The spirits that defend the many caerns the Bunyip left be­ hind are not friendly to werewolf intruders. These include many Bunyip ancestor spirits who have shed their peaceful natures in order to defend their territory to the end. In addition, many Bunyip caerns have some nasty surprises in store for intruders. The Storyteller should select one of the following options:

• Angry Dreamtime: The Penumbra within several miles of the caern is actively hostile to travelers. Garou will be attacked by maddened beasts and lashed by wicked foliage, and earthquakes, sandstorms, and wild storms with torrential rain and deadly lightning smite them. Outside the Penumbra the effects of these attacks by Nature are up to the Storyteller and will probably involve appropriate Survival and Primal Urge rolls to avoid the worst effects. A werewolf suffers 10 dice of lethal damage per hour that she spends within the Penumbra.

The caern’s anger is even more potent within a few hun­ dred yards of its center. A werewolf outside the Penumbra suffers 10 dice of lethal damage per hour as the land rises up to smite her. Werewolves who enter the Penumbra within this area instead suffer 10 dice of aggravated damage per hour.

• Shifting Moon Paths: Moon Paths to and from the caern disappear, stop dead, turn in circles, change directions, lengthen, or otherwise change in ways that frustrate Garou traveling them. In some cases, the path instead leads to obscure Umbral Realms, particularly the Atrocity Realm. Recognizing this shifting of the Moon Path in time to turn back before being misdirected into a dangerous realm re­ quires a successful Perception + Occult roll at difficulty 8.

• Dreamtime Banishment: Garou within several miles of the caern who enter the Penumbra find the Gauntlet resists their return to the material world, increasing the Gauntlet for that werewolf by 3 until next she successfully returns to the physical world. This holds true even if the werewolf travels thousands of miles from the caern before attempting the crossing.

• Drain Gnosis: Werewolves within several miles of the caern cannot regain Gnosis normally in the physical world or Penumbra. Further, the caern saps the Garou of 1 Gnosis each day at sunset for as long as he remains within the range of this mystic maelstrom.

• Tears Unnumbered: Garou within a mile of the caern experience intense guilt and sadness as long as they remain in the area and are unable to regain Willpower normally. At sunset of each day the Garou remains in the area, the

Garou must succeed at a Willpower roll (difficulty 8) or be overcome by a sense of guilt and futility, losing all temporary Willpower and motivation. Those already close to Harano tip over the edge into an abyss of self-loathing and despair from which only death is an escape.

Tullu Demtu Caern: Level 4 Caern of Visions. Arkwasive Caern: Level 3 Caern of Strength. Gish Abbai Caern: Level 5 Caern of Healing.

Baba-Yaga Stone: Level 2 Caern of Wisdom Lake Moutniy: Level 2 Caern of Healing. Chimtarga Peak Caern: Level 1 Caern of Healing

My name is Diedra Bone-Cracker and I’ve been asked to tell you stories of my travels. The den mother thinks exposure to older and well-traveled Garou will be good for your edu­ cation. While I am not the oldest, I am the worldliest in the sept, so here I am. Sit down and I will tell you all there is to know about fighting the Wyrm. I’m sure you have all heard the history of the Triat, so I won’t bore you with those bits.

The Wyrm? What does that have to do with traveling? I follow and investigate rumors of the Wyrm’s control wherever they happen in the world. My duty in life is to seek out the Wyrm where it hides and destroy it. I am one of Gaia’s champions, her chosen warrior, an Ahroun. If you were born under a full moon, you might understand better. Let’s start with a story about the longest of the most recent wars with the Wyrm, the Amazon.

In the many years since the war in the Amazon started, the silent campaign against Pentex created a very good cover for the Garou in the Amazon. The deep cover and sleek campaigning gave the Ragabash a chance to shine. A few of them took up a propaganda war against Pentex that affected

the local population’s desire to prevent deforestation. This created a hostile environment for Pentex within many of the local governments. Pentex is adept at changing tactics, that’s why the war has gone on for so long. Now instead of cutting down the forest, they are working on building major roadways from the Chilean mountains to the coast of Brazil.

I first went to the Amazon when I was eighteen. Four of my septmates – Moon-Eyes, Strong-Back, Lorelei, and Long-Claws – and me had just finished our Rite of Passage and we formed a pack in search of Glory and Honor. In fact, we stylized ourselves For Glory. We were raised on stories of the war in the Amazon, and we foolishly wanted to get our teeth wet on Pentex’ evils. I say foolish because we didn’t know what we were in for, not because killing Wyrmspawn isn’t an honorable goal.

My pack and I spent the first two months learning tactics and how to stay alive. You would think that this is an intuitive process, but in a wartime situation, the smallest mistakes could get you killed. We were taught simple tricks like fading into the jungle, hit and run tactics, and how to leave the right kind of trap to disable a moving truck. We trained with other packs who already knew the ins and outs of the jungle.

Our first missions were to watch and learn. We traveled through the forest looking for Pentex outposts and supply lines. We observed and follow, but do nothing more. I am impatient and these missions tested my limits. They were designed to do so; another form of training that forced me to keep my cool. The scouting wasn’t futile though; the enemy followed patterns and repeated techniques. Our scouting taught us those patterns and showed us weaknesses in their organization. After a few days of watching, we designed our own plan of attack.

We needed to disrupt the supply line for road building and make the whole venture too costly for Pentex to contin­ ue. I had some ideas about tactics I thought would work, but I’m sure new ideas are a fable in war. Anything I could think of was something someone had done before and the enemy would be prepared for it. So, I decided to find out how they would react to our attacks and work around it. The Garou we learned from spoke of constant learning and adapting and I assumed the enemy did the same.

I led our first foray to gauge reaction times. We set up an ambush along one of the supply lines. I had Moon-Eyes

in a tree for sniping and we set explosives along the path. When the caravan arrived, Moon-Eyes shot at the lead caravan truck. The supply team stopped their vehicles and took up a defensive position. They watched the jungle, trying to spot us. I reminded my pack to not engage, this was a learning mission only. The enemy waited for nearly ten minutes. They fired a few warning shots into the jungle. When they loaded back up, they reversed and went back the way they had come. We didn’t even get to see what would happen when the explosives detonated. When we went to the supply line for the next scheduled trip, they weren’t using it any more.

We found a different caravan that made regular trips to camps with food and medical supplies. We tried our attack again, using the explosives first. The result was much of the same, but it took longer for them to scramble into defensive positions out of the smoking wreck of the lead truck. We did several test runs of different scenarios and each time we saw how the enemy reacted. I used that to come up with a plan that we could use multiple times before the enemy would adapt.

We set explosives along the trail for a food supply line. Most of them were at the edges, where the personnel would be setting up their defenses. The goal wasn’t just to destroy or disrupt, we wanted to take the supplies for our own people. We watched the caravan trundle along until they reached the designated mark, and blew the explosives under the main truck. The truck rocked, but seemed unaffected by the blast. They had employed some kind of armoring to protect from the blast, and kept moving. Determined for my plan to work, we set off an explosive further to the back of the caravan, originally intended to prevent escape. The truck went up in a blaze of smoke and fire. The caravan stopped and the men scrambled, shooting wildly into the jungle. We blew the explosives under their feet. Blood and bits of bodies rained down around us as we moved in to secure the trucks. More men came out and we fought. Moon-Eyes in the trees picked off quite a few of them before they got to us, and we quickly killed the rest in a frenzied melee. Our enemies grazed two of my packmates, but we had four of the five supply vans intact and captured.

We rejoiced over our little victory as though we had turned the tides of war. For us, we had, and we were eager to do it again. We brought the supplies to camp like champions of war returning home to tell the commoners they had nothing to fear. Our attitude was met with relative calm. I am sure we weren’t the first young pack to come tromping through the jungle with egos large enough to fill the entire river basin, nor would we be the last. The jungle is a rough place, and they knew that we would learn our lessons eventually.

