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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1372444744982.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:Talk about [[EatenAlive a painful way to go...]]]]
3
4The Werewolf take on the TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness may even be more of a CrapsackWorld than normal...
5* The SpiritWorld is full of strange, alien entities that range from barely-sentient motes of spiritual power to terrible and alien gods. And all of them are literally [[BlueAndOrangeMorality incapable of thinking like humans do]], which makes them extremely dangerous; even a spirit of Love, Friendship or Joy can do terrible, unspeakable things to humans simply to promote its own nature. And, what's worse, they all basically want to get into the material world, where they do fun things like [[DemonicPossession take over human beings]].
6** Worse than even average spirits are the Maeljin. These are the Incarnae (spirits of such power they are, for all practical purpose, ''gods'') of the SevenDeadlySins, plus the Incarnae of Deceit and Destruction. They're much the same as regular spirits, but up to eleven; they want to turn the entire SpiritWorld into one giant [[{{Hell}} Wound]].
7** The Idigam are spirits of concepts and things that never existed -- that is, manifestations of concepts so alien that they have no place in reality. A regular spirit would twist reality so as to cut out all but a specific part of it, but the Idigam seek to turn it into something it never was and never should have been. All Forsaken tribes are specialists in hunting a type of supernatural baddie, but there is is no tribe for the Idigam because ''nobody'' is sure how to counter them.
8* The Hosts are malevolent demon-gods shattered into many pieces, and which now inhabit the bodies of ordinary animals. Given the time, though, they can grow in strength and power and become far more terrible monsters, who gnaw their way into living human flesh and begin eating them from the inside out to assume ghastly semi-human forms.
9** Azlu: Giant spiders who live to feed and to weave, slowly thickening the Gauntlet that lies between the two worlds, stifling the minds and souls of all things -- and people -- in the area around them, reducing mortals to shuffling zombies, no better than cattle, ready to be snared and devoured.
10** Beshilu: Maniac rats who seek to gnaw holes in the Gauntlet, opening the way for armies of spirits to come through and claim human bodies for themselves.
11** Srizaku: Locust swarms are scary enough to begin with; imagine a locust swarm that eats ''flesh''. A great mass of flying bugs and bug-men that descends in an unstoppable tide upon entire villages and leaves behind nothing but ruins and gnawed-clean bones.
12*** Even better: the Locust Hosts' progenitor, the spirit so evil even death didn't stop him? He's the only one [[OhCrap still very much alive and whole]], still trying to eat the universe so that only he exists, finally sated by the destruction of everything that can be. Did we also mention he's an idigam?
13** Halaku: Eye-eating crows that can see through the bloody sockets of any person whose eyes they eat, and whose motives remain a mystery. Nobody knows why they do the things they do. They just ''do'' it.
14*** They have become worse in 2e. Now they enter the living body of a person by their eye sockets and trick their Host’s neighbors, friends, and family into its home to force their body to murder them and demands that their now blind victim build a nest to them with their bones. And if they managed to resist the order? They will just kill him or her and move to repeat the process with other human.
15** Razilu: The Snake Hosts, creatures so mysterious and rare that nobody knows ''what'' they want. Are they mad healers who attempt to cure others by doing things like stripping away all their emotions? Slumbering monsters that wake and then interact with the world as if they are still caught in one of their timeless dreams? Predators who seek only to devour all other Hosts? Nobody knows... and NothingIsScarier.
16** Adarusharu: Wolves who feed on fear and flesh with equal fervor, capable of slipping freely from Material to Shadow and back again, seeking only to grow in numbers until they can devour the world.
17** Usudwirku: Sentient fungi that infest corpses and reanimate them, using them to harass and bedevil werewolves while the fungi itself grows in loci, creating fields of toxic mushrooms that can and will kill anything that approaches with showers of poisonous spores.
