Tabletop Game / Werewolf: The Forsaken

Unleash your animal side.

Werewolf: The Forsaken is the second game in the Chronicles of Darkness line and the spiritual sequel to Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

This story is true.^note That's the Uratha equivalent to Once Upon a Time, by the way Long ago, the physical world — the Gurihal — and the Spirit World — the Hisil — were one world, named Pangaea. The great spirit Father Wolf — Ur-Farah — patrolled Pangaea, ensuring that spirits were kept in line and did not terrorize humanity. The first werewolves—beings part spirit and part human—were Father Wolf's children via the moon spirit, Luna, and were his followers and fellows in arms. But Father Wolf grew old and weak, so some of his children rose up and killed him (ostensibly for the greater good), and then all hell broke loose: The spirit world and the physical world were forever split apart by the dying howl of Father Wolf, and the descendants of the werewolves who struck down their own sire now inherit a grim legacy.

Werewolf: The Forsaken is about playing one of the titular Forsaken — werewolves who threw away the closest thing they had to paradise. Their role is to serve as "border patrol" to the Spirit World, keeping voracious spirits from meddling with human affairs. At the same time they must war with the descendants of those ancient werewolves who were not complicit in the death of Father Wolf and who still regard the Forsaken as traitors and outcasts. It's a hard, bloody, and usually short-lived experience... but someone has to do it.

Werewolves, as the children of the moon spirit, take their calling in life from the phase of the moon their power and personality are most closely linked to, also known as Auspices:

• Cahalith: Glory-seeking prophets and storytellers. Cahaliths are usually the ones making sure the pack's morale high and the prey's low. They are linked to the Gibbous Moon. Their Auspice gifts are Inspiration, Knowledge, and Gibbous Moon. An alternate Auspice Gift was shown in the Onyx Path blog called Screaming Moon based on fear and madness.
• Elodoth: Honorable judges and ambassadors. Elodoths deal with their pack's external relations and cut their prey off from their allies. They are linked to the Half Moon. Their Auspice Gifts are Half Moon, Insight, and Warding.
• Irraka: Cunning stalkers and murderers. Irrakas assassinate the pack's prey stealthily and quietly, killing them one by one and vanishing without a trace. They are linked to the New Moon. Their Auspice Gifts are Stealth, New Moon, and Evasion.
• Ithaeur: Wise shamans and spiritmasters, though they dislike that last one. Ithaeurs forge fetish and alliances with the spirit world. They are linked to the Crescent Moon. Their Auspice gifts are Crescent Moon, Shaping, and Elemental.
• Rahu: The warriors who uphold the Purity of the Uratha. Rahu are the ones who strike hard after their pack soften the prey up or who make sure their attention are on himself. Their Auspice Gifts are Strength, Dominance, and Full Moon.

The Forsaken band together into tribes, loose sociopolitical groups who share the same patron spirit: the fierce warriors of the Blood Talons, the shamans and spirit walkers of the Bone Shadows, the hardy and bestial scouts and explorers of the Hunters in Darkness, the urban and cosmopolitan wielders of human technology and society of the Iron Masters, and the generals and high kings of the Storm Lords. The antagonistic Pure werewolves have tribes as well: the zealous fanatics of the Fire-Touched, the cold and manipulative Ivory Claws, and the hunter-warrior gladiators of the Predator Kings.

The game presents a nest of unsettling dilemmas for characters: They grew up believing themselves to be human, but now find that they are part of a larger and more dangerous world where the human way of acting (and feeling) can be a detriment. They've inherited a legacy and blood-war not of their own making but which poses a dire threat to themselves and everyone around them anyway. And they have the unenviable job of navigating and policing a strange and alien world of totally inhuman entities who by their nature resent and fear them. The only thing they have to rely on is each other... if that?

While not officially a "limited cycle" like the later lines of Promethean: The Created, Changeling: The Lost and Hunter: The Vigil, Werewolf did have the fewest official sourcebooks of an "unlimited cycle" (like Vampire: The Requiem and Mage: The Awakening) released before White Wolf declared they were giving up traditional print for PDFs and print-on-demand.

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This game contains examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo: Pretty much any bullet or arrow that has a spirit bound into it. Blood Talons and Iron Masters have also been known to create weapon fetishes out of guns with a couple of examples being given in Tribes of the Moon. One of which is a silenced submachine gun whose bullets turn into snakes and insects after hitting the target.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: Pretty concise summary of the Spirit World.
• Animorphism: Werewolves. Of course.
• Anti-Magic: Some first edition Gifts are this. Lordly Will makes your character immune to supernatural mind-affecting powers. The Will Of The Winds allows you to cancel out all supernatural weather effects within a certain radius. But the ones that really take the cake are things like Darkened Moon, which causes the target to immediately lose all access to Auspice Gifts in addition to canceling Auspice Gifts that are currently in effect on said target, and the entire Wolfslayer Gift tree (which does things like stripping away Totem benefits to completely killing a werewolf's regeneration).
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Nearly everything — animal, plant, landmark, machine, emotion, belief, memetic — has a spirit. And they're hungry.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: The Oath of the Moon says "The People Shall Not Murder the People" and the core rulebook makes it clear that it's a sin against Harmony to kill another werewolf. This makes dealing with the Pure a little bit of a headache, since they outnumber the Forsaken and don't give a shit about the Oath.
  • It also becomes something of a headache for the Blood Talons in the Second Edition as their preferred prey is other werewolves. The core rule book specifically mentions that hunting other werewolves can weigh heavily on a Talon’s Harmony and that they are expected not to show it around members of the other tribes.
• Arrested for Heroism: Want to play a good werewolf that protects ordinary humans from spirit incursions and keeps other potentially nasty supernaturals in their place? Good luck there, because as far as most humans are concerned, especially those pesky hunters, you're still a monster.
• Artificial Insolence: Life-or-death situations can force a dice roll for the werewolf to resist Death Rage. If they fail, they shift into War Form for the rest of the scene, ignoring everything but their fight-or-flight instinct.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The general opinion of Gauru (War Form) in 1e. It should be the coolest and most lethal of forms, but it suffers from various problems that mean many fans never bother to assume it; Urshul is almost as effective a fighter — better, in some ways, since it has access to certain combat options that Gauru doesn't — and doesn't have the limitations of "you can only take actions to attack or run away", "you can only remain in this form for half a minute tops", or "you risk flying into Death Rage every turn you remain in this form".
  • 2e tries to rectify this problem by beefing up Gauru substantially with, among other things, a supercharged Healing Factor that completely restores all non-Aggravated damage instantly. It is also a channel for primal fear, meaning that only the hardiest people can put up any kind of real resistance, and even they do it imperfectly.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Nidmuzug, from the War Against the Pure. They're human beings who can turn into either a swarm of five hundred plus 4-6 inch long cockroaches... or a human-sized and crudely anthromorphic cockroach. They're surprisingly pitiable creatures, because they didn't ask to be like this (all they did was eat a perfectly ordinary piece of food... but there had been another Nidmuzug within a mile or so, so it was tainted and turned them into more were-roaches) and they're still fairly human in terms of mentality—they don't even get the healing powers that all other shapechangers do. Their name translates as "the Unclean".
  • The Azlu as well. Giant Spiders who feed on human flesh and who assume humanoid forms by eating peoples' brains and absorbing their bodies. Not fun.
• Big Eater: Uratha have greater appetites than most (partially because they're part-wolf, partially because of the metabolism required for their Healing Factor). As a result, four meals a day is normal for most of them.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Wolf-blooded lineages are often like this, but Ivory Claw ones tend to be the biggest and screwiest.
• Blood Knight: Blood Talons (their name is something of a hint). Exhibit A: they consider the warrior aspect of a werewolf's existence the most important part. Exhibit B: almost all of their rituals involve someone's ass getting kicked. Exhibit C: their extra part of the Oath of the Moon forbids them from surrendering in a fight unless they would make the offer to their opponent in similar circumstances.
