Items

Kami are rare. And yet, this book presents a good number of specific and suggested Kami to use in your chronicle as well as rules for creating your own. If you were to use all of these special creatures, your game would suddenly feel pretty crowded with the special and strange. Now, that could be then focus of a chronicle, to be sure, but if you only want to use one or two Kami, you may decide that those are the only ones in your World of Darkness. Just because one Kami exists does not mean all Kami exist, and that’s something you can bring up with the players to reinforce how rare these creatures are, even if your players have read this book.

planted it was a sickly thing, put down by road workers with all the care and compassion of a dump truck. They about threw the thing into the grassy median, and I didn’t figure it’d last long.

It spent a time thin and spindly and just growing, and I wouldn’t have thought a second thing about it but that for the city, it had a pretty spot. Sunlight hit the area so the grass around it was particularly green. In the spring and summer it had a lot of dandelion companions and I think a woman down the street threw some wild flower seeds in the sunny spot, because purple and blue wildflowers occasionally broke up the green and yellow. The median was wide enough across that in the winter, it didn’t end up covered in black sludge instead of snow. Even naked of it’s measly leaves and covered in snow, the twig-of-a-tree seemed picturesque. I watched a high school girl take her black and white camera to the spot in December while it was snowing to catch the natural beauty there in the middle of a busy city street.

Can a tree be happy? Can it be content with its life? Maybe.

When it survived about five years, I was surprised. And a touch heartbroken when a summer storm came and the tree was hit by lightning. It split the trunk and I figured the happy little tree was a goner.

But that didn’t stop it. Life will win out, I guess. This little tree wanted to live. It wanted to keep on going and do whatever it was supposed to do. It had, I don’t know, strength of character. The spindly little thing went right on growing, bent over by the break, like the tree was forever bowing respectfully. It thickened up in the years to follow, and things got strange. Pigeons and alley cats would gather around the tree in a circle. No one noticed, the animals would run if humans or Garou came too close. But I saw.

Sometimes I’d see squirrels and little finches sitting in the branches chittering and tweeting away like they’re singing hymns. I started calling it Gaia’s Littlest Cathedral at that point, though the Ga­ rou I pointed it out to laughed it off. Still, I feel a power there that can’t be explained by the presence of a caern. That’s not what’s going on here and it’s hard to explain.

Sometimes I know what the tree wants. Sometimes I know what the cats and dogs and squirrels are praying for. Sometimes I know the words to the hymns the finches are singing and I wish I could just go down there and join them. But I also know that this tree isn’t here for me, or for people, or for the Garou. It’s there to bring the praise of other living things to Gaia and give all those creeping critters a place to feel safe and revel in the glory of our Mother.

I’ve asked the boy, that when I die, they have my ashes spread in the median along 5th Street so I can join the Cathedral and the animals as they pray. I just hope the tree accepts my gesture. I think it will. It’s that gentle.

—Mr. Vo, Kin of the Glasswalkers and Respected Guardian of 5th Street.

Kami come to it willingly. Unlike the possessed or fomori or any other of the strange beings that inhabit the cosmology of the Garou, no Kami goes unwillingly or un­ wittingly into service. Even Kami that grow out of creatures or things with no recognizable sentience make the choice to become Kami. If it is sentient or even quasi-sentient, then not only does it choose to become a Kami, it knows at the start what being a Kami means. The Kami-to-be must be gleeful and celebratory in its purpose as Gaia breathes a new life into it. Kami are never accidents, they have no resent or regret. While they may regret what their purpose occasionally forces them to do, they do not resent their purpose, their reason, or their position as Gaia’s chosen.

• A tree grows in a city that acts as a vessel for Gaia’s love, and channels it to and from the wild creatures that live in the city. It is not yet a Kami, the process takes a long time with non sentient creatures. It needs protection, though, and has made attempts to call for help. The tree needs to be sure it won’t be uprooted and killed before it completes its process, and city planners have been talking about gentrifying the area and destroying the trees little space. Beyond its need to live ‘for Gaia,’ it can’t really communicate any more complicated ideas. If the pack can protect the tree, or else save its life, they may be on the ground floor of the birth of a Kami, a rare and amazing experience. But, that’s a pretty big ‘if.’

