Places

While most of Hashima’s residents lived in massive apartments, the management owned houses along the edge of the island. These houses had thin walls and weak roofs; Japan’s houses tend toward intentionally temporary erec­ tion, but these houses even more so because they were just homes away from home, never meant as family residences. Soon after the island’s abandonment, brush overtook this district. Brush gave way to trees, and within a decade, a

visitor would have to know what to look for if she wanted to find evidence of these old houses.

This place is now the site of a Glen. In the Umbra, thousands of tight-knit tree spirits formed a solid wall around the clearing. Inside, the Wyld has taken over. Waterfalls flow in every direction, rushing through patches of jungle and swamp that roll over one another. The entire area on the outside appears no more than one hundred yards in diameter, but inside the space goes on for nearly fifty miles. No two of those miles look like they belong next to one another. A curious side effect of the island is that all the thousands of animal spirits within are hybrid creatures with the features of at least four different beasts. Cats prowl with pincers ready, worms shriek and slither to their holes, and scorpions howl at the moon.

A place beyond space, the Near Umbra is simultane­ ously far from the Penumbra and as close as a shadow. The strange paths between the two often make sense in metaphor even though the evidence of a werewolf’s senses tells her otherwise. Werewolves can travel to the Aetherial Realm via the Penumbral skies, climb out of Webs into the CyberRealm, or open an otherwise unassuming doorway into the misty strangeness of the Near Umbra between the Realms.

While each of the Near Realms has its own laws governing travel within their borders, the Umbral space between them is not well-defined. So far removed from the Penumbra, travelers have less frame of reference for what they experience. Neither their lupine nor human instincts guide the Garou here, but instead their spiritual senses do upon such journeys. They need every edge they can get because traveling the Near Umbra is far more dangerous than the Penumbra. After all, getting lost in the Penumbra might lead a questing pack astray, return them to the material world somewhere far removed from

their original destination, but within an environment they can understand.

Getting lost in the Near Umbra might land a pack in Malfeas.

Actually venturing from the Penumbra to the Near Realms is more difficult than simply moving from one place to another. Physical distances do not apply to the Near Realms, except as they fit within that Realm’s laws — such as troop movements in the Battleground. A werewolf can run forever in the Penumbra and never reach beyond the Earth’s shadow.

Intent, destiny, will — all are integral components of Umbral quests. Werewolf mystics say that if you search for something in the Umbra, you will find it if you are destined to, and if not you will find something else. What you find may not be the adventure you sought, but it will likely lead you toward your goal. Meaning and myth are powerful forces in the spirit world, always acting upon travelers. If you seek the Battleground, begin your search with the desire to find battle. Look for signs of conflict. The tracks of a predator or the collateral damage caused by a battle of spirits, these are things to follow. And the further you follow such tracks with your heart set on reaching past

the shadow of the world, the further you drift from the world you know.

Many of the signs travelers follows are in fact airts, or spirit tracks. They function like road signs for Umbral travelers. The increasing prevalence of spent shell casings, blast craters and derelict vehicles warn travelers that they’re steadily approaching the Battleground. Tire tracks in the mud may not have been made by ephemeral vehicles but by spirits themselves on their way to or from the Realm. In another Realm, they might be a trail of broken cockroaches leading to Scar, or of golden leaves leading to Arcadia or the Summer Country. Spirits are quite adept at following these trails, and wise werewolves seek out spirits for their aid in traversing the Umbra.

Airts take on different forms depending both on the desires of the travelers and the nature of their quest. They range from animal or vehicle tracks to scents drifting on the air of blood, bone, sickness or even oil. They can be beaten paths or trails of thick roots in otherwise barren lands. Airts can even be shimmering contrails left behind by spirits like the trail of a slug passing through the realm. Sometimes they have less tangible effects. The airts left by Wyld-spirits have a way of rejuvenating those who follow them, while Wyrm-spirit airts nauseate and slow any Gaian creature desperate enough to travel upon them. Whatever their form, they stand out and even the most oblivious werewolf finds them impossible to miss. Whether or not a werewolf follows them, the tracks are there for anyone with a modicum of Umbral sense to see.

Spirit airts are useful but not always reliable. Spirits are fickle and prone to wandering off on their strange paths or vanishing entirely as the spirit discorporates and reforms elsewhere in the Umbra. Even relatively benign spirits see things differently from werewolves, and may not fully understand their would-be allies, or might encounter danger even the Garou can’t protect them from.

The most prepared werewolves make use of all their gifts — and Gifts — when they venture deeper into the Umbra. Airts, magic, totem spirits, pack tactics and their many forms all give the Garou advantages that few other Umbral travelers enjoy. Sometimes it takes everything they have in order to succeed, but the End Times call for great heroes and epic deeds. No werewolf ever forged legends with routine actions and weak efforts.

