Bestiary

These city-dwelling Banes appear to be a hideous fusion of Weaver and Wyrmish forces. They make their lairs atop tall buildings designed for human habitation: apartment blocks, tenements, and even the occasional run-down hotel are the normal hunting grounds of Abliphets. They extend spiritual tendrils down through the hidden ducts and vents of the building and slowly turn the building they’ve chosen as their prey into a hotbox of tension, despair, and rage. No one in such a cursed building can keep a dark secret to himself; no one can keep their mind off the failings of their neighbors; but equally, none can bring themselves to take the building’s problems outside of its borders. Once the building has collapsed into a spiritual Wound or self-destructs in an orgy of domestic violence, murder, or arson, the Abliphet moves on to find new prey.

Rage

9, Gnosis 9, Willpower 6, Essence 25-35

*Everybody’s Secret: This Charm is similar to the Shadow Lord Gift: Whisper Catching, save that it en-compasses every secret event or exchange to occur within a building. The echoes of domestic violence, perversion, and hate slowly work their way through the building’s ducts and corridors. Eventually, everyone who lives in the building knows the secrets of everyone else: perhaps they drift under a door, or through an air conditioning vent, or rattle about in an old elevator as it carries tenants up through the building’s black throat. Speaking of the secrets of a building learned through Everybody’s Secret is extremely difficult, requiring a point of Willpower and a Willpower roll (difficulty 9); failure causes the desired words to die in the tenant’s throat, and a certainty to fall down around him that it’s just not the business of anyone from outside the building.

Image: An Abliphet is a massive Bane: A huge, jellylike, white-and-purple thing squatting at the top of a building. If possible, Abliphets lair in attics or storage spaces, but in a pinch they will squat on the roof, open to the elements. Most of the Bane’s substance takes the form of long, pulsing veins, bladders, and tubes dangling down through the substance of the building. They choke its Umbral ducts and pipes writhe invisibly along the walls of its elevator shafts. It is through these pipes and arteries that it conducts the building’s dirty secrets after processing them in its main body.

Background

No one is quite sure where Abliphets come from, but they’re among the most destructive Banes of the modern urban environment. The Hakken of Japan are well-acquainted with these horrors, where they exist in unparalleled numbers, finding the nation’s ant-hive overcrowding much to their liking.

Storytelling Notes: Abliphets are good for running the Werewolf equivalent of a haunted house story, or a combat raid. Finding out about the Bane’s presence is only the beginning of a pack’s troubles; running the gauntlet of the thing’s environment-manipulating Charms to actually reach it is a job in itself. In worst-case scenarios, an Abliphet may act as a central misery-focus to attract lesser Banes, and a pack may find itself stumbling into a run-down tenement full of spiritual shock troops and even some fomori.