• Raymond Terry has a special job to do, and a very special benefactor, the earth itself wants him to fulfill his role. What that role is, he isn’t saying, but proof abounds that he is in fact Gaia’s special child. Problem is, the Wyrm has its own ideas about Raymond’s fate, and while it can’t attack Raymond directly for some reason, it has decided to

put doubt in the man’s heart. Bad luck follows Raymond like a cloud over his head, and his experiences are Jobian in their tragedy. A prophecy spirit visits the pack and gives them just a glimpse of Raymond’s future. Can they get to him before he loses heart? And will they trust their instincts enough to help him become the Kami he is meant to be, even if they don’t know what his purpose is? Is their faith in Gaia strong enough?

•Pete wants to become a Kami. He doesn’t know the term exactly, but he’s got it in his head he can somehow serve Gaia. Problem is, Pete is dead. In life, Pete was a bad man. He died with a Bane riding on him, but make no mistake, he wasn’t some innocent victim in the whole thing and he knows it. Now he’s a restless, angry, sorrowful ghost with incredible power at his disposal. He could turn into a real nightmare for the pack, could blame the whole thing on werewolves, but he doesn’t want to become that kind of ghost. He wants redemption and has this crazy idea that he could, maybe, serve Gaia the way he served the Wyrm. He just doesn’t exactly know how. He’ll need to find a peace and purity inside of himself, and he won’t leave the pack alone until they help him purify himself. This quest could take the pack and Pete all over the Umbra before it’s completed. And Pete’s sure as heck not going to make it easy.

When the Kin told us that many of the children kept going missing, we at first dismissed it as a problem for them to solve. The children always returned, you see, and so we felt there was no need to concern ourselves. Still, the Den Mother eventually got involved, beseeching on behalf of our Kin that we look into the strange behavior. All of the children between five and twelve would simply vanish for six to twelve hours and return dirty but unharmed save that they could not remember what they had done or where they had been. They were quiet though, calm and content in a way you rarely see from children of that age. We examined them and saw no spiritual harm to them. Quite the contrary, they seemed extraordinarily healthy. Even little Katin, a sickly child from birth, seemed robust and brimming with life. When we noticed her brother’s twisted foot straighten out after one of these periods, we realized we had to look closer. No one was especially worried about the children, but these things don’t just happen without an explanation.

We planned to track them, then, and waited. It took a while, but eventually we spotted some of the children leaving in the middle of the night. Spirits followed them, covering their tracks. They walked about twenty minutes, in the middle of the night, with no light and no concern as they moved deeper in the woods near the kin-home where they lived. We raise our children to be fearless, you understand, but this was something else entirely.

When they finally stopped deep in the wood, they gathered around what appeared to be a trash dump. This happened sometimes, small businesses would use old dirt roads and dump their problematic trash in the woods where no one would find it right away. I could see computer screens and large batteries, ancient server towers and other electronic detritus. I can imagine the sorts of things that were dripping out of those old machines into the soil.

The children seemed aware as well, because they were cleaning. Humming happily and carefully bagging the machines up for proper disposal. The older kids wore gloves to handle the toxic cases and batteries. The younger children brought buckets of water, which they sang to and prayed over, before cleansing the soil around with the water. It looked enough like a rite that I asked our Crescent Moon if such a thing were possible. She said it was happening, possible or not.

Something had drawn these children out here to clean the land, to purify it, and instinctively they seemed able to do just that. “The land here is powerful,” our Crescent Moon told us, though she said it was only a feeling. “Something important is going to happen here.”

We have decided not to interfere and let nature take its course, though we will be watching as events unfold.

The process of becoming a Kami can be an arduous one. It’s time intensive, sometimes stretching to decades depending on the needs Gaia has set out for her chosen one. One of the most important parts of the process is for the would-be Kami to find a place of peace and pu­ rity. It’s vital that she accepts her purpose for Gaia in a place uncluttered by the Triat’s meddling, or even more mundane influence. “Place” is subjective here, of course. For many human-turned-Kami, that place is internal, and the noise or pollution they need to fight are greedy thoughts, anterior motivations, doubt, and unsettled pain or anger. The landscape of the mind is as important for a sentient Kami as a clean environment around a plant- or earth-Kami. Of course, Gaia has a way of nudging these things along. That nudging is exactly the sort of thing that can push a pack of characters into stories with Kami at the center.