We cleaned up, ate our fill, and set out again the next day, ready for success. The second time we tried our tactic, we managed to flip the armored lead truck and blast some of the infantry without losing any of the supply trucks. The ensuing fight was worse than the first. They expected the blast on the outside of the trucks and many of the men survived the attack. I took several gunshots to the leg during my initial charge. I figured they were using silvered bullets, because I felt like my leg would melt right off my body. I kept moving though, adrenaline and rage pushing me forward. Long-Claws took a bullet to the head; he fought for another full eight seconds before his body fell limp to the ground. I lost control of myself at the sight, changed quickly to Crinos and lunged at the nearest Pentex soldier.

These weren’t normal men. They were shaped like men, but the resemblance stopped there. A dull gunmetal colored armored hide covered their bodies. Now that I was close, I could see that they were not carrying guns. Some of them had hands that were mutated and shaped similarly to assault rifles, but I could see large veins pulsing along the outside edges. Others had deadly edged blades instead of fingers. Their eyes were silver slits with red centers. Their mouths were grates that spewed noxious gas and exhaust. As I drew close I could smell the reek of phosphorus and oil emanating from them.

What were they? Fomori. Men who turned to the Wyrm, now horribly twisted abominations. The one I attacked was ready for my teeth and claws and jammed his gun-arm up into my chest and threw me away with ease. Despite their armored appearance, they were wickedly strong and fast. I charged back at him, avoiding his attack, and knocked him to the ground in one touch. My claws sunk into his chest. He coughed and gurgled as blood poured out of his mouth grate. The blood was deep red, almost black, and burned like acid. I swore and jumped back from the thing, shaking my hand. I saw thin trails of smoke where the drops of blood touched the surrounding greenery. I wiped my hand clean and looked around for another enemy. Moon-Eyes shot three of the fomori during my short fight.

Lorelei bit one of the men’s head clean in two and gouts of blood sprayed into her mouth and face. She howled in pain and clawed at her face in panic. I moved to assist her, fomor aiming at her blocked me. I jumped on him just as a stream of dark red blood exited the end of his gun-arm. They weren’t shooting bullets, they shot their blood. I clawed at him, taking care not to get any of the blood on my skin. Lorelei fell unconscious before I could reach her.

Avoiding the acidic blood was difficult. Small points of burning sensation riddled my uncovered body. Six of the creatures were still alive and only Moon-Eyes, Strong-Back, and I still stood. Moon-Eyes abandoned his position in the trees to join us on the ground. The fight was taxing and just attacking the fomori was dangerous. We danced around the group making small cuts and slices where we could, but it was going too slow for us to keep it up for long.

I heard a rustling in the jungle just before I saw a large spotted creature in Crinos form jump on one of the fomor and claw into it. As the blood sprayed, it reared back in pain, a parody of what I had done earlier. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest for joy at the arrival of aid.

“It’s acid.” I called out, as I jumped on one of the closer fomor who was distracted by the newcomer.

It growled by way of reply. It attacked another fomor, this time avoiding the blood. The attack style was curious­ ly graceful and lithe, at first I was confused since didn’t realize what it was.

What kind of Garou was it? It wasn’t a Garou. It was a werecat, they’re called Bastet. Specifically, it was a werejaguar, a Balam. We had heard a lot about them from the packs back at camp.

It made quick work of the thing and turned its atten­ tion to the next one. My pack took out the last two with a renewed energy from this unexpected assistance.

When we finished I turned to it and held out my hand in a greeting. “Thank you. I owe you my life.”

The werejaguar let out a low guttural growl and charged at me. It had me on the ground with its teeth at my throat before I could react, I was so surprised by the attack. Thankfully, Strong-Back had better reflexes and barreled in and knocked it off me before it could sink its teeth in. I could still feel the points of teeth on my neck as I stood and readied myself. Strong-Back was no match for the lithe Bastet, who tossed him away like a rag doll. Moon-Eyes and I moved in tandem to maneuver around the cat.

“What is your problem?” I growled at it. It didn’t respond and rushed at Moon-Eyes. I followed to jump on it which gave Moon-Eyes a chance to latch on. Strong-Back jumped in as well, and the three of us wrestled it to the ground.

“Seriously, we don’t want to hurt you. Why do you insist on attacking us?” We were so close that I could feel hot breath on my face.

“Intruder.” It spat in a broken form of the Garou lan­ guage. It arched its back and pushed with a surge of strength. We went flying. Turning with blinding speed, it gutted Strong-Back before he had time to stand. Moon-Eyes went into a rage and flung himself at the Bastet. They struggled and I jumped on the cat’s back and sunk my claws into the flesh of its neck. It released Moon-Eyes and scrambled at me in an attempt to dislodge me. Moon-Eyes bit into its throat and we brought the thing struggling and fighting to the ground again. I pushed my claws deep into its chest, and Moon-Eyes held on tight until the struggling ceased. We stood and looked at a giant man’s unconscious form. We could have killed him, and maybe we should have, but he had saved Moon-Eye’s and my life, even if he did kill Strong-Back. We took Strong-Back and Long-Claws further out into the jungle and buried them there.

Our victory did not feel as sweet as the first. We re­ turned subdued with the hard won supplies and Lorelei’s unconscious body. We brought her to a healer to apply herbs and medicines to her wounds. We were told she would survive, and that was enough. Later, we howled the deaths of Strong-Back and Long-Claws. We were not the only ones howling deaths that night, and it was the first time that we noticed just how many howls were taking place.

With half of our pack dead and Lorelei out for a while, Moon-Eyes and I joined some of the other packs engaged in some larger raids into the mountains. When Lorelei recovered, she left the pack and the Amazon, the loss of her sept-brothers too much for her. Moon-Eyes and I stayed for six more months, but the rigors of war became depressing. We wanted to make a difference, but no matter how many small victories we won, the price always seemed too high, and the road construction continued. I think I mentioned that I’m not very patient. We heard rumors of Wyrm creatures invading the lands near our home caern

and contact with the North American septs was spotty. Moon-Eyes and I went to North America after only a year of being in the Amazon. I have never gone back.

In 2010, the largest oil spill in United States history devastated the waters of the Gulf Coast. Crews from all over the country, both human and Garou, spent months cleaning the oil from the beaches all across the Gulf of Mexico. The Sept at Lake Pontchartrain sent calls for aid within days of the spill. What seemed a large accident to most of the world was clearly an act of agents of the Wyrm to the Garou. Oil Banes surfaced all along the coast of Louisiana, and it took all of our time to fight them off. The humans took three months to seal off the well spilling oil into the gulf. The delay was mostly due to corrupt Louisiana government officials. The fact that Louisiana was infested with the petroleum industry did not help matters either.

Several packs went down for cleanup duty, killing Banes with abandon. We spent the better part of a year rooting out and destroying Banes that had taken up residence within Lake Pontchartrain as well as the Mississippi River. My pack and I had sought out and killed a major Bane almost once a month during that time period, and we were not the only ones. The number of Garou in the Sept at Lake Pontchartrain swelled from fourteen to about fifty in the course of a few weeks, then the number settled to about twenty-six for the next year.

The presence of the Oil Banes emboldened a Pit of Black Spiral Dancers nesting in New Orleans. They moved into an abandoned area of St. Bernard Parish after its near destruction during Hurricane Katrina. The group fed the Banes to make them strong allies in strikes against the sept. With the increased number of Garou at the sept, we beat back the Dancers. As the Bane population dwindled, so did the Black Spiral Dancers’ tenacity. Though they still infested New Orleans, we saw less and less of them. A few scouts checked on them, but when they failed to return, the missions were called off. Cleaning out the Banes was a higher priority at the moment.

My pack routinely scouted north along Mississippi River near Baton Rouge. We consistently found Banes near a huge refinery situated along the river. I assume they were drawn to the large amounts of crude oil in the plant. We just finished scouting the area one evening, and were returning to the sept, when Moon-Eyes caught the stench of petroleum coming from the river. We did not see the pollutant at first, until we realized that it completely filled the river from bank to bank. Without a contrast, it was hard

to tell the slick from the normal, murky, brown water. We followed it upstream directly to the refinery. We had been in that area a few hours before, and the river was clear, so we knew this was a recent development.

