The Moon-Banished inspire terror in the hearts of were- wolves, and rightly so. They are powerful, unknowable and utterly alien, but they have a kind of familiarity to them. They did, after all, spend millennia imprisoned by the Forsaken’s most powerful spiritual patron. No wonder, then, that they seem to be drawn to werewolves, whether out of revenge or curiosity. They want to know more about their spiritual brethren.
This section discusses how to make use of the idigam in a chronicle, including how to present them, what they want and some thoughts about what they are (or rather, what they might be).
w
hat are theI
dIgaM?
Werewolves don’t know much about idigam. In fact, al- though some clever Uratha have made the connection between the idigam’s appearance in the 1969 and the moon landings,
Storytelling the Idigam most have not. The story of Father Wolf and his banishment of
the idigam to Luna’s prison is not a widely circulated one, and even when the notion does come up, werewolves tend to snicker. Idigam are from the moon? They’re aliens? Shouldn’t they be green, or at least gray, then?
But that misses an important fact about them — they
aren’t from the moon. They are terrestrial spirits; they were just
banished to the moon. And that begs the question: what kind of spirits are they?
We aren’t going to present a definitive answer, because the idigam aren’t the sorts of foes that werewolf packs should be taking down left and right. A pack might make a career out of killing the Pure, or Bale Hounds, or Ridden, or vampires, or any other enemy that might strike it as dangerous (or fun) to hunt. But if a pack destroys an idigam, other werewolves tell the story for years to come. Max Roman is probably the single most famous werewolf in the world, certainly in North America, because his research allowed the Uratha to destroy one of the Moon-Banished. Other Uratha in other parts of the world have also achieved notoriety for their discoveries about the idigam. Indeed, a Latvian Hunter in Darkness named Juris became fa- mous for his “battles” against the idigam, despite the fact that he never actually fought one. He did, however, lead servants of the idigam away from their master by training his pack in a dizzying blend of shapeshifting and free-running through the burned-out buildings of his home city, and thus enable other werewolves to attack the Moon-Banished successfully. An idigam is effectively a god, and killing one is an epic feat, usually requiring multiple packs.
As such, including one in your chronicle is a big decision, and you need to decide how much you want to let your players learn. That might include seeing from the idigam’s perspective, and learning about the loneliness and anger of being locked away on the moon for so long. It might involve a quest into the spirit wilds and a meeting with a tribal totem (one of the Firstborn might remember when Father Wolf flung the idigam into space). It might even involve a personal visit from Mother Luna herself, but that would almost assuredly require that the characters do something to get the attention of the most power- ful Lunes.
And if the characters are willing to go to such lengths to learn the nature of the idigam, they should take some knowl- edge away from the ordeal. Here, then, are some possibilities for the true nature of the idigam, as well as some thoughts on how werewolves might come to this theory.
Spirits of the Primordial Ooze
Idigam did once have a physical analog. It was the moment of creation, the first time life began. But once it did, once the first unicellular organism began its swim through the stew of the nascent world, that analog was no longer present. The idigam, though, did not vanish, because that moment, that trillion- to-one chance, was such a powerful occurrence that even the tiniest spirit born of it could survive its absence. And so the idigam continued on, devouring other spirits but never choosing to adopt a true nature.
The Moon-Banished, therefore, are chaotic because they encompass the possibility of creation. They are deadly because they are life. And it’s just possible that, if they were all destroyed, the possibility of life would be, too. The world might wink out of existence, or all living things might lose the ability to reproduce, leaving the world to the doom of slow decay.
Werewolves might discover this through interaction with other, ancient spirits. A spirit of oceans, for instance, might remember its own formation and thus be able to explain the creation of the idigam. Spirits kicked up in the eruption of a volcano might, likewise, prove informative. For a more practi- cal approach, what if characters present at the destruction of an idigam were rendered infertile, their ability to create life snuffed out? The pack might learn this through rumors about luminaries like Max Roman and Rachel Snow, both there when Gurdilag died, both now unable to sire or bear children of their own.
Alien Beings
Maybe the Moon-Banished are from another world. Con- sider: meteorites impact the Earth fairly often. Surely they carry spirits with them, but rock is rock. The only way an alien spirit could survive the fall to Earth, the loss of everything that defined it (other than the stone itself, which isn’t really too different from terrestrial stone), is to lose all connections to everything physical. The idigam chose chaos to survive, but in so doing, they lost their memory. They could not remember a time when they were anything other than the formless masses that Father Wolf hunted down.
This begs the question, though: why have no new idigam arrived on Earth this way? After all, meteorites certainly haven’t stopped striking the planet. One possibility is that it takes an ob- ject of significant size to bring an idigam here (which raises some questions about, for instance, the Tunguska Blast of 1908). An- other possibility is that the creation of the Gauntlet prevented more of the spirits from arriving, acting as a “filter” around the planet’s Shadow. And finally, it’s just possible that the spirits have been arriving here, but have simply gone unnoticed — at least until their banished brethren returned from exile.
This theory is quite simple for a pack of werewolves to dis- cover. They just need to be nearby when a meteorite hits Earth, bringing a new (possibly nascent) idigam with it. The characters can then spend some time looking into other such spirits, pos- sibly using this information to destroy them more easily than would normally be possible. Of course, the next story in such a chronicle should begin with the pack hearing news of an upcom- ing meteor shower.
Luna’s Children
A theory that might have some favor among the Pure, but probably not among the Forsaken (at least, not out loud), is that the idigam are children of Mother Luna. Mother Luna created (or bore) them long before Father Wolf, and unlike the fickle Lunes, the idigam are pure unbridled chaos. They do not have physical analogs on Earth not because they are alien, but because they are children of chaos. Therefore, the idigam are simply idigam, completely self-contained spirits. Of course, this also makes them solipsistic sociopaths. They are incapable of un- derstanding that the world outside them exists, much less that it matters, and everything they perceive is assumed to be a figment of their imagination.
