Places

• Difficulties for all frenzy rolls here are reduced by 2. • Shapeshifters who participate in the realm’s battles automatically gain one point of Rage each turn. • The battles a Garou faces in the realm often reflect the shapeshifter’s battles in the material world. • Spirit arms and armor are collectable in various battlefields, but they’re ephemeral and can only be used in the Umbra. They may be usable in Near Realms, but they disappear in the material world. • Changes in the course of a battle here might change the memories of people who participated in the material world. However, the result of the battle cannot change. • If a shapeshifter participated in a conflict in the physical world that’s reflected in the Umbra, that conflict won’t begin (again) in the spirit world until the shapeshifter arrives. • Characters in the Battleground can’t really be slain. If a Garou is “killed,” he’s transported into the Near Umbra and loses two temporary Gnosis points. Nothing can kill a werewolf in the Battleground.

• A shapeshifter searching for a particular battle can make a Gnosis roll (difficulty 8; consult the chart below.)

The Battleground is the embodiment of war, struggle, and conflict. This Realm reflects every battle since Earth’s prehistory, whether its warriors are professional soldiers, desperate rebels, or criminal gangs battling over turf in a large city. Emanations and spirits engage in continual battles that reflect past conflicts in the material world.

This chaotic and in many ways nightmarish Realm is a military historian’s dream. Every battle of every war plays out here from its beginning to the end, and then it resets and replays in an infinite loop. An observer can take in a perfect re-recreation of a famous battle and discover details lost in the heat and anarchy of combat — every act of cowardice, every fatal mistake, every victory won by courage, cunning, or luck. As well, the battlefields frequently overlap, creating conflicts between forces that could never have met each other in war — ancient Aztecs and Egyptians, Crusaders and warriors of Three Kingdoms of China, or Vietnam era U.S. Marines and French musketeers versus Japanese samurai and modern day members of the Israeli Defense Force. The Battleground offers an infinite number of potential combinations. An outsider who is willing to put himself in harm’s way can even interfere with the events of a battle in an effort to change its outcome, but these are purely thought experiments and do not actually alter history — no more so than does a historical simulation strategy game.

One feature of the Realm remains constant and is the starting point of every visit to the Battleground: the Signpost. Its exact form varies from visitor to visitor. Some see it as a literal signpost with wooden arrows pointing down one of the two paths that lead deeper into the Realm. Others experience it as an Egyptian obelisk with hieroglyphics or as a touch-activated computer terminal or as a pair of gargoyles that tell the outsider which battles can be found along which road. Whatever the form, however, the road only leads in two directions. The Signpost’s list of battles changes from visit to visit, and a battle that lay to the left on a previous visit may lay to the right the next. Some of the battles are inevitably famous conflicts familiar to anyone even remotely familiar with history, while a few are so obscure that even their participants would not call them by the name on the sign (or by any name at all). Shapeshifters with a high Rage quite often find their past battles listed on the Signpost.

The Two Roads

Travelers who remain on the road will eventually reach all the battles listed on the Signpost for the direction they chose — as well as several other actual or hypothetical battles that were not on the Signpost. That raging battle will not harm them so long as they stay on the road. Bullets and arrows whiz by harmlessly. Explosions shower the traveler in dirt, but the concussive force does not even throw her off-balance. The roads themselves change in accordance with the specific battle. A visitor might view a conflict in the Wild West from a dusty trail through the desert, or watch from a Roman road as Roman legions fight Germanic warriors. For naval battles, the road becomes an appropriate small vessel that is not involved in the conflict — a motorboat or dinghy.

The road’s protection only lasts until the traveler steps off of it. Once the visitor does this, the path disappears for him and he is forced to participate in the battle until its end. Fellow travelers still on the road can drag him back to safety so long as they do not step off the road themselves. Visitors walking off the roads encounter wounded and dying soldiers and refugees, as well as able-bodied potential enemies and allies. Some werewolves, such as the Get of Fenris, come to the Battleground to revel in the thrill of its battles. Other Garou regard it as a good place to practice strategy and tactics — a way to test their wits and mettle against the greatest generals and warriors in history.

Should the pack continue along the road and ignore all the events at hand they will eventually discover another Signpost that lists “Retreat” as an option. This place takes many forms (a helicopter pad, a lifeboat, a dense forest

The Plain of the Apocalypse

untouched by the violence, etc.), but semi-solid mist clings to Retreat. Those ephemeral soldiers who flee into the mist disappear. Outsiders who leave the road and enter this mist exit the Realm, reappearing in the Near Umbra.

Garou who travel to the Battleground eventually come to a vast, broken plain of alkali flats and sparse patches of grass that Theurges call the Plain of the Apocalypse. The Get of Fenris claim that the Garou will fight their final battle here, and the outcome will determine the fate of Gaia. Unlike the rest of the Battleground, no shrieks, explosions, or battle cries break the eerie silence of the Plain of the Apocalypse. After the chaos of the rest of the Realm, this place feels strange and uncomfortable, like all the gods of war are holding their breath, waiting for the general to give the order to attack.

Not long ago, even the battlefields that surrounded the Plain of the Apocalypse were also strangely quiet, but that is no longer the case. Three mighty forces now battle for supremacy at the edge of the plain where the Garou will fight in the Last Battle — the forces of Weaver, Wyrm, and Wyld. Each force jockeys for tactically advantageous positions from which to enter the Plain of the Apocalypse, eager for even the smallest improvement in their likelihood of winning the battle for reality. These preliminary battles are so fierce that they often spill into other battlefields of the Battleground, or even onto the otherwise inviolate roads that pass through the Realm. Some of the Battleground’s emanations have joined one or another of the three forces, fighting alongside the spirit-creatures.

The army of the Weaver primarily consists of a seething mass of drones and spidery spirits. Its soldiers embody military discipline and battlefield tactics. They build bases and bunkers, establish communications and perform reconnaissance, and spin fortifications and encampments out of metallic silk. They are no strangers to flanking maneuvers, feints, or other tactical movements on the battlefield. Although they attack the Wyld army when and where it makes strategic sense to do so, the Weaver’s forces are intent upon defeating the Wyrm’s army, which they regard as the real threat.

The army of the Wyrm is a vast force of Scrags and other Banes, led by reflections of the Maeljin Incarna themselves. They attack Wyld and Weaver without prejudice — or anyone else who comes within striking distance of the Plain of the Apocalypse — almost as if the Wyrm hopes to win the Last Battle before it has even begun.

The army of the Wyld is the smallest force. It is little more than an unruly mob of amorphous, chimerical spirits that randomly attack and retreat without thought for their fellows. Sometimes its soldiers turn on each other on a whim, relishing the struggle as much as any of the Realm’s other emanations. A few shapeshifters have joined the Wyld’s army, evidently thinking to aid Gaia and her children on Earth by confronting the Wyrm here. The constant contact with the apocalyptic army’s Wyld energies has driven them mad, and they are no more capable of ordered thought than are the other soldiers in the fray.