Places

The Garou ascribe names and demeanors to the major Planetary Incarna as follows.

Mitanu, the trickster Rogue of Mercury;

Tambiyah, the fecund Veiled Mother of Venus;

Nerigal, the fierce Ice Warrior of Mars;

Rorg, the feral Many-Taloned Hunter of the asteroid belt;

Zarok, the kingly Crowned One of Jupiter;

Lu-Bat, the sagacious Peaceful Counselor of Saturn;

Ruatma, the enigmatic Shadowed One of Uranus;

Shantar, the pragmatic and inventive Loom Maker of Neptune;

Meros, the restless wander of Pluto.

honor and wisdom; the nature of the Incarna determines which trials are given the most weight. The domains of these Incarna tend to be amalgamated reflections of the physical planet, associations humans have given it, and the Incarna’s personality.

The Aetherial Realm holds more Anchorheads to the Deep Umbra than other place in the Near Umbra. Most of these are protected and maintained by packs of Garou elders and Ancestor Spirits. Some Garou from more prideful tribes, such as the Silver Fangs and Shadow Lords, say that the Garou Nation guards all Anchorheads and therefore knows the comings and goings of every traveler to the far realms. Some may believe this propaganda but other Umbral-exploring Fera know this is demonstrably false. These claims also don’t explain the hunting packs of Black Spiral Dancers who terrorize the far-away places, who must have access to Anchorheads of their own or use other, darker means to slip through the cracks to into the Deep Umbra.

Dreams of Arcadia have haunted sleeping humans since before tales were told, but only a few deluded souls claim to have visited it. The Arcadia Gateway isn’t the enchanted

land of the fae. Arcadia itself is too alien and ephemeral to survive within the Near Realms, but few deny that Arcadia Gateway has some connection to the homeland of the Fair Folk. Some insist that the Realm is a literal pathway leading to Arcadia — a palatial walkway cobbled with nightmares and flanked by topiaries sculpted into the shapes of love, beauty, and honor — if only the questing hero could find the door. Others believe that no such opening exists in the Gateway, but the Realm was once inhabited by the fae and therefore might hold clues to the true location of Arcadia. In either case, the Arcadia Gateway pulses with Wyld energy that even now creeps into humans while they sleep. The primordial dreams it inspires help slow the calcification and decay that the Weaver and Wyrm wreak on the collective unconscious of humanity. If events in the Realm radically change its nature or destroy it entirely, it would echo in the physical world, and that alone makes it of interest to the Garou.

The genesis of the Arcadia Gateway remains a mystery. In some stories, the fae lived on Earth many millennia ago when the world was young and full of hidden places and chaotic magic. In those days the Fair Folk took humans as lovers, hunted them for sport, and otherwise used them as playthings to suit the fairies’ wicked temperaments and moods. Then humanity learned to forge iron and so be­ came a threat to the fae. A few among the Fair Folk made war upon their former servants in hopes of subjugating them once more, but all their enchantments shattered against the cold iron and many found ignoble death at the hands of those they once casually tormented for their own amusement. Of the remaining fae, most went into hiding. They still played their games with mortals, but they did so either symbiotically and with the humans’ permission or secretly and at the edges of civilization.

A third group of Fair Folk nobles, including some of the most powerful of all the fae, determined that they would not become shadows in the world they deserved to rule. If this world would no longer serve them they would create one that would. They left behind Earth with its un­ ruly mortals and cold iron. They walked the spirit worlds for centuries in their quest. Such was their mystical power that their paths through the Umbra forged the trods that wind their way through every Realm. At last they opened a gateway beyond the Near Umbra and into the Deep Umbra, where they willed Arcadia into existence. Although they closed that gateway behind them, some of the faerie magic leaked into the Near Umbra, and the Arcadia Gateway formed like a bubble around it.

In other stories, the Fair Folk originated from Arcadia and came to Earth to search for new amusements. In these stories the Arcadia Gateway is either the place where the Fair Folk entered the Near Umbra, an outpost they created from which to observe Earth before their invasion, or both.