Places

Wyld-spirits are full of energy and possibility. Since the Wyld is most commonly associated with nature, many of these spirits appear as natural forces, but with a brilliance and vibrancy rarely seen in the natural world. Animate shafts of sunlight, energy that ripples like water, ephemeral essences only detectable as the scent of petrichor after a rainstorm — Wyld-spirits personify life-giving energy. As forces of chaos, they’re likely to appear continually in flux, cycling through impossible geometric forms, the faces of a thousand strangers, or multicolored, pulsing wisps of formless energy. Whether as easily identified as the animal spirit of a deer or as impossible as the scent of the color blue, the spirits of the Wyld become more recognizable the farther one travels from the so-called logic and reason of Earth.

The unlimited ambitions of the Wyld must eventu­ ally gave way to ordered growth. With a few strands, the Weaver anchored the turbulent vortex of the Wyld’s creation, naturally selecting the most promising creations to endure, thereby saving them from falling back into the maelstrom of the Wyld’s endless creation. Limitless chaos was structured and given form. From these simple lines and strands, patterns took shape, as the Weaver began constructing the fundamental structure of the universe: the Pattern Web. Wherever there was form, there could be growth and progress. Inconstant infinity yielded to enduring eternity.

Then the Wyrm began pruning the Weaver’s forms and structures. The Weaver’s perfect patterns gained im­ perfections; some say this was necessary, so they could not inhibit the Wyld’s ceaseless acts of creation. The Weaver has given us time and distance, but when it acts without restraint, it also threatens to bring stasis and conformity. In legendary times, the Wyrm attempted to act as a force of balance between the Wyld and the Weaver. For the Garou, they acted as the true cosmological trinity of chaos, creation, and destruction. This stalemate would have lasted forever, but the Weaver found a way to tip that balance.

Despite the Weaver’s own epic ambitious, the Weaver’s webs could not contain everything. Parts of creation were patterned within absolutes of time and distance, but the

Weaver’s order could not resonate through all of infin­ ity. Quantifiable matter composed the structure of the physical world, but the ephemera of the spirit world not fully conform to the Pattern Web. In a compromise, the Weaver erected a calcified barrier between the realms of flesh and spirit. The Wyld’s presence in all living things allowed some randomness in the physical world, along with the presence of magic, but as the worlds of matter and spirit drifted apart, order became ascendant in the physical world. The evolution of the first sentient beings advanced this process: they perceived an orderly world of consistency and pattern. Over time, these sentients became more intelligent and advanced, and humanity’s real world solidified.

Garou endlessly speculate on the Weaver’s role in all of this. Not every explanation is the same. One version holds that when the Weaver responded to the Wyld’s boundless energy by attempting to calcify all creation, and the attempt drove the Weaver insane. By recklessly attempting to bind the Wyrm within the Pattern Web, she never considered the cosmological consequences of her actions.

Another legend claims that the Weaver was far more calculating: When she attempted to define all of reality to conform to laws of causality, predictability, and order, she saw the Wyrm as the only obstacle to her ambitions. Through her machinations, some loremasters claim, she trapped the Wyrm within her Pattern Web, leaving it no recourse but to lash out to avoid constriction and calcification.

Glass Walkers posit a far more sympathetic view. The Wyrm’s destruction and malice was an undeniable threat, they say, and the Weaver had no choice but to confine it as an act of self-defense. She deduced there would be a future in which the Wyrm would try to destroy everything. Preparing for this eventuality was a prudent act of caution.

Most of these Garou can agree that the Weaver held the origins of intelligence. As human civilization and sci­ ence has advanced, the physical world has become more structured and limited. The power of magic has faded from a raging conflagration to a spark in the darkness. Human technology has advanced more in the last century than in the entirety of human history, and accordingly, the Weaver is now powerful far beyond her station. Whether this drove her mad or is a product of her madness is irrelevant: this is the world the Garou must live and die in. The ancient balance of pattern and chaos has given way to stagnation and decay. Prophecies say the Apocalypse is inevitable, but some believe creation will not ultimately vanish be­ cause of the Wyrm’s destruction. If the Mad Weaver ever finishes spinning her cosmic web, all of the Tellurian will be bound in rigid, motionless, changeless strands.