• The fish of the East River are dying. It was never a particularly clean place to begin with, but to see this many fish dead all at once is troubling. Worse, all manner of life from the river floats dead on the surface. Something is going on in the river, and it isn’t pretty. Fish spirits and cleansing spirits have gathered on the spiritual reflection of the river, but the spirits efforts are killing them off left and right. “Something beautiful is meant to be born here” the fish spirits moan. “You must stop whatever is killing the fish. Something beautiful and clean is meant to be here. Stop the corruption. Stop it or we will see it spread to all

the living things of the city, not just here where our mira­ cle is about to happen.” The fish spirits will not elaborate much more, but they are awaiting the birth of a fish who will become a Kami. If river isn’t saved, it can’t be born, and the river spirits will have revenge.

• A Stargazer Kinfolk has been ‘called to Gaia’ for an inexplicable service with full blessings of the tribe’s elders. The problem is, nothing is happening. The events that should have taken place to mark her rebirth as a Kami, a mystical meteor shower and other miracles, simply haven’t happened. What the elders don’t realize is that this girl has a troubled history and it taints her dreams and memories. The pack may need to enter the girls dreams to help her come to terms with her past, and therefore let her find that place of peace.

• An old Southern graveyard is on the cusp of becoming a very special Kami. It’s no ordinary graveyard, however, as it was a place where the Klan buried lynched and mur­ dered Civil Rights activists. It’s sort of a public secret and the grandchildren of those Klansmen still spread their evil generations later, though not so overtly. Soil does not have a moral center, or an understanding of human lifespans. The graveyard needs balance, and it needs the murderers brought to justice. Through dreams and impulses, it draws the pack in to right the wrong and give peace to those buried here and birth the Kami the land needs.

It is a mistake to assume that when a plant becomes a servant of Gaia it is happenstance or even simply convenience for the goddess. The tree was in the right place at the right time. That coral reef just grew where there was a need, and so the reef became the blessed creation.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Plants, same as animals and humans, seek out Gaia. They want, yearn, and need to serve. They come to Gaia in their own way with a desire to be and become more for She from whom all life comes. One could argue that their dedication is even more impressive since by and large plants are not sentient. So in order to serve Gaia they must give up the freedom of non-sentience, accept the burden of thought and worry, and take it on to themselves so that they may fulfill the need Gaia has for them.

It’s a sacrifice. It’s also important to note here that we are not discussing the spirits of plants that seek out service. That would be a far less impressive sacrifice. This is not the spirit of a rose bush, but the bush itself. Kami are not a binding of spirit and flesh. They are flesh itself filled over with Gaia’s love.

The peculiarity that I have myself not yet worked through is what manner of accident and happenstance it is that so often Gaia has a purpose to fit Kami that cannot move. So often, she has a purpose, is it something She creates first, and the servant

comes, or is it servant who come first, and Gaia’s need comes second? More likely, both happen simultaneously. That’s the workings of the goddess.

Plant Kami are simple, straightforward beings that think and act only exactly as is necessary to their purpose. Some Kami were more used to freedom of thought and action before their creation, the plant Kami had no such difficulty. They grew and propagated and that was about it. Now, in service, they grow and propagate second to their purpose, but that’s as far as most will go. Given time, centuries maybe, a plant Kami may learn traits like cooperation or enlightened self interest, but it’s rare. Plant Kami aren’t stupid. They simply don’t bother to know or understand more than is necessary for their duty. If they can be convinced it’s necessary to their purpose, they can be taught. They can grow to understand things outside of their task, but it usually takes external sources. Plant Kami are refreshingly free of conflict and internal struggle. Many of them resent sentience as it clouds their duty, but accept it as a necessary evil.

• A tree grows from a mountain side, and it has been crying. It sends a low, sad, mournful spiritual impression all through the valley next to the mountain. The animals in the valley have stopped procreating and feeding themselves. The birds won’t clean themselves or sing anymore. The valley has become depressed along with the ancient tree. She has been a Kami in service to Gaia since this mountain was young, and she is tired. She has seen a million generations of rabbits come and go. She has even outlived the spirit friends she has made over the millennia. She is ready to rest now, but her purpose is not over. She blocks a cavern in the mountain that human feet must never cross. That is her purpose. And she is so very tired. While she mourns, the valley around her is dying of sadness.