18** Uglathlu: Worms that can only infest the bodies of those who were already on the road to pure evil, raising the corpses as steadily more disgusting, worm-infested sacks of skin and bone, the very presence of which creates Wounds and inexorably pushes those around them off the MoralEventHorizon, driving them deeper into depravity.
19** Sidalaaghu: Cicadas that can deafen victims with their intense, clacking song, and only appear in numbers similar to the Srizaku in the later part of summer. This make fight them very difficult and usually the packs or recolocate their bases or hole up until the onslaught ends.
20** Alaghidim: Crabs that are infamous for causing fishing boats to vanish without a trace. Not very scary, right? However, one nest had been in Odaiba, an artificial island of Japan with a shopping and entertainment district with nightclubs and malls, for over a century, to the point that is considered suicide going there. Look below to see just how durable and powerful a werewolf is in 2e and think about what one of them would consider suicidal.
21** Ukusguaku: Lampreys that burrow in the flesh of their victims to drink their blood and cause the Gauntlet to become fluid, allowing them to appearing in any moment and seeping blood and oozing into the Flesh.
22** Kha-Yaawk: Leeches that bubble out of the Gauntlet with the rains to enter the bodies of sleeping humans and animals and drain their blood before move to another victim. If their victim body began to rot in standing water, something very likely because they only manifest in rainforest, it will return as a parody of a vampire just as blood-hungry as their murderer.
23** Afther this gallery of horrors you can feel safe, because at least you know all kinds of Host, right? Wrong. These are just the ones that you will more likely find. In the sourcebook ''Blasphemies'' are mentioned three more Hosts: The Stinger, a man swollen with living bees that lead a cult that helps "him" create honeycombs of dried skin to "pollinate" both the Shadow and the Real World; The Cat Hosts, feral stray cats that hunt spirits, Ridden and Forsaken after hypnotizing the locals and that don't look different from other cats; Finally, the Ghost Hosts, human shells Claimed or gutted by legions of dead spectres, each one an OmnicidalManiac whose only motivation is destroy other beings and create more of themselves. Want to know something worse? Those are the campfire tales that werewolves tell one another and near no one actually believe that such abominations can exist,that the book lampshades by saying that such short-sightedness will get yourself dead.
24* The werewolves themselves are frightening enough; they're an entire race of half-flesh, half-spirit ''things'' that live a few steps away from flying into a berserk fury and the mere sight of which can drive people insane. Of these, maybe a third of the race want to do their "job" of destroying the Hosts and keeping humans safe from the spirits (who loathe them for it and who do everything they can to thwart them). The other two thirds of the race basically regard humans as mere livestock and want to openly conquer the world, creating a hellish new reality in which humans would be slaves to werewolves and spirits alike.
25** And then it gets worse. Some werewolves can't stand up to the mental and spiritual punishment the world dishes out to them; these become the Zi'ir ([[MeaningfulName "Broken Souls"]]), which are all the psychotic fury of a blood-mad werewolf and absolutely no control or sanity left. Other werewolves, the so-called Bale Hounds, have decided that evil is winning... and they want to be on the winning side. So they actively serve and promote the agenda of the [[GodOfEvil Maeljin]].
26** And did we mention that taking these things on is virtually impossible for a human to do (at least in 2e)? They have a HealingFactor so powerful it borders on making them NighInvulnerable, allowing them to NoSell the ChunkySalsa rule -- even the weakest of werewolves can shrug off a barrage of gunfire that would make mincemeat of a human and still make balloon animals out of their assailant's intestines before healing up without a hesitation. Combat-focused werewolves can get run over by a loaded trailer-truck and shrug it off, especially since, in Garou (their [[MeaningfulName War Form]]), they ''instantly'' heal back to full health. Of course, that's assuming you can muster the urge to shoot one in the first place, since seeing a werewolf in all its glory induces a deep, abiding, supernatural dread so strong that most are incapable of doing anything other than pissing themselves and curling into a weeping ball until it rips them apart.
