Bestiary

Few of the Wyrm’s minions are as fearsome or powerful as the dreaded Nexus Crawler. Some Theurges believe that these alien things come from well outside known reality. A Nexus Crawler’s very presence corrodes and decays the fabric of reality around it.

Rage

10, Gnosis 10, Willpower 6, Essence 30-100 Charms: Airt Sense, Materialize (which grants 12 health levels), Re-form, Warp Reality*

*Warp Reality: As beasts of raw entropy, Nexus Crawlers may alter reality with a successful Willpower roll (difficulty 7). One success allows fairly minor alterations: it may create a hazy, blurry illusion, light a small fire, change an individual’s facial features, or drop the temperature in a small area. With three successes, a Crawler can cause more drastic changes to the environments or specific targets. These changes include turning a stone floor into a viscous liquid, transforming any steel object into silver, changing a foe’s sweat into a corrosive acid, creating an illusion that affects any two senses, or darkening a city block completely. The Crawler may also hurl bolts of raw entropic energy that inflict three dice of aggravated damage. (Roll Willpower to attack, and use normal ranged combat complications.) If the Crawler gains five successes, it may cause truly spectacular effects. It can turn a person’s bones into swamp muck or rotten wood, change the air into carbon monoxide or mustard gas, remove a target’s entire face (and all sensory organs), create a full-sensory illusion, or turn everything in a room-sized area into silver. Entropic bolts of this power level inflict six dice of aggravated damage.

Image: In its natural state, a Nexus Crawler appears as a black shimmer in the air, a warbling vibrato drone, a feeling on the skin like fingernails scraped across a blackboard, and a miasmic scent reminiscent of an infected wound. If neces­ sary, it can manifest in a loathsome and horrifying avatar.

Background

Nexus Crawlers are sapient, after a fashion. While they are self-aware, their thought processes are alien — even for one of the Wyrm’s servants. Other minions are ill at ease around Nexus Crawlers, and they tend to avoid them under normal circumstances. When in combat, Nexus Crawlers rarely use tactics that make any kind of rational sense, and they do not often display logic. This fact alone may have helped werewolves survive encounters with Nexus Crawlers.

Storytelling Notes: Nexus Crawlers are effectively forces of nature. They are more akin to tornadoes or earth­ quakes than to other Banes. Should they so choose, Nexus Crawlers can assume a truly vile, repulsive, and terrifying physical form. Humans will run in terror at first sight, as if they have been affected by the Delirium. Upon first sighting the thing, players of Garou roll Willpower, lest the characters fly into a fox frenzy. The Nexus Crawler bristles with a host of appendages and weaponry, includ­ ing mouths with row upon row of needle-sharp teeth and additional arms covered with venomous barbs.