• Bloodbath PC Origin: Very common angst-oriented origin story for both good and evil Werecreatures.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Harmony is how in tune werewolves are with themselves. Since they're half human and half wolf-spirit, it really doesn't mesh up well with the human form of morality. For example, murdering humans "just because you can" is about as morally grating for werewolves as grand theft is for humans, while wielding silver or telling humans that werewolves exist is as bad for werewolves as a planned, deliberate murder is for humans. Killing another werewolf is even more damning for a werewolf than murdering a human is for a human, but so long as they have a reason, a werewolf can kill as many humans as they want without the slightest moral twinge. Meanwhile, betraying the pack is the absolute worst sin a werewolf can perform, the only other sin as bad as it being hunting werewolves for food.. Alongside the Sin-eaters, werewolves have the most alien Karma Meter in the Chronicles of Darkness.
  • With Second Edition, it's even more alien; it's repeatedly noted that werewolves not only don't have the inherent revulsion towards killing and murder most humans do, their entire existence revolves around destroying at least partially sapient beings, and they're only really at peace with themselves on the hunt. Also, Harmony is a sliding scale with the middle being a werewolf at their most sane, so murdering someone who is binding them to the human world could very easily be them trying desperately to retain their mind if they've begun to swing too far towards their fleshy, human side (admittedly, said Touchstones can be things the werewolf is better off without-one flesh Touchstone is "Abuser Who Refuses To Accept She's No Longer Part Of Your Life").
• Bolivian Army Ending: Part of the horror of this game line is that werewolf packs rarely get a happy ending. The Uratha world is a cruel and ruthless one. As members grow older and weaker, a pack is commonly wiped out by its enemies (Spirits, Hosts, Pure Tribes, or even rival Uratha packs).
• Brown Note Being: A being known only as the Unseen is said to have a form is so blasphemous that reality itself refuses to show it.
• Canis Major: The Urshul or "Near Wolf" form allows a werewolf to turn into a massive, nearly bear-sized wolf.
  • Taken up to eleven with the Primal Form, the ultimate of Mother Luna's Gifts in 1e. The resultant monster wolf, described as "one part prehistoric beast and one part pure nightmare", stands as tall as Urshan is long and causes Lunacy as potently as the Gauru form does. A werewolf in this form is also more likely to slip into Death Rage.
• Cannot Have Sex Ever: Continuing the trend from Werewolf: The Apocalypse, sex between two werewolves is forbidden and has dire consequences - in this case, one becoming pregnant with and violently giving birth to an abominable spiritual abortion called a Ghost Child, whose sole motivation is to destroy all their parents hold dear for giving them existence. Presumably in response to the abundance of gay werewolves created for Apocalypse (which some players figured out had to be okay, since it wouldn't involve any weird births, and which the developers reportedly thought of as them attempting to smartass their way out of the forbidden love drama), Forsaken went on to specify that Ghost Children happened in all instances of werewolf on werewolf sex - even when both are males. Naturally, this backfired by filling the internet with mpreg jokes and the whole idea seems to have been abandoned for 2e, which conspicuously doesn't even mention any unusual consequences for werewolf on werewolf sex.
• Can Not Tell A Lie: Fire-Touched. They can't even let anyone within earshot tell one.
• Canon Discontinuity: Unihar (see Fetus Terrible on this page). Going into Second Edition, the writers realized that their existence is a terribly sexist thing and so they have been removed; officially, the child of two werewolves is simply an abnormally potent wolfblood.
• Church Militant: Fire-Touched again. They're quite happy to receive conversions from the Forsaken instead of just killing them, but that doesn't make their preaching any less militant.
• City of Adventure: Denver and the surrounding areas. Werewolf has a specific splatbook, Territories, which allows for customization of a Werewolf "city," using not only examples from the Americas, but also from England and other countries/continents.
  • Second Edition gives us a lot more examples to play around with, from Iraq where the wolf god of destruction has manifested, driving many werewolves in the area insane with blood lust, to the mountain ranges of central Australia where a single Lodge, not the tribes, form the main social grouping.
• Les Collaborateurs: The Bale Hounds. They're a group of werewolves who, seeing how malevolent spirits are continually gaining ground, came to the conclusion that the world is naturally inclined to evil. And they want to be on the winning side. They became Maeljin cultists and act as The Mole among other tribes. For the record, both the Forsaken and the Pure loathe them with a burning passion, and with good reason...
• Combat Pragmatist: Second Edition makes this a major thing for the Irraka. A common topic for their idle thoughts is, "How can I kill everyone in the room in the most efficient way possible?" An account of one Irraka's First Change involves him realizing that he's thinking about ways to take advantage of his old friends' disabilities and sports injuries in order to take them out fast.
• Conlang / Indo-European Alien Language: The First Tongue. Word of God says it's generated by going back as far back into Proto-Indo-European language tree as they could and making a few detours along the way.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: Uratha have a subtle one in their Healing Factor. They can quickly heal from injuries and thus survive damage that would be fatal to a human. With enough time and willpower they can even regrow severed limbs. The problem is that this draws considerable suspicion if an Uratha is involved in some manner of accident and then turns out to not have a scratch on them. Also, because of said power werewolves have a much longer lifespan than humans. In theory, a werewolf could live forever if they got powerful enough and they don't start visibly aging until late in their life. According to the book, a werewolf basically looks in their late 20s to early 30s until they're about 75-80 years old. Again, this can be problematic if human authorities start looking into a werewolf's paperwork.
  • In 2nd Edition, it's less subtle; the Healing factor looks and feels really painful, with broken bones reaching out to join with each other, muscles twisting to let new blood veins through-it causes Lunacy, but that can be cold comfort if the Werewolf is unlucky-see The Virus and Heroic Willpower.
• Crapsack World: Part of the horror of this game line comes from the fact that all Uratha are painfully aware that the spirits of anger, hate, and excess are more common and more powerful than spirits of love or joy.
  • And even if they find spirits of love and joy, there's a very good chance they've turned someone into a Stepford Smiler or a person who will never, ever leave their abusive spouse "because he means so well."
  • Not to mention that the wolves themselves are cut off from humanity and can easily lose their temper and kill everything within reach.
• Cult Colony: The Pure are both an army and a cult, and they regularly make bunkers/forts in the deep Hisil.
  • Any Lodge that gives access to the Lodge Stronghold merit has this by default.
  • The Lodge of the Lake; once a band of werewolves dedicated to guarding Lake Vostok in Antarctica and protecting humanity from a spiritual Eldritch Abomination trapped in the depths, only to be corrupted into becoming fanatical worshippers of that creature, a Maeljin, after humanity accidentally drew up a fragment of the power below.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Bone Shadows have a pretty big fascination with death and actively practice a form of necromancy. Still they are on the good guys' side.
  • Lodges have several examples themselves. The Lodge of the Screaming Moon are obsessed with fear and the ability to cause it... in creatures that have already made their living by driving innocent people to utter terror and nightmares. The Eaters of the Dead do exactly that in service to a mad Firstborn...who went rational again at some point and just wants to be accepted by her family again, by proving her "new Tribe" have a vital purpose in hunting malignant undead.
• Demonic Possession: Spirit-Ridden is a general term for people who have become inhabited by spirits eager to live on the flesh side of the Gauntlet, close to their food source, for a while. Urged just have the spirit exerting minor More than Mind Control to create more Essence, while Claimed have undergone complete fusion with their passenger and have become unique monsters with the strength of both halves and less weaknesses than either.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: All Cahalith have the innate talent of receiving visionary dreams straight from Luna herself. However, as Luna's mercurial as hell all the damn time, these dreams are often heavily cloaked in symbolism and metaphor.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: If silver touches a werewolf's blood, it burns them for aggravated damage and has a rare chance of messing up their Healing Factor. Also, it is possible to magically enhance the bullets.
