Places

Things aren’t looking so great for the Gnosis economy of the Scar. The barons who fled to the CyberRealm during the last decade returned to find their holdings consumed or bankrupt. Subservience to the new school of oily businessman is their only option, until they can muster the resources for a successful mutiny.

Whereas the last generation of barons modeled themselves after the fat-cats of early American enterprise, this generation is all business casual youth willing to lay groundwork with the very Realm that ousted the old guard. Realistically, this has left the majority of the Scar as little more than an old fashioned subsidiaries of the CyberRealm’s sleek, light-speed start-ups.

The troubles of the upper echelon certainly don’t mean relief for the lower rungs of the Realm’s overtaxed workforce. If anything, the overseers are meaner, the deadlines are tighter and the already deplorable conditions worsen by the day. The Scar’s resemblance to the sweatshops of reality’s corner-cutting outsourcers is no accident. Whether it’s grotesquely unsafe working conditions or dependency-driven debt slavery, the influence of the Scar is a two-way street. The Realm feeds on the horrors First World business inflicts on less developed countries, and its insidious agents reward the most egregious offenders. Even with the Bane CEOs of the Scar struggling to keep their collective heads above water, the Realm still serves its dire purposes.

Monkeywrench

No shortage of spirits find the Scar antithetical to their continued purpose. Countless Incarna have lost their brood to the Wyrm-fetish assembly lines of the unforgiving Near Realm. Of all the spirits interested to the Scar’s dissolution, the totem Rat is among the most zealous. He plays an active role directing Bone Gnawer and Ratkin alike into the Scar, even if his means aren’t always the most direct or honest. Once in the Scar, Rat encourages almost any act that puts the boots to the Realm’s upper management.

To meet Rat’s eventual goal of leaving the Scar a smoking ruin, the union Amalgamated Iron unites the lowest of the Garou Nation and Gaia’s plague-bearers. Though the Bone Gnawers and Ratkin have one of the least-troubled relationships of any Garou tribe and Changing Breed, the Scar has made that relationship a concrete necessity for either group to function. The continued cooperation has

opened doors for other Garou tribes to throw their lot in with Amalgamated Iron. Any shapeshifter welcomed into the union receives the benefits of Rat as a totem, as long as they remain in Scar.

Since its inception, Amalgamated Iron has drawn interest from the barons of the Realm. Aside from destroying Gnosis batteries, and putting a messy end to many of the Realm’s supposed peace-keepers, Amalgamated Iron has gone out of its way to encourage the creation of labor unions among the Scar’s downtrodden. While the original attempts failed because of the Scar’s thick miasma of apathy, Amalgamated Iron has found that spirits in the wake of a sudden, explosive infusion of Gnosis are much more willing to unify.