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.
But first, you carefully turn your head, trying to feel the neck wound that severed your artery. Your fur is matted with blood, but the wound has healed enough that you're no longer bleeding out. It's still raw, though.
And where are you?
The Speedway (and its bathroom, where you can clean up) shouldn't be far. You glance back to check your hip: the clothing kit you prepared is still there. But you don't want to change in the cold.
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 though it wasn't easy, you destroyed both the rider and the horse-thing. 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
The role of spirit-mediator normally falls to a pack's theurge, not its philodox, but Clay's theurge is…not always available. You will have to suffice. You are no scholar of the rites and ways, but you've seen what flawless recitals have offered Clay's pack: silence from the spirit world. Instead of perfect form and millennia-old words, you howl your sincere thanks to the spirits for this victory, and promise more victories to come against the Wyrm and its servants. That same silence answers you, but you feel better.
Then you hear bitter, howling laughter carried on the ice wind. Not the spirits of this place: Clay's theurge. She squats atop a tree stump, a huge black wolf with corpse-blue eyes.
"Would you take my place, little usurper?" she whispers.
Clay moves in the shadows behind her, a looming and monstrous shape, over ten feet high. But where is the third of their company? Where is Scarper?
"I mean no disrespect, Black Tarn. I only want the spirits to know our work." This is what the Litany asks of me.
Let Black Tarn rage and snarl—I quietly finish my prayers, then turn to face her.
"If we can teach them to answer us again, maybe we can still win this war, Black Tarn."
These Garou are paranoid monsters. If the spirits are silent, maybe I can find regular people who can offer me what Clay's pack cannot.
Next