• Detect Evil: There are the abilities that allows your character to smell "Malice" (ie: hate, anger, jealous, ill intent) and "supernaturality" (ie: monsters, other werewolves, wizards).
• Dual-World Gameplay: Player characters can easily sidestep between this world and the Spirit World. Any permanent-ish solution to the world's many woes usually needs things to be done on both sides of the Gauntlet.
• Eagleland: A unique variant. Irinam the Colossus is a magath formed from a Manifest Destiny spirit... who backed the wrong horse during the Civil War and found herself partially embodying a country that no longer existed except through a Nostalgia Filter. Her entire ethos is based around eating enough of the right Essence to embody America itself and regain her sanity, but since no majority is actually sure what America is her quest is doomed to failure (the Rumors section outright calls the idea of Irinam being purely the embodiment of capitalist greed to be stupid, since she's also devoured utopian dreams, individualism, civil liberty, bureaucracy..).
• Earn Your Title: Deed Names, game fluff that states werewolves who've attained deeds of great Renown will often take on a name to reflect it.
• Eldritch Abomination: The idigam, spirit-things that are ancient, powerful, and mysterious—they appeared in the mid-twentieth century, and took over entire regions of the Shadow, turning them into twisted abominations. Oddly, unlike other spirits, the idigam don't have analogs in the physical world—in spirit terms, they have no natures of their own, which should be impossible. They've been hypothesised by fans to be linked to the Abyss, from Mage. The final books revealed that the idigam originated on Earth, but were banished and imprisoned on the moon by Father Wolf and Luna, until they managed to escape their prison in the wake of the moon landings.
  • Also magath, normal spirits who ate something so directly inimical to their natures—usually machine/nature spirits, but not always—that they are driven Ax-Crazy by their conflicting desires. At least normal spirits are predictable. For certain values of "predictable".
  • And then there are Maeljin, spirits that are revered by the Bale Hounds who've become twisted inwards to the point that they're just wrong. The Seven Deadly Sins are well-represented among them.
    • Fun fact about the Maeljin: they got mentioned in Inferno. You know what that book's about? Demons.
  • And then there are the primordial spirits from the back of Predators — not quite idigam, but very old and very dangerous. These include: a spirit that is completely invisible and very large; a toxic cloud of gas that even werewolves need environmental protection from; and a shapeless form that keeps finding new and disturbing ways to give birth to twisted, mutated children.
  • The Pangaeans as presented in Dark Eras. Godlike creatures that were native to the Border Marshes. The very weakest were Rank 4, and the powers just rose from there. Even more disturbing, each of them also has access to one of the ten Arcana from Mage.
• Emotion Eater: Some spirits embody emotional concepts. Mind you, being spirits, they don't have any idea of restraint; they just know that things like love, anger or sadness taste really good.
• Enemy Mine: Both the Forsaken and the Pure hate the Bale Hounds with a passion and have been known to put aside their differences, temporarily, to deal with them. They're also both terrified of the idigam, and have worked together to defeat them as well.
• Expy:
  • One of the supplement books, Skinchangers, has a character in it called Shuichi Kurama, who is possessed by a fox-spirit named Yoko. The manga/anime series YuYu Hakusho has a fox demon named Yoko Kurama who was mortally wounded and took refuge in the womb of a pregnant woman, Shiori Minamino, and was reborn as her son, Shuichi Minamino. Even the description of Shuichi Kurama -long black hair, a pleasing face, a friendly demeanor, dresses in traditional clothes when he can get away with it and school uniforms when he can't- matches the one of Yoko Kurama in the manga (anime changed his hair color from black to red).
  • The Brineborn from War Against the Pure are basically shapeshifter expies of the Deep Ones. Only they aren't hostile towards humans as a rule and are, in fact, pretty pathetic. Their own legends say that Mother Ocean has forsaken them and they have no place amongst humanity, they can't get more than ten miles away from a large body of water without getting weaker and weaker, they can't swim for more than a couple of hours before having uncontrollable panic attacks, they can't even breathe water for longer than an hour or so even in their fishy forms.
  • All of the tribes are Expies of ones from Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Some are blatantly obvious: the Blood Talons are the Get of Fenris; the Iron Masters are the Glass Walkers with just a little of the Bone Gnawers tossed in; the Predator Kings are the Red Talons; and the Storm Lords are the Shadow Lords. Others are a little mix-and-match; for example, Bone Shadows combine aspects of the Silent Striders and Uktena. It goes for the Auspices as well with Rahu being the new Ahroun or Irraka equaling Ragabash.
• Fantasy Contraception: There is a magical Rite that will render a werewolf sterile for one month. It's often used on female werewolves during risky times, as the fetus isn't protected by the shapeshifting process.
• Fantastic Fragility: Werewolves can make traps for spirits but they always have to include a way out.
• Fetus Terrible: If two werewolves have sex and bear a child, they produce an unihar, or ghost child. Once it bursts forth from its mother's womb, it takes off to the Spirit World, where it waits until it's powerful enough to return and wreak havoc on its parents. For extra fun, it's immune to werewolf Gifts, making an already powerful spirit even nastier.
  • Except, of course, for the fact they don't actually exist. See above for more.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief:
  • Irraka are the thief-type with gifts related to stealth and deception.
  • Cahaliths and Ithaeur could be considered mages as their gifts don't give direct combat ability but can act as buffers/good for working with spirits to make magical effects.
  • Elodoth and Rahu as the fighters with Elodoth being more of a leader and Rahu focused more on tanking and DPS.
• From a Single Cell / Asteroids Monster: This is a distinctive ability of the Hosts, races of Puppeteer Parasites created from the shards of potent spirits slain by Father Wolf—kill an adult one, and its body dissolves into a swarm of the animal it represents, one of which contains its soul (and don't think you can get lucky by looking for it—they can Body Surf between their components). Let it get away, and eventually it will evolve back to its original power, and it's going to be pissed.
• Functional Magic: Gifts and Rituals (Theurgy, learned from spirits).
• Fur Against Fang: Unlike its predecessor, werewolves don't, as a whole, feel the need to exterminate vampires. That being said there are werewolves who make it their mission in life to wipe out the vampire population. Case in point, the Black Moon Extreme is a pack of young cubs who decided the best way to aid Denver was to hunt down vampires. While some pack members have good reason to hate vampires — and Denver has had a bad history with the bloodsuckers — the pack's alpha is basically just doing it for an ego trip and a lot of the other packs think they're posers who are going to do something hideously stupid one day.
  • This can be a thing for Iron Masters in 2e, though. The Iron Masters' favored prey is humans... but this can include things sufficiently like humans that still pose a potential danger to the Uratha. Like, say, vampires.
• Gadgeteer Genius: The Iron Masters have an affinity for Technology Gifts that, at the highest level, allow them to make just about any technological device out of the base materials. Like a circuit-board out of plastic and sand or a gun and ammunition out of scrap metal.
• Genki Werewolf: There is an Iron Master lodge called the Lodge of Lightning whose members act like they consume nothing but caffeine and crystal meth—they do everything they can with everything they have, and most Uratha have a lot in the tank.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Werewolves aren't typically the most involved parents, given that they've often got duties that put them in the line of fire on a constant basis, a feeling about them that unsettles normal humans, and Rage that's constantly threatening to boil over.
  • Deconstructed in that werewolves themselves hate this fact — the average werewolf, having both human and lupine parental instincts, plus extremes of all emotions, not just rage, is very protective of his or her children. But between the dangers of their enemies and themselves, they just can't risk being around their kids. As older werewolves tend to instruct new parents; yeah, it hurts not being there for your children. But how much worse will it feel when some spirit or Pure bastard kills them to get to you? Or if you lose control and end up ripping their arms off? Children are so fragile, and werewolves lose control so easily...
