Moon-Banished

Open Development, Werewolf: The Forsaken

I’m on the redlining charge now. That’s where I read through all the first drafts and mark up comments and corrections, everything from use of the passive voice to rules that don’t do what they claim to do, before passing back to the writers for second drafts. Of the book, I’m about halfway through — 109,000 words out of 215,000. I can normally redline 10 to 20 thousand words each day, but it’s in-depth work that involves keeping the whole contents of the book in my head and cross-referencing everything. That’s why I’m being even quieter than normal — I’m reading, but I need to focus on the redlines so don’t have time to respond just now. I am listening, though. Also? Sleep-deprived. That one’s nothing new, though.

Anyway: idigam won, 42 to 14. So let’s talk about the Moon-Banished.

The main source for the idigam up to now is Night Horrors: Wolfsbane. That’s a fantastic book, and I don’t just say that because it’s got my name on it. Matt McFarland did some stellar work defining the spirits of things that aren’t, and I didn’t want to go back and change that up for no good reason. I love the idigam as they are.

I don’t normaly do this, but I’m going to quote from the setting bible that I gave to all my writers, describing the idigam:

The idigam are creatures from before time, spirits of concepts that do not — can not — exist in the world as we know it. As the things they reflected slowly winked out of existence, never to be remembered, the idigam decided that they would not go gentle into that good night. They had to change to survive, and never stop changing. The idigam could mimic anything, physical or spiritual, for a while before they had to change again. Permanence is not part of their nature. Able to take any form, Father Wolf could hunt the idigam but not kill them. Each time he tried, they took a form that defied his efforts. And so he banished them to the moon, a place without resonance or Essence. Luna locked them away in a formless prison, recognizing the changing spirits as kin-but-not-kin, for while she/he is ever changing he/she is still the spirit of the Moon and that anchors her existence. After that, the stories get a bit muddled. One version tells that a handful of idigam could remain in the world, taking skins and forms as necessary, to be the monsters that humans killed — a distraction from the real monsters in the dark. Humans slew fewer and fewer monsters. They faced far worse predators in war and sickness. When humans landed on the Moon, these idigam knew that no human would return to slay them. Surely soon Father Wolf’s get would come to imprison them? Seeing Luna distracted by the humans upon her body, they called to their kin, who escaped the Moon’s prison. Another story tells that the idigam latched on to the spirits that the moon landings brought with them — spirits of technology, food, fuel, and light; of joy, fear, faith, and accomplishment. This influx of Essence awakened the idigam. Four of them escaped the Moon with the Eagle lunar lander; many more followed with the return of other moon landings. Whether the conceptual spirits of Apollo 13 were strong enough to provide anchors to bring the idigam — or stranger things — back with it, nobody knows. Whatever the story of their origin, during their long imprisonment the idigam called to the stars and to spirits not of the earth, spirits that knew not of Father Wolf. Occasionally, the stars answered. Now, a meteor shower might bring a handful of alien spirits, one or two of which an idigam might find and nurture. While still spirits, these creatures embody nothing known on Earth, making them potent foes in their own right. The greatest spirits of change, the idigam can warp and manipulate Essence itself. In order to remain in the world the formless must coalesce around some facet of the world, usually a slumbering spirit. Coalescing fixes the idigam’s form and ban — it’s more vulnerable to harm, and having a ban that doesn’t change from scene to scene is another weakness. On the other hand, they have full access to their Essence-shaping powers. The idigam have a real hate-on for the Forsaken. Partly that’s because the Forsaken serve the idigam’s jailer, and partly it’s because Father Luna’s blessing gives the Forsaken a measure of protection against the Moon-Banished. Other werewolves are more likely to be victims or cat’s-paws of the idigam than capable of fighting against them.

So, that’s the background. What does that mean for the Idigam Chronicle? Well, no tribe has the idigam as their sacred prey. To the Uratha, the idigam are an out-of-context problem. The Moon-Banished are things that don’t match up to what the Forsaken and Pure have any experience of. As far as werewolves know, the idigam are a new thing, an emerging problem.

They’re also not elements of “cosmic horror.” That’s another term for “low-rent Lovecraftiana,” and our idigam are nothing like that. They are big, bad spirits that hate werewolves — Forsaken especially — and can warp the very substance of the Shadow. They aren’t unknowable, uncaring gods representative of the author’s fears of atheism or miscegnation.

Idigam are both rare and unique. Each one has to change, and finds its own way to coalesce and thus its own strengths and foibles. They don’t communicate, they don’t organize, if they even know that other creatures of their kind exist then one idigam may not recognize another, or may want it destroyed.

Ultimately, the idigam are the big bad that underlies a whole chronicle. They’re less “video game end boss,” more “Fenric.” I grew up with the Seventh Doctor, deal with it. The pack encounters spirits and werewolves poisoned by the idigam’s Essence, spirits of alien things, humans and Pure and shartha manipulated by the idigam, and in the end the pack can piece enough together to idenitfy the creature behind it. Then, they need to gather enough allies to have a chance of hunting the idigam successfully.

The book gives a broad toolkit for constructing not just the idigam themselves but their minions and catspaws and random thralls. It also includes a handful of idigam made using the new system, all of them new. The ones in Wolfsbane can fit right in as well.

If you think you’re getting away without Bowie’s Changes, you don’t know me. Next week, do you want to see the things werewolves hunt, or how we build their pack — Prey or Pack Creation?