BatmanGambit: The revised edition of the Shadow Lords Tribebook has a particularly nasty one in the fluff. Some Shadow Lords are stretched too thin to handle a nest of Setites who are taking over local crime operations. The nearby Silver Fang sept is refusing to help them, except for one chomping-at-the-bit arrogant young Ahroun. So a Shadow Lord pack beta points him at the Setites...and tips off the Setites about ''him''. The vampires get the drop on the kid and murder him horribly, and the now-enraged Silver Fangs sweep into town in force and crush them. Just like the Shadow Lords asked them to in the first place. (The guy's alpha is horrified, but does nothing, because it ''did'' work.) |
| 86 | * BearsAreBadNews: Double subverted by the Gurahl werebears, who are known for their healing powers and generally retiring ways. For shapeshifters, they're downright mellow and calm. Until you piss them off, that is, then you'd better run. |
| 87 | * BeenThereShapedHistory: In spades. |
| 88 | ** The Silver Fangs married into many of Europe's royal families and shapes history as royal leaders. |
| 89 | ** The Shadow Lords prompted their Visigoth and Vandal kinfolk to sack Rome. |
| 90 | ** Shogecka Hunter Moon's story in ''Garou Saga'' states that Wendigo warriors were among Tecumseh's followers. The Wendigo, Croatan, and Uktena also initiated the migration of humans from northern Asia to North America. |
| 91 | ** According to ''Rage Across New York'', the Black Furies protected the early American suffragettes. Black Fury kinfolk encouraged leaders of the early women's movement to take refuge near New York's Finger Lakes (a Black Fury stronghold), which lead to the 1848 Seneca Falls convention. ''Rage Across New York'' also states that the Children of Gaia contributed followers and protection to historical figures such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony. |
| 92 | ** According to ''Rage Across New York'', the Seventh Generation was behind several historical calamities. When Socrates discovered Seventh Generation activity in Athens, the Seventh Generation orchestrated his trial and execution. When Freud discovered that childhood abuse was pervasive among his patients, the Seventh Generation forced him to revise his theories and claim that his patients had overactive imaginations. According to ''Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth'', Charles Manson was a Seventh Generation devotee, and his murders were in service of the Wyrm. |
| 93 | ** The Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico was due to sabotage by agents of the Wyrm, according to the 2013 ''Rage Across the World'' book. The spill generated a deluge of oil banes and attracted Black Spiral Dancers from New Orleans. |
| 94 | * BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: The whole World of Darkness line is fond of this trope. Examples from ''Werewolf'': |
| 95 | ** The Croatan, which in real life was the name of an island and a Native American tribe, and was found carved into a tree in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony Lost Colony of Roanoke]] possibly as a sign telling their resupply ship where they had gone. In ''Werewolf'' it was a Garou tribe who sacrificed themselves to defeat an aspect of the Wyrm that had been inadvertantly summoned by, and subsequently destroyed, the Roanoke colony. |
| 96 | ** The Ananasi werespiders claim that Monica Lewinsky is one of them, and seducing UsefulNotes/BillClinton was a ploy to reduce his credibility as President. |
| 97 | ** John Henry was a Bone Gnawer, [[Myth/IrishMythology Finn MacCumhail]] was a Kinfolk and founded the Fianna tribe. Rasputin may have been a Shadow Lord but lots of people claim him all over the World of Darkness. |
| 98 | ** Emperor Justinian was Shadow Lord kinfolk, and Empress Theodora was a Shadow Lord Garou. |
| 99 | ** According to ''Caerns: Places of Power'', conservationist Aldo Leopold was Children of Gaia kinfolk. |
| 100 | ** According to ''Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth'', Charles Manson and Gilles de Rais were Seventh Generation devotees. |
| 101 | ** The Gurahl tribebook strongly implies that the ancient Bear King was Myth/KingArthur. It also states that the prophet Elisha was a {{TabletopGame/vampire|TheMasquerade}} who controlled an umfalla (werebear abomination) named Sarah Childslayer. This was a reference to [[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Kings+2%3A23-25&version=NIV 2 Kings 2:23-25]] in the Bible, in which bears slaughtered a group of children who were teasing the prophet Elisha. |
| 102 | ** At least one [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dmitriy False Dmitri]] was Silver Fang Kinfolk, and exactly who he claimed to be. The problem was that [[FurAgainstFang he'd also become a vampire]]. |
| 103 | * BelligerentSexualTension: Possibly (emphasis on "possibly") Jonas Albrecht and Mari Cabrah (for those who don't buy into their VitriolicBestBuds packmate dynamic). |
| 104 | * BeneathTheEarth: Black Spiral Dancer hives. |
| 105 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: The Children of Gaia. In the 2nd Edition Players' Guide, the tribe's accompanying artwork was a lovely GranolaGirl with a serene smile, dragonfly tattoo, and healing powers. She can still turn into an 8-foot clawed beast and tear you a new one if provoked. In fact, it is stated in several places that when the Children of Gaia do frenzy it can be even worse than some of the more warlike tribes because they've held their rage in for so long. |
| 106 | * BestialityIsDepraved: Shockingly ignored most of the time. Werewolves, who have human-level intelligence, mate with actual wolves. This is seen as completely normal. The fans have certainly noticed that they are expected to play as race which are more or less angry humans with superpowers who literally screw the pooch. |
| 107 | * BewareTheSuperman: Ancient Garou history is a lesson on how powerful beings can easily become oppressors. In ancient times, Garou ruled over humans, even going as far as to cull the human population through the Impergium. The mistakes of the ancient Garou have had far-reaching consequences for their descendants and the human race. Unfortunately, if the tribebooks are anything to go by, many Garou ''still'' haven't learned from the mistakes of their ancestors, and still see humans as peons, breeding stock, or pests to be culled. |
| 108 | * BigHam: The Get of Fenris in general. |
| 109 | * BittersweetEnding: The Time of Judgment scenarios that ''don't'' involve a Wyrm victory are still bittersweet. |
| 110 | ** In the scenario in which the Wyld is dominant, the Weaver and Wyrm have been restored to sanity, but the changing breeds have been completely annihilated, humanity has been hurled back into the stone age, and Gaia will still take centuries to heal. |
| 111 | ** In the Ragnarok scenario in which the Weaver is victor (and smart enough not to sever the physical world and Umbra), the human race survives, but majesty and creativity leave the world. A clockwork and stagnant WorldOfSilence is all that remains. |
| 112 | ** In a scenario in which both the Wyrm and Ananasa escape their respective prisons, the two restore the fabric of reality to balance. Ananasa reweaves the cosmos in such a way as to eliminate the changing breeds and reduce some of Gaia's majesty. |
| 113 | ** In a scenario in which the Perfect Metis is sacrificed as a scion to the Defiler Wyrm, the player characters must rescue his tormented spirit from the Atrocity Realm and cleanse it in the silver lake of Erebus. The Perfect Metis dies, but his soul is finally at peace. The Defiler Aspect of the Wyrm can be banished through an entire tribal sacrifice, allowing the Wyrm to be damaged, and eventually, retreat to the Deep Umbra. |
| 114 | * BlackAndGrayMorality: Imagine this game as ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' with werecreatures, instead of SpaceMarines, and you won't be ''too'' far off. While minions of the Wyrm are absolutely vile and the grand goal of their master is utter destruction of the entire Universe ''at best'', the werewolves themselves are very very far from politically correct heroes by the modern definition, with the more extreme members of their various factions ranging all the way from fanatical eco-terrorists and {{Straw Feminist}}s to literal Nazis. |
| 115 | ** Gaia herself falls into this. While she is devoted to cultivating life and is considerably more sane than any member of the Triat, [[BlueAndOrangeMorality Gaia is not good by the standards of human morality]]. For example, she assigned the task of culling humans -- no matter how innocent or defenseless -- to the Ajaba and Ratkin, and did not intervene during the Impergium or the War of Rage. |
| 116 | * BlandNameProduct: Pentex's subsidiary companies are often this, O'Tolley's for [=MacDonald's=], Endron for Enron and so on. Amusingly this included Black Dog Game Factory, [[SelfDeprecation a parody of White Wolf itself.]] |
| 117 | * BlindObedience: |
| 118 | ** With the exception of the democratic-minded Bone Gnawers and Children of Gaia, most Garou tribes expect their members to obey elders without question. Cubs and cliath who openly question their elders are throated or worse. |
| 119 | ** Ananasa expects the Ananasi to obey her commands without question. |
| 120 | ** According to ''Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth'', Pretanic Order initiates who have yet to walk the Black Spiral Labyrinth are expected to obey higher-ranking cultists in all things. Brutal punishments await those who disobey. |
| 121 | * BloodbathVillainOrigin: A Garou's First Change frequently boils down to 'Lapse into UnstoppableRage and change into a giant war-beast when in a stressful situation[[note]](which ranges from 'Mob trying to kill you' to 'argument with parents' to 'all-nighter at law school')[[/note]],' so this is sadly common. |
| 122 | * BodyHorror: |
| 123 | ** For many Garou, the First Change qualifies. Garou who do not know about their werewolf nature are terrified when they suddenly transform into an eight-foot tall beast with fur and claws. |
| 124 | ** Transformation into a fomor only requires a Bane (spirit servitor of the Wyrm) possessing a person who has weakened spiritual resistance. The Bane itself doesn't particularly care (in most cases) if the recipient is willing; it moves in and starts remodeling. And the remodeling is seldom painless, bloodless, or at all concerned with being attractive by any but the most depraved of minds. |
| 125 | * BrokenAesop: |
| 126 | ** The overall messages of the game -- that people should protect the natural world and question the more destructive aspects of civilization -- are noble. However, in-game history indicates that ancient humans lived meager lives and suffered oppression under the Garou before they cultivated civilization. To boot, human life isn't intrinsically valuable to some Gaia-aligned factions, or arguably to Gaia herself, so abandoning civilization and getting back to Gaia might not be a good things for humanity. |
| 127 | ** The game is intended to raise awareness about environmental harm, corporate corruption, and other social issues. In-game, however, these problems spring from a mad triat and cosmic imbalances that the characters are unlikely to impact. In other words, the game's backstory suggests that taking any action against such problems will only have a small impact at best, and [[InherentInTheSystem that large-scale change is impossible]]. |
| 128 | * CaptainEthnic: The stereotypes of many tribes are often related to their "territory," such as the Get of Fenris's association with Norse/Germanic barbarian culture, or the Fianna's association with Ireland. |
| 129 | * CareerRevealingTrait: It's mentioned that workers at [[BurgerFool O'Tolley's]] can easily be recognized by the smell of grease and meat even if the [[BadJobWorseUniform embarrassing uniform]] isn't in view. Veteran "burgermen" also sport minor burns from working the fryers, and have become so inured to pain over the years that they frequently expose themselves to absolutely scalding temperatures just to experience real warmth. |
| 130 | * CirclesOfHell: The Black Spiral Labyrinth in Malfeas represents the tormented mind of the Wyrm. The labyrinth is divided into nine circles, each of which tests and torments visitors until their minds are broken. For example, the circle of endurance pushes visitors to their physical and psychological limits, while the circle of loyalty forces visitors to choose between (what's left of) their humanity and fealty to the Wyrm. Black Spiral Dancers pass through the circles to gain rank, but only a handful have ever passed through all nine circles. Gaia Garou consider dancing the Black Spiral a {{fate worse than death}}. |
| 131 | * TheCommandments: The Litany of the Garou Nation. Each other Changing Breed has their own version as well, with some rules specific for their function in Gaia's hierarchy (Corax having rules about spreading secrets, for example). The Black Spiral Dancers have their own EvilCounterpart Litany as well. |
| 132 | * {{Conlang}}: The spoken form of the Garou language was never really explored beyond the fact that all Garou know it automatically upon their First Change but the written form shows up all over the different books. It's an intentionally simplistic glyph language with a symbol for each auspice, tribe, Changing Breed and other important concepts to the Werewolves. Each glyph is made of straight lines that resemble claw marks because that's what they usually are. |
| 133 | * CorruptCorporateExecutive: |
| 134 | ** Pentex's subsidiaries, except for a handful of key corporations, are headed by people who have absolutely no idea what the Wyrm is or that there are supernatural things in the world. To them, Pentex is just an organization that is very good at covering their illegal and morally dubious business practices. And, of course, there is the board of directors of Pentex proper, that is corrupt in more than one sense of the word, consorts with the universal force of corruption and destruction, actively works to bring about TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, and hopes for a "controlled crash" scenario to get whatever remains of humanity under their thumbs. |
| 135 | ** The Corporate Wolves faction of the Glass Walkers are a heroic (in a GoodIsNotNice sense) version of this trope, as they use their corporate connections to secure funding for the tribe and to try and fight Pentex on its own ground. |
| 136 | ** Subverted, by the board of directors of [[CorporateSamurai Shinzui Industries]], the {{foil}} to Pentex. Shinzui is a MegaCorp that is every bit as vast and ruthless as Pentex is, and as aware of the cosmic dimensions of their struggle. However, rather than being knowingly malicious, their top leaders instead sincerely want to bring about a utopia for humanity. Unfortunately, they are nonetheless prepared to go to [[KnightTemplar almost any lengths]] to do it... that, and it's actually [[CrapsaccharineWorld the Weaver's utopia]] they are promoting. |
| 137 | * CrapsackWorld: As with all ''[=WoD=]'' games. In this case we know why it's a crapsack; because of the Wyrm. Although the question of whether the Wyrm causes human evil or just feeds on it can become sort of a circular chicken and egg debate. And of course every Changing-Breed and Garou tribe has their own story about just why the Wyrm is so fucked up in the first place. If the ones involving the Weaver's descent into madness are even partially true, it takes it up to eleven: of the three primal forces of existence, two have been driven insane and the third arguably already was in the first place. |
| 138 | * CrashIntoHello: The first meeting of signature characters Jonas Albrecht and Evan Heals-the-Past, sans the MeetCute part. |
| 139 | * CreateYourOwnVillain: According to "Klaital's Journey" in ''Garou Saga'', the ''Garou themselves'' are to blame for the current state of the cosmos. At the climax of his journey, Klaital realizes that the Garou damaged the Weaver's web by attacking her servants, thereby driving her insane. The Garou's hatred also feeds the Wyrm dwelling within them. |