    • and in 2e, downplayed, by the Raised by Wolves merit for Wolfblooded characters, which states that the character was raised in their werewolf parents's pack (wolfblooded being allowed as pack members in 2e) and is thus used to supernatural events.
• Glory Seeker: Cahalith werewolves seek Glory and this gets more pronounced in the Second Edition. They specifically say they have the question Will people remember this tale? kicking around in the back of their minds at all times.
• Green Aesop: Less blatant than in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, but still present; if a gas company starts fracking in an area, it might drive the whole ecosystem out of balance.
• Green Thumb: Hunters in Darkness have a Nature gift set that allows them to grow and shape plants at will, use them as weapons and even commune with the forest.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The Pure believe that Luna slept with Father Wolf and birthed the Firstborn specifically to drain his power, so she could take over the world by proxy when they killed him. It didn't quite work out.
• Good is Not Nice: Pretty much sums up the Forsaken. They are dedicated to policing the spirits and preventing them from running amok in the material world; which is good for humanity. They are also perfectly willing to kill people in large numbers to accomplish this.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Were the Forsaken right to kill Father Wolf, or was it a crime against nature? Are the Pure right to persecute the Forsaken, or are they cowardly bigots? It's actually pretty hard to tell.
• Guile Hero: You read the description of the Irraka up there, yes? The Iron Masters also prize Cunning and their initiation rituals are usually designed to encourage applicants to think outside the box. When we have an Irraka who is a member of the Iron Masters, then things tend to get really screwy.
• Haunted Technology: It is possible for spirits to possess machinery. Especially if the spirit in question was born from machinery.
• Healing Factor: Werewolves have quite a potent healing ability, being able to recover from blunt trauma in a matter of seconds, and injuries like cuts, burns or bullet wounds as though they were bruises (Essence can be spent to make healing even faster, and hurt a lot less).
• Heroic Willpower: Lunacy can backfire; a mortal who has an exceptional success resisting it not only remembers what happened with perfect clarity, but refreshes all Willpower as the fight-or-flight instinct is channeled into fight.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Some Gift trees can be rather more gamey then they first appear.
  • A prime example is Knowledge. To give just one obvious example the third Gift in the tree, Sagacity, allows you to earn skill points temporarily. This might seem weak in comparison to the ability to control the weather or turn into a living shadow; but it allows you to do things like turn your character temporarily into the world's best sniper or the best martial arts expert or figure out how to reprogram a fire control computer or etc...
  • Technology. If you have a friendly GM and know what you are doing the very first Gift, Left-Handed Spanner, allows you to things like disable tanks with a touch or plunge the entire city into a black-out.
• Hopeless War: Part of the horror of the setting. The Forsaken are currently engaged in a three-front war with a lot of indications that they are losing. Their enemies are the Hosts, vicious half-spirit entities that want to either cut the spirit world off permanently (the Azlu) or rip its walls down (the Beshilu), the spirit world itself, and a faction of their race known as the Pure which views them as heretics. The Hosts are nigh-impossible to kill permanently. Nine out of ten spirits are more powerful than the strongest werewolf, and they tend to be extremely hostile towards living things. And the Pure collectively outnumber the Forsaken.
• Horrifying Hero: This is pretty much self-explanatory; your characters are werewolves, one of the classic Hollywood monsters.
• Hulking Out: Death Rage, you automatically transform into your "war form" and go on an unstoppable rampage. It's either triggered through pain or anger (and depending on your Karma Meter, that anger can range from "one of your packmates just got killed" to "someone smarted off to you").
• Hunter of His Own Kind: In the Second Edition this has become the Blood Talons hat. Why other werewolves? As far as the Blood Talons are concerned other werewolves are the only prey who can put up a good fight while with humans, vampires, mages, etc... the kill is over almost before it begins. And not only do they hunt the Pure, they hunt Forsaken who the Talons have deemed to have lost their way.
  • The Second Edition version of the Lodge of Garm takes this up to eleven, as they specialize in hunting the oldest and most powerful werewolves that exist. The bond with their totem also gives them a subconscious desire to be defeated by something more powerful than they are.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Spirit Slayers introduced The Bear Lodge: an organization of American big game hunters that realized that werewolves are real and decided they would look good on the trophy wall. Interestingly, they sometimes will let a werewolf live, so long as it has not killed a human being. (It probably helps that werewolves, and their parts, revert to human form when they're killed.)
  • Iron Masters do this too; while they actually like humans and human society, their primary prey, the ones they view as most dangerous out of all the Forsaken's many enemies, are humans and other supernaturals who disrupt the Shadow from the flesh side. Why? Unpredictability and raw intelligence.
• Ice Queen: How the other tribes tend to view the Storm Lords.
• I Did What I Had to Do: How most Forsaken view the death of Father Wolf. If someone did not take Father Wolf's place, one of the nastier spirits might have killed him and caused all kinds of hell to break loose. It was a horrible thing, but it beat the hell out of the alternative—according to the Forsaken, anyway. Course, the Pure don't give a shit and still want them dead.
  • Also, this is what the Pure think about killing Forsaken in their war.
  • Sometimes a possessed human can't ever get his original personality back, leading to this trope.
  • Note that werewolves have no compunctions against killing humans if it's necessary, and no convenient memory erasure powers. As an example, in one game, an entire village had to be wiped out because "The Herd Must Not Know".
    • They have Lunacy on their side, which sends Primal Fear through all the nearby humans and makes them forget what scared them so much... unless they already have a viewpoint that allows for werewolves to exist. In which case they may in fact be killed.
• Immune to Drugs: An extension of their Healing Factor makes them virtually immune to all manner of drugs and poisons. Many werewolves get very frustrated by this.
  • Never Gets Drunk: This includes alcohol too.
• In the Blood: Werewolf-ness is inheritable. Also, exclusively how Ivory Claws add new recruits, which is why their tribe is by far the smallest of the Pure Tribes.
• Innate Night Vision: The Gift Night Sight grants this, causing the user to suffer no penalties for blindness in darkened or pitch-black areas. Another Gift, Night-Eyes, does something similar.
• In-Series Nickname: All of the tribes have in-universe nicknames listed in the core rule-book, in fact most have more than one (one they use amongst themselves, one other tribes use informally and often a third derogatory one).
• I'm a Humanitarian: Subverted. Human flesh is Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious to werewolves, and they can sometimes end up eating their victims after flying into Death Rage, but the Forsaken strictly avoid doing this. On the Werewolf Karma Meter, eating human flesh is a sin comparable to serial murder on the mortal Karma Meter. So is eating wolf flesh, for much the same reason, and eating other werewolves is even worse.
  • It's implied the Pure don't care too much about this rule, though.
  • There's actually at least two Lodges that tie into this. The Lodge of Wendigo teaches secret rites that are empowered by cannibalism, though they are actually not the Lodge's focus and most refuse to use them. The Lodge of the Feast, on the other hand, is devoted to giving werewolves an opportunity to savor the "forbidden feast". Needless to say, the Lodge of the Feast is strongly implied to be a Bale Hound front.
• Karma Meter: Harmony, a measure of how well a werewolf balances his human and spirit halves. Notable among Chronicles of Darkness games in that it emphasizes how different werewolves are from normal humans — for instance, killing humans isn't necessarily a sin, just killing them for no good reason.
  • As of Second Edition they got rid of the "sin" part all together. Now there are merely actions that pull the Werewolf towards their human or spirit sides. Examples of things that fit spirits are spending too much time in the Shadow, or eating your own kind, while typical human actions are eating processed food and breaking the Oath of the Moon.
• Kryptonite Factor: To silver, of course. The Pure Tribes, however, have it a lot worse than the Forsaken. Forsaken just get dealt aggravated damage when wounded by a silver weapon; Pure can't even touch silver without getting hurt.