We called it in to the sept and they sent us the nearest Garou that could help, a Glass Walker named Jonathan. He came from Baton Rouge and showed up within an hour. During that time, I came up with a plan to break into the refinery, find out where the oil was coming from, and stop it. My pack and I were ready to go when Jonathan arrived, much to his dismay. He told me that breaking in would get us in trouble, maybe arrested, and that we should wait for him to do some investigation before barging into the building. The ensuing argument only lasted a minute before I was able to convince him of the merits of my plan.

How did you do that? I Throated him. I also had the benefit of logic; time was an issue since the oil still spilled from the refinery. In the end though, we went with a combined plan of advanced scouting and infiltration. Jonathan found a blueprint of the refinery, and we planned a route to the most probable sources of the spill. Jonathan spent a few minutes trying to hack into the security cameras for the refinery only to find that the system shut down. This sent up red flags, something more than just a break in a line was going on.

I led my pack and Jonathan to the closest entry point to the facility, prepared to break the door down. This was wholly unnecessary; the door was slightly ajar showing the dark interior of the building. We moved slowly into the building and crept silently along, on the lookout for whoever had come in before us. I extended my senses all around me and heard scuffling sounds coming towards us fast. We pressed ourselves to the corridor wall, just as three men rushed from inside the facility. They caught sight of us and stopped short, two of them pulling guns from holsters at their sides. One of them was dark haired and greasy, one was light haired and greasy, and the third was completely covered from head to toe. These men reeked of Wyrm taint and oil, and I was certain that they had caused the spill flowing into the Mississippi River.

I kicked the nearest man’s hand and sent his gun skidding away. The second gunman shot me, and the one covered up pulled off his jacket and began a quick change into Crinos.

“Shit, Dancers!” Jonathan cried as he pulled out a gun and fired. The barking of gunfire drowned out anything else he might have said as Moon-Eyes grabbed the fallen gun and joined Jonathan.

Stacey, a Black Fury that had recently joined the pack, changed quickly to Crinos form and rushed at the Dancer who was just finishing his transformation. She backed him down the corridor with her labrys. I quickly changed as well

and clawed the man I disarmed earlier, who also changed. Jonathan and Moon-Eyes continued to lay down covering fire as Stacey and I ripped into the three Garou. Though they were outnumbered, the three fought with a terrible force and a deadly pack mentality that rivaled our own.

I wouldn’t say we were equally matched though. Stacey was deadly with her ancestral weapon, and was keeping her combatant at arm’s reach, cutting into him if he got too close. Speaks-With-Trees and a Theurge Get of Fenris from my home sept flanked my gunman and we harried him with tooth and claw. Moon-Eyes and Jonathan abandoned their guns and fought dark and greasy together. I was impressed by how easily Jonathan fell into an easy cadence with Moon-Eyes. While Speaks-With-Trees distracted blonde and greasy, I slammed him to the ground with a touch. I fell upon him, my claws sliding easily into his flesh to disembowel him. I could see Stacey’s target got a few claws in on her, but she wore him down. Jonathan suffered from a bite wound, and I directed Speaks-With-Trees to help him out as I joined Moon-Eyes to finish off dark and greasy. I bit into his neck, my teeth turned to ice and froze the flesh in my mouth. I gave one hard jerk and his head snapped off with a loud crack. His body dropped to the ground Stacey shouted her battle cry as she brought her labrys down on her enemy’s head, cleaving it in two.

We looked at the forms of the Dancers while we cleaned our wounds and let Speaks-With-Trees tend us.

“What do you think they were doing here?” Stacey asked as she came over, cleaning her labrys.

“Probably causing that oil spill. If we are lucky, they were the only ones, but somehow I doubt it.” Jonathan said.

“I wonder why?” I mused aloud. No one spoke, so we sat and listened for the sounds of more Black Spiral Dancers coming up the corridor. I was certain we had made enough noise to alert the entire facility to our presence, so they should have shown up pretty quickly. We waited, but no one came, so I proposed that we continue on to find the leak and seal it up. We followed the foul trail left by the Dancers back the way they had come.

We tracked the scent deep into the facility to a pump­ ing station. Pipes lead out of the building and up stream, possibly to a holding facility. The exhaust vents had been welded shut and the pressure valves closed, which more than likely caused a crack in the pipe further on. Jonathan took a look at it, and figured out how to release the pressure valves and seal off the pipe completely, stopping the flow of oil into the river. I wanted to make sure the leak had stopped. We backtracked to the entrance and Jonathan pulled out his tablet and marked on the blueprint where we had been and where the pipe should exit the facility on the outside. It only took us a few minutes to find the pipe on the outside. Oil drifted slowly up to the surface of the

river and made lazy swirls as it caught in the current and was swept downstream. As we watched, the last trails of oil plumed to the top and drifted away.

While we watched, Speaks-With-Trees looked down­ river and snarled. I turned and the stench he caught on the wind wafted over the river, the noxious fumes stung my eyes. The oil slick bulged and convulsed in the river, and roiling bubbles released bouts of putrid air. The river level rose as the sludgy crude oil coalesced and rose into the air taking the form of a large cresting wave moving right towards us. We broke into run, Moon-Eyes and Speaks-With-Trees dropped to all fours as they changed to Hispo form. I heard the sickening glop and gurgle sound of the filth as it reached the east bank of the river and moved across land. I spared a glance back to see the grass and reeds near the river sizzle and smoke under the touch of the Bane.

“We have to fight it; it’s going to spread filth everywhere if we don’t.” I called out to my fleeing companions and turned to face it.

For the second time that day, I changed to Crinos form and stood in the way of the Wyrm. Moon-Eyes and Speaks-With-Trees rounded to either side of the large mass of what looked like oil, trash and other waste runoff from the river. We tried to hedge it in, but it came at me, forcing me to move back. Moon-Eyes swiped at it, and the stuff sizzled and evaporated under his claws. This thing was larger than any of the other Banes we had fought and I guessed the Black Spiral Dancers had brought it with them to the refinery. The body of it snaked back all the way to the river and continued downstream. We were only dealing with the very tip of the creature, and even that was massive.

Stacey came back around and we clawed at the thing, trying to force it to go back towards the river. It pushed forward and washed over us like a wave. Wherever the goop touched us, it clung and burned. I wiped at it and only served to spread it around more. Stacey dropped to the ground and rubbed herself into the dirt, causing streams of smoke to plume up around her. I steeled myself against the pain and ran straight at the thing, claws flashing. My relentless attack forced the creature to back away from me, and the rest of my pack joined in. I even saw Jonathan at the edge of the mess trying to hem it in. I knew from pre­ vious experience that we would have to find the heart of the thing and cut it out before it would go away. I waded through the muck, healing the burns, and ignoring the pain as best as possible. Stacey and Jonathan followed me in, as Moon-Eyes and Speaks-With-Trees herded the thing back towards the river.

We were there for what felt like hours, but I’m sure was only minutes. Of course, as soon as I got good and in the middle of the Bane, Black Spiral Dancers showed up and started attacking Moon-Eyes and Speaks-With-Trees. I

yelled for Jonathan and Stacey to fall back and help them, but they were just as stuck in the muck as I was. I cut into the creature at a fevered pace trying to reach its center to destroy it. Stacey started in the other direction and Jona­ than followed her.