| 140 | ** Some of the earthly threats that the Garou have faced throughout history were in response to Garou atrocities. For example, in the Leukippes legend of ''Garou Saga'' the Wyrm-tainted priest Kamisos rallies his followers against the Garou by reminding them that the Garou culled humans and terrorized the land long ago. |
| 141 | * CreativeSterility: Zig-zagged with the Wyrm. On one hand, the Wyrm creates bane spirits to carry out its wishes. On the other hand, as the cosmic force of death and destruction, the Wyrm isn't equipped to create life en masse and must drain energy from a Wyld font in Malfeas to do so. The Wyrm does not create most of its follows from scratch, preferring to corrupt humans, shape-changers, and spirits. |
| 142 | * CreepyCockroach: |
| 143 | ** The Cockroach is the totem of the urban-dwelling Glass Walkers. In their tribebook, a discussion between members of a Glass Walker pack on the spiritual powers of the cockroach devolves into discussing ways to keep cockroaches away without offending the tribe totem. (The alpha of the pack is unimpressed by the digressing packmate.) |
| 144 | ** The W20 ''Book of the Wyrm'' adds the Samsa, the were-cockroach Mockery Breed... who, playing against type, are '''the''' most sympathetic and PC-appropriate of the Mockery Breeds, with one of the many angles Cockroach is playing regarding them being trying to position himself as their only friend in hopes of eventually converting them to Gaia's side. |
| 145 | * CreepyCrows: |
| 146 | ** The Corax wereravens |
| 147 | ** The Shadow Lords' tribal totem, Grandfather Thunder, is served by spirits called Stormcrows. They also have a camp called the Children of Crow, whose members focus on being TheLancer -- as long as TheHero is doing his job. |
| 148 | * CruelCoyotes: The Nuwisha (werecoyotes) are notorious pranksters, who allege that their "pranks" are meant to instruct others, but other shapeshifters just find them a nuisance. |
| 149 | * CultureJustifiesAnything: In ancient times, Homid Garou took part in some of the uglier activities of the societies they lived in. For example, ''Garou Saga'' reveals that the Black Fury Leukippes took part in raids against the Medes and Macedonians alongside her Scythian kin. Gunnar Draugrbane and his fellow Get of Fenris took part in raiding and pillaging, much like the Vikings of yore. |
| 150 | * CulturalPosturing: The Garou and the other Fera do this a lot, with every cultural group generally of the opinion that they've made much greater contributions to the fight for Gaia. |
| 151 | * TheDarkArts: Various camps take part in unsavory practices that make them vulnerable to the Wyrm. |
| 152 | ** Among the Silent Striders, members of the Eaters of the Dead camp practice the Rite of Dormant Wisdom. Participants ritually devour a dead person's brain to acquire their memories. Not only is the rite a grave violation of the Litany, but participants risk attracting the attention of the Urge Wyrm Foebok. If a Garou takes part in the rite more times than their permanent gnosis score, they become a slave of Foebok. |
| 153 | ** Among the Stargazers, members of the Oroborean camp learn about the Wyrm by drinking bane blood or consorting with Black Spiral Dancer hives. |
| 154 | ** The Dying Cubs camp of the Red Talons practices a rite that "feeds" the earth with the pain of a tortured human. The rite cleanses the land and lowers the Gauntlet of the immediate area, but the effects are temporary. Moreover, spiritual guardians of the region will no longer defend the land against Wyrm incursions. |
| 155 | ** Some Red Talons learn a gift that allows them to regain rage or gnosis when they spill another being's blood upon the earth. The gift is taught by decay spirits and banes. |
| 156 | * DarkIsNotEvil: |
| 157 | ** The Silent Striders are well known for their affinity with the spirits of the dead, and their fascination with death itself. The other tribes tend to be somewhat off-put by their dark demeanor and generally morbid attitude, which stem largely from the tribe's Batman-esque tragic past. Be this as it may, their hatred of all things of the Wyrm, proves them to be unambiguously good. |
| 158 | ** The Shadow Lords have darkness in their very name, often affect a rather "Dark Lord" like image and are known for being secretive, manipulative and power hungry. They have had more than their fair share of selfish would-be tyrants but most of the tribe genuinely sees their manipulations in terms of trying to achieve the best results to save the world. In at least two scenarios in the "Apocalypse" book the Shadow Lords de facto ruler, Margrave Yuri Konietzko, is one of the leaders or ''the'' leader of the Garou in the final battle. |
| 159 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: |
| 160 | ** Many of the Garou tribes and Fera have values that come across as alien or barbaric to readers, emphasizing how the "Gaian" outlook is very different from the human outlook. Value systems that are warlike or pro-eugenics are not uncommon. |
| 161 | ** Garou are supposed to engage in sex for primarily reproductive reasons, not simple, wasteful fun-time (although the Fianna and the Children of Gaia's Aethera Inamorata camp might disagree). They also tend to seek mates of the same "base type" as themselves, which is why lupus Garou are going extinct. |
| 162 | ** The cultural practices and values of the Black Spiral Dancers are deliberately revolting to emphasize how twisted the tribe has become. |
| 163 | ** Most tribes deeply regret the Impergium, by which the Garou sought to keep the human population in check through violent cullings... because what they ''should'' have done was allow the Ratkin to perform their Gaia-appointed function of keeping the human population in check through famine and disease. This is at least partly because the Ratkin way would have been covert and let the humans believe that they were dying for reasons outside of anyone's control, while the Impergium let them realise that someone was killing them on purpose and start resenting Gaia for it. We are... ''probably'' not supposed to agree with the Garou that mass murder is fine as long as it's discreet, but the books are remarkably consistent in arguing this as the right, reasonable and moral position. |
| 164 | * DemonicPossession: All types of spirits can merge with material beings (usually humans), but Wyrm-spirits do it most often, transforming their victims into deformed, deranged horrors called fomori, which serve as cannon fodder of the Wyrm in the material world. Sometimes the possession results from MoreThanMindControl, sometimes it happens simply because many things in this world MayContainEvil (thanks to Pentex). And the Wyrm isn't the only one of the Triat whose spirits can possess physical beings. The Weaver has her Drones who become creatures of pure Stasis and the Wyld has Gorgons who are creatures of pure Dynamism, while Gaia herself has Kami who are supposed to be pinnacles of natural life on Earth. |
| 165 | * DespairEventHorizon: Harano, a form of depression that comes over Garou when they believe that the war against the Wyrm is futile. |
| 166 | * DinosaursAreDragons: The Mokole were-reptiles are the keepers of racial memory all the way back to the time of dinosaurs, and when their first change comes they tap into this racial memory and dream of their battle-form. Mechanically speaking, this is represented by pulling a certain amount of traits off a menu. When doing so, it's ''very'' easy to come back with something ''distinctly'' draconic, rather than dinosaur-ish. |
| 167 | * DisasterDominoes: When reading the various Fera's opinions on The War of Rage and its causes, it seems that there was no single cause for said war (which wiped out two Changing Breeds, plus severely impacted several more, and set up others to later be killed off). Similar to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, it seems that several incidents (''e.g.'' the Gurahl's refusal to teach [[BackFromTheDead revival gifts/rituals]] and the Grondr's vocal backing of the Gurahl in this assessment) along with long-simmering issues (most prominently, the Garou collectively [[AndManGrewProud growing more and more prideful]]) led to a civil war that spanned all of Gaia's erstwhile defenders. |
| 168 | * DivineChessboard: The Wyrm, the Weaver, and the Wyld are all manipulating characters to their own ends. Queen Ananasa uses then entire Ananasi Changing-Breed as her agents to manipulate the world as her chessboard, with the ultimate (long long ''long'' term) goal of freeing herself from the Wyrm's grip and restoring the Triat to balance. |
| 169 | * DivineConflict: Ongoing conflict between the Wyld, Weaver, and Wyrm is to blame for the [[CrapsackWorld current state of the world]]. |
| 170 | * DramaticIrony: The Rokea's sole task is to survive, but they're currently unwittingly engaged in slow and elaborate suicide, as they scapegoat and kill the only ones among them who have any real chance of understanding the threats to the Rokea and the sea and mounting a more effective response than "Kill random people who are doing bad things, and make humanity hate and fear sharks even more in the process." |
| 171 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: |
| 172 | ** Many of the first edition ''Werewolf: The Apocalypse'' books feature metis characters who were born in homid form (instead of crinos form) and raised by humans. |
| 173 | ** ''The Valkenburg Foundation'' describes heart daggers used in Black Spiral Dancer marriage rites. Later books make it clear that the Black Spiral Dancers find concepts such as love and monogamy alien. |
| 174 | ** The first edition introduced the Seventh Generation, a world-spanning conspiracy of Wyrm-worshipping pedophiles who were presented as the Defiler Wyrm's foremost instrument on Earth. While they were occasionally mentioned in later editions, their relevance and reach were toned ''way'' down, with the role of "the main reason why everything is so fucked up" being taken over by Pentex. Amusingly, Pentex is established to ''absolutely despise'' the Seventh Generation, nearly as much as they hate the Garou. |
| 175 | ** As with most of the Old World of Darkness first editions there was a lot of BeenThereShapedHistory and BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy with many a major historical figure or movement being attributed to an appropriate Garou tribe. While this didn't go away entirely the Revised Edition cut way back on this, with most of human history being ''human'' history with the Garou sometimes taking advantage of it or helping it along but generally focused on their own struggles rather than what the humans were getting up to. Several Revised Tribebooks even have tribal elders warning young werewolves not to get involved with human politics if they can avoid it as it's usually none of their business. |
| 176 | * EcocidalAntagonist: The game's primary villainous force is the Wyrm, the embodiment of decay, entropy, and destruction, and its many servants. The modern Wyrm is quite insane, and what was once a natural force of renewal now manifests as the defilement and destruction of everything good about the natural world. Areas of Wyrm influence are typically filthy, polluted hellholes, and its active servants are for the most part actively invested in ruining everything else -- most notably the MegaCorp Pentex, which uses its appearance as a legitimate corporation as a front for its mission to pollute both nature and the bodies of humanity and hasten the final collapse of civilization. |
| 177 | * EldritchAbomination: |
| 178 | ** The Wyrm, the spirit of destruction whose unchecked actions are destroying the world. Its peers in the Triat of the greatest spirits are just about as alien and uncaring, although much less immediately hostile. Unfortunately, all of them are absolutely integral to the very existence of the universe, and their insanity in an animistic world means that the fundamental fabric of the universe is inherently broken, self-destructive, and evil. Yes, this game is set in a CrapsackWorld. |
| 179 | ** Nexus Crawlers also qualify. They have alien goals, their appearance can induce mind-shattering terror in onlookers, and they can [[RealityWarper warp reality]] at will. |
| 180 | ** Grammaw, a colossal Thunderwyrm revered as a goddess by Black Spiral Dancers, qualifies as both an {{eldritch abomination}} and an {{eldritch location}}. Grammaw nests underneath the Trinity nuclear testing site in New Mexico and serves as a living caern for the Trinity Hive. Grammaw exists simultaneously in the physical world and Umbra, houses elemental spirits throughout her body, induces terrifying visions and disfigurements in those passing through her system, and can even grant rebirth to Garou she deems worthy. |
| 181 | * EldritchLocation: |
| 182 | ** The Umbra in general qualifies as as eldritch location. |
| 183 | ** According to some accounts, ''reality'' was once this, filled with overlapping and contradictory planes. In the revised Silver Fang tribebook, when Albrecht points out that the creation stories of the Changing Breeds differ, Byeli claims that the world was govered by different laws of reality in ancient times. |
| 184 | -->'''Byeli:''' Could not different stories have taken place in different lands, each with its own spiritual rules? Why must Gaia's creation be uniform and true everywhere? There are different degrees of Wyld, Weaver and Wyrm in all aspects of Her creation. Why not different laws or physics for different places, all within the same era? |
| 185 | * EmbarrassingNickname: Nobody ever said deed-names are just for ''cool'' deeds. The unlucky schmuck whose massive screw-up has witnesses will probably end up with one of these. |
| 186 | * TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: It is right there in the title. |
| 187 | * EnemyMine: |
| 188 | ** Went from a strong undercurrent in first and second edition to possibly the main theme of the game in the third and 20th Anniversary editions. The Garou are confronted with a literal world-ending crisis, and even in their weakened state would probably win handily if they could just work together. But, of course, they can't. WordOfGod became fond of observing that the Garou Nation would not stop the Apocalypse... but a pack might. |
| 189 | ** The Black Furies hate the Get of Fenris, the Shadow Lords hate the Silver Fangs, the Red Talons '''really''' hate the Glass Walkers, and the Wendigo hate everyone except the Uktena, but it's not uncommon to find members of opposing tribes in the same pack, where they put aside their differences for the greater good. Individual members can become friends even if they hold that other tribe's general views in low regard. Except the Red Talons, whose genocidal hatred of humanity makes them ''so'' difficult to work with, storytellers often forbid them as player characters and might even cast them as villains. In ''W20'', it's stated that a number of other werewolves have fears that the Red Talons will fall to the Wyrm due to their hatred and brutality, or that they may have already started to... and that these fears are ''definitely'' not baseless. |
| 190 | ** And ''everyone'' hates the Bone Gnawers, except the Glass Walkers and Children of Gaia. The Gnawers just shrug. |
| 191 | ** Even within tribes, the Uktena -- who have long embraced oppressed minorities -- have had to deal with young Garou from opposing gangs in the same pack. |
| 192 | ** The game books include several scenarios in which Gaia Garou team up with Black Spiral Dancers. In ''The Valkenburg Foundation'', the player characters have the option of teaming up with a pack of Black Spiral Dancers who want to destroy the Puppeteer banes. In ''Rage Across the Heavens'', the Perfect Metis' guardians have the option of accepting succor from a sept of Black Spiral Dancers who believe that the Perfect Metis is a Wyrmish messiah. In one possible Time of Judgment scenario, the Garou Nation forges an uncomfortable alliance with the (now grown) Perfect Metis and the Black Spiral Dancers against the Weaver. |