• Light Is Not Good: Three examples, one a lot more sympathetic than the others:
  • Helios, spirit of the Sun, is the reason the Shadow isn't safe in day hours — he considers himself Luna's elder brother, and hates her children for killing her husband. While Luna has largely forgiven them or never blamed them, it's not in Helios' nature to change his mind at all, and so his Helion sun-spirits always harass and attack any Uratha they find.
  • The Lodge of Apollo claims to be the clergy of the sun god, utterly neutral in the war between Forsaken and Pure and hoping only to keep their temples nice and running. They don't mention the fact that powering said temples is done by feeding the fires the souls of intruders, which they deliberately lure by playing to the worst aspects of humanity and Uratha. Also, "Apollo"? Is either an idigam or a Maeljin that was trapped on the sun by Luna, and created the Lodge as a plot to escape and Take Over the World.
  • Ansar-zalag, an idigam who devoured a star-spirit and got its powers. It usually attacks and burns down every werewolf it can find not for revenge but For the Evulz and ego.
• Loss of Identity: Hit Harmony 0 and the human half of your spirit decays entirely as some other type of spirit fills the gap, turning you into a zi'ir.
  • Thankfully no longer a risk in Second Edition, landing on either extreme of Harmony merely makes you extremely unstable mentally. Of course, what this means is that Harmony 10 is just as bad as Harmony 0.
• Luke Noun Verber: Deed names tend to be like this.
• Lunacy: Each werewolf has his role in society determined by the phase of the moon (Auspice) when he first changes — full moons are warriors (Rahu), gibbous moons are bards and prophets (Cahalith), half moons are judges and arbiters (Elodoth), crescent moons are mystics (Ithaeur) and new moons are spies and tricksters (Irraka).
  • One weakness of the Pure Tribes is that they do not have Auspices, said to be because they refused to accept any guilt for Father Wolf's death and thus never got back on Luna's good side. They also actively hate Luna, and reject any association with her or her laws. One of the conditions for Forsaken Uratha to defect to the Pure is to undergo a ritual which permanently destroys their auspice.
  • Then there's the more traditional interpretation of "Lunacy": werewolves politely refer to their patron goddess as "Ever-Shifting Luna", and the reason no werewolf packs try to take a Lune as a totem is because continued exposure to the Lunes makes you crazy.
  • Lunacy is also the term werewolves used for the aura of spiritual power they have that drives humans who behold them crazy. It doesn't appear at all in human or wolf forms, but its potency is affected by which form the werewolf is in. Strangely, the near-human form is actually weaker in terms of its Lunacy aura than the near-wolf form, despite the fact the former looks more like the classic cinema "Wolf Man" type werewolf.
    • The near-man form can be rationalized as a really tall, disfigured human with the manliest beard on the planet, even up close. From far away, it's just a tall guy in (usually) a long coat and a big hat. Meanwhile, near-wolf is the size of a bear, can't really wear clothes, and has the shape and speed of the creature from An American Werewolf in London. Little harder to rationalize, so a bit more likely to scare the crap out of you.
• Mad Oracle: Where Rabid Wolf's name comes from, according to the Fire-Touched. He was the most honest and wise of the Firstborn, according to the legends, but the knowledge of just how deceptive and short sighted the world is drove him beyond sanity. They also believe that it's impossible to possess both perfect clarity of thought and visions of the future at the same time—you need to be delirious to perceive the flow of fate or commune with Rabid Wolf. Fire-Touched oracles usually do this via self-inflicted torture and Disease Gifts.
• Mad Scientist: Most idigam are some variation on this, what with their Forced Transformation ability and intelligent natures. Why do they do this? Actually a variety of reasons:
  • Udu Luthal: So I can make more idigam and find a mate.
  • Zul Sanam: So I can destroy all werewolves.
  • Umum Wabalu Damu: So I won't have to be alone anymore.
  • Gamugur: So I can protect my charges from chaos.
  • Gifmalu Igizalag: Why the hell shouldn't I?
• Magic by Any Other Name: Gifts.
• Magic Knight: Ithaeur may be shamans but they still have all a werewolf's physical prowess and they live in a definite warrior culture.
• Magic Pants: The shift from human to 900-pound killing machine usually destroys clothing utterly, but werewolves can learn a ritual known as the Rite of Dedication that allows clothing to become a part of their identity, causing it to change with them.
  • Actually mechanically encouraged to be the rite of just pants, since dedicating an entire outfit doesn't bring things like your wallet and cell phone along, whereas if you dedicate a single item of clothing (e.g. pants) then whatever's in the pockets stays with you. So... lots of bare-chested hulk outfits going on there.
  • This too got removed with Second Edition. Nowadays, any werewolf who isn't too Human can easily incorporate their clothes and such into their spiritual identity, and it changes along with them. The removal of this rite, however, meant that when someone who is on the too human side of the Karma Meter have no choice but to strip naked before changing shape, or tearing their clothes to shreds.
• Mana: Called Essence here but otherwise the same thing.
• Manipulative Bastard: The Storm Lords actually have an entire lodge dedicated to cultivating this particular mindset. It's called the Lodge of Crows and cunning is required for recruitment.
• Marked Change: This happens every time a werewolf enters the Shadow, where they gain glowing silver tattoos all over their bodies, called "Spirit Brands," which detail particularly heroic deeds that the werewolf has performed.
• Masquerade: One of the basic laws of werewolf society: "The Herd Must Not Know". In addition, werewolves have the gift of Lunacy bestowed on them by Mother Luna — people who see them in their war form automatically go into a fearful panic, then forget what exactly it was they saw. Most of the time. There's a reason they have to consciously suppress their existence.
  • And then there's the Bale Hounds, who must uphold a masquerade even to other werewolves, lest they be lynched as soon as they blow their cover.
• Meaningful Name: The children of Father Wolf, who also lead the tribes, have names that are a dead give-away to what they are or what they do.
  • Dire Wolf is a savage beast. Death Wolf is obsessed with the dead. The patron of the Bale Hounds tribe is named "Soulless Wolf".
• Monster Knight: The Blood Talons have a lodge, The Lodge of the Rose, that is dedicated to a code of chivalry. That is the Knight part, the Monster part should be self-explanatory.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Wolf-blooded who get at least a little more respect than their spiritual ancestors, Kinfolk in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. One of the splatbooks gave them their own share of abilities.
• Multiform Balance: Whether the Uratha's five forms are better balanced than those of its spiritual predecessor is debated by many; but the effort is there. As for actually usage:
  • The Hishu (human) form is most likely to pass among mortals and best suited for social dealings.
  • The Dalu (wolf-man) form allows added strength while retaining human form, but still pings Lunacy a little.
  • The Gauru (monster two-legged wolf) form is the strongest, most damaging form, but can only be used for a limited time and is locked in a state of rage that makes any action but attacking something a failure.
  • The Urshul (dire wolf) form is fastest of all and quite strong, but will still ping Lunacy heavily.
  • The Urhan (wolf) form will blend in most easily in nature and could maybe pass for a wolfdog in urban environments.
• Mysterious Antarctica: The aforementioned Lodge of the Lake was originally dedicated to keeping something locked in Lake Vostok. Then they found something that may be a Maeljin, went collectively nuts, and started alternating between refined salons and slaughtering whatever expeditions they find.
• Mythology Gag: In 2e, a Gift of Change allows a werewolf to flay an animal — or a person — and enchant it to temporarily assume the form of the skinned being by wearing it. This gift is called "Skin Thief", and in 1e, an entire splatbook revolved around ritual casters who could shapeshift using enchanted hides. These casters, and the book they appeared in, were called "Skin Thieves".
• Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom: Deed names tend to be like this.
• Nature Hero: The Hunters in Darkness tend to be like this. Their signature Gift in 2e is even called Nature and allows the player to do things from speaking to animals to using the entire forest as their personal mine field.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Ivory Claws, with their obsession with racial purity and discipline. They can even take a merit symbolizing good breeding or a flaw symbolizing bad breeding... which, to really drive in the Fantastic Racism aspect, has absolutely no mechanical effect apart from how other Ivory Claws react.