I’m not certain if they were trying to get out to help the others, or if they were trying a different direction for the center. Either way, I lost sight of them in the sludge within moments. Unable to do anything else, I continued to cut my way through the Bane, my rage and fury building with each attack. The sounds of battle were loud in my ears, and it kept me on track as I waded towards the middle of the Bane. Soon I was half swimming, half floating in the thick grotesque body of the Bane. The river current pulled at me, threatening to take me under. I struggled to stay afloat, but the Bane worked with the river and plunged me into the murky depths. Sight, sound and smell lost to me, I felt cut off, completely alone. I felt the slippery mass around me and the warmer water cut through. I followed the slippery feel down and towards a center. As I moved deeper into the water, I felt the slick narrow down to a thin tendril. I grasped it and pulled hard, propelling myself towards the mass of toxic waste, oil and refuse that made up the heart of the Bane. By this time, my lungs burned for air and my eyes stung with the pollution in the river water. I gave a sharp tug and sliced into the heart with my claws, severing the tendril I was holding. The thing tried to slip and move away from me, but I kept an iron grip on it. It moved to slip around me and cover me, and the pain of its touch forced a cry out of me. Water slipped into my mouth and my lungs. I thrashed at the thing with all my limbs, claws digging deep into the pile of filth. I felt it stop moving and disperse around me, as I attempted a desperate swim for the surface.

I blacked out before I reached it. When I woke up, Speaks-With-Trees was ministering to my wounds. The pack killed three of the Black Spiral Dancers, and the other two ran off. Stacey and Jonathan had been released from the Bane when I severed its tie to the oil slick, and were able to join into the fight with the Dancers. Apparently, when the Dancers saw that their Bane had been defeated, they attempted to break and run. It had turned the fight in my pack’s favor, and I was relieved to hear that no one had died in this trip.

We returned to the Sept at Lake Pontchartrain and reported our findings. Another pack that had been scouting around New Orleans found evidence that the Black Spiral Dancers were planning another large scale assault on the caern. We waited for nearly a month, but the attack never came. I deduced that they were trying to feed up the Bane in preparation for the assault, and after I destroyed it, they had to abandon their plans. The Bane also seemed to be

the last of the Oil Banes that had been plaguing the area, and after some long and heartfelt goodbyes, my pack picked up to move again.

I was so impressed by Jonathan’s bravery and aplomb, despite being a Glass Walker, that I asked him to join our pack. He accepted, with some conditions attached.

What kind of conditions? I think his pride was still sore about the episode outside the refinery. We argued about the practicality of going at a problem head first. His take was that the Garou Nation needed every werewolf it could get, while I think that some things are worse than death. It’s why I fight as hard as I do to make sure the Wyrm doesn’t win. While we both agreed on that point, I couldn’t see how it would ever be advantageous to sneak about and just hope that the Wyrm will go away on its own.

So, how did you resolve it? Let me tell you about New York.

The most insidious thing about the Wyrm in New York is how easily humans fall to its corrupting power. Sure, there’s pollution from the 8 million or so residents and the infrastructure maintaining them, but the amount of money and power coursing through the city is a subtle influence that is hard to fight. Entire cults have risen out of greed, desire, and privilege. Some think they pay lip service to the Wyrm and have no idea how strong a hold it has over them. Others are full scale nut jobs that think the Wyrm gives them power and intentionally spread its corrupting force. The stock traders on Wall Street making insider deals, the corrupt bankers accepting millions of dollars in government bailouts, the politicians and city leaders who encourage a massive divide between the rich and the poor, the crazed wife beaters and child molesters protected by society from retribution are all tainted by the Wyrm. The city is inundated with their filth, and dealing with them is a constant unsavory task.

Jonathan said he had a test for me. He was going home to New York for a week and he wanted me to come with him to follow his sept’s guidance in dealing with issues. I’m never one to decline a good challenge, so I agreed, sure that I could show him that taking on the Wyrm head first is never the wrong option.

Jonathan brought me to the Glass Walkers of New York and told them that I was there as a student. The sept was welcoming despite my Get of Fenris heritage. We were immediately set to task to find out some information about an ongoing issue having to do with the Glass Walkers’ Kinfolk. While it wasn’t the Wyrm per se, I was obliged to let Jonathan put his money where his mouth was.

The sept was concerned about the deaths of two younger Kinfolk. The first died the year before. His thymus had been removed to cure a rare autoimmune disease, myas­ thenia gravis, as a child. After struggling all his life with a repressed immune system, he died at twenty-three from the flu. While this was not completely strange, another younger Kinfolk in his early teens was diagnosed four months ago with myasthenia gravis and died shortly after his thymus had been surgically removed. The boy had shown signs of undergoing the change and the Garou planned to bring him in shortly before he died. Two weeks ago, another Kinfolk, again showing signs of the change coming on her soon, was also diagnosed with the autoimmune disease. The doctor told her parents that the only course of action would be to remove the thymus, but the Glass Walkers were concerned that she would die just like the boy. The Garou planned to kidnap her before she could undergo surgery, but they needed to determine the underlying cause of this disease and try to prevent more Kinfolk from contracting it.

Jonathan introduced me to the internet. While I am a modern American and I have a smartphone and I look at Facebook, I had no idea how much information was readily available on the internet.

What? Don’t you know about Wikipedia and Google? What? Oh no, I still just let Jonathan do all of that. But, it was eye opening to see what a great resource it is. I will point out that investigating is important for planning, even if your plan is to go kick it in the butt.

I suggested looking at background information or envi­ ronmental exposure to something that might have caused the disease. Jonathan told me that we needed to understand the big picture first. His idea of big picture was city demographics. New York City had the highest diagnosis rate of myasthenia gravis in the country. Some of the best thymectomy surgeons worked in the city and people came from several states away to see them. New York is a big city, and so far, I wasn’t con­ vinced this was a theme. Most patients are diagnosed with the disease in their thirties and forties yet those diagnosed in New York were between six and thirteen. I was sure some kind of environmental influence caused the illness in these children. Jonathan wasn’t convinced so we looked into the doctors and the patients. When Jonathan hacked into the hospital system to take a look, he couldn’t find any of the patient files. They had either been deleted, or were under further security he couldn’t breech.

I decided we should pay the doctors a visit, starting with the one treating the young Kinfolk girl. Though Jonathan complained that this was the exact attitude he was trying to dissuade, I told him that it was just an information-gathering mission. Jonathan came along, but was clearly not happy. Once we got to the hospital, I was at a loss for where to find them. Most doctors have offices, but I had no idea

how to find a surgeon. Jonathan suggested asking the desk clerk, which did not go well for me.

I asked for Dr. Busby and the plump woman at the desk told me that he didn’t have any appointments today. When I asked her to tell me where his office was, she just stared at me. Jonathan had to step in and charm her into giving us the information. He said something about not making demands of people, but I’m not really sure what he was talking about. We went up to the ninth floor and were greeted by a nurse’s station. Getting past them was them was actually easier than the front desk. I just walked to his office like I belonged there and no one stopped me. I opened the door on a thin lanky man in his mid-fifties with a bald spot shining through his graying hair. Though entire hospital smelled aseptic and clean, his office smelled of cigar smoke and cinnamon. I was pretty sure there was some regulation about smoking in hospitals.

Dr. Busby looked startled to see Jonathan and me barging into his office, and he stood in surprise. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“My name’s Deidra and I walked right in. Your nurses aren’t very good door guards. We have some questions if you have some time.” I told him as I pulled out one of the chairs in front of his desk and sat down.

Jonathan sat in the other chair, and it seemed that Dr. Busby’s good manners had the better of him, because he sat as well. “What kind of questions?”

“Let’s start with myasthenia gravis. How do you go about diagnosing such a disease?” I kept my tone conversational.

“Are you afraid you might have it?” He said. “No, I think my younger cousin might though.” I figured a little lie couldn’t hurt.

His eyes lit up for just a moment, so brief that I would swear I was imagining it if I didn’t see Jonathan react as well. “Oh how terrible. You would have to bring her in for a proper diagnosis.” He was a master at schooling his emotions.

“You seem rather excited at the prospect of a new patient?” I wasn’t going to play nice with this man. He was clearly doing something wrong, and I was going to get down to the bottom of it. I stood and stepped to his desk, leaned over and grabbed the front of his shirt. I pulled him towards me and growled into his face, “What are you doing to the children?”

His stammered, “What? Who sent you? Was it Chief Dudek? You can tell him that I didn’t do anything to them, if his last order was bad it was because he was rushing me.” That was completely unexpected.

Jonathan caught my eye, and I could see that he was just as surprised as me.

