Gifts

Spirals follow this tenet almost without fail, as it highlights the paramount importance of a Pit to a hive’s survival. The Pit is the home of a Black Spiral Dancer, his sanctum and his place of power. The Spirals cannot win without their Pits and they cannot live without their Pits, and they treat their Pit’s location, nature, and information about its core spirit as their greatest secrets. Pack leaders often set the rules to protect a Pit’s safety. Those who compromise a Pit find themselves branded as traitors and hunted as prey.

When the Black Spiral Dancers first sprang from the abyss, the Garou fought a bitter, bloody battle to drive them back. In one essential way, they succeeded: in order to survive, the Spirals needed to hide, and in order to hide, they needed to go down. Dwelling on the surface, — going in search of caerns and holy places they might defile and enshrine, was not an option. Nowhere had they settled would stay safe for long; their enemies would soon find them to root them out.

Instead, they burrowed into the Earth, tunneling deep into her depths, finding homes in natural caves and warrens, and spreading out their own diseased grottos in the hollow organs of the planet. In darkness, they brought their Kinfolk and their prey, and they bred, feasted, and raised a robust nation of blind horrors in those hellish and forgotten places.

These places of dark ritual and hallowed horror are Pits, and the septs of werewolves living in them are as hives. These were — and continue to be — the sacred places of power for the Black Spiral Dancers.

Today, the Spirals need not live exclusively under­ ground. Through the ages, they bred and outbred the Garou, and grew more powerful in numbers, stronger in cunning and clever in devices. They began to organize, to spread out, and to find caerns on the surface that they could corrupt. But old traditions remain strong: regard­ less of whether their place of power is above or below ground, a Spiral’s dominion is still called a Pit.