| 193 | ** In one section of a Time of Judgment scenario, the Weaver can give the Garou a powerful weapon. This opens up the possibility to the players that the Weaver might not just be working together out of necessity, but is using the Garou to be triumphant over Wyld and Wyrm both. |
| 194 | * EqualOpportunityEvil: The Wyrm isn't picky about those it recruits into its ranks. Corrupted shapeshifters, spirits, and humans of diverse backgrounds can be found among its minions. Not to mention Black Spirals don't care about and even love Metis. Compare this to various Garou tribes that limit membership due to breed, class, sex, or ethnic background. You can see why the Wyrm's got a numbers advantage. |
| 195 | * EverybodyHatesHades: An in-universe example. A fair number of the totem spirits the Garou revere are entities associated with death and destruction that are remembered as monsters in human mythology when Garou know that they are intimidating but necessary elements of nature and the spirit world that are ultimately loyal to Gaia. Fenris and Wendigo are likely the biggest examples. |
| 196 | * [[ThreateningShark Everything's Even Worse With Sharks]]: The Rokea are weresharks, and they're ''very very'' dangerous. They stop aging after their first change, can literally eat anything at all (and consider this the go-to answer to most threats), and have nothing resembling human morality. And they can turn into sharks or tall hulking shark men with CLAWS AND RAZOR-SHARP SKIN. |
| 197 | * EvilMakesYouMonstrous: Fomori, humans and animals possessed by Wyrm-Spirits (willingly or not), are almost all physically deformed into hideous monsters sprouting malformed limbs and orifices, rotting inside from infectious fungus or pus-filled tumors, and/or dripping acid and mucus from six-inch barbed talons. In very rare cases fomor are nearly-human in ''appearance'' aside from an UncannyValley effect. |
| 198 | * TheExile: The Ronin, Tribeless Garou either as a result of having violated some law so heinous that excommunication is the only possible solution or Garou who have become disillusioned with the way the other Tribes are handling things. Ronin still gather in "Prides". |
| 199 | ** The first Ronin was also the First Metis, who is still alive. And still pissed off for being ostracized and exiled for his parents' violation of the Litany. |
| 200 | * ExtraStrengthMasquerade: The amount of supernatural weirdness ordinary people [[WeirdnessCensor are able to ignore]] gets a little extreme. Of course, the Delirium inflicting amnesia and panic on any human who sees shapeshifting helps out, and most shapeshifters go to great lengths to minimize even the occurrence of Delirium. |
| 201 | * {{Expy}}: |
| 202 | ** The Wyrm totem G'louogh has much in common with Shub-Niggurath from the Franchise/CthulhuMythos. Both have jumbled features that constantly reshape themselves, and both spontaneously give birth to vile young. |
| 203 | ** Empress Aliara, one of the Maeljin Incarna, is an expy of Slaanesh from ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''. Both characters serve as gods of hedonism and sexual depravity, take on whatever form an onlooker finds most beautiful, and oversee a spirit-world realm full of pleasures and temptations that doom those who partake. |
| 204 | ** Great Trash Heap, a Bone Gnawer totem, is an expy of Marjory the Trash Heap from ''Series/FraggleRock''. Both are sentient piles of garbage who offer wisdom to supplicants. |
| 205 | ** In the Mokolé breedbook, there's a twisted and corrupted Mokolé who performs in the costume of a big purple dinosaur in a children's television series created by Pentex, who also runs a torture pit in the Atrocity Realm where he does horrific things to the spirits of children. His character's name is [[Series/BarneyAndFriends Braney]]. |
| 206 | * FaceHeelTurn: Several factions have betrayed Gaia's cause. |
| 207 | ** Among the Children of Gaia, members of the Bringers of Eternal Peace camp believe that true peace will be realized when the Wyrm destroys the world. The Children of Gaia see them as akin to Black Spiral Dancers and kill them whenever possible. |
| 208 | ** Among the Stargazers, the Oroboreans are dangerously close to becoming this. The Oroboreans long to free the Wyrm from confinement, but engage in sinister and violent practices in order to understand the Wyrm. |
| 209 | ** ''Apocalypse: Time of Judgment'' contains scenarios in which one of the Garou tribes falls to the Wyrm and attacks the Garou Nation. |
| 210 | * FantasticRacism: |
| 211 | ** The werewolves against most of the other werepeople, such as the spiders, hyenas, aurochs, cats, bats, boars, bears, snakes, crocodile/dinosaur/dragon hybrids, coyotes, and rats. Only the ravens, sharks (for being in the middle of the ocean), and foxes (for not existing at the time) were unaffected. Three were totally wiped out by werewolf genocide and as a result, there is much mutual distrust to be had. It's one of the reasons why the Apocalypse is approaching in the first place, because the various shapeshifters are supposed to be working ''together''. |
| 212 | ** Ratkin (wererats) want to exterminate most of humanity, werewolves (with Bone Gnawers being slightly more tolerated due to having Rat as their totem), and everyone who objects; and for Ananasi werespiders and Nagah weresnakes "Better Than You" is not only their motto, but their way of life. Such sentiments exist all around, it's just that the non-wolf shifters lack the power to really act on them. |
| 213 | ** Even those non-wolf shifters who aren't pretty much automatically hostile to all or almost all outsiders still are often portrayed as [[{{Jerkass}} major dicks]], particularly towards werewolves. |
| 214 | ** The Simba werelions committed genocide against the Ajaba werehyenas, who now are almost extinct as a result. This, of course, led the Ajaba to universally hate all werelions and kill them without mercy whenever possible. |
| 215 | * FantasticSlurs: |
| 216 | ** Werewolves have a wealth of derogatory terms for their enemies and even their own breeds. "Leeches" for vampires is perhaps the most famous. Other shapeshifters, due to the above genocidal wars and FantasticRacism, tend to call Garou "dogs." |
| 217 | ** Inversion: "Bitch" is used in a totally non-derogatory way. |
| 218 | ** In a [[DownplayedTrope downplayed]] example the Garou refer to all other werecreatures as "Fera," a term they don't consider insulting but implies that the Garou are uniquely important and the rest can be clumped together under a single heading, something only the Garou believe. The others tend to use the term "Changing Breeds" to refer to all werecreatures, including the Garou. |
| 219 | * FatalFlaw: Several Time of Judgment scenarios show how fatal flaws undermined the various shape-changers. |
| 220 | ** The Nuwisha alienated many Garou with their trickster ways. When the Wyrm targeted the Nuwisha for genocide, their reputation created difficulties for them when they sought refuge among the Garou. |
| 221 | ** The Black Furies naively revered the Wyld for much of their history. This spelled doom for them when a quarter of the tribe contracted the Wyld-tainted Metamorphic Plague. In the alternative scenario, their sexism manifests as a pogrom to kill all men. |
| 222 | ** The Bone Gnawers were unwilling or unable to reign in the tribe's "rabble". In one Time of Judgment scenario, the rabble fell to the Wyrm long before the Apocalypse. Servants of the Wyrm helped the rabble stabilize themselves and claim territory, after which the rabble killed, converted, or drove off the other Bone Gnawers. |
| 223 | ** The Children of Gaia, who take desperate risks to make peace, perform a ritual to heal the Wyrm incorrectly and awaken the Wyrm instead. |
| 224 | ** The Get of Fenris always placed too much emphasis on relentless combat and too little on subtlety. This gung-ho attitude drove the tribe to charge head-first into subterranean tunnels to fight the Black Spiral Dancers. Even when it was obvious that the Black Spirals were luring them deeper into the tunnels with {{defensive feint trap}}s, the Get pursued their prey anyway, until the tribe fell to the Wyrm. |
| 225 | ** The Uktena's close study of the Wyrm always worried the other tribes, and their strategy of binding banes under caerns was dangerous. In one Time of Judgment scenario, these bound banes corrupted the tribe's Bane Tenders, who in turn corrupted the rest of the Uktena. |
| 226 | ** The Red Talons' uninhibited hatred of humans led them to eat human flesh. This resulted in the contraction of a prion disease, which they in turn passed on to other wolves, annihilating almost all of their wolf kinfolk. |
| 227 | ** The Wendigo's self-righteous hatred of the white man caused them them to infiltrate a nuclear sub and attempt to start WW III [[DisproportionateRetribution over a police shooting at a rally]], leading to their eventual damnation. |
| 228 | ** The Shadow Lord tribe was unforgiving of failure. In the scenario in which Grandfather Thunder petitions Gaia to make him a Celestine, the tribe collectively fails to complete the task that would have elevated Grandfather Thunder's status. Unable to cope with this failure, Grandfather Thunder and the Shadow Lords fall to the Wyrm. |
| 229 | ** The Black Spiral Dancers saw nothing wrong with cultivating madness and dysfunction among their members. The tribe grew weak as a result, allowing other fallen Garou tribes to take charge of them, absorb them, or take their place as the Wyrm's favored servants in several scenarios. |
| 230 | * FateWorseThanDeath: Being turned into a fomor (for humans) or forced into the Black Spiral Labyrinth (for werewolves) are just the most common of many examples the World of Darkness offers. Werewolves that have walked the Black Spiral (willingly or no) can also be turned into a fomor, for double the horror. |
| 231 | * FictionalDocument: ''Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth''. Like many other White Wolf examples, this was eventually [[invoked]]{{defictionali|zation}}sed. |
| 232 | * FirstPersonDyingPerspective: This is one of the powers of the Corax (wereravens); by eating one of the victim's eyes they can see the last moments of the victim's life. |
| 233 | * ForTheEvulz: Upheld, in that this seems to be the primary motivation of most Wyrm-creatures, like Banes, Fomori, and Black Spiral Dancers. Subverted, in that this is NOT the primary motivation of the Wyrm itself. As its core, the Wyrm just wants to escape from the pain of being trapped forever in the webs of the insane Weaver. |
| 234 | * FurAgainstFang: Werewolves and vampires hate each other. Werewolves see vampires as agents of their sworn enemy, the Wyrm, and since most of the vampires in the setting see killing as ''just another thing'' after a while they're not entirely wrong. However, their tendency to strike at vampires regardless of how corrupt they are is more than a little extreme. Meanwhile, Vampires have no collective opinion on shapeshifters and little desire to go to war with an enemy that tends to physically outclass them, on the individual level at least. However, all but the most [[TheFundamentalist fundamentalist]] of Werewolves will tolerate a FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire and even work with one if their interests align, and it's an OpenSecret that certain Werewolf tribes like the Glass Walkers, Shadow Lords, and Uktena maintain Camarilla contacts. The only vampire factions the Werewolves consider evil beyond all debate are the [[ReligionOfEvil Sabbat]] -- with good reason, since the Sabbat are AxCrazy on their good nights -- and certain independent clans like the Followers of Set. Nosferatu and Bone Gnawers basically have an unspoken agreement to stay out of each other's way; some say the two tribes often exchange information, but if such a thing happens, it's an extremely closely guarded secret. Otherwise, Kindred and Garou are usually content to avoid each other. |
| 235 | ** Hatred of vampires is taken up to eleven by the Silent Striders. See ItsPersonal below. |
| 236 | ** Werewolves and vampires equally have a KillOnSight attitude toward Abominations (vampirized werewolves). |
| 237 | [[/folder]] |
| 238 | |
| 239 | [[folder:G-L]] |
| 240 | * GaiasVengeance: That's your characters (and werepeople in general). Bonus points since the chief spirit of the Earth (or the Universe, depending on interpretation) is actually named Gaia. The Garou, and the Fera in general, were created to be Gaia's "Claws and Teath". |
| 241 | ** The Black Furies in particular think of themselves as Gaia's Vengeance. The Red Talons, too. Perhaps even more so. Their primary suggestion for defending the world is "kill and eat all of those fucking Earth-murdering idiot humans". |
| 242 | * GeneticMemory: Expressed through the Garou's Past Life trait (whether it's {{Reincarnation}} or ancestral memories varies by edition), the Mokole werelizards' Mnesis (much more powerful ancestral memories), and -- due to shapeshifters' past cullings of humans -- {{Muggles}}' delirious reaction upon seeing werecreatures' war forms, often compared to baby mice running from a hawk's silhouette. They often forget what they see afterwards. Werecreatures call this effect the Delirium, and consider it very helpful in maintaining the [[{{Masquerade}} Veil]]. Retconned for werewolves in Revised. The "Past Life" background was changed to "Ancestors", and involves direct communication with literal ancestor spirits (which better explains the Bone Gnawers, Glass Walkers, and Silent Striders lacking access to the background; the former two are too modernist to care, the latter are cursed). |
| 243 | * GlorySeeker: Shapeshifters can advance in rank and gain access to cooler Gifts by gathering Renown through acts of bravery, honour and wisdom. The kind of Renown you get for defeating enemies is even called "Glory." |
| 244 | * UsefulNotes/{{Gnosticism}}: The game's cosmology borrows from Gnosticism. The Triatic Wyrm is a demiurge masquerading as the true Wyrm of balance, and much of the suffering in the WTA world can be laid at his feet. The Urge Wyrms and Maeljin Incarna can be likened to archons. The true Wyrm of balance, trapped in the fabric of reality and unable to fulfill its original purpose, is not unlike Sophia. |
| 245 | * GodIsFlawed: |
| 246 | ** The three members of the Triat are supposed to be collaborating to keep the forces of the cosmos in balance. Unfortunately, they're either too busy struggling against each other or too indifferent to perform their tasks properly. For example, the Weaver imprisoned the Wyrm in the web of creation, the Wyrm is slowly killing Gaia in his attempt to break free, and the Wyld could care less about the situation. |
| 247 | ** Some sources suggest that Gaia is flawed, or at least shortsighted. The narrator of the Corax tribebook speculates that Gaia lacked foresight when she created life. |
| 248 | --> "Gaia's not an omnipotent, omniscient God, not in the sense in which you learned the drill in Sunday school. I mean, she created everything, including all forms of life, but it's almost as if she didn't recognize, in a gut kind of way, that everything she'd created would have consequences." |
| 249 | * GodIsInept: The three members of the Triat are extremely powerful but lack common sense. The Weaver decided that it would be a good idea to bind the Wyrm in the web of creation, then ignored the huge problems this created for Gaia. The Wyrm has been bound in the Weaver's web for eons but can't seem to extract himself from it, despite being a powerful EldritchAbomination. The Wyld has been standing by while all of this has been going on, too stupid or apathetic to do anything about it. Even the Corax tribebook speculates that the Wyld was off "picking his toes" during the primordial incident with the Weaver and Wyrm. |
| 250 | * GoMadFromTheRevelation: |
| 251 | ** The Black Spiral Dancers are completely insane, thanks to dancing the Black Spiral Labyrinth. This is a nightmarish spirit-scape in which their minds are ripped into little bits, exposed directly to the agony and hate and rage of the Wyrm, force-fed divine revelations of its plans for destroying the world, and then more-or-less stapled back together. Not that insanity stops them from being cunning and extremely dangerous foes. |