“Yes, Chief Dudek sent us. What, did you think we wouldn’t notice?” Jonathan chimed in with a gruff voice, only a slight twinge betraying his nervousness.

“I’ll tell you like I told him, there was nothing to be done about it. I have to cultivate for weeks to get the proper taste, and rushing me can’t produce that. Not to mention all the records I have to go through just to get the thing out of here.” He pulled on his shirt front, trying to loosen himself from my grip, indignation warring with fear on his face.

I tightened my grip and shook him once. “So you didn’t do anything to the children?” I hissed. I wasn’t putting on an act. Whatever this guy was doing was seriously wrong.

“What? No. I didn’t do anything that would change the flavor. Of course, I gave him treatments just like the others, but those are necessary for the diagnosis.” Fear rose so strong I could smell it wafting from him.

“Treatments?” Jonathan’s cool collected calm was completely shattered.

Dr. Busby’s eyes went round, “Wait, who are you?” He started shrieking and screaming and everything went to hell. A nurse ran into the office and saw me shaking the screaming doctor. She started yelling and ran out the office door. Soon two male nurses ran in and tried to pull me off of him, and I resisted for a moment until Jonathan yelled at me to let him go. By that time, the men were us­ ing brutal force to try to remove me, and I could see that they were starting to get anxious from being around me. I released my grip and made a run for the door. I ran right into a security guard who was hustling into the office and we tumbled to the ground. Another security guard grabbed my arms and thrust them into a thin plastic tie behind my back. A look from Jonathan told me that I shouldn’t break the tie, normal people can’t do that.

I let the security guards hold me until the police arrived, and then we took a nice trip down to the city precinct. Jonathan was not arrested, since he was not being violent, and he had some excuse that I was a mental patient that got out of his control. Somehow he had certifications to show them and they let me out on bail. As I was leaving, I noticed a placard on the wall reading Robert Dudek, NYPD Chief of Police. I pointed it out to Jonathan, whose eyes went wide.

We brought our new information to the sept, and they were able to help us piece together some more infor­ mation. Chief Dudek was a member of a group of men in New York well known for acts of corruption and possible dealing with the Wyrm. He had suspected associations with the Seventh Generation, whose ranks were filled with some of the most vile and corrupt members of the city’s political and economic sectors. Based on our disturbing conversation with Dr. Busby, we pieced together a grim story of doctors in the city removing children’s thymus gland to later be eaten. Definitely by Chief Dudek, quite possibly by others he associated with.

Feeling rather sick, I suggested killing them all in retribution for their vile crimes against Gaia. This was immediately shot down, and Jonathan reminded me of my trip down to the precinct. These men were in control of the city and a direct attack on them was sure to bring trouble down on the Garou in the city. So, instead, I let Jonathan lead me through a more subtle plan of exposing their black market ring to the public to shut it down.

So, what did you do? How did you convince the community it was true?

That’s a very good question. We went to the mother of the young girl and told her about the situation. She was skeptical at first, but we showed her the void in the medical files and told her that the treatment the doctor was giving was making it worse. She gave it a week, and afterwards the girl was starting to look and act healthier. That was all the proof she needed. She took the story to the other two families whose children had died and they compared notes. Then the three families took the story to a reporter, recommended by Jonathan, who did a short piece on it. A nightly news reporter who happened to be another of the Glass Walker’s Kinfolk took the piece. His fact checkers discovered the strange disconnect between diagnosis ages in New York City versus the rest of the nation. We had a small hold up while they tried to quench the story, which only made the reporter more avid to tell the world. After that, the information caught like wildfire and families of misdiagnosed children came forward in droves to demand justice. Some payoffs were made and some money got dumped into a public relations campaign for many of the men involved, but the surgeons took the fall and the entire operation was shut down.

All in all, the plan was so simple and elegant that I’m not sure I could really call it a plan. It took no more than a month, but with the right push here and there, the cascade of reaction was remarkable. I didn’t get to go out and murder the bastards, but I got to watch as an outraged community called for resignations and indictments of some very corrupt men.

I’m confused. You wouldn’t have ever known what was going on if you didn’t go talk to that doctor. So going at it head first was still the best way.

You’re very smart. Just don’t let Jonathan hear you say that.

A call for assistance went out from a small gathering of Stargazers from the Tranquil River Sept near Sandouping, China about a month before the Three Gorges Dam went

fully operational. For years the local Garou had fought against the Chinese government to delay the start up oper­ ations of the dam, but they had finally lost out. The initial flooding started much sooner than originally anticipated, and the caern was under threat of being lost to the flood waters. The sept wanted to expedite the move, and were asking for any able bodied Garou to come and help. It wasn’t something my pack and I normally did, but I decided to go, if only to make sure they didn’t leave anything important behind. I went alone. I wasn’t expecting to do anything other than act as bodyguard to Garou moving across the moon bridges, so I took my time getting there.

By the time I arrived, the caern was cleared out. Not in that “we finished moving and you missed it,” kind of way. More like the, “where the hell is everyone and why did they leave half their things behind?” kind of way. I could see signs of violence and a struggle. They didn’t go without a fight, but I couldn’t tell what took them. Blood splattered structures, but not enough to constitute even one dead body. Whatever came in hadn’t left any tracks. I sniffed the air and smelled the sharp coppery scent of blood, the musky smells of sweat and spittle, and the dis­

tinct acrid odor of the Wyrm. With the city nearby and the dam looming in the distance, it was hard to tell where that particular scent was coming from. I hoped beyond hope that it wasn’t coming from inside the caern.

All was quiet and still. The sept was gone, and I was the only one who knew about it. I wondered briefly about the other septs in the region, and where they all went. This is why I will never go anywhere alone again. I couldn’t both look for the missing Stargazers and contact the other Garou. I would have to do one and then the other. So I set out to find what became of the sept, and either rescue them or howl their deaths.

Scenting a trail on the Stargazers was difficult, a thou­ sand different smells of coming and going from the past few days’ travel muddled everything. Instead, I tracked the Wyrm scent. I followed the trail into the small city of Sandouping and to the main entrance of the Three Gorges Dam. By that time, the stench was burning my eyes and making me sick to my stomach.

I couldn’t find the source in the city, which meant it was in the dam. Men in guard uniforms and workers swarmed the place, and going in was tricky. I waited until

dusk for the workers to change shifts then waylaid one in an alley to take his clothes. The clothes were baggy on me, but I didn’t think anyone would be checking. I followed another worker up the ramp and into the dam without molestation, and picked up my trail again.

My stomach lurched from the nauseating odor, and I had a hard time keeping myself together. Deep in the bowels of the dam, near the churning generators, I lost the trail. I don’t mean that it suddenly went away. It was there all around me, filling the room with the putrid smell of decaying water-logged flesh and disease. I found it, whatever it was. I checked the room for evidence of the Stargazers, but only found a few oil-slicked water spots.

While I wandered around the room I became aware of the faint sound of trickling water. The sound was strange and unnatural, and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The water sounds moved through the room, creating an eerie sense of footsteps. I changed to Crinos form and readied myself for an attack. My senses sharp­ ened and I could feel heaviness in the air, as though I was breathing water. I heard it move towards me and wheeled, but it landed on my back. Its scrabbled at me with clawed hands, trying to get a good grip. The icy fire of its claws sinking into my skin sent shocks of pain through my body, and I spun around to dislodge it. It held tight and bit down hard on my shoulder. Blood welled up and I could feel cold numbness spreading through my arm and I quickly lost all feeling there. I reached back with my good hand and wrenched it off of me and hurled it into the far wall.

I could see it now, a small humanoid looking thing with pale watery flesh and long black hair that fell past its head and chest. The thing’s face was a large toothy maw with grey sunken eye holes. It hissed at me and lurched forward, but I was expecting it this time and dodged to the side, letting it graze my bad arm. It had its back turned to me, and I sank my claws deep into the back of its neck, where the head meets the spine. It felt as though my hand passed through ice-cold water, and thick green pus oozed around the wound, knitting the flesh back together. The scent of pestilence and decay filled my nostrils. The thing pulled away from me and turned; its mouth a mockery of a toothy grin. I roared in frustration and charged at it. Every time I clawed or scratched it, I went through it like water. Its bites and scratches created a burning fever that drained my energy.