• A King’s Lomatia is a sort of bush, and maybe the longest living plant in creation. By cloning itself instead of reproducing, some examples have lived for more than forty thousand years. One such ancient plant is growing, in part, in an area near the pack’s territory. Its purpose is complicated and hard to express to creatures that live and die in relatively brief flashes, and it literally lives in dozens of places at once with one mind. Pentex has taken part of the plant to a laboratory. It is in pain. It is in constant pain. It needs liberation, and if it must uproot and walk into the pack’s territory to demand a rescue, it will do just that.

• The sounds of rabbits screaming in the middle of the night wakes the pack. Not one, but many, an entire warren of rabbits and a warren of their spirit fellows crying like they are trapped and terrified. They will not stop. If and when the pack goes to investigate, they find the source of the fear is not the rabbits. They are only a vehicle for expression. In fact, a sanicula has just become a Kami. The plant is a relative of the carrot, and this particular sanicula is here to feed the rabbits in the area for Gaia. It is terrified,

though, it has never thought before, and sentience terrifies it. Doubt. Pain. Awareness. The sense of mortality. The long-lived carrot is experiencing all of these things at once, and it will not release the rabbits from screaming until someone calms it.

I know what you’re thinking, and I’m always surprised when I come across this idea in humans. Fucking pets, right? What little fuzzy assholes. I don’t know why anyone keeps them around! They shit everywhere, and they only love you so that you feed them.

Let me tell you, that is such complete bullshit I can’t even GAH! You humans need better profanity for the amount that idea pisses me off.

Look, even before this whole thing, I was a creature of love. I lived in your house, instead of the wild, so I was basically a forever-kitten and there was pretty much nothing in the world I wanted to do more than just love you. I ate the food you gave me, but I never felt entitled to it. I was grateful and even sur­ prised every time you put down my bowl. Didn’t you hear that purring, you insensitive asshole? Was I standoffish sometimes? Not in the way you think I was. See, I was loving you, sure, but also sometimes I’d get distracted. I’d be thinking about food or your lap or that warm spot by the heater, and then all the sud­ den I’d be thinking about Gaia. I didn’t know that word, or any word then really, but I would start thinking about the wonder of life and how good things are and I’d just know it came from a source. A source that I wanted to be a greater part of. Yeah, yeah, I know that sounds silly. But the thing is, it’s legit. I know the whole thing was real, because well, I kept loving you and lov­ ing Her and then one day, I could really think about loving her. I had this reason for being beyond just loving you. I understood the world in a way I never had before.

So I still love you, you big stupid pink thing. A part of me will always love you. But I’ve got a reason, a thing I gotta do, and it’ll make the world a better place. Not just for me or you, but for all of us. So, I’m sorry.

—A letter from your cat. Animal Kami are maybe the easiest sorts of Kami to understand. They are at least in part aware, and yet not so withdrawn from the natural order that they miss the call from Gaia when it comes. Maybe when the family dog is staring out the window its just thinking about getting out and chasing chickens, or maybe it’s thinking about Gaia. Maybe doves just sing to find mates, or maybe, sometimes, they sing for Her. Animals are the closest to Gaia of all aware creatures, right? After all, the Changing Breeds all come from animals, don’t they?

• The javelinas have organized. Or rather, they have a leader now. And it seems like that leader is smarter than

your average Arizonan. They’ve killed two hunters by run­ ning them down. What will they do next? And is it really in service to Gaia?

• Whales, in general, are not aggressive. Off the coast of the city where the pack lives, locals report an unusually large whale running into fishing boats and capsizing them. It isn’t all boats. Some werewolves have determined a pattern. Fish and sea life spirits have begun flooding to the area where the whale is hunting. It could cause an imbalance in the natural order due to over-fishing or pollution. What is the whale doing, and why? Can the characters intervene to maintain balance, or is the whale already acting on an imbalance the characters aren’t aware of?

