Bestiary

The world is a dark, dangerous place. When you’ve been face to face with agents of cruelty and destruction, you learn how to fight the good fight. You know that it’s your brothers

against the darkness. You know that no one else will stand in your place. You know it’s a thankless job, and sometimes a price has to be paid. In the end, however, the heroes are the ones who stand tall. Folks possessed by Owl Shards are such heroes; they were born to be heroes, and all those naysayers who want to cry about missing and murdered indigenous women, who want to cry Black Lives Matter while thugs run wild and murder police without retribution… well, they’re just the tools of pure, unadulterated evil. They’re the cogs in the machine of anarchy, and Owl Shards are protectors of what is good and just. The Owl Shards sing of such goodness and justice, and they sear those songs into the souls of their Awakened partners.

Owl Shards almost always accompany souls that have been damaged, or that will become damaged before their Awakening: children of absentee or abusive parents, kids from impoverished families, or even simply folks who come from households rife with psychological abuses in the form of toxic masculinity, racism, pro-militarism, pro-secessionism, and so forth. The key here is fear: fear of difference, of The Other, of poverty, powerlessness, loneliness, persecution. Owl Shards nestle in the souls of people who, for whatever reason, are afraid, and who deal with that fear by turning against their neighbors and embracing hate that seems like power.

Why? Because Owl Shards originate in the shattered form of Big Owl, the embodiment of fearful hatred.

Even before a mage Awakens to their influence, Owl Shards are quite powerful, able to shape the people around them through the principles of fear. Once drawn to a po­ tential host, the Owl Shards encourage hellish childhoods; that abuse, in turn, shapes someone who will abuse others. Occasionally, a Shard’s influence leads to, or is tied into, a magickal Awakening; in such cases, the Shard becomes that mage’s Avatar spirit, and guides his life accordingly. More often, these entities roost in hosts who never fully Awaken; these unfortunate souls become corrupted or even possessed by the spirit (as in the Corruption and Possession Charms — see Mage 20, pp. 491, 493-494), suffering painful influence and, in extreme cases, grotesque physical transformations.

People chosen by an Owl Shard tend to favor violent careers, strict discipline, and a communal sense of belonging — like the Shards themselves — to something greater than one’s self. Rigorous physicality and emotional distance nurture the influence of the Shard… and, in turn, the Avatar nurtures a depthless aggression. Although a toxic stereotype of “mascu­ linity” provides a firm base for an Owl Shard’s possession, women embrace it, too, either in the cold “ice queen” perso­ na, the “tough bitch,” or the archetypal heartbreaker whose apparent beauty underscores her ruthless, yet fearful, cruelty.

Beyond the hidden apprehensions of the Owl Shard’s host, such entities thrive off the abuse their hosts commit against other people. That abuse doesn’t have to be physical; in truth, despite the momentary satisfaction an act of bru­ tal violence can bring, it’s often easier (especially in a legal

sense) to get away with emotional cruelty. Punching someone with a fist tends to bring the wrong sorts of attention, while ripping someone apart with words tends to earn social status instead. And so, in whatever form, the Owl Shards encourage ever-widening spirals of abuse. More abuse means more fear; more fear means more places for the Owl Shards to grow.

Generally, Owl Shards tend to gather within the people of a dominant culture, where their abuses can be excused away as “just the way things are.” If and when a host establishes a certain amount of respect and influence (as in, say, mili­ tary or police forces, gang culture, upper-echelon corporate management, mass media, government or — most appallingly – childcare, medicine, education, and religious organizations), that status excuses untold measures of fearmongering abuse. One person so influenced can influence hundreds, perhaps thousands, occasionally millions of other people. And so, the Owl Shards come home to roost.

Occasionally, a host goes too far. A cop may be fired, an executive banished, a celebrity disgraced, a solider dishonorably discharged. That’s when the Owl Shard truly digs its claws in deep. Whatever happened to the host is always someone else’s fault: those lazy, crazy, twisted, hateful [fill in the blanks]. Skin color, gender, religious creed, political affiliation — it’s all ammunition for boundless fear. That fear ripens into hate;

hate sows discord; discord feeds violence, which in turn creates more hate. And through it all, the Owl Shards feed.

That’s when the Owl Shards begin to manifest. First, they coo quietly — gentle whispers of frustration and directed rage. They point out lost scholarships and veteran-hating liberals. They cry out about the unfairness of the media that favors those who would destroy society, and they mutter about the strangeness of movements to undermine “traditional values.” Soon, the whispers become violent screeches. The hosts go forth to target “those people,” bold with a sense of righteous fury. Immigrants, natives, homeless people, women who would falsify rape charges against innocent men…the Owl-hosts take them out to the desert, or dump them in garbage bins, or just leave their corpses near homeless encampments where those corpses will be forgotten. The hosts begin staying up all night because it makes their work easier… and they start to listen to the screeches with gleeful anticipation, for now the Owl Shards give them orders. These people crave direction, and now they have it: a sense of purpose that seems to drive the fear away.

Except, of course, that it does no such thing, because that fear has lived inside them all along.

Most Owl Shards remain unseen by mortal eyes… even, in most cases, from the perceptions of their hosts. Such owls are seen clearly only in dreams, mystic Seekings, or both. The sounds they make, however, might be heard by people who

cannot see them directly. Hence, Owl Shards are sometimes referred to as “night screechers” by those who have heard of them, perhaps even heard the sounds of their wings and cries, but who have not seen such entities in solid form, or at least have not seen such entities in solid form quite yet.