Werewolf: The Forsaken - Blank It

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Chapter I: The World of the Forsaken
HUMANS
Humans might not live in a werewolf’s territory at
all. Uratha who are lucky enough to claim land out in the
wilderness far from human development might not have
to put up with more than a handful of humans. That’s not
going to stop those humans from damaging it or disrupting
the local spirit world, though. For example, the US
government has been giving out licenses to companies
that want to pull natural gas out of the ground. One way
companies do that is to pump air into the ground, which
forces natural gas up to where they can get at it affordably.
This pumped air and natural gas interact with the
local water table, and nearby creeks and streams die from
this treatment. They poison land in all directions, and if
a werewolf pack’s territory happens to be affected, then
dealing with this disruption becomes its problem.
Why care? Because a creek’s death makes its spirits
insane. Those spirits need live crawdads, healthy fish,
thriving plants. If they don’t have those things — because
the creek is dead — they must find some other focus. Such
spirits might possess humans and make them destructively
insane, or they might torment werewolves in the spirit
world, attack other local spirits at random and so on.
Most Uratha have to tolerate humans in their territory,
as well, and although werewolves are human-born,
their “human nature” is simply a skin they wear. Many
come to believe the legend that they are the children
not of Man and Woman, but of Father Wolf and Mother
Moon. Werewolves had the ability to wear a human’s form
before the humans had established themselves as the major
player on the planet. They might have that ability even
if the humans bomb themselves back to the Stone Age.
Humans feel most emotions more strongly than
any other species of animal does (barring werewolves, of
course), and strong human emotion is imprinted right
onto the spirit world. Violence, hate and fear create loci
of the worst resonance, which attracts spirits of appropriately
cruel and predatory nature. The spirits feed off those
emotions and try to spur more, creating a self-perpetuating
cycle. Many Uratha find it most expedient to kill off
the humans causing those emotions or kill off whatever’s
causing the emotions within the humans. They also have
to destroy the spirits.
Human “progress” can also reshape the spirit world,
and many werewolves choose to limit that in order to
let the spirits opposite the Gauntlet thrive. Knocking
down a beloved concert house in order to put up a
parking garage can leave that concert house still upright
in the Shadow until everyone in the area goes a full
day without thinking about the old place (which could
take years). At the same time, though, the spirits that
used to reside in the concert house go mad with the
loss of their focus — damaging cars, possessing them
and doing harmful things with them, or doing the same
with employees of the garage. To keep those spirits from
harming the physical world or other spirits around them,
it behooves the pack in whose territory the concert hall
stood to find those spirits a new edifice to haunt. Maybe
some of them would be satisfied by a conservatory, others
a bar where a lot of music is played. The remainder could
be coaxed into moving to a local library.
Looking at things the other way, humans are the
most frequent victims of the spirit world when spirits or
monsters press their way into reality. They make a good
barometer of spirit activity in that fashion. Werewolves
aren’t instinctively compelled to rescue the humans, per
se, but some are still compassionate toward their human
cousins and see rescuing humans as a happy side effect of
their work. Indeed, most werewolves eventually take human
mates. Those rare wolf-blooded are far more attractive
to a werewolf, but when the urge strikes, Uratha can
make time with just about any willing human who strikes
their fancy. Having a territory full of attractive young
humans makes this both easier and more pleasant.
RIVAL WEREWOLVES
The Tribes of the Moon have two factions of potential
enemies among the People — the Pure and each
other. Threats from fellow Forsaken arise when one group
wants a piece of the other’s territory. They might start to
frequent a location on the border of said territory — a
bar or a vacant lot where they’d like to gather — and the
resident pack does its best to nip this behavior in the bud.
If the usurper pack is more competent and experienced,
there’s no dishonor in offering to “buy it off.” The locals
give the outsiders a bit of land or some other form of
tribute and get them to agree that further transgressions
are off limits. If they disagree, the locals must then decide
whether to fight over that chunk of land or fall back and
hope the outsiders don’t seize more. Fighting isn’t out of
the question, even for packs of raw amateurs. Many-onone
contests between a pack of werewolves and one single
werewolf, no matter how talented, generally go poorly for
the lone wolf. Two packs who share fealty to the Oath can
theoretically work out their differences without resorting
to fang and claw, though it isn’t always smooth sailing.
The Pure Tribes are not so complaisant. If they try to
take territory from a Forsaken pack, it’s a prelude to trying
to take those werewolves’ heads. When trouble starts,
most Forsaken opt to fight the Pure rather than holding
out the vain hope of working it out. Some Forsaken can
survive for a time with Pure Tribes for neighbors, but if
they start moving into occupied neighboring territory, everyone
involved is in for an unpleasant few months. Sometimes
the struggle between neighboring Pure and Forsaken
packs can be resolved with a single decisive strike — the
trick is in knowing how and when to pull it off.
It can be vital for a pack to negotiate with other local
werewolves regarding limits on movement through territory,
and what is considered a “non-hostile” action. For instance,
if one pack has staked out and claimed a university
campus, the question arises if another pack can drop by
for lunch at a campus cafeteria? What if another pack has