27*** Of special note is that in some editions, the only thing 'supernatural' about the fear is the presence of the werewolf- the actual fear is a completely mundane survival response that humans evolved due to YEARS OF UNREPENTANT HUNTING BY WEREWOLVES
28* One of the horrors mentioned in Wolfsbane? Irinam the Colossus. She's the incarnate Spirit of the United States of America. And she is, even by spirit standards, totally insane.
29* Su Ubh is a spirit called the Mockingbird, who lures humans out with the sounds of people in distress, then abducts them to the Shadow and lets them starve. If they somehow escape, then, in a year, it will come to them and leave a baby crying on their doorstep -- not a monster that looks like a baby, just a normal human baby it kidnapped from somewhere else -- and arrange things so that they end up leaving it to die out in the cold.
30* Vespertilius; lycanthropy as a sexually transmitted disease, that incites you to seduce others to your bed... and then kill and/or eat them.
31* Let's hear it for the Spirit Wolves (at least before the writers caught on to the UnfortunateImplications and declared them CanonDiscontinuity). One of the crimes that hits a werewolf's harmony is having sex with another werewolf. It's likened to incest, but what happens is that the female, if she gets pregnant will give birth to a... creature that claws its way out of her womb, possibly killing her. It will then break out into the shadow and start hunting werewolves or just anything it can sink its jaws into. And the whole experience of having sex with another werewolf can drive you mad. Yes, not even safe sex will protect your characters.
32** And just to make it more lovely, imagine two werewolves that were in love with each other before the change and how difficult that would be to resist. This is why werewolves can't have nice things. Because spiritual death machines that want to destroy everything in sight because that's all they know ruin them. You can reason with some werewolves in human form. Not these ones.
33*** Even worse, until a potential werewolf actually has his or her First Change s/he is indistinguishable from all the other humans with some measure of werewolf blood who are innately attractive to and naturally tolerant towards werewolves.
34* The Lodge of the Field, Polish werewolves who worship a totem spirit they call Lycaon-Ur. A Spirit that preaches that the ''purpose'' of werewolves is to devour humans to feed the hunger of the gods. A Spirit that may, one day, ascend to the power of a Firstborn and become Devourer Wolf, a ravenous, biomechanical hunter fashioned of metal, flesh, and lightning. The Lodge's membership outnumbers the ranks of the Forsaken and the Pure ''combined'' in its own territory... and its numbers just keep on growing.
35* The Lodge of the Screaming Moon, aka the [[OurBansheesAreLouder Banshees]], [[TerrorHero quite intentionally]]. The good news is, most people [[DarkIsNotEvil need not fear them at all]]; their sacred prey is exclusively beings who exploit fear, either because they feed on it or ForTheEvulz. If you happen to be ''one'' of those beings, though, like an Autumn Court changeling in need of a Glamour boost or a hungry Beast, you'll quickly discover the Banshees organize around the principle of mastering fear themselves, to the point where they regularly declare hunts ''on themselves'' [[TrainingFromHell to sharpen their skills]]. When faced with someone they actually want to kill, they don't just want to murder you and be done with it-no, they want to ''punish'' you first, to [[TheKillerBecomesTheKilled make you feel the same fear you exploited]] and to hear you die screaming-it's literally their Ban, to mark each kill with either their prey screaming or howling themselves if they couldn't pull that off. Their very Hunt rite immunizes them against your fear-remember how you scared people to death? [[NoSell Yeah, the Banshees think that's cute, you trying to give them heart attacks]]. Worse, they're a ''[[MagicKnight sorcerous]]'' lodge-their patron, Zakinsuzi [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast the Tyrant Over Fear]] gives them to manipulate Fear and Inspiration and even ''Moonlight'' (yeah, he's a Lune, so all of the Banshees are nuts-he's just distant enough for them to be a functional, minor nuts that doesn't impede them at all) so they can better kill you. And oh yeah, most of them are Cahalith, so [[{{Seers}} they know what you're going to do already]]. So...yeah. Start running.

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