• Necromancer: Bone Shadows naturally. They can do things like enchanting weapons to kill ghosts to ripping information from corpses to even temporarily resurrecting dead allies.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The whole premise, in a way. Although the Forsaken adopt a staunch I Did What I Had to Do stance about it, the fact still remains that they ruined Pangaea, killed their own father, sent a large part of their brethren into exile for NOT partaking in the murder, and apparently, the world has only got worse after that point...
  • And massively subverted if Dark Eras was any indication. Pangaea may have been good for the werewolves, but everyone else? Going by the fact that the Vinca did not advance for 500 years due to their fear of the spirits, it's safe to say humans really don't mind, nor do many of the werewolves (it's even hinted that Luna may have agreed with the Forsaken to begin with, since it's revealed Death Rage and silver vulnerability are fundamental aspects of Uratha existence, not curses).
• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • Werewolves in 2e are superhumanly tough, capable of shrugging off anything that isn't silver or magic. In game crunch, they explicitly only take Aggravated damage from supernatural attacks and from silver, nothing else. Not even massive bodily devastation is inherently dangerous. So you can run a werewolf over with a car, blow it up, drop a tree on it, catch it in a rockslide... and it'll still heal up and come right back after you in a few minutes.
  • Gauru form jacks this up even higher, as it boosts their Healing Factor to absurd levels-as in, everything not Aggravated is instantly recovered on the werewolf's next term-ie, Gauru heals faster than anyone can hurt it. There's a reason it's called the "killing form" and not "war form" in several places.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Averted; shifting to wolf form right after drinking coffee is a very bad idea.
• Noble Wolf: Ultimately the Forsaken are trying to protect humanity from the ravages of the Spirit World.
• The Nose Knows: Werewolves have supernaturally good tracking abilities and certain Rituals allow them to share an acquired scent between pack mates. Not to mention there are Gifts that allow them to smell things such as lies.
• Nuke 'em: Merciful Storytellers may not want to pick up the Spirit Slayers splatbook, advertised as suitable for both werewolves and hunters. Why? Task Force: VALKYRIE has a bomb that does in the spirit realm what a nuke does in the material world, intended specifically for use against werewolves and their spirit allies. And they intend to use it.
• Occult Detective: This character archetype can actually come in multiple flavors.
  • The core rule book specifically mentions that the Elodoth tend to serve as investigators (especially the Iron Master Elodoth) in addition to judges and diplomats. Their unique Gifts include one that detects lies and another that can force the target to tell the truth and they have access to the Insight Gift Tree.
  • Several Lodges encourage characters to be this. For example, the Iron Masters (used to be the Blood Talons in the first edition) have the Lodge of the Shield (which is literally werewolf cops) and the Blood Talons have the Lodge of the Einherjar (which tries to discover the fate of destroyed and decimated packs).
• Of the People: Among the various names for the Uratha is "the People."
• Older Than They Look: As werewolves have a strong Healing Factor, it's understandable that aging would be somewhat slowed. There's a vignette in one book meant to emphasize this - a werewolf who looks to be in her early 40s is called in for a polygraph test, and completely confuses the cops when she admits to being in her 70s and the test shows she's telling the truth.
• Omniglot: There are three language-derived Gifts that range from instantly pick up the native language to understanding what anyone says, but you can't reply back.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: One of the things the Second Edition changed is that each of the Forsaken tribes now have a preferred type of prey they like to go after. They'll hunt and fight other things, of course, but this is what members of the Tribe specialize in and tend to get pissed if a pack-mate from another Tribe attacks said prey.
  • Blood Talons: Other werewolves; as far as the Blood Talons are concerned they’re the only prey who stand a chance against a Blood Talon’s rage.
  • Bone Shadows: In keeping with their necromancer theme they prefer to hunt the spirits of the Shadow and other ephemeral beings.
  • Hunters in Darkness: They'll hunt anything that violates their territorial boundaries but they reserve especial ire for the Hosts. They also don't like the Fae and the Changelings too much either.
  • Iron Masters: They specialize in humans and human-derivatives like vampires and mages.
  • Storm Lords: They hunt the Ridden and the Spirit-Claimed. They also don't like Sin-Eaters one damn bit, after all "Claimed by the dead is still Claimed".
    • The Lodges take this to extremes, each Lodge is dedicated to a specific sub-set of targets, and usually a specific method of hunting them as well.
• Orphean Rescue: Some of the Forsaken make it their mission to eject humans who are trapped in the Spirit World, although it's more having to do with keeping order in their territories than altruism for the poor bastards.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: They're part-human, part-wolf spirit. Their society is divided up into five major tribes, and the phase of the moon under which they change determines their basic role in society.
  • Also, they have four non-human forms, whereas most depictions of werewolves give them one or, at most, two. The Dalu (Near-Human) is the classic "wolf-man" of cinema (bigger, stronger, hairier, bestial features, fangs and claws). The Gauru (Wolf-Man) is the anthropomorphic wolf common to more modern depictions of werewolves. The Urshul (Near-Wolf) is a gargantuan, but otherwise mundane-looking, wolf. Finally, the Urhan is a standard run of the mill wolf.
  • Justified in that, well, the classic creature that completely loses control every month simply doesn't make for a sustainable or particularly fun player character. There is a Pure tribe (the Predator Kings) and an alternate ruleset in the core book for those that want to play a more straight mythological werewolf.
  • Also, none of those "classic" mythological tells for werewolves (long index finger, monobrow, hairy palms, etc) apply to real werewolves. At the very least, they're no more common for werewolves than they are for humans.
    • That said, in 2e, several of these classic tells become Wolf-blood Tells and directly correlate to the power that the Wolf-blood has. For example, fur beneath the skin^note no, we're NOT making that up; some cultures genuinely believed werewolves hid their fur beneath their skin, leading to accused werewolves being Flayed Alive granting natural armor, overly long fingers granting a bonus to performing rituals, monobrow resulting in an enhanced ability to appeal to empathy, etc.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: One werewolf lodge, the Lodge of the Fallen Idol, is dedicated to bringing an end to all religions because they view them as the most dangerous and destructive of all human concepts. They began as a lodge for "alternative beliefs" in medieval Europe, but after Christian werewolves helped the inquisition kill off most of the members, the survivors regrouped, took a serpent spirit of truth as their totem, and vowed to bring down religion by any means necessary. Their symbol is even a snake coiling around a shattered cross. That's not to say that they don't recognize the existence and power of powerful supernatural beings, like high Rank spirits and Archmages; they just don't believe anyone, humans especially, should be worshiping them. This may also be why they tend to focus primarily on human religions.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: When a werewolf physically enters the spirit world, they pretty much bring themselves and nothing else. This is another reason why the Rite of Dedication is useful, as it allows a werewolf's clothes to be interpreted as part of their "spiritual identity."
• Plaguemaster: Some Fire-Touched are like this; even the ones who aren't masters of disease literally view faith as a metaphorical disease, in how easily it spreads. And every Izidakh is enthusiastic about spreading their faith as far as possible.
  • And then we have Beshilu Hosts, for whom spreading disease is their reason for existing, more or less.
• Partial Transformation: Aside from their three hybrid animal-human forms werewolves can learn a gift that allows them to shapeshift one body part at a time.
• Place of Power: Loci, which are bound up in spiritual importance and are where the border between Earth and the spirit world is a little bit thinner and Essence can be gathered.
• Post-Modern Magik: The Iron Masters are all about this. Their driving ethos is blending with the Herd and learning from it, they favor Gift lists that allow them to command technology spirits, and their Lodges are dedicated to everything from "creating an online database of assembled Uratha lore" to "use the Internet to become Big Brother."
• Power Copying:
  • Irraka have (or had) a Milestone Gift that allows them to permanently copy any supernatural power they witness, as long as they witness the power on multiple occasions and make the right expenditures of Willpower.
