Toads first emerged during the 1980s, although nobody is sure quite from where. Neither terrible warriors of the Wyrm nor scheming masterminds, Toads tend to pop up in the forgettable middle management of the corporate world. They’ve proliferated since they first appeared, often serving as key actors in Pentex corporate espionage and asset acquisitions operations, but are now a breed on the decline. More brutally competitive creatures are spilling out of the labs of Project Iliad and

Project Lycaon (see p. 167), and the Toads are looking for a new safe haven.

Unfortunately for them, nobody really likes a Toad. Toads spread misery to those beneath them while coveting the more exclusive positions above them, but generally lack the ambition to work for those titles. Late-night office “accidents” along with a spot of well-placed human resources intimidation may suffice to move a Toad up the corporate ladder, but the higher a Toad climbs, the more of a target it becomes. Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 4, Charisma 2,

Manipulation 4, Appearance 1, Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3 Abilities: Alertness 3, Brawl 2, Intimidation 3, Larceny 2,

Stealth 2, Subterfuge 4

Background

s: Contacts 3

Powers: Barbed Tongue*, Immunity to the Delirium.

* Barbed Tongue: Barbed Tongue functions as a hybrid of both Lashing Tail and Frog Tongue, being capable of both capturing targets and inflicting damage with its sharp tip at the fomor’s discretion. Particularly old or vicious Toads may also possess Venomous Bite, which can be applied with their tongue.

Equipment: Automatic pistol, large car, cell phone, laptop.

Image: Toads seem human at a glance. They’re overweight (but not grossly so), situation-appropriate-but-shabby dressers, with wide-set, bulging eyes. A Toad’s fingers are like damp, clammy sausages, and their complexion starts at bad and gets worse over time.

The true distinguishing feature of a Toad is, of course, his tongue. A Toad’s tongue can extend a full 15 feet and ends in a viciously sharp barb. A Toad can shoot its tongue out to full length in a fraction of a second. When not in use, the tongue collapses into a wad stored in the mouth and throat, sort of like a huge glob of chewing gum; as a direct result, most Toads mumble.

Genesis: Toads seem to have just happened; no program takes credit for them. They’re not considered particularly valuable by Pentex, and the Black Spiral Dancers hold them in open contempt; as a result, nobody is particularly worried about their declining numbers in the present day, or their ongoing exodus from Pentex into the private sector.

Roleplaying Notes: It’s all about control: the power to hire, to fire, to reward and to punish. You enjoy it when others labor to please you, and hate being looked down on. You let disrespect roll off your back like water when it happens, while making sure you always get even later. You’re a bully at heart. You try to avoid any fight where the odds aren’t stacked in your favor.

Not all fomori are created. Some are born. As the number of fomori increase, they encounter one another more frequently. Drawn together by taint, mission, and sometimes chance, fomori typically work towards a common goal — or just as often, tear each other apart. But occasionally, in a fit of domination, lust, or (rarely) sympathy, fomori become sexually involved. The product of such a union is usually human, but not always. Families of fomori who bred true have appeared in remote areas and cities alike. While still relatively rare, the influx of Wyrm taint has their numbers increasing year by year, and with each successful birthing of a new fomori the creatures come that much closer to overrunning Mother Earth.

The first such family arose in a small community in the heart of Wyoming. One of the locals struck a nest of slumbering Banes while digging for a well. The disruption awoke the spirits, which proceeded to wreak havoc on the town. After a day of terror, the Banes had possessed fully half the town. The other half lay about, feeding the ground with their remains. The new fomori, still human enough to be horrified at what they had done, cut off connections with anyone outside the town. They barri-caded themselves in with only one another for company.

They soon fell prey to their urges, and soon enough the fomori produced children. As the community degraded in a swirling mass of debauchery and sadism, the children born lived short, horrible lives full of various tortures. It wasn’t until three years later that a child bred true, emerging from the womb with a Bane in its heart. Inspired by the infant fomor, the townsfolk developed rites and rituals to attract more Banes as they partook in bloody orgies. Soon enough, fomori births became more common. Human children suffered as they always had, and though some were possessed after their births, none lived past their tenth birthday.

The community allowed nobody to leave, and as they reached sexual maturity, the new generation joined in the orgies of sex and violence. More offspring spawned from the unholy unions and, after two generations, the town started to slowly expand with a growing fomori population. The Black Spiral Dancers dubbed the town Hell, Wyoming, and the name stuck.

Pockets similar to Hell, Wyoming exist throughout the rural areas of the world. The isolated fomori families are masses of inbreeding, caring not about who has mated with whom. Conceived from taint and sin, the children of such families have the best chance of breeding true. Half are born with a Bane clinging to their soul. The community looks down upon those who aren’t born possessed as second-class citizens and use them as victims for their sick games. They often die after just a few years. Children who do breed true are greeted with enthusiasm and ritual.

The young usually inherit a deformity from each of their parents, but the communities need and desire diversity. Over the years, the elders have created a number of rites to give their offspring more power. When a fomor child survives to the age of five, the community gathers for an infernal baptism. They brand gylphs into the skin of the child as the elders call for the Wyrm to bestow favor on the youth. At the culmination of the ritual, the fomor gains a new deformity fitting of her personality.