Getting Luna to remember the creation of the idigam, much less admit it, would be an especially heroic feat for a pack of werewolves. If she did, she might be able to recall them to her bosom, destroy them, or least grant them enough sanity to see what they are doing. Yes, some might choose to become destruc- tive spirits — but at least, then, that’s all they would be.
Discovering this origin for the idigam would require a pack to find a Lune or some other spirit that could identify the Moon- Banished as get of Luna. A totem for a Pure pack might be able
to help, as might one of the three tribal totems of the Pure, but under what circumstances would they speak with a pack of Forsaken Uratha? If the pack could take audience with Luna directly (and keep its sanity intact), it might learn the truth.
d
esIgnIng theM
oon-b
anIshedThe preceding sections discussed the game mechanics and theoretical underpinnings of the idigam. This section elaborates on how to create one for your chronicle.
Appearance
An uncoalesced idigam should not keep the same form from one turn to the next. Even if it doesn’t change itself in any meaningful way, it should be constantly altering the color or texture of its skin, its scent, the sounds it makes and any other facet of its appearance.
Coalesced idigam have chosen a form, but that form rarely corresponds neatly to a terrestrial creature. It might be a mass of living rock or gas, but adorned with fleshy antennae or patches of fur. It might be a swarm of tiny motes of fire, but someone unlucky enough to get close realizes that the motes are attached by impos- sibly thin sinew. An idigam that takes a recognizable form is also possible, but if it does, it usually mirrors something in its immedi- ate vicinity — such as one of the werewolves confronting it.
Agenda
An idigam usually has a driving motivation, something that informs every move it makes. It’s all very well to say these creatures are “alien,” but that’s no help to the Storyteller trying to use one in a chronicle (if the creature is utterly incomprehen- sible, how do you play it? It will just come off looking random, and that’s not the same). Instead, remember that the idigam has no sense of other creatures being capable of feeling what it does — because they aren’t. Werewolves can feel pain, and maybe the idigam can, but the Uratha don’t reckon pain the same way. What causes excruciating agony to a werewolf is simply of inter- est to the Moon-Banished, because the spirit lacks the frame of reference to even understand the concept of physical pain the way a living creature does. Below are some possible motivations for the idigam.
• Curiosity: The idigam wants to know everything it can about this odd world around it, and it doesn’t have any checks on the methods it uses. It proceeds in what might seem to be a scientific fashion, and can learn from its mistakes and past “experiments.” Gifmalu Igizalag is motivated by curiosity.
• Revenge: The idigam remembers the endless night of the lunar prison, and it wants to make sure that Luna and anything remotely connected to her know that pain. This idigam might not understand how best to hurt the Uratha, but it is willing to try anything and everything in order to find out. Zul Sanak is motivated by revenge.
• Hunger: Chaos consumes everything. Everything in the universe must eventually break down. This is the “hunger” of the Moon-Banished: the ultimate expression of chaos. Such idigam might literally consume their foes, or they might alter spirits to do it for them. Mussughana is a hungry idigam.
• Loneliness: A billion years or more on the moon’s sur- face, with nothing around except stillness and silence, is enough to drive anything mad. This idigam wanted company, but don’t feel pity for it. It wanted raw material to alter and mimic, more than anything. This sort of Moon-Banished is likely to mimic werewolves at first, rather than attacking them, just because it enjoys being around other sentient creatures. Umum Wabalu Damu is motivated by loneliness.
• Desire to mate: Idigam cannot create more of their kind, and each one is effectively a race of one. The Moon-Banished might want to ensure that its legacy lives on, or it might think it is the superlative form of “life” and therefore it should reproduce and take over. Udu Luhal is motivated by its desire to mate.
• Desire for stability: It might seem strange, but some idigam want to be something other than what they are. They can coalesce and gain a measure of stability, but the idigam might look around at the living creatures and stable spirits of the world and long for that simplicity. Its activities are likely to focus on changing itself and then playing at being a werewolf, or a per- son, or an animal, or an ocean — whatever catches its attention. Gamugur is this sort of idigam.
saMple IdIgaM
The rest of this chapter describes six specific Moon-Banished, complete with their methods and preferences for Essence shaping, what sort of prey they prefer, and their driving motivations. historiCaL idigam
This chapter posits that the idigam arrived on Earth only following the moon landing in 1969, but werewolves have stories about similar monsters that date back centuries. Two possi- bilities exist here: either those earlier creatures aren’t idigam, or some of the spirits were present long before the Eagle landed.
If the creatures that werewolves fought before the Moon-Banished hitched a ride back to Earth are, in fact, idigam, the only thing that changes is that the Uratha have some historical records (or legends, at least) to consult when facing them. If a pack of Blood Talons faced off against such a spirit in Germany in the 1600s, per- haps the modern pack facing an idigam can travel to the Black Forest and read the pictographic representation of the battle, carved into ancient trees in the forest’s center.
The moon landing presents a way to expand the cosmology of Werewolf beyond Earth and bring one of the greatest events in humankind’s history into the World of Darkness, but it doesn’t have to be the first time an idigam escaped. What other events might have allowed one to slip from its prison? A lunar eclipse? A comet storm? A ritual on Earth, performed by moon-worshipping cultists? The moon landing might simply have allowed the weakest of the Moon-Banished to come home. Where, then, are the strongest?
The Unholy Ghost: Gamugur