| 252 | ** The Wyrm, according to many shapeshifters, broke and went insane when the Weaver caught him/it in her/its spirit-webs too tightly and ''crushed'' it. All the horror and evil cooked up by the Wyrm is both an expression of its insanity and agony, the result of its frenzied writhing around trying to escape, and its attempt to blow up the world so it can escape and/or cease to exist. |
| 253 | ** The Delirium is basically this trope, applied to humans. Any normal (non-kinfolk) mortal who sees a shapeshifter in its war-form, or witnesses a were-spider disintegrating into lots of little spiders, gets unhinged. Usually they run away in a mindless panic or turn catatonic, and afterwards they either forget what they saw or hallucinate that they saw something else entirely. |
| 254 | ** For that matter, some of the stories suggest that the Weaver went mad first, after an existential crisis brought about by the realization that it could never make a timeless, beautiful structure due to the mutations of the Wyld and the destruction of the Wyrm. |
| 255 | * GoodIsNotNice: |
| 256 | ** The Garou Nation, in many respects, can be summed up thusly. {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s is another good description. |
| 257 | ** The totem spirits that serve as patrons to the Garou tribes qualify. While tribal totems aid Gaia's warriors and wage war against the Wyrm, plenty of them (such as Fenris, Griffon, Great Uktena, and Grandfather Thunder) are angry, dangerous beings. Even the more compassionate tribal totems, such as Pegasus, Unicorn, and Rat's nurturing aspect, are ''not'' to be trifled with. |
| 258 | ** Gaia is good, but she ain't nice. She created said werewolves, and such things as pain spirits. |
| 259 | * GoodShapeshiftingEvilShapeshifting: |
| 260 | ** BlackAndGrayMorality aside, most of the more "heroic" Garou appear healthy in all their forms, since deformity is considered by some tribes to be a sign of [[EldritchAbomination Wyrm]] corruption. By contrast, the Wyrm-worshipping [[EvilCounterpartRace Black Spiral Dancers]] are frequently disfigured, either due to being metis-born or exposure to the Wyrm's corrupting radiation, and their Crinos forms reflect this: expect to see red or green GlowingEyesOfDoom, grotesque bald patches, and fur colors featuring jet-black, greenish grey, or even stark white tones. |
| 261 | ** Played with in the case of the more ominous Fera breeds: though the [[SpiderPeople Ananasi]], the [[RatMen Ratkin]], and the [[SharkMan Rokea]] all have forms based on frightening animals, they're also staunch defenders of Gaia and firmly opposed to the influence of the Wyrm... though the Ananasi's manipulative tendencies, the Ratkin's SocialDarwinism, and the Rokea's BlueAndOrangeMorality frequently make them the {{Token Evil Teammate}}s of the Fera. |
| 262 | ** Some Fomori have the power to shapeshift, with especially powerful and willful specimens being able to turn into just about anything. However, because their powers are due to being [[DemonicPossession infested by Wyrm-spirits]], whatever forms they take are always hideous in some fashion. Johnson, the [[HalfHumanHybrid Ferectoi]] exemplar in ''Freak Legion'', is depicted undergoing a horrific transformation into a carapace-skinned Creator/HRGiger-eseque combat form... and more disturbingly, [[TransformationExhilaration he appears to be getting off on it]]. |
| 263 | * GreenAesop: Gaia's power, which is expressed in all things green and living, is pretty much the only thing keeping the Wyrm from eating the world and every soul that lives on it. Polution is one of the ways that her power is weakened and she can be killed if it's allowed to go on long enough. |
| 264 | ** One of the main antagonists of the world are Pentex, an EvilInc who are actively trying to corrupt nature and people. Toxic waste dumps, oil spills, clear-cutting forests and other such desasters are all planned and executed, leaving it to the player to go on a mission to stop them. |
| 265 | * TheGrotesque: Garou are forbidden from mating with each other. Whether that means any romantic involvement or just making babies depends on the tribe, but the products of such unions are known as Metis; deformed, sterile wretches that often rip through their mother's womb upon birth. For most shapeshifters that even ''can'' produce babies from such unions, the resulting Metis are just as deformed. The Glass Walkers are (in)famous for keeping all their metis -- even those too deformed to fight -- and adopting every metis they learn of. Hey, they have higher Gnosis than homid Garou, and don't have to be trained to walk upright. |
| 266 | * GroupedForYourConvenience: The Tribes all have their own interests and traditional abilities, which can be used to determine a lot about their typical members. |
| 267 | * HalfBreedDiscrimination: Get of Fenris who belong to the Ymir's Sweat camp are descendants of ancient Get who had children with Inuit partners. Because of their indigenous ancestry, they are not well-regarded by other Get of Fenris. |
| 268 | * HealingFactor: One of the things that makes the various Changing Breeds so powerful compared to other supernaturals in the old ''World Of Darkness'' -- they can shrug off most forms of damage very quickly, and they can heal off even aggravated damage much more easily than anyone else. The exception is the Kitsune, who are vastly more squishy as a result. |
| 269 | * HeroicSacrifice: |
| 270 | ** The Rite of Still Skies. Which required 13 garou, one from each of the remaining tribes to sacrifice themselves in 13 separate caerns in order to [[SealedEvilInACan Imprison the Storm Eater Bane]]. |
| 271 | ** The ''entire'' Croatan tribe, in order to prevent the [[EldritchAbomination Eater-of-Souls aspect of the Wyrm]] from breaking through into the physical world. |
| 272 | ** In one Time of Judgment scenario, the Black Furies storm Malfeas in order to "blind" the Wyrm. The Black Furies die en masse but deal a huge blow to the Wyrm's forces. |
| 273 | ** In another Time of Judgment scenario, the Garou nation and Fera take part in a massive rite meant to free the original Wyrm of balance. If performed correctly, hundreds of shape-changers die and Malfeas is destroyed, but the Wyrm of balance is freed from the Weaver's web and empowered to restore the universe to harmony. |
| 274 | * HillbillyHorrors: ''Rage Across Appalachia'' runs on this trope. |
| 275 | * Myth/HinduMythology: The Wyld is the creating chaos, the Weaver molds the chaos into a form, and the Wyrm destroys what has to be destroyed. That may be based on TheThemeParkVersion of the three main Hindu gods -- Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Shiva the destroyer. Many Indian Shapeshifters explicitly link the Triat with the three deities. |
| 276 | * HopelessWar: Many of the Elder Garou doubt a victory against The Wyrm is even possible, however in stark contrast to what one might expect, this doesn't demoralize them in the slightest. Because even if they know that they might lose, the Garou still want to go out fighting for whoever and whatever they choose to fight for. |
| 277 | * HulkSpeak: The Garou do this when in their Crinos form, at least when trying to speak human languages. |
| 278 | * HumanityEnsues: Garou are just as likely to be wolves who turn into human form. They've become the minority in recent nights, however, thanks to the near-extermination of wolves. |
| 279 | * HumanityIsAdvanced: Zig-zagged. Humans are weaker and spiritually less advanced than the Changing Breeds. However, humanity's knack for technology and ties to the Weaver have made them the dominant species on the planet, to the Garou's chagrin. |
| 280 | ** Also zig-zagged in the revised Silver Fang tribebook. A Silver Fang lore-keeper claims that humans are "a dream of Gaia's given life before their time, a premature birth, and so are not fully formed, lacking fur, claws, sharp teeth, or anything with which to thrive in the wild." Ancient humans allegedly crawled out of Gaia's womb while she slept, before she could give them a full array of attributes. Under the Weaver's patronage, however, humans unknowingly created technology spirits and dominated the planet through technology. |
| 281 | * HumansAreBastards: And the werewolves are bastards too[[note]]though at least they care about the fate of the world, unlike humanity...though [[WellIntentionedExtremist that still motivates them to act even worse]] at times[[/note]]. As well as almost everyone else. At least the approaching Apocalypse forced most shapeshifters to seriously rethink their behavior. |
| 282 | -->'''Pavel:''' It is continually amazing to me that the worst foes we ever have to fight are not Wyrmspawn, but rather human beings themselves. |
| 283 | * IJustWantToBeYou |
| 284 | ** Members of the Pretanic Order envy the Black Spiral Dancers, and their rites and theology heavily mimic those of the Black Spiral Dancers. One Pretanic Order document ends with a plea to the Black Spiral Dancers to accept human devotees as fellow servants of the Wyrm. |
| 285 | ** The Ronin chapter of ''Outcasts'' is narrated by a Garou who was ejected from the Silver Fangs for jeopardizing the Veil. He refuses to gracefully accept his Ronin status and move on, convinced that he can prove himself to the Silver Fangs. |
| 286 | ** ''Caerns: Places of Power'' features a Bone Gnawer of [[AmazonBrigade Black Fury]] ancestry named Michael Atreides. He longs to be a Black Fury and stubbornly believes that the tribe should accept male members. |
| 287 | ** A particularly loathed group among the Garou are called Skin Dancers. Kinfolk who are upset that they weren't born Garou, they gather the pelts of five Garou, prepare them with a special ointment, and use a profane rite to become Garou. Unless the skins were given willingly, the new Garou is automatically corrupted by the Wyrm. |
| 288 | * ImAHumanitarian: |
| 289 | ** There's a rule in the Litany (the werewolf code of laws) specifically forbidding Garou from eating people. However, [[SuperpoweredEvilSide falling too deep into frenzy]] may (if you're playing a human-born werewolf) result in your character sampling the long pig in the throes of your frenzy. |
| 290 | ** Among the Bone Gnawers, members of the disgraced Man-Eaters camp consumes human flesh. The Bone Gnawers ruthlessly hunt down these cannibals, and have even developed a rite for rooting out Garou who eat human flesh. |
| 291 | ** Among the Silent Striders, members of the Eaters of the Dead camp ritually consume dead people's brains to gain their memories. Excessive use of the brain-eating rite turns them into slaves of the Urge Wyrm Foebok. |
| 292 | ** Some Red Talons happily eat human flesh, convinced that humans are a prey species. In one Time of Judgment scenario, the Red Talons contract a prion disease from eating human flesh, which they pass on to their wolf kin. The prion is harmless to Garou but deadly to wolves, killing over 90% of the global wolf population. |
| 293 | ** The [[EvilCounterpart Black Spiral Dancers]], on the other hand, have no qualms about eating humans or fallen Garou opponents. |
| 294 | ** Some of the other Changing Breeds, such as the Mokole and Rokea, are perfectly content with eating anyone, human or otherwise, that ticks them off. |
| 295 | * InNameOnly: The Hakken, Japanese Garou that practice Bushido, are supposedly an offshoot of the Shadow Lords. But whereas the Boli Zouhisze and Kuchu Ekundu (Chinese Glass Walkers and African Red Talons, respectively) have the same ideals as their base tribes but with different cultural dressings, the Hakken are absolutely nothing like the regular Shadow Lords and they even look down on their Western kin. They're effectively their own tribe in all but name. |
| 296 | * InterspeciesRomance: Actively enforced. Garou ''cannot'' mate with other Garou (as the resulting offspring are almost always TheGrotesque), and must mate with non-were humans or wolves in the appropriate form to sire/conceive new Garou. This has the expected result when a male Garou impregnates a female wolf -- a feral intelligence that has no real understanding of human civilization. Lupus pups are infamously bestial and have to be taught to ''walk upright.'' |
| 297 | * InTheEndYouAreOnYourOwn: When the Apocalypse arrives, the Garou receive almost no help from the Fae or Mages. Subverted in that the Apocalypse allows the Garou and Fera to finally collaborate against the Wyrm. |
| 298 | * InternalizedCategorism: |
| 299 | ** Low self-esteem (and even self-hatred) is not uncommon among metis, who are stigmatized for their deformities and illicit conception. |
| 300 | ** In one of the official collections of short stories, the hero goes through severe identity confusion and self-hatred as he discovers that he's actually a child of the evil werewolf clan, the Black Spiral Dancers. (He eventually snaps out of it and concludes that he doesn't have to be like his ancestors.) |
| 301 | * InvasionOfTheBabySnatchers: The Seventh Generation, a cult that kidnaps and abuses children. |
| 302 | * InvisibleToNormals: As about werewolves, see GoMadFromTheRevelation. Also, normal humans have no ability to perceive the SpiritWorld, which often makes them easy prey for evil spirits. |
| 303 | * ItsPersonal: All shapechangers hate vampires for one reason or another. The Silent Striders however, take it to a higher level. The tribe was originally based in Egypt. However an ancient ungodly powerful vampire (known as Set, and who was implied to be something just as bad before he became a vampire) placed a curse on them that forbade them from being in Egypt, dooming them to wander. |
| 304 | * JoinOrDie: When the Black Spiral Dancers capture Gaia Garou, they give their captives the choice of traversing the Black Spiral Labyrinth or facing execution. |
| 305 | ** In the Time of Judgment scenario in which the Shadow Lords fall to the Wyrm, Grandfather Thunder kills Whippoorwill, leaving the Black Spiral Dancers bereft of a tribal totem. The Shadow Lords demand that the Black Spirals either join their tribe or face execution. |
| 306 | * KissingCousins: The Silver Fangs are quite, quite inbred, prompting the predictable round of commentary from the other tribes. (Also, if you read the writeups for Yuri and Sophia Tvarivich -- twins who were arguably the tribe's greatest heroes -- they come off more as a [[BrotherSisterIncest passionate romantic couple]] than as staunchly loyal siblings.) |
| 307 | * KryptoniteFactor: Guess. It's worth noting that the Corax and Mokole are allergic to ''gold'', and the latter have an additional weakness against silver. However, whereas {{Silver Bullet}}s are inexplicably all over the place in the World Of Darkness, gold weapons are rare in the extreme. |
| 308 | ** And by ''inexplicably'' we mean ''One of the major movers and shakers of global economy with a couple of arms manufacturers under its wing has a massive feud with werewolves and knows exactly what helps against nine-foot-tall killing machines that can appear from thin air and rip your head off.'' The actual prevalence of silver weaponry varies depending on the setting and the GM, obviously. |
| 309 | ** Werewolves themselves use it as well. Their finest and most legendary weapons are Klaives, essentially silver swords with a spirit of war bound to them. They're mostly used for dealing with the Black Spiral Dancers, but do come out unfortunately often when Garou duel over grave insults or positions of leadership. Certain tribes have other silver weapons, the best-known of them being hammers for the Get of Fenris and Labrys (double-headed axes) for the Black Furies, but there's also the african Hakarr, a hunga-munga or throwing iron (well, silver) that is used by Bastet. |
| 310 | ** And finally, werewolves are not averse to finding out the Kryptonite of other supernaturals and using it against them, leading to for example a whip with a spirit of Helios bound into it that burns vampires like actual sunlight. |
| 311 | ** The Samsa wereroaches take aggravated damage from insecticide. |
| 312 | * LawfulStupid: |
