Werewolf: The Forsaken - Blank It

70
Chapter II: Character
your Storyteller. The more you know about your character,
the more real he will seem.
• How old are you?
When were you born? How old were you when you
underwent the First Change? How long have you been a
werewolf? Did the Change affect your emotional maturity?
For better or worse? Do you look older or younger than your
years? Are you more or less mature than you seem?
• What was unique about your childhood?
What do you remember about your early years? What
was your home life like? Was it idyllic? Troubled? Abusive?
Where did you go to school? Were you a good student? What
is your most powerful childhood memory? Did you go to high
school or college? Did you have a hometown, or did your family
move often? Did you run away from home? Did you play
sports? Did any of your childhood friendships last until adulthood?
Did your nascent Rage affect your childhood?
• What kind of person were you?
Did you like who you were? How would you describe
yourself as a person before the Change? How would the people
who knew you best describe you? How would someone who
disliked you describe you? What about a total stranger? Did
you have an active social life? A family? A steady job? Good
friends, or simply acquaintances? How did you expect life to
go before the Change turned everything upside down?
• What experiences with the supernatural have you had?
Did omens manifest before your First Change? Did you
take particular note of them? Were you hunted and bitten
prior to the Change? Did you ever have an encounter with
a manifested spirit, Ridden or other supernatural entity?
Were you skeptical of the supernatural? Is there anything you
learned to fear?
• What was your First Change like?
How did your auspice moon affect your Change? What
stress brought on the Change? Did you do anything you regret?
Did your Change have ramifications in the mortal world? Are
you now hunted by the police, or by someone else? How does
your First Change haunt you today?
• Who taught you what you are?
Who was your mentor? Who brought you into werewolf
society after your Change? Were they expecting you to
Change, or did they run across you by accident? Are you
related? Is your mentor one of the People or someone with
wolf blood? Do you come from a strong werewolf bloodline, or
were you born into a family in which the blood was weak?
• What was your tribal initiation like?
How many werewolves of your tribe were present? Do
you keep in touch with any of them? How did you feel when
the rite was completed? Did you feel proud? Frightened? What
is your Uratha name? Why were you given this name? Do you
answer to it, or do you prefer your human name? Were you
initiated into a tribe at all?
• How was your pack formed?
When did you first meet your packmates? Did you get
along with them at first? Were you brought together by elders?
By circumstance? What is your pack totem like? Is it the
sort of totem you expected to have, or did it reveal something
strange about your own personality?
• Do you keep a territory?
Is there a place you consider “yours”? Do you share it
with your pack? Are you comfortable with the responsibility?
If you have no territory, do you want one?
• Do you retain any connections to your mortal life?
Are you a “missing person?” Have you been presumed
dead? Do you retain contact with your family or friends?
Have any of your loved ones been subject to danger due to
your new life? Do you have any wolf-blooded relatives?
• What motivates you?
How much do you believe in your tribe’s cause? Do you have
issues from your mundane life that still go unresolved? Do you have
loved ones to protect, or are you in search of someone who understands?
Are there wrongs in your past that need to be righted?
Have your experiences as a werewolf given you new motivation?
Do you want to hold on to a portion of your previous life? If you
could change one thing about your life, what would it be?
NAMING CONVENTIONS
Many Forsaken have two names — the name
they were born with and the name they earned
as a werewolf. The concept of an earned name
(sometimes called a “deed name”) is easy enough
to grasp. Folklore and history offer plenty of
examples: Johnny Appleseed, Jack the Giant-Killer,
Crazy Horse, Catherine the Great, Vlad the Impaler
and so on. An earned name can be particularly
important to a werewolf, because Uratha culture is
based on action. It doesn’t matter who one’s human
family was. What matters after the First Change is
what your character makes of herself. It’s a sign of
the new life that he’s been born into, whether he
wanted it or not. Some Uratha honor this tradition.
Others ignore it.
A deed name is usually earned before or during
tribal initiation. This often has something to
do with how a character performs, though it can
be given in accordance to some vision or impression
an elder has concerning the subject. For example,
Elias Winterborn earned his name because
an Ithaeur of his tribe saw that his soul carried a
portion of the strength of the winter storm that
raged at Elias’ birth.
Although the trend for earned names is
to merge a werewolf’s personal name with an
earned sobriquet, this isn’t always the case.
Some werewolves carry deed names that make
no reference to their lives before the First
Change, perhaps because they wish to forget
their former lives, or perhaps because they favor
a simpler name.