Werewolf: The Forsaken - Blank It

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Chapter I: The World of the Forsaken
to remain on top and keep the young quiet. Elders, by
contrast, feel that they’ve paid their dues. They took their
scars when they were young, so they deserve the benefits
of their station now. Most elders point out that they give
the young (and low) the respect that this law requires.
Ballads that illustrate this tenet follow one of several
patterns: Young Uratha rails against his low status,
disrespects his elders and is brutally put in his place; or
well-respected Uratha mistreats younger werewolves, she
begins to fall into madness, she repents and regains her
heroic stature. (Firebringer’s Redemption, which ends in the
death of the Rahu Firebringer during the third century
CE, is the pinnacle of the latter.)
RESPECT YOUR PREY
Ni Daha. The Uratha have sworn to be responsible
hunters — not to overtax their territory or any neutral territory
in which they hunt. When they chose to supplant
Father Wolf as guardians of the two worlds, they vowed
to respect their prey in order to show that their intentions
were more honorable than those of the spirit tyrants they
oppose. The Oath commands them to respect all their
prey, and indeed any life or spirit they might end. This includes
humans — a truth that reminds young werewolves
just how alien a society they have entered.
Many werewolves exhibit no more remorse when
they must kill a particular human than when they hunt
down and kill a deer. The only real difference, to many
werewolves, is that the Oath forbids them to consume
the flesh of humans. Uratha pay the spirit of the prey the
same degree of respect in either case, and they do not kill
unnecessarily. A deer dies to provide food, while a human
usually dies for an unwitting violation of werewolf taboos.
Most modern packs give a warning to humans who
transgress against them, rather than killing them outright.
Such a warning might consist of an anonymous note, spirit
haunting, exposure to the Lunacy from the sight of Uratha
in Gauru form or terrifying stalking and property damage.
Such warnings usually prevent the human from continuing
to violate Luna’s law, thus saving the human’s life.
THE URATHA SHALL CLEAVE TO THE HUMAN
Uratha Safal Thil Lu’u. No werewolves can be born
of mating with wolves, and one werewolf breeding with
another begets a true monster. Violating this tenet is a
sin of lust and a failure of self-control. When werewolves
— particularly packmates — succumb to physical desire,
they forget the true reason that Father Wolf led them into
the world. Some Elodoth say that Luna forces her children
to breed with humans in order to remind them that breeding
is a duty. Allowing love between Uratha, they say,
would distract those werewolves from their real purpose.
Other werewolves believe that unihar are “born” to
illustrate that no animal should breed too close to its
relatives, lest crippling weakness arise. By this reasoning,
all Uratha are siblings in the spirit-world. Many young
werewolves believe that Luna places no limitation on
intercourse, or on non-intercourse sexual activity; more
conservative older Forsaken take the opposite tack.
Ballads of tragic love strike a particular chord within
the hearts of werewolves. Often, as in The Song of Axebreaker
and Tamer, a violation of this tenet is redeemed by
the heroic death of one of the violators to save the other.
In the eyes of many more modern werewolves, this tenet
is a relatively minor one, but almost any female werewolf
who has gone through a “spirit pregnancy” stands firmly
behind the law.
DO NOT EAT THE FLESH OF MAN OR WOLF
Nu Hu Uzu Eren. The Forsaken do not consume
the flesh of either of their closest relatives — or rather,
should not, though the temptation exists. Perhaps because
humans and wolves are so close to the Uratha, perhaps
because they simply retain a fraction more spiritual power,
their flesh carries a certain spiritual… nourishment. By
devouring human or wolf meat, a werewolf can quickly regain
a measure of spiritual energy to fuel his supernatural
powers — at a terrible cost to his soul. The People find it
frightening and disturbing that such a path to power exists
and that lore on the act is more than speculative.
Thankfully, most Forsaken are raised in cultures
where cannibalism is taboo, so they are loath to commit
what they see as cannibalistic acts. Some tribal elders even
refuse to teach new werewolves the reason some might be
tempted to violate this law. What the young ones don’t
know, they hope, cannot tempt them.
It happens, though. A werewolf who loses himself
in the madness of Death Rage might mindlessly devour a
portion of his kill. He might even remember the taste and
crave more. Also ancient rites of questionable provenance
rely on the consumption of human or wolf flesh. Only two
years ago, a pack of Mexico City Uratha was discovered
to have subsisted on human flesh for weeks at a time. The
werewolves were driven into exile, their pack name was
stricken from the histories, and their locus was destroyed
as they watched.
THE HERD MUST NOT KNOW
Nu Bath Githul. Humans suffer terribly from the Lunacy.
The depredations of werewolves in the days leading
up to the Sundering and the humans’ forcible separation
from the spirit world have strengthened Luna’s curse.
Once torn free from their sheltering blanket of ignorance,
some humans cannot be pulled back, which makes them
pliable vessels for abusive spirits.
In reality, this law isn’t for humans’ protection as
much as it is for the werewolves’. Humans have been
dangerous in numbers since time out of mind. In the
modern day, they’re dangerous even in twos and threes.
The Forsaken do not dare give humans any inkling that
they exist. Humans know about silver’s effect on werewolves,
even if they don’t believe that werewolves exist.
The last few times humans went after Uratha in large