Places

Wyldings are immensely dangerous, fickle creatures. What they want now may have nothing to do with what they wanted five minutes ago. Wyldings can however provide werewolves with some very specialized, very powerful Gifts. Werewolves may occasionally chance upon one of these spirits in a Glen — and those in search of a Wylding will restrict their search if they have the time. Unfortunately, the only way to be sure of finding one of these fickle spirits is to travel to a Wylding. When a pack has to find a pure elemental to help in a pressing battle or to save someone’s life, a Wylding genius locus is her best bet — if she can find one.

Learned Garou know that the Umbra they can enter naturally is but one of many other layers to the spirit world. Werewolves have learned to walk in two others — the Astral Umbra, realm of thought and principle, and the Dark Umbra,

home of the unquiet dead. Each of these layers touches the world with a Penumbra of their own.

High above the Umbra floats the Astral Realm. A protean realm, thoughts and dreams give life to laws and concepts and forms. Like the deepest realms, the Astral reflects aspects of the material world. Here it overlaps with the Penumbra, and like the Near Realms and further beyond, travelers may venture from the Penumbra to the Astral.

The journey begins in places where people prize thought and imagination. The most potent of such places include prestigious universities and well-funded libraries. Glass stairways and trails of clouds lead upward from Penumbral libraries. The Weaver’s web strands lead skyward, as well, toward shapes in the clouds and barely visible spirits dancing on ethereal paths.

Even on the ground, the Astral Penumbra reflects ideas and ideals. The buildings take on a hazy, almost dreamlike quality. Their geometry sometimes defies the very laws of physics. A place might be normal on the surface, but within it is a vast, cavernous chamber roofed by clouds and swirling lights, where letters and symbols appear on the walls and reconfigure every time someone blinks. The space within a building exceeds the dimensions of the outer structure, just as the vision of its inhabitants defies boundaries.

Traveling upward is not the only way to venture into the Astral from Penumbral centers of knowledge. Because thought wanders the Astral and gives life to concepts, shapeshifters may journey inward, into their own thoughts and powerful dreams. As creatures of great passion, all of Gaia’s half-spirit children feel powerful emotions, and their Gnosis connects them to the oldest wellspring of dreams. They rarely seek the Astral, but when they do their need is great and their presence like a storm.

Spirits encountered in the Astral Penumbra are strange, even for Epiphlings. Theirs are perspectives so broad that they encompass whole concepts, or so alien that even half-spirit shapeshifters of Gaia have a hard time understanding them. While they can provide answers to many questions, few werewolves have the patience or the wits to unravel the riddles tied into knots around those answers. For Ephiplings, questions themselves may well be the answers, and in the asking is truth found. Tell that to an antsy Get or Red Talon and one is as likely to receive the head of a warhammer or a curled lip as acknowledgment.

Curiosi are common as well. Many drift in the sky above learning institutions in Slumber, awakened when enough thinkers provide them with power and purpose. Conceptual spirits embody nearly any concept imaginable in the Astral Umbra. Werewolves may seek them out in order to learn powerful Gifts and find new perspectives on

the war. Theurges are especially fond of these spirits, and Stargazer Theurges most of all. Many nights have borne witness to long, strange conversations between Garou mystic and Epiphling, and it is not so uncommon to see Curiosi flitting about such a meeting, endlessly interested in what transpires.

Many reasons drive packs to seek out such places. More contemplative werewolves find such areas conducive to their meditations upon the nature of the Triat and the war. Before venturing into the Astral Realm or the Deep Umbra, or some of the more bizarre Near Realms, were­ wolves desiring to arm themselves with knowledge seek out the wisdom of conceptual spirits and their ilk.

The truest way to fight the fear of the unknown is with knowledge. Where the Penumbra reflects the Astral, rare as it is, knowledge and the resultant thought becomes reality. If the Penumbra is a realm where meaning takes on literal form and the Astral is a realm where thought itself takes on shape, the places where they overlap become areas where one’s hopes and dreams have a real impact on the spiritual landscape. Any Garou worth her salt would fight to protect such places and keep them free of the Wyrm’s will, for there a Gaian creature may dream of a world no longer torn asunder by Apocalypse, of a world restored … and those dreams become an embodiment of hope itself.