| 313 | ** It is ''said'' that if someone has the ''slightest'' bit of Wyrmtaint or is the kindest FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire, most Garou tend to claw it first and ask questions later. Except the Children of Gaia, who are sometimes StupidGood and would sooner have tea with the monsters they're supposed to kill. The truth is more complex, of course, but these are stereotypes commonly held by outsiders to both werewolves as a whole and the Children of Gaia specifically. |
| 314 | ** "Lawful Stupid" ''describes'' the Weaver, with added paranoid schizophrenia and ControlFreak. |
| 315 | * LegionOfDoom: ''Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth'' describes a late 19th-century gathering in which Wayland Webley became the Laird of Demborough. Among those in attendance were Black Spiral Dancers and human Wyrm servants, including Jeremiah Lassater (head of Premium Oil, a predecessor of Pentex); Harold Zettler and Peter Culliford (who later became high-ranking executives at Pentex), and Gunther Draggerunter (a powerful Seventh Generation leader). |
| 316 | * LevelUpAtIntimacy5: The "Rite of Clouds and Rain" involves Garou having sex in Crinos form to decrease their chances of frenzy. Since this directly breaks the Litany, its existence is the subject of considerable contention (and some FanonDiscontinuity). |
| 317 | * LightIsNotGood: The Wyld opposes the Wyrm and the Weaver. That does ''not'' make it safer to stick your nose in the Wyld than into a vat of acid. Werewolves that make this mistake seldom get a chance to make it twice. Even spending too much time near the Wyld is enough to permanently change you into a completely different person. |
| 318 | * LighterAndSofter: The 20th anniversary edition's espouses a less bleak view of the setting. Yes, it's still a CrapsackWorld, but the seven signs of the apocalypse are now amended by an eighth one that boils down to "Stop moping around, get your shit together and you just might win!" |
| 319 | [[/folder]] |
| 320 | |
| 321 | [[folder:M-S]] |
| 322 | * TheMafia: The Glass Walkers, drawing from their roots from Italy, have deep ties with the mob. This branch, the Wise Guys, controlled the tribe for most of the 20th century before the Walkers shifted their focus to legit business and technology. |
| 323 | * MagicDance: Dancing is a component of several Garou rites. |
| 324 | ** Supernatural dancing can also be used by Wyrm minions. In ''Rage Across Appalachia'' a bluegrass band called the Pigeon River Howlers (comprised of Black Spiral Dancers) perform at square dances and barn dances. Their kinfolk circulate among the unsuspecting crowd, teaching newcomers dances that mimic the Black Spiral. The evil dances plant seeds of decay in the newcomers' souls. |
| 325 | * MagicKnight: The Uktena Garou and some Bastet are known for practicing sorcery. Their magic isn't as strong as [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade the Tremere's]] BloodMagic or {{TabletopGame/Mage|TheAscension}}s' True Magick, but they still have all the physical advantages of werecreatures. |
| 326 | * {{Mana}}: Here called "Gnosis". It represents your character's spirituality. Gnosis is used to fuel less aggressive powers, but it also represents a character's ability to empathize with the land. When you're wading through knee-deep toxic sewage, ''that is not a good thing.'' |
| 327 | * MandatoryMotherhood: All Garou and Kinfolk absolutely ''have'' to breed to replenish the ever-shrinking numbers of Garou warriors in the fight. Not even the most liberal thinkers within the Garou Nation ever seem to suggest otherwise. |
| 328 | * MarsNeedsWomen: |
| 329 | ** The Black Spiral Dancers sometimes abduct humans and wolves (preferably kinfolk) for use as breeding stock. |
| 330 | ** In ''Rage Across the Amazon'', the Black Furies of El Dorado kidnap indigenous men when their breeding stock runs low. They fail to see the {{irony}} of their violence, as descendants of Black Furies who migrated to the Amazon rain forests [[{{Hypocrite}} out of disgust with men's brutality toward women]]. |
| 331 | * MassiveRaceSelection: All 12 surviving Changing-Breeds are playable with their own set of rules and Gifts. Fomori, Gorgons, Drones, Kami, and Kinfolk also have rules for playing them. And with the anniversary Changing Breeds out, even the extinct breeds got stats. |
| 332 | * MegaCorp: One of the game's primary antagonists is Pentex, an enormous corporation run by minions of the Wyrm to carry out its dark schemes under the guise of big business. Pollution, manipulating Washington, hostile takeovers, you name it. |
| 333 | ** Its subsidiaries often satirize real-world Megacorps, such as the fast-food chain O'Tolley's (three guesses about what it represents), which is rumored to brainwash its employees and customers, and sell the ''other'' white meat. |
| 334 | ** Funny side note, White Wolf's World of Darkness counterpart, Black Dog, is a Pentex subsidiary noted for degredating the human spirit with dark and violent [=RPGs=]. |
| 335 | *** And as of W20, they've been taken over by creatures previously slumbering beneath the [[VideoGame/EVEOnline Scandinavian ice]], with it left deliberately ambiguous whether they're ancient Banes or some entirely different brand of unwholesomeness. |
| 336 | * MindRape: The Black Spiral Labyrinth of the Wyrm is MindRape Central. See GoMadFromTheRevelation. |
| 337 | * MinmaxersDelight: Three words universally loathed by Werewolf players: Lupus Stargazer Ahroun. Starting Gnosis is determined by breed (Lupus get the most), starting Willpower by tribe (Stargazers get the most) and starting Rage by auspice (Ahroun get the most). Of course, taking this combination may prove short-sighted to the extreme if your GM enforces at least a modicum of roleplaying: |
| 338 | ## Lupus are born of wild wolves, and often start play unfamiliar with basic human concepts such as table manners, toilets, speech, or even ''walking upright.'' |
| 339 | ##Stargazers are a classic pastiche of far-eastern monks -- ascetic hermits -- and have difficulty interacting even with ''other Garou.'' Only the Red Talons -- fanatical anti-humans who wish the Impergium was still in effect and who refuse to even learn the human concept of ''time'' -- are more removed from regular human society. |
| 340 | ## Ahroun are inherently HotBlooded, driven to take the already-extreme aspects of their ProudWarriorRace up to eleven. |
| 341 | *** End result; a literally bestial hermit with TestosteronePoisoning. They're ''great'' savage kung-fu fighters, absolutely shit at ''anything else.'' This is even set out in the rules -- they are locked into three specific Gift lists. |
| 342 | * MiracleFood: There is a Gift the Bone Gnawer tribe has called Cooking. It allows the Bone Gnawer to turn anything into bland but nutritious food. ''Anything''. |
| 343 | * TheMissingFaction: The World of Darkness being what it is, the current diversity of Changing Breeds represents only a portion of a much greater variety that existed in the past. A worryingly large number of ancient strains -- both tribes within greater breeds and entire breeds of shapeshifters -- have been wiped out over history. Some were destroyed by the servants of the Wyrm, but a lot more than one would expect died out in internecine wars among each other, and a lot of the more recent cases were explicitly wiped out by the Garou over cases of mistaken identity and/or the Garou in question being entitled jerks. |
| 344 | ** Within the Garou themselves are: |
| 345 | *** The White Howlers, a Tribe who settled in Scotland and [[ThisMeansWarpaint chose the Picts as Kinfolk]]. They thought that in order to stop the Wyrm they would take the fight directly to it. In the process, they became the original [[TheDarkSide Black Spiral Dancers]]. |
| 346 | *** The Croatan, a third Tribe of American Indian Garou who were the "middle brother" between the Utkena and the Wendigo. They sacrificed their entire Tribe to prevent the Eater-of-Souls from manifesting in the Americas after European colonization. |
| 347 | *** The Bunyip, a Tribe that found their way through the Umbra to Australia and had to use unique rituals to mate with the thylacine (a.k.a. Tasmanian tiger) without a native wolf population. When European Garou made it to Australia, they unintentionally killed their own kind in a war over control over Australia's Caerns after being fooled by one of the Black Spiral Dancers. |
| 348 | ** Amongst the Changing Breeds (although some may not be as "missing" as they seem): |
| 349 | *** The Apis, were-aurochs who served as Gaia's matchmakers. Wiped out by the Garou, except for one who went mad and became the basis of the myth of the Minotaur. |
| 350 | *** The Camazotz, were-bats who served as Gaia's nighttime messengers (complimenting the Corax were-ravens of the day). Wiped out by the Black Spiral Dancers in most of the world and the Shadow Lords during the Spanish colonization of the New World, in the latter case because of their resemblance to Tzimisce vampires. A remnant population turned out to have hung on in Australia, but the extinction of most of their kin pushed their totem, Bat, into the clutches of the Wyrm and thus cost them their ability to procreate. |
| 351 | *** The Grondr, were-boars who served as Gaia's cleaners and purifiers and were able to destroy Wyrm-taint by literally digesting it. Wiped out by the Garou when the latter became convinced that the Grondr had fallen to the Wyrm, although some remaining Kin sought out the Wyrm and were corrupted into the Skull Pigs. |
| 352 | *** The Khara, the original Tribe of the Bastet who were were-saber-toothed-cats. Went extinct with their animal-kin, but their genetics live on in other Bastet. |
| 353 | *** The Ceilican, a Tribe of Bastet who had links to the fae and generally resembled domestic cats. They were secretive, even amongst the Bastet, and were thought to be extinct many times throughout history. The Revised Edition had their last big gathering lead to most of them being slaughtered by the Black Spiral Dancers, with the survivors forced to walk the Black Labyrinth and become the Hellcats. The 20th anniversary edition has brought them back and retconned out their prior extinction. |
| 354 | *** The Okuma, a Tribe of Gurahl who counted the moon bears, sun bears, and giant panda as Kin. Wiped out by the other Changing Breeds in Asia due to machinations by East Asian Kue-jin vampires who the Okuma reviled compared to other Changing Breeds. |
| 355 | *** The Ratkin Bards, who kept the Breed's history and society. Wiped out by the Garou in earlier editions. W20 implies the Bards simply went insane as a result of failing to cope with the oncoming apocalypse and became the Freak Aspect Munchmausen. |
| 356 | *** The Ao, a Varna of Mokole who had turtle and tortoise Kin. They simply disappeared entirely. The Mokole theorize that they used their Mnesis to predict the oncoming apocalypse and traveled deep into the Umbra to hibernate and wait out the end of the world. |
| 357 | *** The Lizard Kings, the ancestors of the Mokole who were truly were-dinosaurs (and pterosaurs and plesiosaurs). Breeding between themselves created the Drachid form, a humanoid reptile form that enabled the Lizard Kings to interbreed and was even available to other contemporary Changing Breeds. They were wiped out entirely in a supernatural event called the Wonder-Work that coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs, and to such an extent that nothing remains of their bodies or their civilization, and not even the Mokole's Mnesis can tell them what actually happened. |
| 358 | *** An unnamed ammonite Changing Breed that was at war with the Rokea and an unnamed "bristlecreeper" (primitive mammal) Changing Breed also went extinct during the Wonder-Work, or at least long before the evolution of humanity. |
| 359 | *** The Insect Races, Changing Breeds created by the Weaver that took bees, hornets, termites, ants, and locusts as Kin. They were wiped out by the Ananasi before humanity existed. An Insect Race of moths also existed, but apparently rebelled against the Weaver and were punished. |
| 360 | *** The Corax claim were-megatheriums were wiped out in the War of Rage. The Nagah believe there was a race of were-freshwater fish that was wiped out. The Shadow Lords claim a Changing Breed of were-falcons was wiped out and the Fianna claim they were responsible for the extinction of the were-otter and the were-eagle Changing Breeds. |
| 361 | *** The Beast Courts of Asia claim that there still is a hidden Changing Breed of were-orangutans in the rainforests of Indonesia. |
| 362 | *** A RunningGag was also that the Corax would joke about were-rhinos -- until Pentex actually [[TemptingFate artificially made some evil ones]]. |
| 363 | * TheMole: |
| 364 | ** Black Spiral Dancers think that they can woo Gaia Garou into the Wyrm's embrace. They fail to understand that some Gaia Garou pretend to draw close to the Wyrm so as to undermine the Wyrm's forces. |
| 365 | ** Among the Shadow Lords, members of the Bringers of Light camp infiltrate Wyrm strongholds (at great personal risk) so as to subvert them from within. |
| 366 | ** Among the Stargazers, members of the Oroborean camp seek to free the Wyrm of Balance by learning as much as they can about Wyrm lore, sometimes with Black Spiral Dancer hives. They later "cleanse" and "liberate" Wyrm minions by torturing and killing them. |
| 367 | ** A handful of Uktena have pretended to join the Black Spiral Dancers in order to gain information or undermine the tribe. Anhai joined the Black Spiral Dancers, only to lead them away from where a new Uktena caern was being created. White-Eye-ikthya ''may'' be a deep cover Uktena agent within the Trinity Hive. |
| 368 | * MultipleEndings: ''Apocalypse'', released as part of Time of Judgement, details several potential endings to the MetaPlot. |
| 369 | ** The Last Battleground: The Wyrm is summoned into the Near Umbra by a series of rituals. It and a newly released legion of Banes rampage across the Umbra, attacking and potentially destroying several realms. All eventually leading to a BigBadassBattleSequence on the titular Last Battleground. |
| 370 | ** A Tribe Falls: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin as the title suggests]], a tribe falls to the Wyrm, which Tribe is completely at the discretion of the Storyteller. This is then followed by the fallen tribe being undercover among the Garou before fully revealing themselves. The Tribe then causes a highly destructive or near-apocalyptic event (The Bone Gnawers create TheVirus, the Red Talons erupt several volcanoes, the Fianna going full RapePillageAndBurn on the British Isles, etc.) followed by TheFinalBattle against the rest of the Garou. |
| 371 | ** The Weaver Ascendant: The Weaver displaces the Wyrm as the BigBad, starting with getting it's own MegaCorp which [[EvilerThanThou eliminates Pentex]], followed by nearly closing the Gauntlet. The Changing Breeds then cause as much chaos around the world to reverse the sealing, before a fully-grown Perfect Metis leads them in a SuicideMission into the heart of Malfeas to free the Balance Wyrm. |
| 372 | ** Ragnarok: Rorg, incarna of the asteroid belt, hurls a massive asteroid at Gaia in a misguided attempt to save her once and for all. Luna tanks the hit instead and [[EarthShatteringKaboom promptly breaks in half]]. Moon shards rain down on earth, killing billions, starting nuclear winter and essentially destroying human civilization. The sheer chaos generated by the event allows the Wyrm and it's forces to break free into the world for the FinalBattle against the forces of Gaia. This route itself has 3 potential endings. |
| 373 | *** The Wyld ending: The Wyrm is defeated, but humanity is essentially reduced to the Stone Age, making way for a new power to rise in it's place. |
| 374 | *** The Weaver ending: Humanity rebuilds, and the Weaver's dominance leads to a TheMagicGoesAway scenario, as the Changing Breeds fade from existence due to no longer being needed. |
| 375 | *** [[TheBadGuyWins The Wyrm Ending]]: The Wyrm triumphs, Gaia dies, the Red Star replaces the sun, and what remains of Earth and the Umbra become endless [[MorDor Mordors]] ruled by Maeljin and [[TheQuisling Pentex]]. |
