Places

Creation begins with the Wyld, the prime agent of change in the cosmos. In fact, the Wyld is more than

chaos: it’s a perpetual process of transmutation. The Wyld drives evolution and adaptation, as endless variations of the creative process result in the advancement of living things. The Wyld is possibility and random chance incar­ nate, responsible for everything from hopes and dreams to the fear that everything we possess will be lost by sudden catastrophe. It’s equally liberating and terrifying.

Its spirits’ capricious actions can be attributed to deliberate fate, meaningless coincidence, or just plain dumb luck, but no pattern can ever fully contain it, and no ritual can fully predict it. Every living thing, from amoebas to ants to antelopes to arctic whales, contains a fragment of the Wyld. We invoke its essence every time we proclaim “where there’s life, there’s hope.” The Wyld is the origin of revelations. It’s the impetus for every spark of creativity, yet it also dwells beyond the limitless horizons of madness. Some Garou blindly insist that Gaia Herself came from the Wyld, for she could never exist without it. Nothing could.

The Wyld is complete unto itself, but without the Weaver, it would lose the vast multitude of manifestations it spawns. Most of its creations return to their primal forge at the moment of inception. The Weaver allows them to persist through time (since time, as Douglas Adams says, “prevents everything from happening all at once”). Wrap your mind around this: Being everything at all times is as indefinable and indefinite as being without any form or substance at all. That way lies madness.

Of the three aspects of the Triat, the Wyld is un­ questionably the least personified. Mutability precludes any “true form,” for the Wyld is formless madness. Of course, the Wyrm is then essential to the Wyld, since it destroys the weakest and least plausible creations within the Weaver’s web, returning their essential ephemera to the forges of creation. Thus, the creative process comes full circle.

In the Deep Umbra, the Wyld should arguably (though unverifiably) the most powerful aspect of the Trait: un­ bounded by Gaia’s laws, he/she/it/everything is almost as powerful as Gaia herself. Fortunately for creation, the Wyld is never powerful enough to overcome the boundary that separates the Near Umbra from the terrifying, alien possibilities of the Deep Umbra. By contrast, the Wyld in the physical world is actually the weakest aspect of the Triat’s trinity.

Fortunately, there are a few scattered sites of pure Wyld energy still left in the physical world. They’re contained within caerns the Garou and their offspring endlessly fight to protect. The Wyld is only truly unassailable within the deepest depths of the Deep Umbra. Far beyond the Membrane surrounding the Near Umbra, any enemy is dissolved into its purest primal protoplasm upon contact with the undiluted Wyld.

The Wyld serves as a symbol of the Garou’s never-ending struggle to forestall an inevitable Apocalypse. Its realms teem with life, and in a world that grows out of the Wyld, anything can happen. The Wyld is the embodi­ ment of hope: the promise of change in a wicked world of malefic matter and entropic annihilation. Although the Garou can never anticipate direct aid from the forces of the Wyld, it’s a powerful ally indeed.