• No one in the pack is quite sure who the cat belonged to. Maybe none of the characters especially like cats, but they found this cat in their territory. One of them might feed it and pet it, since it’s so rare to find a small animal that doesn’t just run from Garou. Then it left a note, saying that it had a greater purpose and saying goodbye. Six months later, the cat has returned. It asked the Garou to take its picture and upload this pictures to a specific web forum. No sooner does the werewolf post one, the cat requests another picture on another site. Then another. She asks to have her picture taken all over the city, in various adorable or funny situations. Once she’s had her picture uploaded to six different forums, the pack likely want to know the point of the whole affair? Is there a connection between the forums? And how does it connect to the string of suicides all across the city by various men in positions of power?

She was beautiful, I mean, to me she was beautiful but no one was going to put her on any magazine covers. Objectively, she was a little lopsided. Her face wasn’t symmetrical, and though she tried to disguise it, one of her breasts was noticeably bigger than the other. Something to do with breastfeeding she said, but I didn’t press the matter because she was always so self-conscious. She was heavy, but she carried it well, and I always saw her more as taking up the space Gaia gave her than as fat. She kept herself well, except her hair, which was long and wild. She fed any child that came to her back door when she was baking or cooking. Some of the neighbors would complain, implying that poor children were like stray cats: if you fed them once, you’d never get rid of them.

Spirits of charity and giving and peace always hovered around the place, not that she was ever aware of them. She never seemed aware of any of it really. She’d just hum and cook and take in charity cases and give out whatever she could afford to give. She said ‘everyone has a reason’ without going into too much depth about what that meant. She just took it on faith that giving was what she was supposed to do. She didn’t know about Gaia, not exactly, and she certainly didn’t know that we

were a pack of werewolves. She was beautiful in that way too. She was outside of our world and not part of our struggle. Going to see her, to bring her food and money, it felt like nothing else mattered. We could lick our wounds and take a breath.

Jerri, our Alpha, seemed to think that this was her reason, that Gaia had made her to make us feel better. I never told Jerri how wrong I thought she was. Not until years after the Kami vanished.

—From the notebook of Chuck the Liar. Unlike other sorts of Kami, human Kami have the unique ability to lie to themselves about what they are and what they can do. That’s not to say that human Kami come to serve Gaia confused about what they do or that they somehow unwittingly fall into service. They understand their purpose with the same reverence as any other Kami. It’s just that through culture and society, human Kami may have filters they use to better understand Gaia in a greater cultural context. An atheist might become a Kami if they were devoted enough to fulfilling their purpose. It wouldn’t even make them wrong in their lack of belief, not exactly. Human Kami have no reason to know the details of Garou existence, or the greater workings of the Triat. While it’s possible, in general, that human Kami just know what they have always known, others just know that what they are doing is the right thing at almost all times.

• A man who fell into a river but did not die, and now a church is growing up around him. He’d been trying to kill himself, according to his story, and the water would not take him. He had a greater purpose, so he says, and preaches about life and love and especially how people should not give up on life just because the world seems so rotten. The church is a rag-tag group of people pulled to this man’s story, and he’s attracting attention and threats to his life from less tolerant faiths. But to werewolves, he’s clearly of Gaia. Are the characters willing to interfere in what could be a small religious war?

• Jerome is the middle of it, literally. He’s a sensitive, thoughtful sort of guy who reads a lot about the world and humanity’s place in it. He also works a high paying tech job in the middle of one of the most corrupt industries in the US. He hates his job but won’t leave it because he believes, deeply, that he can make a difference from the inside. Becoming a Kami was subtle, slow, and he’s unaware of what he is and what he can really do. He’s been exchanging posts with one of the pack members on a spiritual-but-confused social justice subreddit, and he’s strangely informed about the Garou nation without being obvious about it. If the characters want to find out why, they’re going to have to liberate him from his 9 to 5 world and help him understand. The pack has to do it before he becomes corrupted by the industry in which he exists.

• Mannon Jedd knew about werewolves before he came to his duty. Actually, to be direct, he used to hunt werewolves

and kill them. At the time, it was a pretty legit, if dangerous thing to do — his hometown had been invaded by a pack of Black Spiral Dancers. He and some of his buddies fought back and actually managed to drive the Dancers out, killing more than one of them. In the process, they came across a boy going through his First Change because of the stress of the Dancers’ assault. Mannon stopped his buddies from killing the kid, seeing him as innocent, and helped get him out of town to head back to his family in another town. Gaia watched this man and his sense of right and wrong, and eventually, she rewarded him. He moves around a lot, now, studying wolves and picking up orphans before the Wyrm takes them in. He won’t say how much he knows, or why, but he is unquestionably of a creature of Gaia.