I knew that if I didn’t get out of there soon, I was going to die. My Rage threatened to take hold of me and my fighting turned from tactical to brutal fury. I caught its thin frail arm as it made a pass to cut me. I gripped hard, yanked, and then I could hear a tearing sound and a sickening slosh as the arm popped off the shoulder and turned to oily slime in my hand. It fell to the floor with a thick splat and sat motionless. The Bane let out a howl

of pain and fury that sent chills up my spine. Invigorated by this new knowledge, I leapt on the Bane and grabbed its head in my good hand and twisted it off in one swift motion. Both the head and the body sloshed to the ground in an oily mess.

I stood panting and trying to regain my breath. In just the few moments I stood there, the ooze congealed into the top of the Bane’s head, its grey eye hole fixed in my direction. I knew I couldn’t go another round with that thing, so I did the only sensible thing I could do; I ran.

You ran? Yes. Sometimes, part of being a successful warrior is knowing when you need help. The thing was more power­ ful than I could handle alone. I left the dam and the city behind me. I set out to find other Garou and tell them about the fate of the Tranquil River Sept. Travel to the nearest populated caern took me eight days of running in Lupus form. My Wyrm tainted wounds took nearly as long to heal. I passed one other caern on my way, but it was half flooded and I could tell it had been abandoned months before.

A stout looking lupus with dark fur and a musky scent stopped me at the border.

“You stink of the Wyrm, yet you look like a Get. Ex­ plain.” He was succinct if nothing else.

“I came to assist the Tranquil River Sept with their move. When I got there the place was in disarray. I followed a Wyrm scent to the dam. We fought, but I didn’t kill it.” This last admission kindled an anger I didn’t realize I was harboring.

He looked at me and nodded. “I can see the wounds are not healing.” He sniffed and stepped aside.

The sept was larger than I had expected, filled with refugees of the flooded lands further east along the river. I came before the sept Alpha and his pack, and was surprised to see a Silver Fang leading the sept. I nodded in deference and took a submissive sitting position.

“I am one of a few surviving from Russia. Ask me later, and I will tell you about it. Maybe you will want to go there and cut out the Wyrm where it shelters?” He said, clearly noticing my surprise.

“Maybe, Jarl, when this is finished. Now I am here to deal with the Wyrm infestation at the dam.” I told him.

“What is your name?” He asked me, not yet dismissing formatlities.

“Diedra Bone-Cracker.” “Your reputation precedes you, warrior. I am Nikolai Kozlov, alpha of the Sept of Ashes. We are a deliberate people, which I’m sure isn’t to your tastes. You are in our territory and I expect you to behave as though you were one of us. Can you handle that, or should I send you on your way now?” His face was stern and his tone brooked no argument.

“I’ve worked with Glass Walkers, I’m sure I can handle your ways.” I nodded in deference. “You have a Bane holed up in the dam.”

“Do you think we don’t know this already?” I could detect a hint of exasperation in his voice, though I could tell he was trying hard to hide it. “I like to make a plan before going into a fight. Something I’m not sure you are familiar with.” I could see an internal struggle play across his face. He hardened his resolve and told me what was going on. Nikolai explained that a nest of Black Spiral Dancers brought the Bane from an ancient well in the Jiangsu Province. The river started flooding soon after. The Stargazers in the Tranquil River Sept were caught off guard by the speed of the rising waters, and weren’t prepared to move quickly enough. The last they had heard, the sept was moving along slowly in their excavation, but there had not been news in several days.

I had to think about that for only a moment, and the realization that struck me made me angry. No news meant no survivors. “They are all gone. I saw blood and signs of a struggle, but no bodies. The only thing I found out that way was the Bane.” I told him.

Nikolai’s face drew together in consternation. “You saw the Bane?” He asked, genuinely curious.

“I fought it too. Hell of a piece of work you have there.” I pointed to the wound on my shoulder.

“We haven’t seen it. Our plan was to take a team to the dam, and flush it towards the Dancer nest dug in the dry riverbed on the east side of the dam. We would flood their Pit and kill them and the Bane as they tried to escape.” The plan was sound, except for the part about the Bane.

“I think that plan will need to change some. We need a way to kill the Bane and without something that will truly threaten it, you can’t flush it anywhere.” I told him.

“What do you mean? Explain.” He commanded me. “It’s made out of some vile ooze. It doesn’t seem to be affected by claws. I ripped its head off and watched as it reformed itself before my eyes. Got any ideas on how to deal with it?” I had puzzled over this point during my entire run to the caern. “The only thing I could think of was fire.”

“Fire?” He said tentatively. “Yes and no. We could use something that will make it evaporate. A chemical would work better. Something we can spray or throw on it. I’ll talk the Theurges about something they might have on hand. Go rest now; be ready to leave at sundown. We will take the moon bridge to the caern by the dam. With the information you have brought, I can see that we have no more reason to wait.”

Instead of resting, I had a Theurge tend to my wounds. The entire sept vibrated with energy and by the time the first rays of pink dawn stretched across the sky, we were ready to go. We arrived at the caern with the last vestiges

of light. We set out to the dam armed with powder packs that would supposedly evaporate any water they contacted; a handy weapon versus the Bane. My small team slipped into the dam through the Umbra and entered the Bane’s pumping station. This time, it was easy to find.

The thing looked bigger than I remembered, and it smelled worse too. We herded it by tossing packets of the powder at it, which generated a deeply satisfying hiss when they hit. The Bane shied and skittered away from them. Once we got outside, it fled to the river and pulled water all around it as a protective shield. We ushered it further downstream and past the dam to a scheduled rendezvous point. The Bane was pulling the river water behind it and the level of the river rose dangerously high. It almost seemed too easy to me.

Then the Black Spiral Dancers came at us. Maybe they were attuned to the Bane, maybe they heard us coming. Better still, maybe the whole thing was a trap to begin with and they had attacked the Tranquil River Sept to goad the rest of the Garou into a fight they couldn’t possibly win.

I’m certain Nikolai underestimated the Dancer’s num­ bers. I lost count at about thirty when the nearest ones were within range to threaten me. My team’s attention was divided between the Bane and the Dancers. I tossed my remaining handful of powder packets directly at the Bane’s body. The resultant chemical reaction released a wave of heat and light that nearly bowled me over, but I expected it. The Dancers coming at me were not, and they fell back in surprise. I took the opportunity to dive at the nearest one on the ground and rip its throat out with my teeth.

The Bane fled under water, and the rest of the team turned their attention to the Black Spiral Dancers surround­ ing them. The subsequent fight was grueling. I could hear the sounds of battle all around, and knew that the rest of the Sept of Ashes was also engaged. Fighting without my pack was a challenge. I was surrounded with trained warriors, and they worked well together, but it just wasn’t the same. All of my nonverbal communications were lost to them. We did well enough though and killed the dozen or so Dancers that had ambushed us with little casualty. Then we joined the main fray. The Dancers had us outnumbered three to one. Nikolai raised a call to fall back, and several Garou were already running. My team served to distract the Dancers long enough for some of the weaker Garou to flee. I stood fighting until the last of the sept was able to make a break for it. I would have stayed even longer if I hadn’t seen a group of the Black Spiral Dancers break off to give pursuit. I dispatched those around me and followed the hunting party. A few of the sept warriors fell back to defend the fleeing party and between us we were able to beat back the pursuers.

I do not remember how many Black Spiral Dancers I killed that night. I do remember as clearly as if it were

yesterday every Garou we lost in that fight. I remember their names, faces, and how they died. We lost so much that night and gained nothing. We lost the Bane, and killed no less than fifty Black Spiral Dancers, but that wasn’t even half of them. We lost twelve good warriors in the fight before we were finally able to make a full retreat.

