You don't dare stay in this death-hungry form any longer. You scent the air, seeking other threats. Nothing. The fight is over, you tell the screaming monster you've become.
Keep killing. The town isn't far. The People of the Map are soft and weak. You can—
No.
You sink down onto all fours and return to your titan-wolf hispo form. You've learned to plan ahead, so in your wolf forms, you always wear a pack at your hip stuffed with emergency clothing. The pack survived your transformations, but if you turned back into a regular person, you'd probably freeze to death before you could pull your thermals on and reach the Speedway up the road, the one across from the local Amazon hub. You'll need to stay like this until you're within sight of the convenience store.
Right now, you shake the Wolf out of your thoughts and force yourself to plan and think like a person. The Bane is dead, but where are Clay and the others? You need to make a call, and you can't do that without fingers. You check your hip: the good news is that the gear kit you carry in wolf form is still there. The tightly wrapped clothes within it will let you blend back in with the human population. Of course, if you tried to change now, you'd freeze to death before you reached that Speedway. A conundrum.
Next
Flies fall dead onto the snowy ground, forming a black halo around the dead horse in the shadow of an abandoned pipeline that stretches east-west across the landscape. You did it. Clay sent you to destroy the Bane, and now both the rider and the horse-thing are dead. You stand beneath Clay's greatest victory—the abandoned oil pipeline—contemplating the future. You won't be a cub anymore, but a true Garou. You'll be able to seek renown and respect, to join one of the remaining tribes of the Garou Nation.
You can join Clay's pack, but is that even what you want? To linger here with your miserable elders? As a true Garou, you could seek out your own pack, or walk the world for a time on your own. Gaia suffers everywhere. As the monster's blood cools on the snow, you consider what you really want.
Glory. To destroy the enemies of Gaia, and—if it's still even possible—to stop humanity's desecration of the earth and halt the Apocalypse.
Honor. To restore the packs and the tribes, to help rebuild the laws and the dignity of the Garou Nation.
Wisdom. To learn what has happened to Gaia, to the spirit world, and to the paths our ancestors used to walk.
Next
The Garou are Gaia's fangs, made to fight the Wyrm—the cosmic enemy, the principle of rot and ruin. The Wyrm spreads through the spirit world with its army of Banes and unclean spirits, and slowly kills the living Earth through pollution and extraction. Before your First Change, Clay's pack slaughtered the Banes and mercenaries that guarded the empty pipeline that rises over the winter woods, but now they're paralyzed by despair, convinced that the Apocalypse has come and gone, that Gaia is dead and the appearance of life is only the quiver of dead nerves. You turn the possibility over in your mind. Is there still a chance to save this ravaged world? If so, what weapons can the Garou wield, if Rage has failed?
As you consider what "Glory" might look like in this fallen age, a strange smell draws your attention. It's the dead horse in the snow. Sometimes, fomori—that's the name you learned for when a Bane possesses a person or animal—sometimes fomori rot quickly after death, consumed by the putrescence of the Wyrm. Other times, Clay's packmate Scarper has to roll the corpse up in a rug and take it to a pig farm his ex-girlfriend owns. That's always a hassle. But though this horse's fanged teeth have disappeared and it now looks like an ordinary dead horse, the flesh smells…sweet and strong. As if it still held some power within it.
The Litany—the laws of your people—tell you not to eat the flesh of humans. This monster was never human, but still you hesitate.
Damn the Litany! It has failed, and now the world is all but lost. But I have won, so now I brush the flies away and eat.
I'm still worried about the horseman. I want to make sure he's all the way dead. Mortals ruined this world, and I don't want one slinking off to cause more trouble.
I won't eat the dead. I offer the proper prayers to whatever spirits still watch over this place, and thank them for my victory.
I don't want meat, I want information. If there are more of these creatures, they might attack the communities nearby. I study the dead rider for clues that will help me protect people.
Next