El proceso de los participantes

Almost all Bone Shadows have some experi-ence with the supernatural before the First Change comes upon them. Many nuzusul receive attention (or torture) from spirits before Changing, but some

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Early Life werewolves seem prone to such visitations to a much

greater degree. The Bone Shadows often say that these werewolves are born to be Bone Shadows not because tribe is predestined, but because the kind of personality that drives a tormented soul looking for answers (even if those answers can be found in strange and terrifying places) also makes her perfect for the Hirfathra Hissu.

Not all of this supernatural exposure is spiritual in nature, though the precipitating event usually is.

Consider: A young werewolf (pre-Change) sees bats every time she leaves her home at night. The bats hang in trees and under awnings and building eaves, and when she investigates, she finds blood droplets beneath their perches. She doesn’t know anything about bat-spirits, much less these bat-spirits and their strange connection to blood as sustenance, but she does some digging and winds up researching vam-pires. Compelled to learn more, she goes out at night to crypts, and then to nightclubs, looking for the

undead. She might well find them, but that has no bearing on the bat-spirits.

When such a person undergoes the First Change, the experience is often something of a relief, despite its horror. Yes, the nuzusul has experienced the pain and brutality of becoming a werewolf, but in those few moments of blood-soaked rage, she has discovered that there really were creatures tormenting her, that she wasn’t just imagining all those things she saw. That doesn’t mean that such people are better able to adapt to life as werewolves than other Uratha, just that these people don’t look back on the night of their First Change with the same sorts of feelings as others. While other Uratha see the horror of the experience without rhyme or reason, the Bone Shadows see their First Change as one step in a greater sequence of events. They have some context for the Change, and this eases their minds a bit.

Chapter II: Bone Shadows

Of course, some werewolves suffer slightly more detailed supernatural exposure before the Change. It’s not unknown for a person to Change after serving as the knowing blood doll for a vam-pire, or the servant of a mage. And indeed, there are mortal lines that carry the Wolf strong in their veins, and not all such lineages are ignorant of the Uratha. While most tribes don’t make a habit of cultivating mortal families (though every tribe has done so at one time or another), the Bone Shadows find that a family that incorporates the supernatural into its identity, even as a curse, is easier to use and track through the years. Thus, Bone Shadows maintain families across the world with Uratha blood as breeding partners, contacts and storehouses for fetishes and other secrets. The Pickerings (see p. 304 of Werewolf: The Forsak-en) are one such family, and are probably the most extensive and knowledgeable about the tribe, at least in the New World.

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No werewolf is free from the threat of Kuruth, but the Bone Shadows make a point of avoiding it more than the other tribes. This isn’t (necessar-ily) out of any desire to protect the humans around them, or out of loyalty to pack, at least not more so than the werewolves of other tribes. The Bone Shadows are just keenly aware that every time a werewolf flies into Death Rage, the spirits of the area become that much more easily spooked. Avoid-ing Death Rage is a matter of practicality. While a werewolf of any tribe might appreciate this, to the Bone Shadows approaching spirits from a position of strength is important in maintaining Harmony due to the tribal vow, and so avoiding Death Rage merits some special attention.

Nuzusul, of course, aren’t immediately con-cerned about keeping spirits docile. Nuzusul tend to put effort into avoiding Death Rage because they are still close to their families (any that didn’t die in the First Change, that is). A young werewolf who discovers that the Hirfathra Hissu make a point of teaching their recruits to stay calm under stress might well see this as a major point in the tribe’s favor, even if the motive doesn’t have much to do with Uratha-human relations.

Bone Shadow tactics for avoiding Kuruth differ from, for example, the Blood Talons’ notions of con-trolling and reveling in Death Rage. A werewolf can fight while in Death Rage, after all, and so a Blood Talon who flies into the frenzy doesn’t lose much

except strategy and target discernment (which aren’t small things, of course). A Bone Shadow, though, lives by one part gut instinct and several parts factual analysis, and cerebral workings are completely out of a werewolf’s purview once Death Rage hits. There-fore, the Shadows focus on avoiding Rage altogether, rather than directing it.

One of the ways in which they do so is to teach the recruit some basic anger management techniques. Learning to choose one’s battles (leave the room if things get intense, count to 10, breathe deeply and so on) can help to gain a sense of perspective, and thus avoid losing control. This might be represented in game terms by spending a Willpower point, or if the player takes a moment to explain or demonstrate the character’s control, the Storyteller might grant a die or two on the roll to avoid Death Rage.

Another technique is the “false fetish.” This lesson was born in New York City, where a mixed pack of Bone Shadows and Iron Masters found their duties routinely taking them into the hustle and bustle of the subways, the markets and the nightclubs of the Big Apple. Death Rage would spell disaster for the pack, but it included three very young and inexperienced members. The Ithaeur of the pack handed out touchstones and told the other members that the objects were actu-ally fetishes designed to suppress the killing rage.

It worked for a while, but only until a member of a rival pack informed the younger werewolves that they’d been duped (at which point, of course, two of them entered Death Rage, resulting in a riot that took hours to quell). While the technique is still occasionally employed for new werewolves, it’s normally just a temporary affair until they can learn to better control themselves. This placebo effect might be worth an extra die on the roll to avoid Death Rage, if the character concentrates on the “fetish” for a few seconds.

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The Shadow is terrifying, and for the vast ma-jority of nuzusul, it’s new. Yes, some human religions posit that “everything has a spirit,” but no human tradition really prepares someone for the pure strangeness of the spirit world, or the unpredictable-yet-natural way that spirits behave. Other tribes might teach recruits how to fight spirits, or just ignore the issue until the werewolf is ready, but the

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Early Life Hirfathra Hissu recognize that an ignorant werewolf

is a prime target for hithim.

So, if a Bone Shadow pack picks up a nuzusul, the pack takes the time to teach her about the Shad-ow. The werewolves take her into the spirit wilds and point out the different types of spirits, interact with a few (especially if the new werewolf is a Half- or Crescent Moon), and show her how to reason in the Shadow. It takes a different mindset to wander the spirit world, because a car might be an ephemeral ve-hicle, or it might be a car-spirit with a taste for blood.

These lessons stick with a werewolf whether or not she winds up joining the tribe.

A werewolf who received a bit of training from the Bone Shadows has a good justification for learn-ing First Tongue (above and beyond the cursory ability with the language that all Uratha instinctively grasp), and probably for the selection of a Specialty in Occult or Survival dealing with spirits.

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Werewolves create a fair number of ghosts, es-pecially during the First Change. Being torn apart by a frenzied lycanthrope is a painful and terrify-ing way to die, and such methods of death are the ones that commonly induce human souls to linger.

Most Uratha encourage new werewolves to leave their human lives behind, and the Bone Shadows find that helping a new member of the People put her ghosts to rest — literally — does wonders to ease that transition. It also has the advantage of showing the supernatural to the new werewolf in a way that puts her at comparatively little risk.

While some ghosts are dangerous, “young” ones don’t tend to be powerful enough to cause serious harm to werewolves.

The tribe takes the nuzusul to wherever the death occurred and scours the area for evidence of haunting, often employing Death Gifts and fetishes such as the Ghost Salt (see p. 75). They investigate, hunting down the ghost’s anchors and destroying or killing them. If the ghost is anchored to the werewolf herself, the pack might try to persuade the ghost to move on, or might simply help the young Uratha to destroy the shade. This lesson is harsh, but necessary — when someone under-goes the Change, it isn’t just that body that’s altered.

Everything changes, including responsibility.