| 376 | * MixAndMatchCritters: The Mokole can transform into dinosaurs. Or rather, ''dinosaur-themed'' creatures which might combine the size of a sauropod with the tail of an ankylosaur and the teeth of a tyrannosaur. And pretty feathers. And gills. |
| 377 | * MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Some Garou are poor fits for the tribes into which they were born. |
| 378 | ** Gesar, a Stargazer by birth described in ''Warriors of the Apocalypse'' and ''Caerns: Places of Power'', is a bon vivant who has fond memories of his wild youth in Hong Kong. He ''hates'' being Gatekeeper for a Stargazer caern. |
| 379 | ** Some Red Talons find humans fascinating and secretly reject their tribe's anti-human prejudice. ''Warriors of the Apocalypse'' describes Stands-Like-Mountain, a Red Talon who is curious about humans and who wants to live in a city someday. ''Caerns: Places of Power'' describes Greasy Fur, another Red Talon who masquerades as a human in a small Alaskan town and loves comic books. In 20th, a faction with in tribe called Whelps' Compromise exists as "The Red Talons who Don't Want to Exterminate the Humans". Almost none of them admit to belonging to it out of fear of the rest of tribe's wrath. |
| 380 | ** One of the character templates in the revised Black Fury tribebook is a ''very'' submissive Ragabash lupus who can't understand why she shouldn't be submissive. |
| 381 | ** In the first edition Stargazers tribebook, the narrator is instructing a Get of Fenris who is seeking enlightenment and wants to join the Stargazer tribe. |
| 382 | * NegativeSpaceWedgie: Broken Lands are places where the conflict between Weaver and Wyld energies tears a hole in the Gauntlet, allowing the physical and spiritual worlds to overlap. [[{{Cloudcuckooland}} The result is surreal and disturbing.]] |
| 383 | * NeurodiversityIsSupernatural: If a human child fails to become a wereraven (because their magical spirit egg was stolen before their first transformation) they tend to become autistic suddenly (despite autism spectrum disorders being congenital in Real Life). |
| 384 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: |
| 385 | ** According to the stories this is how the Wyrm went insane. The Weaver grew tired of seeing her works destroyed by the Wyrm when their time had come so she spun a cage and thrapped the Wyrm inside. She failed to take into account that the Wyrm would eventually get out no matter what she did and that the hunger while trapped would drive him completely mad. |
| 386 | ** The werewolves' mistakes and misjudgements helped to create many of the dooms that threaten the World of Darkness. The Impergium alienated humanity and afflicted humans with the Delirium, while the War of Rage created animosity between the Garou and other Fera who didn't end up entirely extinct. |
| 387 | ** The Shadow Lords and Red Talons contend that ''ending'' subjugation of humans might well be their biggest collective mistake. |
| 388 | ** Several of the Changing Breeds claim that it was some error or slight on their part that kicked off the War of Rage. Meanwhile, some ''other'' changing breeds claim the Nuwisha were responsible, but the werecoyotes themselves put little stock in this claim. |
| 389 | * NobleSavage: Native American werecreatures call themselves The Pure Ones, and the Western Hemisphere was supposedly a perfect utopia where everyone lived in harmony before White people (known as "Wyrmcomers") showed up. While the White settlers certainly did subject the Natives to slavery, disease, rape, and genocide, the Native American tribes still had their fair share of wars, slaves, and concubines among themselves. Eventually subverted, as sourcebooks described this as more CulturalPosturing on the part of said werecreatures than honest historical fact, and depicted some of the problems that did occur before the European invasions. |
| 390 | * NobleWolves: All Garou who fight for the sake of Gaia regard themselves as such. The degree objective outside observers would do so varies from individual and tribe to individual and tribe[[note]](Children of Gaia tend to get high marks, Red Talons rather low)[[/note]]. |
| 391 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: A rather mild example is a wealthy Silver Fang Kinfolk family called the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family Rothchilds.]] |
| 392 | ** In ''Freak Legions'' there is a mention of "a fallen movie director. Once flavor of the month and talk of the town, this former video rental clerk turned mega-celebrity grew fat on success sucked from the soured tit of civilization's underbelly. He made the decomposition of the human society entertaining. The violent PULP of his bent FICTION reveled in Gaia's passing. When someone more disgusting came down Hollywood's garbage chute, everyone forgot him - except RAW. The Wyrm made that fomor into a leader, trained to deal death to Garou and well armed with immensely potent Eyes of the Wyrm. He possesses the director's viewfinder to oblivion." An obvious jab at Creator/QuentinTarantino who was a former video rental clerk. |
| 393 | * NoDelaysForTheWicked: One sourcebook claimed the Black Spiral Dancers invariably track down and kidnap those incredibly rare White Howler throwbacks born outside the tribe, using corrupted guardian spirits called Kin-Fetches who've stuck around for centuries just waiting to squelch SpecialSnowflakeSyndrome. Meanwhile everyone else's uncorrupted Kin-Fetches, which are ''specifically assigned'' to each infant cub, are known to have trouble sticking around just for the years until the kid hits puberty. |
| 394 | * NoIndoorVoice: Zhyzhak, one of the highest-ranked Black Spiral Dancers, perpetually screams at the top of her voice to drown out all those other voices in her head. |
| 395 | * NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization: Every shapeshifter has the power to inspire lust in a chosen onlooker. The intent is to help along reproduction, since werewolves are born, not made, but it's still essentially a free rape card. The only restrictions are that it can't alter a person's sexual orientation or sway them if taken and firmly monogamous, but these just play into the trope even more. |
| 396 | ** As of W20, it can't make anyone do something that they don't, on some level, actually ''want'' to do. A successful application can win over someone who's interested but hesitant, but "just not into you", for whatever reason, is sufficient to keep it from working as intended. This is intended to be ''less'' creepy but it backfires completely, since it still alters a person's ability to consent with a clear mind, and it lets the offending Garou say "You know you wanted it all along." |
| 397 | * ObliviouslyEvil: The Weaver, and humans in general. |
| 398 | * {{Oireland}}: You ''did'' see the tribal description for the Fianna, right? |
| 399 | * OneStatToRuleThemAll: As is traditional for pre-[=nWoD=] White Wolf games, Dexterity is better than any two other Attributes combined. |
| 400 | * OurAngelsAreDifferent: In the caern at Gish Abbai in Ethiopia, described in ''Rage Across the World'', a gateway opens every decade or so and closes after a lunar month. This gate is guarded by a being resembling a winged human made of light, who bars all entrance to the garden that lies beyond it. No-one has ever bested it in combat, but a few especially wise Garou have persuaded it to retrieve powerful healing items from the garden in exchange for completing semingly impossible tasks. |
| 401 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: |
| 402 | ** One of the other groups of shapeshifters are Mokole werecrocodiles, whose warforms combine traits of [[DinosaursAreDragons dragons and dinosaurs]], with Asian Mokole being more draconic while the Western and Australian varieties are more saurian. Pound for pound, they are more powerful than the Garou but always lacked the pack mentality, hence their downfall. |
| 403 | ** Zmei (Wyrm dragons) are huge, serpentine monsters that are among the most powerful Wyrm creatures this side of Malfeas. |
| 404 | * OurWerebeastsAreDifferent: In addition to the titular werewolves, there are 11 other breeds of shapeshifters, described in their own Splat books: Ajaba (werehyenas), Ananasi (werespiders), Bastet (werecats), Corax (wereravens), Gurahl (werebears), Kitsune (werefoxes), Mokole (werecrocodiles/lizards/dragons), Nagah (weresnakes), Nuwisha (werecoyotes), Ratkin (wererats), Rokea (weresharks). The Apis (wereaurochs), Camazotz (werebats), and Grondr (wereboars) used to exist to, but the Garou genocided them. There was also a group of Australian Garou called the Bunyip who bred with the thylacines, but they were also wiped out by the Garou. ''W20 Book of the Wyrm'' describes four man-made, wholly Wyrm-claimed Changing Breeds -- Anurana (werefrogs, a failed experiment that escaped into the wild but still remains loyal to the Wyrm), Kerasi (wererhinos, shock troops meant to disrupt the Ahadi), Samsa (werecockroaches, meant to be the ultimate survivors but driven by madness), and Yeren (wereapes, debauched predators of the boardroom). |
| 405 | * OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Characters can shift at will into ''any'' form attributed to werewolves: hairy and slouching wolfman, tall lupine-headed wall of death, giant wolf, and normal wolf. Plus, their spiritual nature gives them a plethora of magical abilities. Being a werewolf has a lot to do with the moon, but full moon transformations are not the norm. This is also true for the other shapeshifters, each of which has at least three forms. Numerous other stereotypes about werewolves, depending on Merits or Flaws, might be in affect. A shifter might have a flaw that makes them vulnerable to wolfsbane, but that's on an individual level. |
| 406 | * PartialTransformation: Aside from their three hybrid animal-human forms (only one or two hybrid forms for some werebeast species), werewolves can learn the rare ability of shapeshifting one body part at a time. |
| 407 | * PerfectionIsStatic: Having been driven insane by an existential crisis, [[EldritchAbomination the Weaver]]'s goal is to calcify the universe in a state of stasis where [[DestroyerDeity the Wyrm]] can no longer destroy her creations and [[PrimordialChaos the Wyld]] can no longer change them - for she believes that she's already developed perfection, and any change is a backslide into ''im''perfection. As such, [[TheBadGuyWins if the Weaver achieves victory]] in ''Apocalypse'', the end result is a universe reduced to a static, clockwork WorldOfSilence with [[TheMagicGoesAway no magic]], [[CreativeSterility no creativity]], [[CannotDream no dreams]], no emotions, no thought beyond what's strictly necessary, and no drive to change ''anything.'' Only the ''Wyrm's'' [[VillainWorld victory]] can remotely be described as a worse ending. |
| 408 | * PlanetOfHats: How the Changing Breeds were deliberately made. The Garou are all warriors because Gaia created their entite species to be warriors. The Gurahl are all healers because that's what they were created to be, the Nuwisha are all pranksters and so on. There is variation, different Garou approach being warriors in different ways (say one being TheBerserker, another being a MagicKnight and a third being a ColdSniper) and nothing says they can't have personal interests outside of fighting as well but they are all warriors. |
| 409 | * PsychologicalTormentZone: |
| 410 | ** In the 20th anniversary edition of ''Umbra: The Velvet Shadow'', Erebus is described in these terms. Garou who wish to be rid of extreme Wyrm taint are submerged in the silver lake of Erebus, where the realm's guardians compel them to come to terms with their sins. |
| 411 | ** In ''Rage Across the Heavens'', Umbral travelers visiting Vulcan must tread the Path of Ashes, where they must master their greatest weaknesses and fears. |
| 412 | ** All circles of the Black Spiral Labyrinth inflict psychological torment on those who enter. One's innermost secrets, fears, and pain are laid bare before the Wyrm. |
| 413 | * PsychoSupporter: The original role of the Shadow Lords was that of the eternal Beta, the ones that do the things that are necessary, yet sufficiently atrocious that their Alpha (nation-wise the Silver Fangs) can't be seen doing them. By now, part of the tribe sees this devotion as misplaced due to the Silver Fangs being considered inept, so the tribe has some factions that stay with the traditional Beta role and some that try and make a grab for power themselves. |
| 414 | * QuestionableConsent: Werewolves regularly mate with wolves of approximately dog-level intelligence as well as humans under the effects of the Garou's mind control. |
| 415 | * RankScalesWithAsskicking: Stated to be in force and {{justified|Trope}} for the upper echelons of Pentex in the 20th Anniversary Edition. |
| 416 | * RecycledInSpace: Werewolf: [-THE WILD WEST!-], Werewolf: [-THE DARK AGES!-], and Hengeyokai: [-SHAPESHIFTERS OF THE EAST!-]. And quite literally IN SPACE with the ''Rage Across the Heavens'' book described below. |
| 417 | * {{Retcon}}: W20 has done a few -- most notably, it outright states that the Black Spiral Dancer involvement in the extinction of the Bunyip is exaggerated at best, and is more an excuse to reduce the culpability of the Garou in the crime of annihilating one of their own tribes out of racism and intolerance than an accurate accounting of events. |
| 418 | * RippedFromTheHeadlines: The first edition of the game featured the Seventh Generation, a cult that abused and sacrificed children to the Defiler Wyrm. The Seventh Generation may have been a shout-out to the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s and early 1990s, in which people feared that large-scale Satanic cults were abusing and sacrificing children. |
| 419 | * Room101: The seventh circle of the Black Spiral Labyrinth forces devotees to experience their greatest fears and sorrows, sever their most cherished ties, and swear fealty to the Wyrm, once and for all. |
| 420 | * SavageWolves: Due to Rage, most Garou have to struggle against becoming this at least sometimes... that is, if they do not [[BloodKnight embrace it]]. |
| 421 | ** Garou of any alignment embody this trope when overcome with rage. More specifically, however, a few tribes hew to this trope more closely than most. |
| 422 | *** The Get of Fenris are a Germanic BarbarianTribe who value strength, ferocity and prowess in battle above all. They're extremely warlike as a group, and tend to be involved in more ongoing conflicts than any other tribe. They view themselves as one of the few tribes to remember that the Garou are meant to be Gaia's savage warriors; many other werewolves consider them to be violent savages. They revere Fenris, the Great Wolf, one of the mightiest of the spirits of war, and his bellicose brood. |
| 423 | *** The Red Talons are the only tribe to consist solely of lupus -- that is, wolf-born -- Garou. They've spent millennia watching their territories and wolf kin being driven into dying, isolated pockets by the growth of civilization, and deeply hate humanity as a result. Some simply wish to restore the wild places and the wolves to numbers and health; others want the total eradication of the human race. Savage, vicious, and brutal in their attacks against human encroachment, many Garou fear that the Red Talons are in danger of falling outright to the Wyrm. They revere Griffin, a spirit of anger and the hunt, alongside lesser spirits of beasts, monsters and the hunt. |
| 424 | *** The Wendigo are one of the three tribes native to the Americas, and were savagely beaten back when the Europeans -- and the European Garou -- came to the continent. Those that remain harbor a deep, bitter grudge towards the interlopers and their treacherous kin, and wage a constant, furious war against a world of enemies -- among which they count most other Garou, whom they view as Wyrm-tainted. They revere Great Wendigo, the cannibal spirit of winter, and other spirits of ice, winter, and hunger. |
| 425 | ** The Black Spiral Dancers are more savage than any Gaian Garou -- whereas the most vicious Gaians are ultimately driven by genuine grudges and the desire to save the world, the Dancers are mad, depraved {{Social Darwinist}}s seeking to hasten the world's destruction. |