This land is your land about as much as I’m your lapdog. And I’ll rip your face off for kicks if I can get away with it.

Bottom line is, you roam far enough for long enough, by the Wyrm’s crooked toenail you’ll find out that you can’t even trust the soil under your feet. Don’t believe me? That’s on you. Truth of it is, some places — some special sacred places — will rip you the fuck up if you trespass there. I don’t care if you’re the grand high wolf princess boy king. These places will chew you up and spit you out and shit your hat out without batting an eye. Be­ cause they don’t have eyes. Because they’re mountains or plains, not, you know, things with eyes.

Look! I know! I sound crazy. Years on the road’ll do that. You don’t have to believe me. Probably maybe you’ll never run across one of these things. But if you do, you remember what I tell you. Don’t matter if Gaia herself shows up to vouch for you, Her land gives exactly zero fucks who you are if you get in its way or mess up its mojo. The living land is of Gaia just like the Litany says, just more so. Violate at your peril, buddy. ‘Course, not all sacred places are alive in Her service. Don’t make that mistake and spend four hours yelling at a caern to see if it’ll answer. Trust me on that.

—Mad Molly Green, elder of the Black Furies. Land Kami follow a certain kind of logic, if you look at Gaia as a larger concept than just an earth mother god­ dess. The land, with its plants and animal life, exists as a harmonious whole and the power of creation itself can empower that whole. And that is, essentially what a land Kami is. It is a small ecosystem that is united under Gaia for a specific purpose. That purpose may be to protect the secret within, guard a sacred place, or some other duty even less easy for Garou to understand. It always has a purpose. Gaia could command a mountain to rise up and prove her existence and superiority in a heartbeat. She does not, because that is not her way.

• The trees of Woodsman Park are not separate en­ tities, but share a root network and so the whole of the

park is essentially one symbiotic system. It is a place of safety, and peace flows from it to support the surrounding area, though only the park itself is a Kami. Animals come and go, water flows through streams, and a little bit of that peace spreads outside of the park. People, though, don’t tend to leave. Any human that goes into the park is invited to stay. To join the peace and the quiet, and in fact, join the trees. And people are leaving the surround­ ing city to join the park. Not yet in droves, but it could happen. When the pack discovers this, what can they do, what should they do?

• Finding a new caern is rare enough, but to find one in conflicted territory between two rival septs seems like Gaia is laughing at her Chosen. Worse, the septs quickly discover that the land itself won’t let them have ownership over the caern. The land can think and communicate and defend itself. It will not let war come to it, and it is slowly growing, spreading through the contested territory. Some claim that it is a message from Gaia, a demand for them to withdraw their teeth and be siblings. But not all share that faith. Some see it as wicked magic perpetrated by the rival sept, and as a declaration of war.

• Pelican Bay, a small inlet of water next to a fishing village, is returning the dead to their families. The bay itself has woken to Gaia’s greater needs and, somehow, it is raising those men and women who died while fishing or otherwise in the water to life again and sending them back to shore. Some of these people have been dead for centuries or more. Including a great and powerful ancestor of the local sept.

When Gaia invests the time and effort it takes for her to make a Kami, She does so with a purpose in mind. That might be something as simple and tangible as protecting the last of an endangered species, or it might be a vast and unknowable calling only the greatest of Theurges has any chance to suss out, and only then through dream. Regard­ less of who or what She chooses, the process of becoming is a slow one.

Becoming Kami is quickest for Her animals, but the seasons it requires may take several cycles of reproduction before a mother rabbit bears a Kami kit. A human Kami might take a decade to come into her bloom, though that can be delayed or quickened depending upon the health of her environment. Plants take longer, though flora with short lifetimes may find the process extends their existence until the blessing takes. These vessels in particular must become sentient before sapient, and that is not a short journey. Kami of the land itself are the slowest of all to come into their power. Like plants, they