Forsaken… Saturday?

Open Development, Werewolf: The Forsaken

As the title intimates, this column’s a day late. I spend much of the last week going through the redlines for Umbra, and by the time I should have been writing on this week’s topic, my brain was too fried. It should be back to Friday next year. I can’t wait to show off some of what we’re seeing in the drafts coming in.

Last week’s vote was a lot closer than the weeks before – 51–35, with both sides pretty much tied after the first sixty comments. I’m really really glad happy that people are jumping in to comment, even if it’s just on which they want to see.

Oh, yeah. I should probably clarify that Packs won in the end.

As the old saying goes, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Uratha don’t hold too close to that – they can pick their packmates, at least within reason, but once a group of werewolves is bonded together, they share that bond through thick and thin. They’ve built a whole new family, with all the ups and downs that might entail.

The core of a pack is a group of werewolves – normally between three and six – who share the bond of family, and a spirit that the werewolves press into service. It’s this spirit bond that elevates a group of werewolves into a proper pack, but it’s also this bond that makes it so hard to leave. The werewolves and their totem spirit form the hunting party of a pack; it’s up to them to perform the siskur-dah, the sacred hunt.

Werewolves are people too, and people need friends outside of their family – unless they want to end up like the family from Deliverance. To that end, most packs don’t stop at just a group of werewolves and their totem spirit. The pack includes Wolf-Blooded and a few humans who know the truth about werewolves. They act as lieutenants for the werewolves. The Wolf-Blooded can provide useful assistance, especially those who can open themselves to spirits, or act as loci. These packmates look after the pack’s territory, deal with spirits, and perform the pack’s duties while the werewolves engage in the siskur-dah. Those normal humans at this level carry enough of the totem’s blessing that they are no longer part of the herd, and thus the Oath of the Moon’s requirement that The Herd Must Not Know does not apply to them. The totem is properly part of the pack, binding to the werewolves is synthesis rather than servitude. As a result, the totem operates under different rules to other spirits in the eyes of the Uratha, and joins the siskur-dah in the Shadow.

A small number of packs elevate Wolf-Blooded to their inner circle, allowing her to join the siskur-dah, either because the pack doesn’t have enough werewolves to go around, or because they have to split their members. Though this brings the Wolf-Blooded closer to the werewolves, neither Father Luna nor Mother Wolf ever intended the Wolf-Blooded to hunt. It’s not their role in the universe, and those who do hunt open themselves to grave danger that they’re ill-equipped to handle.

Finally, most packs include a number of humans who may or may not know what the werewolves really are, but who join the pack to be part of something larger. Depending on how the pack organizes themselves, human members might think that they’re part of a gang like the Crips, Bloods, or Hell’s Angels; a criminal fraternity like the Bratva, Mafia, or Yakuza; a secret society like the Cambridge Apostles, Skull and Bones, or the Society of Thoth; or a mystery cult like Aum Shinrikyo, the Branch Davidians, and the Church of Scientology; or a militia movement like the American Resistance Movement, Posse Comitatus, or the Sons of Liberty.

I normally hate run-on sentences, but I wanted to give a sense of the breadth and depth of possible pack organizations.

Anyway. Human members go through some initiation to join the pack, and after that point they’re considered part of the pack. The pack’s totem knows her as one of its own, and she’s never truly alone. Being chosen by the werewolves and their totem elevates the human from among the herd; while most packs don’t encourage the idea of spreading the truth among human members, they use their pack’s cover among the human population to benefit their human members. The werewolves and those Wolf-Blooded and humans in the know help out the human packmates as wel, through means both mundane and supernatural. Part of this supernatural aid can come through Pack Rites, rituals that Wolf-Blooded and werewolves can work that can benefit all of the pack members.

In addition to opening up the concept of packs, the inclusion of otherwise unknowing humans gives the werewolves a connection to the human world that packs might otherwise ignore. Through their human packmates, werewolves can find a tie to the human world — a Touchstone — that can stop them falling too far to the Shadow. Werewolves also have Touchstones in the Shadow that stop them falling too far to the Flesh.

Like large families, sometimes packs suffer a major breakdown. Their human members decide that the pack isn’t going far enough, and break away to pursue their own goals. The Wolf-Blooded believe that the werewolves have fucked up one siskur-dah too many, and try to launch their own hunt. A totem that hates and fears the pack, who Claims a human during her initiation rite and runs off with a twisted meat-suit to form its own cult. And even when a pack’s functional within itself, it’s always in someone’s crosshairs.

Part of the fun of these new packs comes from pack creation, a series of leading questions that helps flesh out the pack — do the werewolves operate as a pseudo-military unit based around half-remembered ideas about wolves, claiming “alpha”, “beta”, and “omega”? Do all the supernatural packmates stand at the same level? Do the werewolves rotate duties among their pack, or do they each have an area of expertise? Do the human members of the pack have sway in the physical world, and what kind? Does the pack only contain werewolves?

Whew. That’s quite a bit, but packs are one of those things that has a big change — but one that we feel really opens up the game. The gang/mob focus of packs gives me the perfect reason to inflict some Kasier Chiefs.

Okay, time for this week’s question. Normally, I’d offer a couple of options that I think would give a pretty even vote; this week I’m really torn. I’ve got the first draft of Gifts in my grubby electronic mitts and they are seriously amazing. But, I promised these columns would always end with a choice. So I’m going to cheat. Next week, would you like Gifts or Gifts?