However she accomplishes it, once a werewolf passes beyond the Penumbra, the spirit world changes drastically. Away from the familiar land and sky, things get strange. Shapeless void swirls about travelers, though it is not empty.

Not always. Sometimes the traveler catches a glimpse of stars in the distance beyond form, or streams of color and light flecked with tiny particles of glimmering dust. If she looks up into Near Umbral “space,” she can see the thirteen Near Realms orbiting her. If one particular Realm is her destination, it seems the closest, though it is difficult to tell distances in a place where distance has no real meaning.

Werewolves don’t travel upon pure void. They move as they do on Earth and its shadow: by running. Sometimes it looks like she stands on perfectly clear glass overlooking a black ocean of stars, but often there is just enough of a faint plane beneath her paws that a werewolf can orient herself. Directions have little objective meaning outside of the Penumbra, but to a werewolf they serve as a way to make sense of a world devoid of physics. The loftiest Realms are “up” and it’s easy to keep moving “forward,” and the traveler’s mind processes this movement in a way that she can understand. To do otherwise is to move as a mind unclad from flesh, and few werewolves have the ability to even comprehend that feat.

One disorienting trait of traveling so far into the Um­ bra is the lack of sensory input. Or rather it is the extreme changes to the sensory information with which the quester is familiar. Shapeshifters rely heavily on their senses, and many on scent especially. Outside the Near Realms them­ selves, the only real scents are those a pack brings with them, or those of rare spirits. Sometimes, spirit-spoor is an airt unto itself — but the Umbra is vast and packs are not always so lucky to find an easy trail.

That is what werewolves must deal with at first, but it is not the whole story. Some experienced travelers learn how to smell the spirits of concepts, or phenomena with no physical counterpart. When asked to describe such things, unsurprisingly many werewolves find it difficult to convey the process in words. For example, a spirit of joy might smell “blue” to a werewolf, because it reminds her of the summer sky she loves so much. She might pick up the scent of solder on Umbral winds if she’s seeking the CyberRealm. It’s even possible to pick up on scents that would have long faded in the material world due to physical processes, such as rain covering up a spoor trail — some especially keen-nosed werewolves can sometimes scent the past itself. This usually means the passing of an entity or events that occurred within the past couple of days, but things are always strange outside the borders of the Penumbra.

Sound is not muted but meets with a lack of medium in the Umbra. The sounds of a traveling pack echo through airless space, with no real direction. It can be disconcerting to hear things with keen wolf ears and have no idea how or where the sounds are bouncing. A distant sound, like the howl of a lost packmate, becomes nearly impossible to follow properly because of this, so groups do well to stick

together. With effort and experience, Umbral adventurers can learn to compensate some for the openness of the Near Umbra, but it is best not to tempt fate.

Things change yet again as the traveler draws nearer to her destination. Pocket realms exist along the path from Penumbra to Near Realm that reflect both worlds. Finding the Battleground by following the signs of war and bloodshed will eventually lead her into a shadowy place with the occasional abandoned tent, littered with cast aside guns and gear. Most of the time, Garou transition straight to one of these places from the Penumbra; it is rare for them to move in the empty space between realms. Instead, a werewolf leading her pack to a Realm starts somewhere appropriate in the Penumbra and goes from there. A were­ wolf journeying to Wolfhome starts in a forest or well-kept reflection of a city park, where she can run as a wolf. Going to the CyberRealm instead starts by following the Pattern Web into electric jungles, and so on.

The transitional areas reflect the destination, but hav­ en’t completely left elements of the known world behind. Journeying to Pangaea, the flora and fauna with which a werewolf is familiar slowly give way to plants and animals that the world has not seen for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Eventually she looks back and cannot see any hint of the world she knew, and now she has breached the border of Pangaea. Now the only way back is an equally arduous journey, or powerful magic.

Spirits and some shapeshifters know other methods for traversing the Umbra. Many of those are safer than wandering spirit paths or braving the open space. They are collectively known as Moonlit Airts.

Nighttime in the Umbra, perhaps ironically, best illuminates many Garou quests. Luna shines a silver light on things that the eyes might otherwise miss, and though her ways are couched in enigmas, her mysterious gifts help werewolves persevere in a dangerous universe. By the light of the moon, aided by Lunes and spirit guides, packs travel deep into the Umbra beneath the watchful eye of Luna. It is comforting for werewolves to travel basking in the light of a great spirit patron, and the Lunes, unpredictable though they are, serve as allies in distant realms. In the End Times, every ally is a resource best treasured.

Moonlit Airts come in two forms: Moon Bridges and Moon Paths.