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Are Kami really proto-Changing Breeds? Did all werewolves and other Changing Breeds start as Kami? Maybe. Will any Kami become new breeds of shapeshifters? It is a possibility.

Gaia is a creative force, constantly making and remaking life in new ways, and guides Her children to change and grow in ways to make survival most likely. Life must endure, and if that means creating a new breed of changers to take on a grand purpose, that is exactly what she will do. If the Kami and Changing Breeds are connected, the difference is that Gaia has granted Changing Breeds more free will. The ability to change shape may come with an ability to change their purpose and their destiny. This is a thing not afforded the Kami. Not yet, anyway.

To put it simply, Kami are things embedded with the essence and glory of Gaia herself. While She may not appear and communicate Her wishes directly, upon its creation the Kami knows what it needs to do. It may not understand how its purpose fits into a grander scheme, and most often, the Kami doesn’t care. They can be people, animals, and even the land itself may serve Gaia in this way. Kami are not spirits joined to a host for a purpose, but rather, a host imbued with the spirit of Gaia herself.

• A former lover of one of the characters, a human, has come back into the character’s life. He still has strong feelings for the character, but he also has a secret. He has been charged by Gaia to have a child with a Garou for reasons only Gaia can understand. To complicate matters, he isn’t Kinfolk and certainly isn’t supposed to know about the Garou. The character broke the Litany with him years ago, but it was simply a loose end never handled.

• An enemy of the pack — and of Gaia — has taken refuge in an abandoned botanical garden while on the run. When the pack gives chase, they are pushed back by unknown sources. If they push harder, the Kami that is the garden commands the Garou to leave. The garden is a place of peace, it insists, and it will permit no violence inside its boundaries. If the characters enter pursuing their foes, they might not be able to avoid a fight. Will the characters wait it out, or find a way to take down their foe without violence? And how will they convince the suspicious Kami that they even can?

• An elephant at the city zoo has started talking, and has been asking for the characters by name. It demands their presence in the way a lord would call on vassals. If they don’t go, he will break out of the zoo and find them. If they go to him, he will command them with the same air of authority. “Take me from here,” it tells them. “By Gaia’s blessed bosom, I command you, take me from here and return me home.” From there, the elephant will demonstrate both Gaia’s blessing and his power. The characters had best return him to his nation. He can back up his implied threats.

When Gaia creates a Kami, it is never by mistake or whim. She creates all Kami with a purpose in mind, and that purpose may be small or cosmic depending on the scope

of Gaia’s need. Perhaps, for reasons only She understands, there is a spring, a drip really, on the side of a mountain in a national park that She wants stopped up. The Kami birthed from that need exists only so long as it takes to stop up the drip. If instead, the spring needed protection beyond even the Apocalypse, until the heat-death of the sun, She would create a Kami that is essentially immortal and potentially impossible to destroy for the task. Gaia’s blessings for the Kami are so specific and direct that they can be a real difficulty for Garou who run in conflict with the Kami. The Wyrm and Weaver resent these special crea­ tures, and even the spirits of the Wyld may occasionally get jealous of the Kami and try to interfere with their purpose. Or push the Garou in between the Kami and its purpose.

• The above letter reaches members of the pack, beg­ ging them to fix what San-chan’s fallen pack made wrong. Approaching the island could be perilous, and so they must find some other way to appease the island and convince it to return the bodies of the fallen Garou and free the ghosts pressed into service there? What will they do when they discover the maddened survivor of the pack trying to rouse other Garou to strike at the island again?

• A cat, small and beautiful, with delicate markings that appear to be glyphs, comes to the pack. She is in trouble. She needs to kill a family of humans but she is incapable of doing so on her own because she is small. In truth, her purpose is to end a family line that has long been tied to the Wyrm and furthering the Wyrm’s ends. They must not have any more generations. The cat, because it is a cat, has sought out the simplest solution, which is to kill a bunch of humans. Will the Garou help her? Will they dig deep enough to understand the scope of the problem? Will they try to stop her and risk Gaia’s wrath? Or will they simply not believe she is doing Gaia’s work?

• The characters can’t seem to avoid a man who lives in their territory. He’s strong, well built, charming, and apparently perfectly normal. He just keeps turning up when things get hot for the pack. Once, they come across him at the site of a Garou taken down by unknown circumstances. Once, he actually helped the pack take down a Pattern Spider when things got out of hand. In truth, he’s a Kami charged with protecting the balance of the Triat in this particular city. He is neutral to the Garou, the Wyrm, the Weaver. He’s only seeking harmony and will use the gifts Gaia gave him to enforce her command. Does that make this strange man the ally or the enemy of the pack? Only time will tell.

You have never seen a thing in all of creation as humble and gentle as the tree that grows on 5th Street. I’m an old man now, you understand, but I remember it before. When it was