In the vastness of the Umbra, facets besides the Pen­ umbra reflect aspects of the material world. One such place is the Dark Umbra, the abode of ghosts. It is a terrifying shade of the mortal world, a realm of deep shadow and looming dread. Formed of the fears and terrors of mankind made manifest, it is a place where that most ancient fear holds sway: fear of the Dark.

The Penumbra meets with the Dark Umbra in the reflections of dark places, appropriately enough. Places that resonate with death and entropy. A Penumbral graveyard is the most obvious example, but something like a seedy network of back alleys home to frequent violent crimes also works. Even a hospital that caters to the poor and sick can manifest aspects of the Dark Umbra. Any place touched by death and the fear of the same is one where the boundaries between Penumbra and Dark Umbra overlap. People claim such places as “haunted” in the material world, and while the majority of the public derides such ideas, the believers are justified. Strange things happen in haunted locations.

In such places, the idealized reflection of the world gives way to visions of fear, pain and loss. The ground itself is gray and lifeless. A malodorous mist hangs over the cold earth like the breath of the dead. Shapes droop or crumble;

a field of nameless headstones is cracked, covered in moss, pitched at odd angles. Churned earth surrounds unmarked graves, though an onlooker can’t say whether something was digging to get in or trying to get out. A pall hangs over the area, afflicting not just the eyes and the body but the heart itself. Garou do not fear death in the way that humans do and better endure such feelings of misery and despair. Their very spirits exist in special connection with Gaia’s life-force, and many have seen the realms to which their ancestors go after leaving their bodies. Even so, wise werewolves tread lightly in the places where Penumbra and the Dark Umbra overlap. They may not fear death itself, but it nips ever at their heels.

The spirits that inhabit such places are ghostly, though not ghosts themselves. They may take the form of carrion animals, gaunt figures or the forms of weapons. A graveyard of war heroes sees spirits take the form of faceless soldiers or the instruments of war, monstrous amalgamations of vehicles and guns. These spirits are much less friendly to Garou than other denizens of the Penumbra, although their magic is strong and they know secrets lost to the rest of the spirit world.

Traveling further along these paths leads a werewolf to the Dark Umbra itself. What appears to be a freshly-dug grave in the Penumbral cemetery leads deep into the reeking earth, to tunnels older than the Garou people. Worm-things and the bones of forgotten dead both scramble in the tunnels, reaching for the warmth of outsiders. Where lights fail and hope falters, the traveler passes into the Dark Umbra itself. Traditionally, the Garou seldom had need to reach the realm of the dead but as more of reality falls into entropy, it’s more common.

As the modern world crumbles and strife spreads like a sickness, more and more stretches of the Penumbra take on traits of the Dark Umbra. Graveyards overflow and stinking crematoria exude an aura of fear. In third-world countries where conditions are so unsafe that people die every day, whole Penumbral villages and towns become beacons of Dark Umbral unrest. Ghosts walk among spirits and stalk the living. These places are powerful in the Shadowlands, but havens of ghastly Wyrm-taint in the Penumbra. Con­ ceptual spirits of hatred, fear, pain and death flourish, and these things are rarely so benign toward Garou as Naturae. Their actions further the cycle of suffering. They wallow in fear-soaked shadows and cultivate landscapes wrought from Man’s nightmares. Reaching these areas is difficult and extremely dangerous.

Despite the unpleasantness of these places, even packs of Garou may have reason to travel through the Dark Penumbra. They might seek a road into the bowels of the deathly realm, pursuing secrets lost to the living world, or a foe that fled therein. The Wyrm’s forces use humanity’s fear — of death, of the unknown — to foster nightmares,

mental instability and evil thoughts. Deep-rooted fear of what lies beyond life is exceedingly difficult for mortals to shake and means that once a place has taken on the air of death, it is nearly impossible to be rid of it. Great effort on both sides of the Gauntlet can accomplish it, but few packs have the time to spare in a world facing the Apocalypse.

This section presents some example reflections of var­ ious places in the Penumbra, both smaller locations that a Storyteller can drop in as needed, and a fuller example that ties a range of Umbral reflections to one location. The list is far from exhaustive; in the World of Darkness, conflict comes in many forms. The Penumbra is perhaps the most important realm to the efforts of Garou and their Fera brethren. Even the most conflicted areas serve as key battlegrounds in the war.