Werewolf: The Forsaken - Blank It

Of course, some hybrid spirits are feared rather than
respected. They have become the other, even by the
standards of the spirit world, bizarre chimeras that owe
their existence to no single choir of spirits. The spirits of
predatory animals are best able to feed on the spirits of
their prey and retain their true form, but even they can
degenerate into strange hybrids if they lose track of their
core. Spirits of different parts that have no real correlation
are shunned and feared by other spirits as unpredictable
and dangerous monstrosities. A spider-spirit can
take on elements of cunning, patience and poison while
still remaining true to the concept of “spider,” but a spider-spirit
that becomes a spirit of glass and fire as well no
longer has any kin in its choir. These illogical, patchwork
spirits have come to be known as magath — those that
are not, yet are.
SPIRIT APPEARANCE
The spirits of animals and plants look very much
like the objects that spawned them. What, though, does
a spirit of fear or of a place or a concept or a nation look
like? Here, humanity lends it a measure of form. The
imaginations of untold billions of people shape the form
of such abstract spirits into the images of popular culture.
A spirit of pain or fear today is as likely to look like a
mass of hypodermic needles, broken glass and rusted
saw blades as it is to resemble the more primeval fears of
teeth or claws. A spirit of a city square might look like
the most prominent statue in the place, a version of the
city’s emblem or even a typical resident of that square.
The embodiment of a locale in Wall Street might appear
as a faceless broker, striding around and interacting with
nothing but money spirits.
The more powerful a spirit is, the more forms it might
possess, shifting from one to the next as it adapts to the
expectations of those it meets. Take, for example, the old
spirits of European cities. The spirit of London, a greater
Jaggling like most city spirits, might exude a certain Victorian
air: anthropomorphic, smartly dressed and of abstract
and angular features, in suit and hat, carrying an umbrella
and often heralded by the arrival of fog. However much
the good people of London protest that such an image has
nothing to do with the real city, it’s too firmly entrenched
in the minds of the rest of the world to be an inappropriate
façade for the city spirit. This is the form that the
spirit of London might take when called, but it might also
have a form made of ancient cobbles and modern metal,
of glass and rope, a hulking gestalt of elements from St.
Paul’s, Tyburn and the Underground all at once. Even
spirits that draw a guise from the most human of concepts
are not human, nor do they look on human emotion with
anything resembling empathy.
The rise of mass, worldwide media has had a profound
effect on the Shadow Realm over the last few decades.
Suddenly, the form of the less powerful abstract spirits
can change in a matter of months rather than the decades
it used to take. A hit movie seen by millions of people
worldwide can affect whole choirs of spirits within weeks
of its release. The appearance of computer and information
spirits changes every few months, or so it seems.
The very insular nature of werewolf life means that
the Uratha have only just become aware of the profound
spiritual effect the steady homogenizing of human culture
is having. Those werewolves who have given up the siren
call of territory for a roaming life have found the spirit
wilds less diverse than they were a decade ago. The spirit
wilds of America and Europe are different, but there are
more points of similarity among the spirits than there
were ten years past. The effect is even more noticeable between
countries in Europe. Some younger werewolves take
this new element of familiarity to mean that the Shadow
is a closer reflection of the physical world than it actually
is — only to be greatly surprised when the true inhuman
nature of the spirit world uncoils before them.
ABSTRACT SPIRIT S
One of the reasons that spirits that feed on negative
emotions or events are so despised is that they seek to
promote the suffering that spawns them to prevent their
own decay. A pain mote quickly dissolves if the injury
that birthed it is healed. Therefore, it’s in the interest of
an awakened pain-spirit to keep promoting the existence
of the pain for as long as it can. The longer it manages to
survive, the more likely it is that other spirits of a similar
nature will form, giving the original spirit the chance to
consume them and grow in power.
The growth in power of such a spirit does nothing to
give the physical world respite. After all, spirits who are
talented at manipulating real-world events to propagate
their own existence survive to consume other spirits. They
continue to do so, even after it ceases to be a factor in
their own survival, because they enjoy it, because they’re
good at it and because it creates new spirits for them to
feast upon. People sometimes say that a place has an evil
reputation, and that bad things seem to happen there.
That place is likely home to a powerful spirit, squatting in
the Shadow and manipulating events in the physical world
to its own advantage.
This is true of all spirits born of concepts rather than
objects. A spirit of joy will also seek to prolong its own existence
by promoting joy on the earthly side of the Gauntlet.
This does not necessarily mean that a spirit of joy has
a deep empathy for humanity — it might, for instance,
gravitate to the ecstasy felt by narcotics users during the
peak of their highs. Spirits don’t think like people, after
all, or even like the Forsaken. This lack of understanding
can also lead to changes in an unwary spirit’s nature. In
time, the joy-spirit that was drawn to drug addicts during
their highest emotional peak is exposed to so much
despair and suffering during the addicts’ lows that it may
even change its nature, becoming more a tainted thing of
joy lost and despair gained.
Spirits
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