  • Wolf-Bloods can now function like this in the Second Edition, with the copier in question being any mortal in the universe. Fall against Lunacy hard enough, and you absorb some of its power, developing werewolf like powers the next auspice moon of the werewolf who you got the Lunacy from.
• Power Perversion Potential: The "Call Human" rite. The sourcebook explicitly mentions in the rite's description that less-than-virtuous werewolves have used it to summon random humans to their location to rape them.
  • The 2e Gift "Luna's Embrace", which allows a werewolf to swap genders pretty much at will, certainly has some potential for this.
• Pre-Character Customization Gameplay: Character creation starts with a generic human and adds the Werewolf template, so the game suggests an optional "Prelude" chapter to play out how the character came to undergo the First Change.
• Prefers Raw Meat: Werewolves whose Primal Urge gets above a certain level can only derive nourishment from raw meat. They also have Ideal Illness Immunity, so they can ignore the usual health issues this would provoke.
• Prestige Class: Lodges are pretty much cults dressed up as these.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Storm Lords focus on the proud part, while Blood Talons lean heavily on the Warrior part
• Psychic Link: Cahaliths can potentially learn a Gift unique to their Auspice, Unspoken Communication, that establishes this with their packmates.
  • As of second edition this is an ability any werewolf can learn.
• Psychometry: Insight Gift tree in general but especially the level 3 Echo Dream, which allows the user to read the spirit memories and echoes of any inanimate object he touches.
• Reality Bleed: Verges; these are places where the spirit world bleeds into the real world.
• Reduced Resource Cost: As a membership benefit, some werewolf Lodges grant an XP discount to learn skills that support their core mission. Garmir warriors get the discount on Athletics, Brawl, Weaponry, and Persuasion; Crows get it for Larceny, Stealth, Politics, Persuasion, and Subterfuge.
• Savage Wolves: Predator Kings, without exception.
• Seers: Cahalith. Their Auspice Ability is called Prophetic Dreams for a reason.
• Sex Shifter: The Luna's embrace gift in 2e allows any werewolf with at least one dot of honor renown to do this.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The Maeljin are powerful spirits that embody abstract concepts that twisted in upon themselves until they just became wrong. Needless to say, the Seven Deadlies are well represented. The other two who aren't of the Seven Sins are the spirits of Deceit and Destruction.
• Sewer Gator: One potential manifestation of a powerful sewer-spirit from the "Predators" supplement book is described as a deformed giant rat riding "a great albino alligator".
• Shapeshifter Baggage: The devs actually tried to avoid this trope. Among the various points is the fact that Werewolves don't actually shift shapes... they swap shapes. Uratha meta-biology has all five of a Werewolf's forms existent at all times; one in the physical world, and four stored as spiritual energy templates in the Werewolf's aura. As a result, beings that can see Auras perceive Werewolf auras as being intensely bright and dense, with the light brightening or dimming based on the size of the physical form. That means the aura is brightest in Urhan (normal wolf) form, and dimmest in Gauru (Man Wolf Death machine).
• Shock and Awe: One of the more powerful Gifts causes a lightning bolt to to strike your enemies.
• Silver Bullet: Silver is precious to Luna, which means it turned against the Uratha when she cursed them. Silver makes the Forsaken's blood boil on contact, dealing aggravated damage. On top of that, in rare cases it turns their Healing Factor cancerous. They still get a better deal than the Pure, who never sought Luna's forgiveness; the Pure can't even touch silver without getting hurt. Wolf-blooded with the A Wolf's Meat Tell in 2e also get itchy rashes just by touching silver, a drawback of the regenerative powers they share with their more powerful kin.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Bone Shadows are known for making fetishes out of human bones, including skull masks and articles of clothing.
• Snakes Are Evil: The Razilu snake-hosts are among the most evil of the hosts...maybe...
• The Social Darwinist: The Predator Kings. The Blood Talons and the Storm Lords have some shades of this as well, though a bit more restrained.
• Soul Eating: Spirits consume other spirits of their kind to become more powerful. They often acquire traits of the consumed spirit as well, unless it was another spirit of the same type or one that would be "in its nature" to eat, an example being a fox spirit eating a rabbit spirit.
  • If the spirit that was devoured was of a radically different type, there is a substantial risk that the influx of different Essence will mutate the spirit and turn it into a magath. Of course, this doesn't require a spirit to eat another. Any source of too-different Essence will do.
  • The Lodge of the Reaping, a Bone Shadow Lodge are literal soul eaters. This is universally considered evil, and members of this Lodge have great trouble keeping their Karma Meter in check.
• The Spartan Way: The Blood Talons initiation rites are deliberately designed weed out the weak and to leave new recruits badly scarred.
• Spiritual Successor: To Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
  • Many groups within the setting are also successors of favorite groups from the previous one, such as the Iron Masters (Glass Walkers), Bone Shadows (Silent Striders) and Bale Hounds (Black Spiral Dancers).
• Spirit World: The Hisil (also known as the Shadow, or the Other). Given that it's the twisted reflection of the World of Darkness, it's not really surprising that it has more in common with Silent Hill than most. To give you an idea of the things that happen in there, mall-spirits lure other spirits and Werewolves into them, where they are then devoured by the greater building spirit. Rather like the mall in Reaper Man, actually.
  • To be specific, Silent Hill is a Verge keyed to the protagonist's emotional state. The normal town is in Twilight, a different layer of the world that spirits exist in when they're not in Shadow—and the Verge opens up, taking the character into Shadow for the Otherworld.
• Stealth Expert: Irraka specific gifts tend to focus on moving about unnoticed, not to mention there is another tree or two of stealth based gifts not unique to the New Moon Auspice. These can range from diverting people's attention to becoming a living shadow to out-and-out invisibility.
• Stepford Suburbia: Night Horrors: Wolfsbane features a town where everything's nice and orderly, a little oasis in the midst of the Crapsack World. What made it so nice and orderly? Simple; several years ago, the town's spirit went completely power mad, ate everything nearby in the Shadow to become the only semi-sane magath in existence, and simultaneously Claimed the entire town. Stay too long and he'll happily add you to his roster.
• Storyboard Body: A werewolf's Renown appears as glowing brands on their body whenever they enter the Hisil.
• Supernatural Angst: A common occurrence, not the least of which is that the Forsaken might have to take some extremely violent actions to prevent even worse things happening to the world.
• Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious: Uratha can regain Essence by eating the flesh of humans, wolves, or werewolves. However, as all three are extremely akin to them, that counts as cannibalism, meaning they need to make a Harmony check.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Werewolves have two degrees of Rage. One where they have to kill something and another where they have to kill everything.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Being a werewolf is a hereditary thing but that doesn't necessarily mean all children of werewolves will Change. The coupling between a Changed werewolf and the unchanged child of a werewolf (known as Wolf-Blooded) has a greater chance of producing a werewolf than a werewolf and an ordinary human.
• Take That Us: The game's primary antagonist faction, The Pure, is essentially a giant Take That to the Garou Nation from Werewolf: The Apocalypse - or at least to the Flanderization they underwent later down the line - with their rabid, religious zealotry, bigotry, obsession with eugenics and hatred of mankind being presented as exactly as twisted as they are.
• Terror Hero: Enter territory protected by Hunters of Darkness at own risk. They love their Slasher Movie aesthetics.
  • Also Cahaliths with the Gift of the Screaming Moon, at mid-level you can make other supernaturals suffer Lunacy too.
• Teleport Spam: Normally you are limited to crossing the Gauntlet to whenever your characters are near a locus. However, certain werewolves (Ithaeurs in particular) have access to Gifts that allow them to jump across at will and bring the rest of their pack along with them.
• This Was His True Form: Werewolves revert to human when they die. This also applies to any severed limbs and spilled blood. Makes maintaining the Masquerade a whole lot easier.
