The monstrosities known as Heart Eaters are an old, old work of the Wyrm: rare, subtle, and insidious. They’re strange things, neither Banes nor fomori nor the product of any other Wyrmish artifice of which the Garou are aware. They seem to exist only to reap a harvest of death and betrayal, and to worship the Maeljin known as Empress Aliara.
Heart Eaters are soft-bodied, writhing, flexible things. No creature of Gaia could feel anything save revulsion for a Heart Eater. However, the Heart Eaters understand the emotions and relationships of others all too well. Possessed of an uncanny empathy and a genius for relationship dynamics, Heart Eaters find it easy to sniff out deep bonds between others. When they find a particularly deep or vital bond, they go to work.
Heart-Eaters are a sort of skin-walker, eating an in- dividual’s heart and brain to absorb their identity. They
the Wyrm’s most enduring horrors. Heart Eaters have always primarily been found in the Americas, with only a very few ever stalking the towns and woods of Europe. They feature prominently in the cautionary songs and foe-litanies of the Pure Tribes, but were almost unknown to European Garou during the era of the Wyrmcomers. As a result, the Heart Eaters reaped a great and terrible harvest among their new and unwary foes up until the twentieth century, when shared knowledge informed all the Garou Nation of these creatures.
Storytelling Notes: Heart Eaters are willing to play the long game when wearing a loved one’s skin. They’re cowardly things, more interested in destroying hearts and shattering sanity than in simple murder. As a result, they often leave the paramours of their victims alive after paralyzing them, “disrobing” in front of a horrified captive audience. The greatest of Heart-Eaters may stalk a preferred target throughout his life, returning to check on him every few years, waiting patiently for him to fall in love again, and then repeating their masquerade. Supernatural beings, already alienated from the rest of the world, are particularly tempting targets.
Heart Eaters are mostly solo operators, seeming to reserve their Wyrmish devotion exclusively for Empress Aliara, but will work occasionally with other Wyrm-hor- rors or even Black Spiral Dancers if they can be convinced that their allies are also true servants of Aliara. Heart Eaters are especially dangerous when working alongside others, restraining their natural impulses in order to act as long-term deep-cover spies within Kinfolk families or even septs of the Garou.
Thunderwyrms
Vast and deformed children of the atomic age, Thunderwyrms are among the more recent Wyrm-birthed monstrosities, and among the largest. Massive, pale, bloated terrors, Thunderwyrms live only to consume and grow. They sleep deep beneath the ground for many years before the need to feed drives them to the surface in an orgy of destruction: trees, cars, livestock, a Thunderwyrm can digest almost anything, but only living things truly satisfy the monster’s massive appetite.
Attributes: Strength 8, Dexterity 4, Stamina 8, Charisma 0, Manipulation 0, Appearance 0, Perception 3, Intel- ligence 1, Wits 2
Note: The Attributes listed above reflect the statistics for an average (30-foot) Thunderwyrm. Strength and Stamina increase substantially the larger the creatures grow, and there appears to be no upper limit on how much they can grow. Grandmother Thunderwyrm is allegedly strong enough to shatter concrete by rippling her skin.
Abilities: Athletics 5 (cannot dodge), Brawl 5 then wear the skin of their victim and masquerade as
them, the better to get close to the victim’s paramour.
Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Charisma 5, Manipulation 5, Appearance 0 (uses host-skin’s Appearance), Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 4
Abilities: Alertness 3, Athletics 2, Brawl 2, Empathy 5, Expression 4, Performance 5, Subterfuge 5
Rage 5, Gnosis 8, Willpower 7
Health Levels: OK, –1, –1, –2, –2, –5, Incapacitated.
