Gifts

The relationship between Spiral and Kinfolk involves a necessary remove. The werewolf keeps his distance, emotionally and physically, to limit the amount of con­ tact between her family and the Wyrm. As corruption and a corrosion of sanity are both real threats to those exposed to the Wyrm, a Spiral is generally a distant figure in the lives of her mortal relatives. She is a mysterious face haunting photo albums, or a name heard only in whispers at family reunions.

Not even a hundred years ago, the Black Spiral Danc­ ers still believed in rigorously educating their children, filling them with knowledge spun from the Wyrm’s perspective of Gaia and the Garou, and on preparing

them for the war at hand. However, as more Spirals found lasting, even prosperous lives on the surface, as the monsters became more self-sustaining and able to blend into society, using it as a shield to survive; more Spirals began to find strength in stability. With this migration, the Spirals began to realize the value of their kin being able to function in society and walk where they could not walk, and speak where the Spirals needed voices. This necessitated a change in the role of Kinfolk, from uneducated broodmares to sophisticated, educated agents. Such Kinfolk knew only what they needed to know, and existed in family units where members varied in knowledge of their werewolf progenitors.

Even into the early twenty-first century, tradition­ alist Spirals argued that Kinfolk who weren’t prepared to receive the blessing of the Wyrm would spawn weak werewolves, fit only to die shortly after the First Change. This argument lost its weight with the appearance of a Spiral named Alan Rixby, who was wholly unprepared for what he would become. His mother, a Black Spiral Dancer, had deliberately hidden the truth of his existence from him, allowing him to feel unloved and unwanted. He crept through his life in terror of her mood swings, and of the truth he knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his family was not all right and that something was terribly wrong with mother.

Unprepared for the truth, Rixby’s terror, his fear, his anger, and worst of all — the sudden rightness, the sense of it all — sent him whirling down the Spiral inside, making him a vessel of the Wyrm before he ever set foot into a Pit. His mother’s last words before he pushed his face through her chest were “Give mama a hug.” Long after her death, her phantom Crinos remained entangled in the aura of his hatred and pain, leaping to his defense and guiding him in the ways of destruc­ tion. He was one of the most effective Spirals of the decade. The Spirals needed no further proof for what was by then so obvious: this was just another case of how their kind could draw tremendous power from the suffering caused by betrayal. Many began to see that it was the lack of preparation, combined with the hope of some sort of normal life, which made the Black Spiral transformation potent and deadly.

Another advantage to the distance between the Spirals and their Kinfolk is the deniability that makes their Kinfolk viable as objects of conquest and mates to the Garou. While some Kinfolk have traveled into the foulest Pits and beheld the awful majesty of the Wyrm, many only had brushes with malignant spirits, or understood the Wyrm by the faintest clues. It’s easy for the Garou to kill Kinfolk who are psychotic mass murderers and cannibalistic thralls, but it is hard for them to murder Kinfolk who barely even have any concept

of the Wyrm or no concept at all. Should their Spiral protectors die, the Garou may consider these Kinfolk redeemable commodities for their potential to produce Garou children remains. Therefore, the curse of the Black Spiral Dancers endures.