Bestiary

From a Storyteller’s perspective, what should matter is whether the players make an attempt to properly show their characters’ sincerity. The effort to treat the spirit honorably and respectfully should mean more than the exact number of trash cans the pack knocks over for a cockroach-spirit. Storytellers, trust your instincts; if it feels right, it probably is.

with it. Someone wanting to bind the spirit into a fetish is likely to make the vessel as attractive to the spirit as pos­ sible, often using materials that align with or potentially glorify the spirit’s nature. Some spirits ask for minor but strange favors, like a rat-spirit asking a werewolf to destroy all mousetraps he sees for a time — which makes trips to the hardware store awkward — or a night-spirit asking each member of the pack to share with it a secret they’ve never told anyone.

For some spirits, particularly Wyld-aspected spirits or spirits of war or violence, the opportunity to do the favor is chiminage enough. If it sounds interesting or chaotic enough, a Wyld-aspected spirit just might go ahead and do it on principle. Some aggressive or predatory spirits, if asked to assist with a battle or slaying a Wyrm-beast, will come along for the experience itself. These circumstances aren’t common by any means but are a pleasant surprise when they do happen.

Some spirits want something material. Some spirits appreciate certain objects and want one brought to them, or they wish an object or creature sacrificed in their name. Some material forms of chiminage can be difficult to find, necessitating an expedition deep into the Umbra or finding the resting place of an obscure relic in the physical world.

Even though different spirits are unique entities, especially as they grow more powerful, different breeds of spirits tend towards common wants or needs when it comes to chiminage. Experienced Theurges keep track of what sorts of chiminage appeal to different spirits, both for personal reference and to teach cubs as part of their training. The sorts of things that a Rat Gaffling in one region would want are roughly the same as a Rat Jaggling in another region, the primary differences being scale and specific context — like the availability of mousetraps.

Some spirits want to haggle and negotiate specifics, but it’s still important to have an offer ready to lay down on the

metaphorical table anyway. The werewolf might offer a thou­ sand origami cranes to a crane-spirit. The spirit then insists that he make them from paper the color of its feathers and left among tree branches in the forest north of its dwelling. Even if he expects a counter-offer, demonstrating that he’s ready to negotiate at all makes the werewolf look good to the spirit.

Even though they aren’t properly ‘alive’ in the sense that most humans would consider, spirits do behave like living creatures. They’re born, they feed, they grow, some reproduce, and they can die. They’re capable of thought and will and agency, albeit oriented around their purview. They have instincts and act out their own versions of what scholars would call a proper life-cycle.

Actions and objects in the physical world leave impres­ sions in the spiritual plane. An action that has an impact on the world around it or the creation of something new or a powerful emotion leaves a mark like a footprint in wet sand. If the impression is deep and sturdy enough, Essence flows into and coalesces around that mark and becomes a spiritual entity in the ‘shape’ of that impression. Sometimes these impressions are caused by physical events like car crashes. Other times, massive emotional outpouring like the grief over a national tragedy creates them.

Some of these spirits are born at that place, hidden within the Penumbra or in the physical object itself. Others come into being in the Deep Umbra, far from whatever triggered their birth and sometimes at the behest of a much more powerful spirit. Wyld spirits in particular often emerge from spontaneous eruptions of Essence.

All along the different levels of spiritual awareness and power, spirits organize themselves into families called broods much like the Garou do tribes. (W20, p. 373) All of these broods descend from one or more Incarnae and, by extension, Gaia. And as with the Garou tribes, a num­ ber of these relations are through adoption rather than having any direct relation to the Incarna patron. They are all related in terms of philosophy or nature, though to a spirit the distinction is fuzzy.

Whether born literally from other spirits in the brood or adopted, they consider each other true family. Even if they don’t all get along with each other, they still show proper respect to each other and reverence to the Incarna from which they’re descended. If a shapeshifter greatly of­ fends a spirit of Chimera’s brood, Chimerlings and other assorted spirits of wisdom or enigmas will be hostile and uncooperative until she can redeem herself. In extreme cases

she might have difficulty dealing with other shapeshifters following Chimera as a pack or personal totem. She needs to make amends, starting with an offer of chiminage, and if she is fortunate the right chiminage will settle the debt.

On the other hand, on very rare occasions a spirit brood will adopt a worthy werewolf into its ranks. Spirits treat such an honored individual as family, a bond even closer than the one between the Garou and her tribal totem if they aren’t already one and the same. Such a blessing often comes with an offer to serve the brood after death in the form of an ancestor spirit. A rare honor but an Incarna has few higher ways to honor one of the Garou.

Spirit relations can get complicated in ways that make perfect sense to the spirits themselves but seem random or arbitrary to someone raised in the physical world where heritage and genealogy are understood concepts. For exam­ ple, after the fall of the White Howlers their tribal totem Lion was adopted by Griffin and is considered a part of his brood in every way that matters. At the same time, the aspect of Lion that serves as patron to the Simba werelions isn’t related to Griffin at all. As Incarna exist on multiple levels of reality at once, this is part of the natural order to them whereas beings that experience one reality at a time might need a chart to wrap their heads around it.