We crossed back over the moon bridge and Nikolai decided to seal it off to prevent the Wyrm taint from spreading through it. The Tranquil River Sept members were never found. I suspect they were taken and murdered by the Black Spiral Dancers. Their hold on the dam was absolute, and all the surrounding caerns were lost to the Garou. Eventually, the flood waters forced the Sept of Ashes to move yet again, further inland and away from the river. The number of septs in the region has been reduced to just the one, and they hold a line against the spread of the Black Spiral Dancers further west into China.

I still have a scar from that wound on my shoulder. Do you want to see it?

Oh, yes please.

Nikolai Kozlov told me chilling stories about the history of Russia. Several cities turned over to military control and were sealed off to outside residents for decades. They were referred to as closed cities, and all the caerns in the surrounding areas had either disappeared or been irreparably tainted by the Wyrm. Initially, Kinfolk living there reported strange experiments and nuclear weapon productions. Soon communications with the Kinfolk stopped due to tightening regulations on travel in and out of the cities. Several septs attempted to invade to combat the Wyrm controlled leaders, and possibly rescue their Kinfolk. They were met with brutal force, and lost many lives in the attempts. Nikolai assured me that most of this was ancient history, yet the closed cities still remained. Norilsk was one such city, and was reportedly so polluted and covered in Wyrm taint, that Nikolai was sure it housed something particularly terrible.

The conversation sparked a desire to go and see these cities for myself, and test my mettle against what I found there. So, I gathered up my pack, and we set out for Russia. The nearest moon bridge brought us several days’ travel away from the city via foot. Running kept us warm, and we got a good look at the scenery. When the forested landscape turned to barren plains we knew we were getting close. The signs of damage to Gaia were evident in every dead tree trunk and patch of shining metal-filled dirt we came across. The heavy metals in the air tasted like blood and rot. They choked us and slowed our run. The city materialized as a dark smudge on the horizon a day before

we were close enough to see buildings take shape. Military outposts blocked the roadways into the city, stopping and checking any vehicles attempting to pass through.

We set up a camp on the outside perimeter of Norilsk, as none of us wanted to spend a single night inside the confines of the polluted city. In the morning, we scouted to see if we could find out the largest source of Wyrm taint. Instead of passing through the checkpoints, we entered through the Umbra. We had to fight our way in anyway. Though we easily bypassed the human guards, we ran into a number of small Banes that were hanging around the city. Nikolai was not wrong when he said the place had fallen completely to the Wyrm. Larger Banes were near the nickel smelting facilities and mines. All of the spirits that would normally be in the area were long gone. The Umbra was as uninviting a place as it could be and we stepped back over as soon as we were well away from the outside border.

As with any other over-industrialized city, the people were downtrodden, the air was putrid, stagnant, and pollut­ ed with the sounds of industry. Traveling through Norilsk was both depressing and rage-inducing. We did not find evidence of any large Wyrm creatures or influence within the city proper. We went on to Nadezhda, the nickel smelter.

As we circled the complex, we caught sight of a few workers milling about the outside lot. They spotted us and walked over. At first I thought they wanted to talk, or maybe they were going to tell us to go away, but then I got a better look at them. They were repulsive. They had no visible hair on their bodies, which looked shriveled and pasty white. Some had open sores on their arms and faces; others had large pustules that clearly preceded the sores. Their heads were misshapen and their hands were elongated and enlarged. They jerked as they moved, as though their joints did not work correctly. One opened his mouth as though to say something, but I could see that his tongue was a black wormy mass in his mouth, and he just groaned as they moved closer.

Oh, I know. They were fomori, right? At the time I thought they might be. They were definitely Wyrm tainted. Later, Speaks-With-Trees said he didn’t see any Banes, so the answer is no.

Then, what were they? I’ll explain in a little bit, that is part of the story. I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I just stood my ground as they came. The rest of my pack took up defensive positions. The men shambled forward and attacked us. I wasn’t sur­ prised, but it was completely unnerving. They were relentless, yet methodical. A few of them moved with the slowness of pain, yet they were determined to continue. They clearly were not trained killers either. We easily dodged their lumbering swings and ill-aimed kicks. Though they clearly wanted to do us harm, I almost felt sorry for them. That stopped when

one of the men with open sores caught me with a powerful left hook. Even though they were slow, they packed a lot of force when they did connect. I kicked him in the knee and was rewarded with the distinct sound of bones cracking as he collapsed in a howling heap on the ground. I didn’t think I had kicked him hard enough to break bones.

Three of the more intact looking men scattered and ran, spooked by the sound of their friend’s broken bone. My pack mates rounded up the remaining few, and knocked them unconscious. We checked each of them and found that they had neither identification nor other personal be­ longings. The life force filling them was sickly and twisted, and the foul Wyrm smell emanating from their bodies was strong enough to make me sick. After a lengthy discussion, we decided that killing them and putting them out of their misery was the best course of action.

We set out to follow the three who had run off. We had lost sight of them, and no one saw which way they went. I changed to Lupus form to better track them. I could smell their distinctive scent heading to the west, and began running that way, my pack trailing behind me.

I tracked them to the ore quarry just outside of Norilsk to the southwest. My heart broke to see the giant scar on the face of Gaia. The belly of the land had been laid open to the sky, and dust hung in the air just above the entire pit. The place also reeked of the Wyrm. We scanned the perimeter but saw no evidence that the men had gone around the mine. Miners worked in the pit, pulling ore from the ground and loading it into trucks with the Pentex symbol and the name Norilsk Nickel emblazoned on the side. After all we had seen, I was completely unsurprised to see that Pentex was involved.

The Umbra was full of Banes milling about the quarry, so we didn’t dare enter the spiritual realm to continue tracking them. Instead, we waited until dusk, when the miners packed up to leave for the night. As they left, we watched for the mutated men, but they did not emerge. Wherever they had gone, they were not returning, and I suspected that we would find the source of whatever had caused their mutations in the mine.

The quarry was completely still in the hours following dusk. Lights from the smelting complex lit up the night

sky and cast a yellow gloom around the quarry. We passed the trucks and the mining equipment and ventured into the ore veins. We followed the Wyrm stench down into the deepest part of the quarry. I felt a prickle of something strange nearby. It was the kind of feeling you get when you know something is hot, but you haven’t felt the heat yet. My hairs stood on end as the smell wafted to me and burned the inside of my nose. I turned and followed the scent down a crevice large enough across for two men to walk side by side. I could see a faint green glow from deep in the crevice and I knew what it was before I saw it, balefire.

What is balefire? What do they teach you around here? Balefire is produced by the Wyrm, kind of like a waste product. It is by far the most corrupting substance found on Earth, and I had found an entire lake of the stuff. I scrambled away and out of the crevice as fast as I could, and I didn’t dare look back until I reached my pack. I brought them to the crevice, and we scouted along the ledge I had found, careful not to make too much noise or to get too close to the balefire. Along one side of the lake was a large metal enclosure, nearly fifty feet long. Hundreds of men stood at the back of the enclosure, grouped as far away from the balefire as they could possibly get. They all had pale skin and sunken eyes. Some were covered in oozing pustules, but some still looked relatively healthy. The enclosure was clearly a prison of some kind.

These people were being intentionally exposed to the balefire. I didn’t know why they were imprisoned there, but no one deserved that kind of torture. I hesitated for a moment then jumped off the ledge onto the near side of the lake and sprinted around to the enclosure. I moved so fast that the rest of my pack had to scramble to keep up. The sudden movement startled the men inside the pen and they huddled closer to the wall. Some of them were so far gone that they didn’t even seem to notice the press of bodies around them. I grabbed the metal of the gate to rip it open and was thrown back from the force of the electricity flowing through it. I landed heavy on the ground with the wind knocked out of me and my left arm half in the balefire. Searing pain from the contact forced me back on my feet, burning all over with lack of oxygen as I gasped for breath between screams.

Did it leave a scar? Yes. Look here at my left hand. See how it looks like it was on fire? That is the best we could do with it after the Rite of Cleansing. I can barely open and close it properly anymore.