Outsiders stumbling upon these isolated groups rarely leave. They’re used as twisted playthings or subjected to torture depending on the whims of the families. The fomori commonly kill their victims in brutal survival games or lock them up and torture them until they die — or accept the Wyrm and become fomori themselves. The fomori don’t use captives as breeding stock. The chances of a child breeding true are much smaller with a non-fomor parent. Conceiving children with outsiders is a waste of time and effort. When elders discover forbidden couplings, they carve the unborn out of the mother’s womb. If the mother dies in the process, it is of no concern to them.

Remote communities are not the only places an unwary victim might find fomori families. As their numbers increase in urban areas, so have families started to spread. Ironically, the poor and downtrodden are not the most likely to harbor Bane-ridden families. Instead, the lower-middle class hide most of the urban atrocities.

Deluded into believing that they are an evolution above humans, the urban families strive to keep their powers secret from the public while maintaining seemingly ordinary lives. Members who can pass as human find occupations through which they can spread their taint. Those who can’t take low-level jobs at various Pentex subsidiaries. Company recruiters keep tabs on the families, offering education to any children who can’t attend a normal school due to their deformities.

Urban families do not fall into the mass of inbreeding that is prevalent among their rural counterparts. Instead, their children spread out into the world, through Pentex initiatives and through cults masquerading as family support groups, meeting other humans and fomori with whom to start relationships. Such relationships devolve into hatred, anger, and abuse, but sometimes the two fomori form a permanent link and, despite hating each other, they find themselves drawn back to one another time and again.

Large fomori families are very rare in the cities. The possessed, after all, have access to an unlimited human population. Because their blood is not as strong, they breed true with other fomori only one time in ten. Any offspring conceived with a human has no chance of being born with a Bane in her heart. Due to the lack of inbreeding, the children are all born with one inherited

deformity — which can come from either parent — and a new power of their own. Their deformities are not as obvious to casual observation, and they are more likely to pass as normal in society. The children have a chance to accept their Bane and grow with it. Many who survive to adulthood are true horrors, fully accepting of what they are and the powers and deformities they possess.

Inspired by the fomori ability to breed true, Pentex started Project Echidna, using genetic engineering to take spiritual decay into its own hands. All of the Project’s attempts to create fertile fomori in a controlled environment has failed. All children conceived in the labs have either been normal humans or have died in their mothers’ wombs. Frustrated, the company has turned its attention elsewhere.

Hidden in zoo laboratories around the world, Project Echidna employees work fervently to recreate fomori families in various lines of animals. Unlike humans, the experiments have met with some success. They’ve created fertile fomori among carnivores, with the greatest success rate occurring among wolves and the great cats. They keep the offspring away from their parents after birth to stop the young killing their siblings — or the parents feasting upon their children. Project Echidna nurseries have found that fomori animals bred and raised in this manner have more control over themselves than their wild counterparts, making them trainable. The company raises and trains the creatures, keeping them separated, until they reach maturity. Siblings share most of their powers and deformities, and only a select few gain more as they mature. Project Echidna is actively working to make their fomori spawn stronger, keeping the best for future breeding stock, but their funding is being siphoned off into Project Lycaon’s attempts to create shapeshifters.

When the fomori come into their full powers, they are shipped off to different departments and subsidiaries where they commonly act as guard animals. Some make their way into First Teams where they are used to track down Garou in a similar fashion to police K9 units. Black Spiral Dancers will sometimes buy the less deformed creatures and then use them against Garou and Fera alike. Werewolves suddenly ambushed by great cats with strange powers might find themselves placing blame where it doesn’t belong.

Standing in direct contrast to the tried-and-true fomori breeds, the atrocities-in-flesh known as fomarchs are a new experiment by Pentex, part of the company’s ongoing efforts to lessen its dependence on other Wyrmspawn such as the Black Spiral Dancers. Fomori are all well and good as disposable shock troops. They’re cheap, easy to replace, and versatile in their variety of hideous forms, but their benefits are generally their drawbacks.

They’re short-lived, generally dying by their third deployment, and most of them have to be housed and trained well out of the public eye due to their hideous mutations. Most of all, they’re weak—very few fomori are capable of standing up to a werewolf in single combat. Fielding them in strike teams only mitigates this problem to some degree, since the Garou normally operate in packs as well.

Fomarchs are a next-generation experiment in “elite” fomori. Pentex designed fomarchs to have fully conceal-able powers. Each fomarch has, at minimum, the Bestial Mutation power. They should work as solo operatives, or with backup from “normal” fomori. To be considered a success, a fomarch must be free of any drawbacks that severely curtail its life-expectancy, must have powers at least on par with a Ferectoi, must be able to completely conceal its powers by adopting an outwardly-human guise, and must be at least functionally sane. Pentex has attempted a number of methods to create fomarchs, experimenting with multi-Bane possession, binding of exceedingly mighty Banes into hosts, and even with mystic and genetic augmentation of standard fomori. The majority of these experiments have created deformed, hulking failures, which become as fodder for the front lines or the vivisection tables, but each success helps the company zero in on a reliable method to augment its forces with elite special operatives and mighty leaders, at least, so Pentex hopes.

A handful of fomarchs is detailed below; each considered a success by Pentex. All fomarchs are, to date, unique. Pentex has yet to devise a method of reliably creating fomarch “breeds.”