Attacks: Strength +3 bite (lethal), Strength tentacle attack (bashing, out to 10 feet), Strength +1 sting (lethal, see below)
Powers: Body Barbs, Clean Scent*, Empathy*, Extra Limbs, Sting*
* Clean Scent: The Heart Eater may spend one Gno- sis point per scene to hide its Wyrm-taint from detection. * Empathy: With a Wits + Empathy roll (difficulty 5) the Heart Eater can discern not only whom an indi- vidual loves passionately, but if the object of the target’s desire feels the same way. By consuming an individual’s heart and brain and spending two Gnosis points, the Heart Eater can perfectly impersonate the victim. They instinctively mimic the victim’s personality, mannerisms, and even habits, and have access to the victim’s memo- ries. This access is instinctive rather than deliberate, however. The Heart Eater can’t “rifle around” in the victim’s memories selectively. Instead, memories arise and present themselves as necessary for the Heart Eater to maintain its masquerade.
* Sting: The Heart Eater can inject a paralytic toxin into its victim through the tips of its tentacles. Unless the target makes a Stamina roll against difficulty 9, they will be rendered unable to move for the rest of the scene. Injecting a dose of toxin costs one point of Rage.
Image: When a Heart Eater emerges from a stolen skin, it is a hideously malformed thing that only fits the description of “human” by a great act of generosity. The monster is mottled mold-green and maggot-white, its body plump, segmented, flexible, with collapsible flesh, and many-jointed limbs. Its face consists of two perfectly human eyes, which can change colors at a whim, set in the midst of puffy flesh and a great, sharp-fanged, lipless maw. Two long, stinger-tipped tentacles extend from the flesh of the thing’s lower back; it wraps them around itself when sliding into a skin. The monster is able to compress its body radically, so that it always fits into any flayed skin it has stolen, and the hideous secre- tions that coat its flesh are able to preserve a stolen skin almost indefinitely.
Background: No one knows where the Heart Eaters come from. They feature in Uktena songs that date all the way back to the War of Rage, making them one of
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Rage 6, Willpower 5
Health Levels: OK, OK, OK, –1, –1, –1, –2, –2, –2, –3, –3, –4, –4, –5, –5, Incapacitated
Attacks: Bite (Strength lethal), Roll (Strength bash- ing — more than 3 successes indicates the target is pinned under the creature’s bulk), Body Slam (Strength + 3 bashing)
Powers: Armor (four extra soak dice), Burrow (as the Garou Gift, but with no cost)
Image: Thunderwyrms range in size from merely huge to unspeakably gigantic. The most commonly en- countered normally stretch 30 feet in length, and almost eight feet wide. The largest, and presumably oldest, is Grandmother Thunderwyrm: she spans the length of two football fields and is almost three hundred feet around. Rumor has it that she contains an entire Wyrm caern in her gut. The smallest Thunderwyrm yet seen — presum- ably newly hatched — was only the length of a man.
These pillars of pale grey flesh constantly secrete a thick, mucus-like substance to speed their way through the earth. They move through muscular contractions, and by eating everything ahead of them and defecating the earth out as they pass, leaving little trace of their presence. Thunderwyrms resemble earthworms with enormous mouths filled with row upon row of jagged teeth. Some are aquatic and develop rubbery black hides more like a leech.
Background: According to the Uktena, the first Thunderwyrms were born from the radioactive soil at the Trinity nuclear test site. Reports of Thunderwyrm attacks are rising in frequency. A new generation of the things appears to have recently hatched, and Thunderwyrms are born hungry.
Storytelling Notes: Encounters with Thunderwyrms are rare, and generally in rural areas. Many Thunder- wyrms follow trends in their attack patterns: only coming out during storms, for example, or repeatedly stalking favored locations. The marks they leave on the ground strongly resemble the patterns left by tornadoes. While their digestion-trails are badly Wyrm-tainted, they leave no chemical digestive residue in the soil for scientists to examine.
Thunderwyrms are perfect for stories where “some- thing” is beginning to terrorize a small farming commu- nity, or isolated desert town. If the Garou don’t step in, a hungry Thunderwyrm — or its newly hatched brood — might devour the entire settlement.