Gifts

Rite of Memorial

Level One While the Gathering for the Departed is performed for most deceased Garou, the Rite of Memorial is reserved only for a sept's greatest heroes. When a memorial or shrine is built in a caern to honor such a hero, this rite dedicates it to the ancestor-spirit in question. Like the Gathering for the Depart­ ed, this rite's form varies from tribe to tribe and from caern type to caern type. Children of Gaia in a caern dedicated to healing might croon a lullaby while standing in a circle around the shrine to ask the hero to bring blessings of peace, while Get of Fenris in a caern full of Rage might sacrifice an animal or person symbolic of one of the hero’s victories, leaving its entrails to tie the ancestor to its still-living kin.

System

This rite is generally considered offensive to perform for a slain Garou of Rank less than 4, unless his deeds were unquestionably heroic on a scale that affected the entire sept or tribe. If successful, the hero's accom­ plishments reflect favorably on his comrades. Each of the deceased's septmates present gains one temporary point of Glory Renown, and each of his packmates present gains one additional point.

Rite of Soul Sending

Level Two In an ideal world, the soul of every being would pass on to wherever it should go when its body dies, whether that's an afterlife, sweet oblivion, or something even stranger. But this is not an ideal world. This is a world of darkness, and here the Dark Umbra manifests the ghosts of the restless dead in their obsessive agony. To protect a soul from this unnatural fate, a Garou mystic can perform this rite to help ensure that whatever business the dead soul may wish to resolve is less appealing than the call of the world's natural cycle of life. Since it's extremely rare, if not unheard of, for a werewolf's soul to become trapped as a ghost, this rite is usually per­ formed to send off the spirits of humans (or, occasionally, animals) who died of violent or supernatural causes, or may have compelling reasons to linger. It's common for tribes to perform this rite for deceased Kinfolk. Some Garou perform this rite for slain enemies, not wishing to be the objects of otherworldly vengeance, although Wyrm-tainted corpses reject it out of hand.

The ritemaster bathes the corpse in clean, cool water to calm any wrath the spirit might feel. Then he dances around the body in a circle while all those in attendance drum or stamp their feet and recite the name of the deceased over and over. They begin loudly, to attract the spirit's attention, and gradually get softer and softer over the course of the ritual until they whisper the name away into the wind, never to be spoken among them again.

System

This rite will not work on a corpse that has been dead for longer than a number of hours equal to the ritemaster's Gnosis, or on the corpse of any being touched by the Wyrm. The difficulty of the roll is (5 + number of hours dead), to a maximum of 9. The spirit of the deceased does not linger as a ghost or appear in the Dark Umbra. Should the ritemaster botch the roll, the dead spirit instead immediately rushes in and becomes a wraith right then and there.