| 426 | * ScienceIsBad: Kind of. The Weaver is the patron of science, and she's a reckless nutcase who is largely responsible for the Wyrm going crazy and evil -- and a few Garou, such as the Red Talons, certainly think that the world has been going downhill ever since mankind worked out metallurgy. Still, ''Book of the Weaver'' makes it clear that Science is actually her least maleficent aspect, and in fact it being choked out by Dogma (blind faith) and Technology (which isn't curious about the world at all) is a symptom of her increasing despair and ControlFreak tendencies. |
| 427 | * ScienceIsWrong: Much like ScienceIsBad, it depends on the book. ''Rage Across New York'' is easily the worst about it, though, repeatedly emphasizing a difference between "evidence-based medicine" (which is continually dismissed as just using pills to hide symptoms) and "real healing" (MagicalNativeAmerican rituals). |
| 428 | * {{Sentai}} : In Hengeyokai: [-SHAPESHIFTERS OF THE EAST!-], the standard grouping of five shapeshifters is called a Sentai, and uses a variation of the Five Man Band. |
| 429 | * SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny: The book ''Possessed'' features an old man who spent many years standing with Bible in hand at the college gates, berating female students for their skimpy clothing. Turns out that his true motivation was that he enjoyed staring at beautiful young women and commenting on their bodies and clothing. The whole moral superiority thing was merely an excuse that he used to trick everyone (surely including himself) that his behavior was acceptable. To make it worse, indulging his hatred of beautiful young women and his self-inflicted sexual frustration opened him up to what can be called demonic possession. Having turned into a Fomor minion of the Wyrm, [[MuggingTheMonster he ends up attacking a young beautiful female co-ed werewolf, making himself the first kill in her new career as a slayer of wyrm-tainted monsters]]. |
| 430 | ** Bizarrely averted in the case of werewolf/wolf mating. Sex and pair bonding between creatures with human level intelligence and dog level intelligence is seen as completely normal. In real life, such things would be... problematic. |
| 431 | ** Averted again in the case of Garou abilities that let them mind-control humans into having sex. This is, again, seen as just a useful tool to keep the number of werewolves steady. |
| 432 | ** In the earlier-edition ''Freak Legion'' sourcebook about Fomori, one of the [=NPCs=] is the director of a CureYourGays compound, who has sex with many of his clients while turning them into Wyrm-possessed monsters. |
| 433 | * ShapeshifterLongevity: Downplayed with the Garou; according to the revised edition of the game, it's quite possible for werewolves to live for up to a hundred and twenty years thanks to their enhanced health and resilience... but because the Garou live such violent lives in defence of Gaia, most of them never get that far. |
| 434 | * ShapeshifterModeLock: |
| 435 | ** Garou had a version of this in the past, used to keep Garou in Crinos form if they were entering a difficult battle or for Litany violations. But the knowledge to make it was lost with time. In the modern day, they have a mystic rite that will allow a dying metis to assume the form of either a human or wolf, so that the corpse does not arouse suspicion. |
| 436 | ** A particularly creepy one comes from any shifter that becomes a drone, which is to the Weaver what fomori are to the Wyrm. Because the Weaver takes those possessed by its spirits for a specific purpose, it locks them into one particular form forever. It's said to drive the Fera stuck in one form forever mad. Generally, however, the Weaver will only make a shifter into a drone either as punishment or if it feels it has no other choice, as the Weaver recognizes the usefulness that a shapeshifting agent can have. |
| 437 | ** A temporary form of this hits if a member of the Fera expends ''all'' of both their temporary Rage and temporary Willpower, immediately reverting to their breed form and unable to shift until they've regained at least one temporary point of each. Luckily for most shifters, regaining Rage is fairly easy (Willpower will vary depending on circumstances). |
| 438 | * ShoutOut: The were-cockroaches created by Pentex are one big reference to Literature/TheMetamorphosis: they are called Samsa (the name of the protagonist), and their Crinos-like form (a giant cockroach-human hybrid) is called Ungeziefer (the name of what he turns into in the original German). |
| 439 | * SinisterNudity: |
| 440 | ** ''Book Of The Wyrm'' features quite a few images of Wyrm-affiliated individuals naked, all of them designed to look as monstrous as possible. One early example features a female Black Spiral Dancer caught in the act of transforming into her Crinos form; she's naked, crawling on the ground with breasts out of view, and sporting an absolutely deranged look on her partially transformed face. |
| 441 | ** ''Freak Legion'' features several fomori depicted in various stages of undress, and given that their Bane-possessed bodies are often hideously disfigured, the results are commonly played for horror and disgust: |
| 442 | *** One image displays a completely naked woman who might look alluring if not for the [[BodyHorror cancerous growths covering her body]], the drool pouring down her lower lip, and the expression of pure hatred on her face. |
| 443 | *** The accompanying image for the "Second Head" Taint features a scantily clad woman opening her bodice to reveal a monstrous face growing out of her right breast. Incidentally, said face is depicted in the act of [[LecherousLicking licking another female fomori]] (who is clearly not into it). |
| 444 | *** The "[[HillbillyHorrors Fomori Families]]" entry has a charming shot of two members of the aforementioned Wyrm-tainted clans: both are more reptilian than human, complete with lamplike eyes and lipless grins, and they're both naked (one [[ToplessnessFromTheBack with her back to the reader]], the other with his genitals hidden by his crooked legs). Also, the female of the two appears to be pregnant and is sitting on a human corpse in a rather... [[ILoveTheDead suggestive pose]]. |
| 445 | *** Normalites are always depicted as naked and more akin to hunting hounds than human beings, having been driven to all-consuming hatred as a result of Pentex's Bane-tainted [[HeteronormativeCrusader "cure" for homosexuality]]. |
| 446 | ** The image for Howling Shamblers (Bane-possessed Garou who [[OurZombiesAreDifferent linger on after death]]) features one of the dead ones caught in the act of taking a bite out of unlucky victim. The Shambler is naked, ''oozing'' with decomposition, and the victim has hacked off her arm and head - but that hasn't stopped the now-severed head from remaining latched onto the victim's thigh. |
| 447 | ** ''Rage Across Appalachia'' features an image of a naked, heavily muscled man apparently meditating in the LotusPosition, feet crossed over his groin... and a gigantic tentacled Wyrm-affiliated EldritchAbomination hovering above him. |
| 448 | * TheSocialDarwinist: Shadow Lords and Get of Fenris sometimes fall into this philosophy, due to liking their AsskickingLeadsToLeadership ways a bit too much. The Silver Fangs don't allow anyone with "low breeding" into their tribe. Black Spiral Dancers and other Wyrm-servants don't particularly bother with justifications like this. |
| 449 | * SpecialSnowflakeSyndrome: Modern-day White Howlers, anyone? However, what's worse is when a player wants to be a Bunyip in the WildWest setting since they were still alive back then, and gives a convoluted story of how an Indigenous Australian wound up in Texas in 1850. And then there are players wanting to play a werewolf who's also a [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade ghoul]], [[TabletopGame/MageTheAscension sorcerer]], [[TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion medium]], and/or [[TabletopGame/ChangelingTheDreaming fae-blooded]]. |
| 450 | ** The Fae-Blooded aspect isn't entirely unreasonable due to the Fianna having a history with the fae, and their...[[ReallyGetsAround common means of recreation]] |
| 451 | ** In one of the supplementary books, it lists that in order for a player to play a relic White Howler (actually a Black Spiral Dancer Ronin), they have to fill up an entire Pure Breed background stat, and that labels them as someone to be hunted down by the Black Spiral Dancers at all costs. |
| 452 | ** For W20, the team in charge noted they felt they'd been fairly punitive on people who wanted to play 'last White Howlers' and so on, perhaps as an attempt to avoid SSS, and decided to take a different approach. You want to play one of the Lost Tribes or Breeds? Cool, go ahead. Might not be what they'd do, but it's your game, and that's what matters. There is now even an official White Howlers Tribebook for those that want to play one in the timeframe before their corruption by the Wyrm. |
| 453 | *** It ''does'', however, note that a last White Howler or reclaimer of the Bunyip/Croatan heritage is probably going to be central to any campaign they're part of and the Storyteller and other players should be prepared for dealing with a ''de facto'' "main character" before allowing it. |
| 454 | ** Earlier editions also noted that "Tribe" is as much upbringing and cultural identity as it is birth. A werewolf can be of White Howler blood, but with no extant White Howlers to induct them into the Tribe, and Lion having joined Griffin's brood and no longer acting as a Tribal Totem, these White Howler descendants have to join another Tribe or be Ronin by default. White Wolf also eventually published rules letting werewolves be Embraced and become vampire-werewolf hybrids called Abominations, and it's almost impossible to pull off (requiring the prospective Abomination to ''botch'' a Gnosis role to not just die during the Embrace, and the best way to survive long-term as an Abomination is to give one's soul over to the Wyrm completely). |
| 455 | * SpiritWorld: The Umbra. Besides including a reflection of the material world, it features many, many fantastic (and often dangerous -- the Wyrm and his chief servants reside in the Umbra) Umbral Realms, each with its own different set of physical laws, as well as strange, Lovecraftian deep regions. |
| 456 | * {{Splat}}: The Tribes are among White Wolf's original, archetypal splats -- categories of character with features mostly in common, detailed in a line of supplements. |
| 457 | * SquishyWizard: |
| 458 | ** The Kitsune werefoxes. By far the physically weakest of the Changing Breeds, and the only ones with no HealingFactor. However, they are incredibly adept with magic, and can even use Fox Magic to make new spells. |
| 459 | ** Seventh Generation and Pretanic Order cultists also qualify. While they can use Wyrm gifts and enter the Umbra, they're still biologically human, making them much weaker than banes, fomori, or members of the Changing Breeds. |
| 460 | * TheStarscream: The Shadow Lords, whose ManipulativeBastard mindset has more in common with vampires than werewolves (though this can be an advantage), plus they've long despised either the Silver Fangs' traditional leadership or their ineptness, depending on the source. |
| 461 | * StrengthEqualsWorthiness: Most War Spirits challenge Garou to honorable combat before teaching them gifts. It's also the general attitude of the Get of Fenris. |
| 462 | * StrongAsTheyNeedToBe: Several major spirits in the ''Werewolf'' universe suffer from this. |
| 463 | ** The original Wyrm of Balance can't liberate itself from the Weaver's web, even though its cosmic purpose is to destroy excessive parts of the Pattern Web. Once liberate, however, it suddenly has the power to restore balance to the cosmos. The Wyrm of Balance also can't reign in the Triatic Wyrm it spawned, despite being one of the three most powerful beings in the universe. |
| 464 | ** Ananasa is a powerful servant of the Weaver, creating life and diversity out of the raw energies of the universe. However, she wasn't powerful enough to escape from an opal containment cell in which the Weaver had imprisoned her. Then, in one Time of Judgment scenario, she becomes powerful enough to rewrite reality after escaping from the opal. |
| 465 | ** Pegasus, who is powerful enough to act as the tribal totem for an entire Garou tribe, somehow got gelded by a human man in ancient times. |
| 466 | ** Great Uktena (a massive horned serpent who breathes poison, swallows deer whole, and fells trees with his hiss) found himself at the mercy of a mere Garou with a spear in one Uktena legend. Moreover, Great Uktena failed to free the Wyrm from captivity in the Weaver's web, despite being a spirit whose ''original purpose'' was to find secret ways to break down the Weaver's web. |
| 467 | * SummonBiggerFish: An interesting example comes from the Amazon War. The Swiftclaw pack, seeing the failure of conventional tactics, decided to switch gears. Instead, they began destroying (relatively small) sections of the Amazon rainforest themselves, littering the destroyed areas with looted Pentex gear. They were called before Golgol Fangs-First and nearly stripped of renown and disgraced... until news arrived: the Brazilian government, having proof of Pentex's destructive acts, was beginning a full-scale investigation into their activities. This one move forced Pentex to confront an enemy they didn't have enough power to shrug off: a national government with the legal authority to throw them out. Pentex was immediately forced to divert resources from the war towards shaking off government attention, putting them on the back foot in the Amazon. |
| 468 | * SupernaturalPhone: The supplement The Book of the Wyrm gave us the Umbraphone, a mobile phone which can call up spirits across the Gauntlet (the spiritual barrier separating the real world and the Umbra). |
| 469 | ** Several Glass Walker Gifts were originally treated as binding a spirit to the character's PDA. With W20, the Gifts have since been rewritten to allow players to equip their characters with spirit-infused smartphones and tablets. |
| 470 | [[/folder]] |
| 471 | |
| 472 | [[folder:T-Z]] |
| 473 | * TakeThat: Sourcebooks are not shy about castigating players who get it wrong. To be fair, [[SelfDeprecation they also take shots at earlier books that got it wrong]]. |
| 474 | * ToxicInc: Pentex and many of its subsidiaries intentionally destroy the environment to make The Wyrm stronger. |
| 475 | * TheTrickster: This is the job of Garou of the Ragabash auspice -- to play devil's advocate, drag secrets out into the light, challenge old traditions to make sure they're still relevant in modern times, and keep the leaders and warriors from getting too full of themselves. It's also the role played by the Nuwisha werecoyotes (who are ''all'' Ragabash), and to varying degrees the Corax wereravens and Qualmi werelynxes. |
| 476 | * ThisBearWasFramed: The titular characters have a love-hate-relationship with the trope. On the one hand, it's a convenient way to avert suspicion and protect [[TheMasquerade the Veil]]. Use it too often and people might think about [[NiceJobBreakingItHero eradicating wolves and other wild animals, though...]] |
| 477 | ** Red Talons have a spell that inverts this, making it seem as if the bodies of those they have slain were mangled by human tools rather than fang and claw. |
| 478 | * ThrowTheDogABone: Several Time of Judgment scenarios allow marginalized characters to shine. |
| 479 | ** In the scenario in which the Black Furies charge into Malfeas to "blind" the Wyrm, Tiresias convinces his female tribemates to allow the tribe's male metis to participate in their {{heroic sacrifice}}. |
| 480 | ** In another scenario, the macho Get of Fenris finally acknowledge the mettle of a female warrior. Else, a Get of Fenris philodox, successfully defeats several of her tribemates in ritual combat and leads the tribe in battle against the Black Spiral Dancers. |
| 481 | ** In a non Time of Judgment manner, the descendant of the Shadow Lord who exterminated the last Camazotz admits his mistake and pays pennance to Bat, causing the spirit's aspect to be redeemed. |
