Places

One of the greatest secrets of the Realm is that a Black Spiral Dancer swirls somewhere in the silver sea. The liquid metal slowly burns away the Wyrm’s hold on him. A hand-picked pack of Brood carefully monitors his progress and ensures the ritual is administered precisely. They report any changes to his status immediately. Charyss’ most skilled servants work tirelessly within his mind to uncover every last crime against Gaia.

So far the Dancer has endured unending tortures for more than a decade and no one knows how much longer the process may take. Charyss isn’t even sure if he can be

saved or if the lake will claim its first fatality. She hopes for purification but quietly believes one less Dancer is not a poor outcome.

The currents of the lake are now bringing him closer to the shore but this is not the first time he has drifted in before being dragged out again by the tides. Maybe this time he will be able to climb from the shores, born anew in Gaia’s eyes. No one knows what he will be if and when he does emerge. Could he be the first of a new White Howler tribe, or something else entirely?

Erebus is only for the purification of Garou, but some wonder if Gaia’s other shapeshifters have minor Realms hidden in the Near Umbra where their sins are burned away? They may be surprised to learn the answer is no.

Most other Breeds don’t have the same freedom of Umbral movement the Garou enjoy. Apart from the Corax and Nuwisha, most Fera spend little time in the Umbra and are much more focused on the physical world. Also, the Fera populations are too small to waste time with regrets. The Breeds view the Garou as too self-important and willing to indulge in self-pity. In the eyes of the Fera, the Garou are Gaia’s warriors and have a war to fight. The wolves may be suffering but they brought it upon themselves when they slaughtered their cousins; the time for wallowing in self-imposed torment to feel better about their mistakes has gone.

The Breeds have very different outlooks to the Garou. The Corax and Nuwisha don’t feel they have anything to atone for and the Ratkin don’t live with regrets. The Bastet are confident that even their mistakes have meaning, the Mokolé meditate and relive memories of sin to learn from them and the Ajaba are too focused on survival. The Ananasi have purpose instead of sorrow, the Gurahl are too few to have the luxury of penance, and the Nagah triumvirates provide support and chastisement in equal measure for each other.

Those Fera who know of Erebus just see it as another reason why the Apocalypse is fast approaching, and why the Garou are

partly responsible. Some Fera still believe other atonement realms exist. They swap rumors of Corax hanging in white-hot golden cages from a great tree, or Mokolé burning in waterless deserts as shrapnel-filled winds tear at their flesh. These stories have no basis in fact, but that doesn’t stop some explorers from trying to find them.

In ancient times, matter and spirit were one, and the domains of the Wyld permeated the Gaia Realm. The laws of reality were more fluid, and those with the spiritual strength could command time and space, energy and matter simply by stretching out with the force of their will. Such radical reshaping is no longer possible in the material world, but the Wyld still rules supreme within the Flux Realm. It is a place of chaos, constant change, and infinite possibility. In spite of this, the Realm is much diminished from its former glory. The minions of the Weaver have spent cen­ turies wrapping the Flux Realm in their orderly threads, creating an eggshell-thin layer of stability around the vast chaos of the Wyld that rages within.

Outsiders find the Realm extremely disorienting. It has no fixed landmarks and is in a constant state of transformation. Vast cities appear in the blink of an eye and vanish just as quickly. Mountains rise and fall, deserts become jungles, seas stretch from horizon to horizon and then shrink to mere ponds all in the space of a few hours — or in some cases, mere seconds.

The ordinary laws of nature don’t apply to the way these landscapes behave even while they exist. Sometimes water burns or mountains fly. Wyldstorms howl through the Realm, transforming everything in their path. The sun burns blue or red or black, and the stars and constellations dance and whirl in the sky or vanish entirely. Luna wields great power in the Flux Realm, but sometimes more moons join her. These alien satellites obey no astronomical laws. Some travel west to east, or north to south, or remain motionless just above the horizon. Time is not a constant here, either. A day can last weeks or end in the blink of an eye. A traveler can arrive in the Realm today and return home a week ago.

The Realm’s inhabitants are no less strange than its environs. Wyld spirits and members of Bygone species that can no longer exist in the material world are among the most ordinary of these. The Chimerae, dragons, Great Beasts, and other monsters that rampage across the landscape may be unpredictable opponents whose shapes change every few heartbeats, but at least outsiders can recognize them as living things or ephemeral projections of living things. Talking stones, hyper-intelligent clouds, and hostile glaciers are considerably more disconcerting to the average traveler.

The Flux Realm is hideously dangerous for non-shape­ shifter travelers. The Wyld energies transform visitors into new shapes as surely as they alter the native inhabitants. While no metamorphosis in the Flux Realm is instantly fatal, being trapped in the body of a giant cockroach or transformed into a pool of quicksilver makes survival outside of the Realm highly unlikely. At the very least, it will prove a life-altering event. Garou and other shapeshifters who visit the Flux Realm might find themselves in bodies not their own, but as creatures of the Wyld these transformations are merely a temporary inconvenience.