Gifts

Outwardly — particularly in Lupus and Homid forms — Black Spiral Dancers may seem no different from Garou; indeed, many began as Garou, and emerged from the Labyrinth possessed with guile sufficient to maintain the ruse. But the nature of the Black Spiral Dancer is most prominently manifest when the Spiral shifts into Glabro or Crinos forms.

Examining the Black Spiral Crinos is difficult by a host of deformities and mutations that have marked and twisted Spiral stock for ages. The Wyrm’s wolves have worn their faces sideways, sported bat’s ears, or impractical tusks that sliced their own muzzles, and have displayed many aberrations that are more dreadful. That said, certain traits remain a constant feature among the Wyrm’s wolves.

A Black Spiral Crinos may be a hideous approximation of a Crinos Garou engulfed by another, more insidious,

grinning black coat of oil-slick fur and verdigris fangs. This flesh pulls down tight around the Crinos like a second skin. Sometimes it pulls too tight, and the skin of the monster rips and splits, revealing raw bone and sinew beneath. A Spiral in Crinos seethes with palpable wrath, its frustra­ tion and hatred radiating through its bristling mane and rippling flesh. When it is most agitated, sometimes the wild, terrified eyes of its former self push up through the surface to beseech the world. Sometimes an entire face or set of fangs will try to push through the Spiral’s face, throat, or chest, and the Wyrm’s wolves delight in the horror this brings to witnesses, particularly those who were fond of the person they once were.

A particular myth about the Black Spirals portrays them as uniformly mottled green, putrid and mangy as if baking with fever, foul with rot and degrading from radiation sickness. Such generalizations fail to capture the enormity of the physical blasphemy that Black Spiral Dancers represent, or the variety of forms they take. Even so, Black Spiral Dancers may be sleek, streamlined, and dangerous, looking every bit as “pure” as a Garou, in jet-black or snow white.