Everything

The Antara don’t just think they’re free. They are free. They see the threads of Queen Ananasa’s webs and the corruption of the Wyrm more clearly than anyone else. What they don’t understand is that they play a more important role in the war against the Wyrm than anyone knows.

When the Wyrm kidnapped Queen Ananasa it was incapable of destroying her, but the Wyrm is patient and understands the rules governing the Triat better than any lesser being ever could. Its corruption is insidious. The

Wyrm knows how the purest objects are those most quickly tarnished. Perfection attracts degradation. It could not kill the spider queen, but while she languished in her self-made tomb in the heart of Malfeas she could not prevent the Wyrm’s corruption slowly seeping through her web.

When the Garou recovered Ananasa’s prison-orb from Malfeas, the Queen could already feel the Wyrm’s tendrils seeking a way into her mind. When the werewolves cracked it open she could not tell whether she was already corrupted — what if it was so subtle she never recognized that her decisions were not her own?

Fighting the Wyrm’s touch from her thoughts, Queen Ananasa made the only choice she knew the Wyrm couldn’t predict or counter. She introduced random flaws into her web that only her most independent children could find, although Ananasa has no influence on which qualities lead an individual Ananasi to the Wyrm. These clever, wicked children desert their Queen, but in doing so they sever the threads binding them to any master. She cannot choose who should walk this path — that would give her influence and make the choice untrustworthy. The Antara are truly free agents, and their nature must lead them to turn on the Wyrm as surely as they turned on the Queen.

Unfortunately, the Wyrm is not as easily deceived as Queen Ananasa believes. The Wyrm knew of her impending escape and manipulated events to further its goals. It allowed the Garou to succeed, setting opposition that was merely devastating instead of impossible. It could not mar Ananasa’s opal shell but it believed the manipulated and misguided Garou heroes might succeed. The crack in the shell gave the Wyrm access to Ananasa, and a hook into her mind.

Both the Wyrm and Ananasa believe the freeing of the Antara was the first act in the next stage of their

shadowy war. The actions of the Antara may decide

in these final days who is victorious – the master

manipulator or the supreme seducer.

The Bastet are Gaia’s eyes, hunting out secrets in hidden places, guided by their

cunning and grace to enter the darkness

and emerge triumphant. The werecats

are Gaia’s beautiful, proud children. They were born last of the shapeshifters and embody perfection. The Bastet play a coy game with Cahlash, the Father of Night and

Author of Mysteries, following

him into the unknown but always keeping themselves aloof and in control. The Garou call Cahlash the Wyrm, the embodiment of corruption.

The Bastet know better. Cahlash is the ancient embodiment of the Balance Wyrm, not the modern, lesser, form. This vanity is the Bastet’s greatest downfall; though the cats believe they have control, with every venture into the darkness the Wyrm tempts them with the promise of the greatest secret of all. Every triumphant return brings with it the possibility that the Bastet has opened her eyes to the truth and joined the ranks of the Histpah. The most curious Bastet discover the final obstacle to unlocking Cahlash’s truth is to bind an unbreakable geas into the essence of their being to never reveal a secret’s answer. Thus over-curious Bastet willingly corrupt their Gaia-given purpose.

Having witnessed the new Histpah accept the geas, Cahlash reveals the truth as he knows it. All of Creation is irrelevant. The Wyrm was never the embodiment of balance; the Wyrm is bigger than anything else, it is the void within which everything else sits. The Wyrm conceded tiny parts of its unknowable self to permit the Weaver and the Wyld to exist as brief diversions in its infinite expanse. These two, lesser, elements of the Triat are no more capable of ever being balanced than a Bastet is balanced by one of her claws. Gaia herself is even less significant than the Triat; she is a momentary experiment in the Wyrm’s brief diversion. This diversion was never meant to be permanent and it has run its course, so the Wyrm returns it to the nothingness from which it came.

The Histpah emerge from the darkness full of truth and knowing they can never reveal this or anything else to anyone ever again. To any other creature this would be a nuisance, but the Bastet were made to uncover secrets and bring truths to the light. The Histpah have sold out their purpose and ability to ever again feel the satisfaction of fulfilling their duty, all in exchange for the ultimate nihilistic understanding of the pointlessness of existence.

The Histpah can’t reveal the truth they’ve learned, and they can never share the answer to any other secret. They are still Bastet and they still yearn to know what hides behind the secrets they encounter, but now they must hoard the truths they’ve worked so hard to uncover.