Everything

Some years ago, a band of mages stole some of the power from a caern. The Garou retaliated by attacking the mages’ stronghold with overwhelming force, but Rage got the better of them. In addition to killing the offending thieves, the shapeshifters slaughtered several uninvolved mages and dozens of humans who happened to work in the build­ ing where the mages had hidden their sanctum. The victims of the massacre became ghosts and now haunt the caern, making it impossible for the Garou to make use of it. The ghosts refuse to cooperate with any shapeshifter’s attempts to put their souls to rest. The slaughter echoed in the Atrocity Realm, however, and there might be enough clues in the scene where their deaths took place to find a path to completing each of the ghosts’ unfinished business.

from the ashes of those burned alive, decorated with the cracked and shattered skulls of those who died at the hands of their abusers. Mountains of corpses divide the Realm into an endless maze, and a fresh scene of atrocity greets travelers around every corner. Screams, moans, and choking sobs emanate from every direction, hinting at the horrors taking place there.

In some ways, the Atrocity Realm resembles the Bat­ tlefield, but it lacks the focus on struggle. Every victim in the Atrocity Realm is helpless and undeserving of the suf­ fering visited upon him. Every victimizer is merciless if not downright sadistic. Bane larvae gather around every scene of torment, growing fat on the emotions of the emanations. The scenes in the Atrocity Realm are only reflections of events, however. Visitors who wish to end the suffering and carnage can interfere with a scene or even disrupt events before the atrocity takes place, but this is ultimately futile. Once the travelers leave, the victims and victimizers take their places again and the scene begins once more as if nothing had changed.

Some Garou claim a pack can exorcise an atrocity from the Realm by avenging or rectifying the victims’ suffering in the material world — bringing the serial killer to justice, trying the dictator for war crimes, or forcing the abusive parent to acknowledge the wrongness of his actions. Howev­ er, many believe such undertakings are unwise. They argue that in the time it takes to purge just one scene from the Atrocity Realm dozens more will spring up in its place. A

Garou can fight the Realm more effectively by preventing the horrors from taking place in the first place.

Although the ephemera of the Atrocity Realm are emanations like those of any other Realm, visitors can glean important information from the scenes of horror these shadow puppets reproduce. Events appear exactly as they did at the time of the atrocity, making it possible to investigate terrible crimes even if the perpetrator left behind no evidence that could point to her. A witness could also examine objects in the background of a scene. The visitor could study the relic that a victimizer stole from the room where he tortured and killed his victim. She could talk to eyewitnesses to the atrocity in order to learn something they knew about an unrelated topic or even rescue the victim long enough to question him about another event he remembers — if she can distract these shadow players from the horror in progress long enough to conduct such an interview. If an outsider interferes with a scene in this way, however, the Realm incorporates her into it in some way — usually as another of its potential victims.

The Realm harvests every atrocity one sentient being perpetrates upon another, and so it has assembled a virtually infinite palette of horrors. To make matters worse, the Atroc­ ity Realm possesses an inherent awareness of the emotional triggers and psychological vulnerabilities of outsiders who come to it. Those repulsed by eye violence come upon many scenes that involve the stabbing, cutting, or gouging out of eyeballs, for example, and those driven to fury by violence against children can expect to see many atrocities involving the young as victims. Woe to the traveler who has personally committed an atrocity worthy of this Realm, for the Realm will confront him with his actions before he leaves. The Atrocity Realm knows how best to shock its visitors, howev­ er. It will never use the same horror often enough to inure the outsider to it, and it almost never presents a personal atrocity except as the climax to a carefully selected string of increasingly upsetting scenes of horror.

Getting to the Atrocity Realm is easy and often unin­ tended, since it calls to emotions that fuel its abhorrent scenes. Shapeshifters who dwell on thoughts of rage, vio­ lence, or death might find themselves unwittingly entering the Realm, possibly taking the wrong branch of a Moon Path or stumbling through a gateway in another Realm. Such accidental visitors cannot escape by conventional means like Gifts or Moon Bridges. The Realm only releases a traveler who willingly dies at the hands of one of its victimizing emanations. He must take the role of a victim and accept all the agony of the atrocity without offering any resistance. The Atrocity Realm ejects travelers upon their “death,” sending them to another Realm or to the material world.