| 482 | * ToxicPhlebotinum: Balefire. Black Spiral Dancers can throw or spew balefire at opponents, with devastating results. The substance also has ceremonial importance to the tribe and has been incorporated into some of their rituals, such as the Rite of the Vengeful Spider. However, exposure to balefire over the centuries has produced mutations among the Black Spiral Dancers. Moreover, some Black Spiral Dancers expose themselves to balefire in the hopes of gleaning insight, only to receive burns or tumors as a result. |
| 483 | * TrueCompanions: Werewolf packs have a tighter bond than the parties in any other ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' game. Whether or not they see each other as true friends or simply coworkers depends on the pack in question, but their tactics and totemic bond gives them an edge (and a connection to each other) that others can't beat. |
| 484 | * {{Tulpa}}: |
| 485 | ** The Urge Wyrms emerged from the thoughts and emotions of the original Wyrm of Balance when it found itself imprisoned in the Weaver's web. |
| 486 | ** According to Silver Fang lorekeepers, the first technology spirits were birthed by human dreams. The mass slaughter of humans under the Impergium created umbral disturbances that brought these spirits into the Near Umbra. |
| 487 | * UnknownRival: There are some elements of this in the relations between the Black Furies and the Get of Fenris. Stereotypically speaking, the Furies loathe the Fenrir for their intolerant ethos and their entrenched macho misogyny; their totem spirit, Pegasus, doesn't even allow Fenrir in the packs it patronizes. The Fenrir, meanwhile, think they've taken care of their sexism and racism issues (whether they actually have is another story) and says if the Black Furies want respect, they can earn it rather than demanding it for being female. |
| 488 | * UnreliableNarrator: The various Tribebooks for the Garou tribes and Breedbooks for the other Changing Breeds are told from the point of view of members of that tribe or breed and unsurprisingly [[BeenThereShapedHistory tend to place them at the forefront of events both mythological and historical,]] usually in a positive light. This frequently results in them contradicting each other. For example the Glass Walkers, the Children of Gaia and the Stargazers all claim to be responsible for ending the Impergium, generally according the other two tribes the honour of having "helped." |
| 489 | * UnstoppableRage: Werewolves can attempt to shrug off fatal wounds at the cost of entering berserk frenzy and attacking everything in sight, except (usually) their packmates. |
| 490 | * VampiricWerewolf: The ''World of Darkness'' forbids template stacking by default to avoid super special character syndrome, and indeed, werewolves who are Embraced by vampires usually just die. The unluckiest ones become Abominations, {{Tortured Monster}}s who have most of the powers of both creatures but are at constant risk of [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie falling to the Wyrm]]. |
| 491 | * VulnerableToItself: In one of the published Apocalypse scenarios, the Wyrm has grown so powerful only its own weapons can harm it. |
| 492 | * VillainousBadlandHeroicArcadia: Given that the entirety of the setting is built around a GreenAesop, it's not surprising that the heroes rule the wilderness and the villains squat in toxic waste dumps. |
| 493 | * WasOnceAMan: Most fomori are humans unwittingly transformed into their current states; while some [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity go crazy and embrace becoming a monster]], others bemoan their states and do what they do in a (vain) hope for a cure. |
| 494 | * WeakButSkilled: Corax wereravens and Nuwisha werecoyotes, befitting the two archetypal trickster breeds. Their half-beast forms aren't significantly stronger than normal humans, but they make up for it with maneuverability and magical Gifts. |
| 495 | * WeaksauceWeakness: In addition to silver, there is also radiation. |
| 496 | * WeAREStrugglingTogether: The thirteen tribes have a combined set of rules called the Litany, but all have different ideas on which rules are ''important''; there's also a lot of struggle within most tribes; and the fact that all werewolves are prone to [[TheBerserker berserk frenzy]] if mildly provoked doesn't help. As a result, the werewolves have all but annihilated all non-wolf shape-shifters, and completely wiped out one of their own tribes, the Bunyip. |
| 497 | * WeHaveReserves: Wyrm forces outnumber the Garou and their allies by a considerable margin. When they see something they want or need badly enough, they'll just throw troops at it till they get it. |
| 498 | * WeirdSun: |
| 499 | ** In the Umbra's Aetherial Realm, travelers can visit the sun, which is ruled by the celestine Hyperion and populated by solar spirits. The umbral sun is solid and habitable, and travelers can ride the solar winds it emits to other parts of the Aetherial Realm. |
| 500 | ** In Malfeas, the Umbral nerve center of the Wyrm, the desert ruled by the Nameless Angel of Despair has a huge black sun hanging overhead. |
| 501 | ** One portent of the Apocalypse is the appearance of Anthelios, a huge red "anti-sun" that can be seen in the skies of both the Umbra and the physical world. |
| 502 | * {{Wendigo}}: One of the tribes follows ''the'' Wendigo as their totem, and named themselves after it. The Wendigo are not evil, in fact they're staunch advocates for Native American rights and culture, but they're warlike and isolationist in the extreme and the Apocalypse scenario where they're subverted by the Wyrm (there's one for every tribe) rivals the Red Talons's for most likely scenario. |
| 503 | * WesternTerrorists: The Glass Walker Tribebook notes that there's a very dirty word for people fighting a private war, unsanctioned by any government, using asymmetric tactics and often hitting targets that are not even aware of having chosen a side in a cosmic struggle. The Garou may be heroes, but they're also very much monsters, and monstrous. |
| 504 | * WickedToymaker: Avalon Toys, a subsidiary of [[EvilInc Pentex]]. As with most of the companies under the Pentex banner, they're dedicated to spreading the influence of the Wyrm and furthering the downfall of the human race by any means available to them, namely by handing out toys that turn children into monsters -- both [[EnfantTerrible figuratively]] and [[BodyHorror literally]]. However, according to ''Subsidiaries,'' CEO Daniel Dial has been sidelining the monster-making toys in favour of toys that subtly whittle away at the free will of children, [[LongGame gradually]] ensuring a workforce of glassy-eyed zombies for other Pentex subsidiaries. |
| 505 | ** Daniel Dial himself is a prime example of this, having risen to prominence by designing and creating the child-eating [[BlobMonster Gooshy Gooze]]. [[spoiler: He's actually a [[TabletopGame/MageTheAscension mage]], specifically [[FallenHero a fallen member]] of the [[MadScientist Sons Of Ether]].]] |
| 506 | * WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: |
| 507 | ** Rage is one of the most important combat stats for werewolves, but it is also rolled to enter frenzy. Having a reserve of superhumanly intense anger and aggression on tap is useful, but it makes werewolves almost completely unsafe to have around squishy mortals. If you roll too many successes on any Rage roll, very bad things can happen. When frenzy gets especially deep it becomes the Thrall of The Wyrm, which is so horrific some Garou commit suicide over what they've done under it. |
| 508 | ** Also, the Silver Fangs tribe as a whole suffers for this -- after their ancestors tried to sit on both sides of the fence between Luna (spirit of the Moon) and Helios (spirit of the Sun), to cement their rule over the Garou Nation, they got slapped with a curse, which drives a sizeable percentage of them to insanity (for Silver Fang [[PlayerCharacter [=PCs=]]] being crazy is strictly optional). |
| 509 | * WomanWereWoes: |
| 510 | ** Black Furies are exclusively female, aside from a few metis males, due to the will of Pegasus and many members being {{Straw Feminist}}s. Thus, while all tribes do not have enough members, this increased restriction further decreases the number of Furies in the world. |
| 511 | ** Female Kinfolk may not be able to turn into werecreatures, but due to them being more likely to give birth to future shapeshifters, they are often forced to be bred by those they do not choose. |
| 512 | ** Due to the supernatural taboo prohibiting two werewolves mating, not only doing so guarantees the female will get pregnant with a metis baby, but for the last few months of the pregnancy she has to maintain the warform of Crinos to handle such a baby coming to term, and the birthing process can be rather bloody, with the inherent healing ability of being a Garou the only reason the female has any hope of surviving the birthing process. Even if she survives, she bears the stigma of bearing an automatically-sterile metis instead of a baby that could one day reproduce. |
| 513 | ** One short story features a female werewolf training to be a warrior. A werewolf's role in their society is determined by the phase of the moon they were born under, and those born under the full moon are Ahroun, or warriors. It's soon revealed that she's a runaway from the Get of Fenris tribe, and this subsection of the Tribe believes Fenris "does not allow the bitches of the Tribe to be warriors," and she ran away because she knew the claim that she was born under the crescent moon, making her a Theurge, was false. The matter is settled by the spirit of Fenris being summoned and validating her as being born under the full moon. The Get still rejects her, but the Children of Gaia Tribe welcome and adopt her.[[note]]Often, disinfected female Get join the aforementioned Black Furies.[[/note]] |
| 514 | * WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: The Wyrm himself. He originally had the duty of removing the dead or broken parts of the universe, but wasn't really evil. Then he got trapped somehow (the books are [[NoodleIncident rather vague about exactly what happened]]) and went insane, creating most of the bad stuff in the world. |
| 515 | * WorkingClassWerewolves: The Bone Gnawers tribe are required to live on the fringes of human society, often as homeless people. {{Averted|Trope}} by Silver Fangs, who are all European royalty to some extent, and many corporate-minded Glass Walkers. |
| 516 | * TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed: The Dark Ages and Wild West spin-offs border on that. Particularly the second iteration of the Dark Ages setting, which suggests the probability of the Apocalypse 800 years before the normal schedule. |
| 517 | * TheWormThatWalks: One type of fomori is called the Hollow Men -- after [[BloodyHorror having most of their internal organs ripped out]], the poor victim is then filled up as they're dying with a colony of small animals possessed by a Bane: popular choices include mice, rats, lizards, and various types of insects. They tend to creep out other fomori, which is sobering when one considers that some combination of BodyHorror and BloodyHorror go into making all of them. |
| 518 | * {{Yakuza}}: Asian Glass Walkers are sometimes members, but in the Revised edition found the Yakuza to be unchanging and very different from the Italian mafia. |
| 519 | * YouDirtyRat: Ratkin are diseased, crazy, and want to bring down civilisation. They're technically on Gaia's side, mind, but they are very much the embodiment of her GoodIsNotNice side - their original divine mission was to keep down the human numbers through famine and plague. |
| 520 | * YouSexyBeast: The game infamously has the Fera have an ability that makes them [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization incredibly attractive]] to potential mates. Later editions have tried to mitigate this... to questionable success. |
| 521 | * YouWouldntLikeMeWhenImAngry: The Crinos is the "war form" of werebeings. They become TheBrute with UnstoppableRage and cannot be reasoned with. It basically means, "The time for negotiation has long passed." |
| 522 | [[/folder]] |
| 523 | |
| 524 | [[folder: 5th Edition]] |
| 525 | * AdaptationalNameChange: A lot of the more problematic names of the original game have since been adapted with the Uktena becoming the Ghost Council, the Wendigo becoming the Galestalkers, and the Fianna becoming the Hart Wardens. |
| 526 | * AdaptedOut: The Metis and Kinfolk no longer exist due to no longer being a correlation between genetics and lycanthropy. |
| 527 | * AdaptationalVillainy: The Get of Fenris have fallen into corruption and become a rogue tribe that kills any Garou they deem insufficiently zealous. They are now the Cult of Fenris. |
| 528 | * AlwaysChaoticEvil: |
| 529 | ** The Get of Fenris have all been corrupted by hauglosk. |
| 530 | ** Averted now with the Black Spiral Dancers who can use a rite to break their ties with Bat. |
| 531 | * ANaziByAnyOtherName: The Cult of Fenris are explicitly compared to Nazis by the text and that killing them is alright. |
| 532 | * ArcWords: When will you Rage? |
| 533 | * BlackAndGrayMorality: 5th Edition emphasizes that the Garou's eco-terrorism is counterproductive and that the people unwittingly doing the Wyrm's business are often innocents far more than previous editions. However, the game gives absolute evil in the form of the Get of Fenris as well as other groups for the werewolves to fight. |
| 534 | * BlackAndWhiteInsanity: Hauglosk results in a werewolf developing this as they are unable to see the world as anything but needing radical ruthless solutions that only they can provide. |
| 535 | * BrainwashedAndCrazy: The Get of Fenris, now Cult of Fenris, have fallen to hauglosk and are now at war with other Garou in their desire to save Gaou. |
| 536 | * CentralTheme: What to do when you have failed at your central purpose in life. Do you give up, try to find something to do, or double down despite it being hopeless? |
| 537 | * DefectorFromDecadence: The Renunciate of Fenris Loresheet is for those Garou who left the Get of Fenris when it became the Cult of Fenris. |
| 538 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The Get of Fenris corruption is meant to invoke the rise of white supremacy and Far Right politics in light of things like global warming as well as other imminent issues. |
| 539 | * DownerEnding: The line's metaplot ends this way with Gaia either dead or dying and the war the Garou fought to save her ending in failure. |
| 540 | * FaceHeelTurn: The Get of Fenris have been corrupted and become radical zealots that will kill any Garou that doesn't meet their rigid standards. They are now known as the Cult of Fenris. |
| 541 | * HeroicBSOD: Garou can suffer this via Harano, becoming depressed and unable to contiue the war against the Wyrm. |
| 542 | * KnightTemplar: Hauglosk essentially is the condition of a werewolf being mentally and physically corrupted into one of these. |
| 543 | * {{Nerf}}: Werewolves have lost the ability to step sideways into the Umbra save through a separate rite. Worse, they can only stay in the Umbra for one scene without taking a point of aggravated damage unless they spend a point of willpower. |
| 544 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Quite a lot of the book is framed this way, arguing the Garou's millennia long war against the Wyrm has caused as much harm as it's stopped. |
| 545 | * {{Retcon}}: A lot of them are designed to clean up the settings more problematic elements. |
| 546 | ** Garou are not longer genetically predetermined even if they have a tendency to appear in certain bloodlines. |
| 547 | ** Metis no longer exist as a child of two Garou may or may not inherit their condition. |
| 548 | ** The names of a number of the tribes have been changed. |
| 549 | ** The Black Furies no longer exclude male Garou from their ranks. |
| 550 | ** The Red Talons no longer exclude human born werewolves from their ranks. |
| 551 | ** Contact between the Fera Courts and the Garou is almost nonexistent. |
| 552 | [[/folder]] |
| 553 |
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