• Too Dumb to Live: Les Mysteries, introduced in the Spirit Slayers splatbook, actually allow spirits to possess them, which you should know is a very bad thing if you have been reading the rest of this page, on purpose and they deliberately pick fights with werewolves despite being mere humans. It gets better: they've figured out that one group of werewolves is out to wreck everything, and one group is generally better for humankind... except they have got the roles of the Forsaken and Pure reversed.
• Took a Third Option: The Bale Hounds justify their throwing in with the Maeljin along these lines, as the other alternatives are to either try and restore Pangaea like the Pure or pursue balance like the Forsaken.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Any human who becomes a wolf-blood in 2e does this, gaining at least one of a number of bizarre, unnatural traits called "tells", which range from having a werewolf-like Healing Factor to being born skin-thieves to having an evil eye or a "living wolf-skin" that lets her assume lupine form. This is in stark contrast to their 1e kin, who A: were born, not made, and B: only got some enhanced resistance to Lunacy out of the deal
  • Werewolves themselves are a lot nastier in 2e than in 1e.
• Trademark Favorite Food: In 1e, werewolves generally prefer meat, as one might expect. In 2e, werewolves are actually like vampires in that their diet becomes increasingly limited as their Primal Urge grows stronger; from Primal Urge 2 on, they can only derive nourishment from first meat, then raw meat, then the flesh of other carnivores, and then finally only the flesh of beings that can channel Essence (namely spirits, humans, mages and other werewolves) can feed them.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Actually averted as it usually takes an instant action (about three seconds) for a werewolf to change forms, leaving them open to attack in combat. However, they can spend one Essence to make the change instantaneous, and don't even have to spend the Essence if the moon's in the phase they first changed under.
  • In 2e, if you're Harmony is in balance then this is true but if you're too human then it takes an instant action like the above
• True Companions: Werewolf packs are supposed to have stronger interpersonal bonds than player parties in any other COD game.
• Unstoppable Rage: When a werewolf enters war-form, he automatically goes into Rage; he fails all mental or social tasks, and must attack something. Then there's Death Rage, where the werewolf can't distinguish friend from foe and must attack everything.
• Villainous Valor: The Blasphemies splat notes that the Bale Hounds actually regard the Forsaken as more of a threat, and as worth more inherent respect, than the Pure. The Pure are practically halfway towards fulfilling the same goals as the Bale Hounds — after all, the sheer amount of havoc that tearing the Gauntlet away and reuniting the two worlds would surely cause the whole world to be one giant Wound soon after — and the Bale Hounds look down upon them as childish. The Forsaken, however, have a genuine and reasonable goal, doomed to failure as it may be, and try to uphold it despite the fact that they're harassed on all sides by the Pure (who outnumber them roughly two to one) and spirits, while ignorant humans undo everything they do.
• The Virus: Nope. You're born a latent werewolf or you don't become one at all. A pack that senses an Uratha-to-be will send a member to bite him or her, but that's for your and others' safety; during the First Change, a werewolf always goes a little Ax-Crazy, and the bite helps the trackers find said werewolf before they grow fur and claws, and thus safely restrain them or lead them away from somewhere they might do something they'll regret.
  • There is, however, a strange lycanthropy-like virus profiled in Night Horrors: Wolfsbane called Vespertilius. It transmits primarily as an STD, and results in somewhat bestial features and heightened primal drives.
  • As of Second Edition, Wolf-Blooded can work like this; a person who suffers a dramatic failure resisting Lunacy actually absorbs some of the Moon's power and becomes one during the triggering werewolf's next auspice phase. Please note, however, that this doesn't actually change a Wolf-Blood's personality in and of itself, and they're inherently immune to further Lunacy. Hence why Uratha avoid relying on Lunacy to protect themselves; it doesn't discriminate against, say, Hunters, and wolf-bloods develop werewolf-like traits. Please take a moment to realize why this would be a really bad thing for the werewolves.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: In addition to the above, gifts in various editions enhance the Urathra's shapeshifting. 1e has the Primal Form (super-huge wolf) and Anybeast (disguise bestial forms as being any sort of animal, rather than just wolf) Gifts, whilst 2e has Skin Thief (use flayed skins to assume the form of other creatures or people), The Father's Form (enter a weaker but more controllable version of Gauru form) and Luna's Embrace (become a Voluntary Gender Bender).
• Warrior Poet: Cahalith have bardic elements even if they're more regarded as prophets.
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • The three Pure tribes have ideologies that are outright mutually exclusive (for example the Fire-Touched are willing to accept converts from the Forsaken, which contradicts the Ivory Claws' concept of purity, and they do not spurn modern technology and convenience like the Predator Kings). So despite outnumbering the Forsaken two-to-one and theoretically placing their shared enmity toward the Tribes of the Moon high on their priority lists they rarely actually get anywhere so far as actual extermination goes.
  • The Forsaken themselves are not exactly well-oiled machines either and it's not unusual for Forsaken packs to get into turf wars despite technically being allies with a common cause.
• Weather Controller: Storm Lords have a unqiue set of gifts designed around weather manipulation.
• Weirdness Censor: Lunacy, one of Luna's little gifts, causes most humans upon seeing a werewolf in the hybrid form(s) to freak out hysterically and forget about what happened later. Emphasis on most humans, as there are exceptions to this rule.
• We Have Reserves: The Fire Touched have a pretty damn big army, almost big enough to take on all the other tribes at once. Naturally, when they see something they want they have a tendency to throw manpower at it till they get it.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: A somewhat more sympathetic interpretation of the Pure Tribes.
• What Have I Become?: Pretty much required for the game play. The player character is bitten by a werewolf (this just helps the local pack track the newbie, it doesn't start the transformation) and one gruesome, painful transformation sequence later realizes they always had werewolf blood in them that was yearning to get out. Now all those bouts of extreme rage and murderous intent throughout their lives are starting to make sense.
• With Catlike Tread: Cahalith don't really do stealth missions, a fact driven home in the 2e rule-book. They can be stealthy but it goes against the nature of their Auspice (Glory requires other people knowing what has happened or is about to happen). If they do manage to sneak up on their target, expect them to announce their presence before attacking as their Hunter's Aspect means that they want their prey to see what is heading their way.
• Worthy Opponent: The Predator Kings's stance on the Forsaken, and the Blood Talons in particular. They don't hold Father Wolf against them (if they killed him, it was his time to die), and they honor anyone who can give them a good fight. But as long as the Forsaken are around, Pangaea's not, so the Forsaken have to die.
• You Dirty Rat!: All the Beshilu.
• You Killed My Father: The Pure tribes' thoughts on the Tribes of the Moon.
  • The Predator Kings are the exception. They aren't angry about Father Wolf—if you can't protect yourself, then you die, it's how nature works. What they're pissed about is that Pangaea was lost in the process. They used to rule Pangaea, and they want it back. The problem with that is that it can't just come back, the Spirit World and Human World are separate, and cramming them back together is gonna cause some serious problems even if it's possible at all.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The final facet of the Screaming Moon Gift is called Soul Shriek, literally scaring people so much that their soul is ripped out. Werewolf and spirits have their Essence overloaded though.
• Zerg Rush: The Pure tribes outnumber the Forsaken roughly 2 to 1. The Fire-Touched in particular command a huge army of followers which makes the other tribes look tiny by comparison, so their default war tactic is to overwhelm their enemies with sheer numbers.
  • Since their enemies, the Forsaken have the blessing of Luna, and the powers that the Auspices grant them, this is a bit of a necessity, as in an equal number fight, the Forsaken hold a lot more advantages.
• Zombie Advocate: The Talbot Group are Hunters who focus on trying to rehabilitate and cure spirit-ridden and werewolves. They resort to violence only as a last resort, and are generally one of the nicest people, though somewhat misinformed in their purpose. However, they don't seem to be aware that the Uratha can not be cured of being werewolves anymore than, say, Africans could be cured of having dark skin; werewolfism is a genetic trait.

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