Moon-Eyes was at my side, pulling me away from the balefire. Jonathan had cut power to the generator powering the fence. I shrugged Moon-Eyes off and gingerly touched the gate again, expecting the pain of shock. Nothing hap­

pened, and I bared my teeth at the burning pain in my left arm as I wrenched the gate away from the rest of the enclosure. The sound of tearing metal drew the attention of the men like moths to a flame. They came running at me, and I moved out of the way. They came through the gate in a disoriented mass. As they realized they were not alone, they became violent and those behind starting pushing the ones in front. They writhed and seethed forward. Soon, the entire mass of people was surging towards us. We moved to let them get past, but they turned on us. A violent madness had taken them and they seemed completely unaware of their surroundings.

The gate acted as a funnel, and we were able to main­ tain a fighting advantage, but their numbers threatened to overwhelm us. My left hand was useless, and burned with the residual balefire glowing green against my coarse arm-hairs. In the beginning the size of the group worked against itself. They trampled each other and pushed those in the front into the balefire. Despite their inhuman strength, they were still brittle and fragile. We engaged the horde gingerly at first, afraid of killing them. They seemed immune to pain and were freakishly strong. Soon we were fighting for our lives. I made a painful change into Crinos form, as did my other pack members. The men were not trained fighters, but their strength more than made up for what they lacked in skill. Several of them grabbed at my legs and succeeded in pulling me to the ground. I kicked at them and heard bones crunching under the blow, but they still pulled at me. They realized that my left hand was useless and a few tried to attack me from that angle. I felt like prey cornered by a pack of wolves. The irony of my predicament was not lost on me. I taught them that despite pain, I could still crush them between my teeth, which only seemed to make them more determined. I could hear the sounds of my pack fighting all around me, and the screams of dying men filled the air. I had the scent of blood in my nose, and it drowned out all the other smells from the quarry, which was an unexpected blessing.

Weariness mixed with the searing pain in my left hand to make me falter. Stacey called out inspiring battle cries in an effort to keep us moving. But even that started to lose its meaning after a while. Someone grabbed my left hand with such force that I was knocked off balance. I roared in pain and my Rage took over me. I lifted him into the air with the arm he was clutching and flung him out over the balefire. He landed with a hiss and disappeared. I tore into another man that had come up behind the first and then snapped the arm of a third man in two. This change in attitude finally seemed to invoke fear into the few remaining men, who attempted to flee. Jonathan and Moon-Eyes cut them down before they could escape the crevice. Suddenly, the fighting was over. Relief flooded into me, along with the bleary fatigue that comes after a long

battle. We assessed the carnage, and killed the wounded and the dying out of mercy. We didn’t stay long after; the nearness to the balefire was taking its toll on us.

Once out of the quarry, the cool crisp night air felt almost clean and refreshing, despite the stench of sulfur. We regarded the place for a long moment, and then discussed a plan for burying the lake of balefire and cleansing the area. Speaks-With-Trees was certain that it would take more than his talents to cleanse the area, but burying the thing would be a start. I knew this would only be a temporary fix. Norilsk Nickel would more than likely dig right back into the land in search of mineral deposits, and Pentex would find another way to seek the corrupting presence of the Wyrm. But, it was the best option we had on such a short notice. I made a point of stopping by the Sept of Ashes to tell Nikolai of what we found there.

In the end, we packed all of the explosives from the mining equipment into the crevice and used the gasoline from the trucks as an accelerant to blow that portion of the quarry sky high. When the dust settled, more than half the quarry had caved in over the balefire and the dead mutants surrounding it. We performed Rites of Cleansing on the whole pack and set out the same night. None of us were eager to sleep in proximity to such a place, despite our exhaustion. We walked until sunrise and I called a halt. We collapsed to the frozen earth, warmed by the bright sunlight shining in a clear sky above.

Did you ever find out what really mutated those men? No, but we were fairly certain that it was their exposure to the balefire. We talked about slaughtering them in that pit. Such a large scale loss of humanity worried me, but I felt we had done the right thing by putting them out of their misery. Speaks-With-Trees suggested that if we had more time and more Garou, we might have been able to cleanse them all of their Wyrm taint, just as he had done with my arm. I agreed, but we didn’t have those things, and we had done the best for them we could have.

After the events in Norilsk, Jonathan decided that we should try to take out Norilsk Nickel to prevent them from ever reopening the balefire deposit we had found in Russia. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to know more about the enemy. It was no surprise that they were a subsidiary of Pentex. The company owned one other set of nickel mines in the southern part of Africa, in Botswana. None of us liked the thought of Pentex mining balefire again, and we decided to check it out.

We arrived at a caern near Francistown, watched over by the Shashe River Sept, predominated by a Wendigo presence. I was a little surprised to find them here, and

expected Red Talons to be running the place. Francistown is the second largest city in Botswana, completely modern and very wealthy. The place was a host to diamond miners, with three mines within 150 miles of the city.

The Wendigo were welcoming enough. They knew of Norilsk Nickel, and mentioned the mines to the east as well as a smelting plant they had been fighting the Botswana government to shut down ever since it was built a few years before. They managed to introduce strict emissions laws to prevent an outpouring of pollutants into the fragile river ecosystem. The effort resulted in less pollution than what we found in Russia by leaps and bounds. They did not know that Norilsk Nickel was a subsidiary of Pentex, but they were not surprised by the news. They noticed an increase in violent acts of greed from the locals ever since the company had arrived a few years before.

We told them the story about the Russian operation, which set the sept on edge. The Elders gave us permission to lead a team into the nickel mines and find out what Pentex was doing there. We set out the next morning with three of the sept’s defenders; Listens-Through-Winds, a Wendigo Ahroun lupus; Tsania, a Wendigo Galliard homid; and Anton, an Uktena Philodox homid. We rode in cars, since the mines were several miles away and we wanted to check both mines. They brought us first to the Phoenix mine, an open pit similar to the one in Norilsk. We explored the site, but it was clean of Wyrm taint, though we did spot a few of the Pentex trucks around the site.

The Selkirk mine was an underground mine about 10 miles away from Phoenix site. Tsania told us this mine had been out of commission since the early 2000s, due to ore depletion. I expected to find it empty and abandoned, but three dozen Norilsk Nickel trucks with Pentex logos were parked near the mine entrance. I knew that we could not sneak the eight of us into the mine without notice, at least not on this side of the gauntlet. Speaks-With-Trees was loath to bring us into the Umbra for fear that we might run into a Bane congregation like the one we found in Russia. Moon-Eyes and I offered to scout.

The mine entrance was unguarded, and we slipped in with relative ease. The mine was narrow and dark. Though our senses were dulled in Homid form, it was the easiest for traveling the tunnels. Both Moon-Eyes and I sensed for the Wyrm, but could detect no taint this close to the entrance. I was certain that we would find something deeper in. The mine twisted in on itself in a honeycomb pattern and delved deep into the earth. We traveled down all the lesser branches we passed, and followed them until we either hit the main thoroughfare or a dead end. Evidence of fresh mining indicated that we were getting close to the end of our route. So far we sensed nothing. We could hear men’s voices and the sound of hammer

and pick echoing up to us from further down in the mine.

“I don’t think we are going to find anything by going down there with them. I think this mine might be clean.” Moon-Eyes whispered to me.

I nodded once and we returned to the group. They told us that while we were in the mine, three of the trucks left carrying crews of men geared for mining. We hadn’t passed anyone in the mine, but the honeycomb formation easily hid movements in and out. I asked if they saw which direction the trucks went, and they pointed out west.

“Let’s follow them, maybe they will lead us to the real reason Pentex is here. I doubt they would be in this country for so long and against such resistance if there wasn’t something making it worth it.” I said.

“I agree. The only thing to the west of here that Pentex might be interested in is the diamond mines.” Anton told us.

“The diamonds cause corruption in this land. It spreads like a plague to consume the men.” Listens-Through-Winds said. “I have fought long against greed and corruption because of those mines. The arrival of Norilsk Nickel has made it worse.”

“I can see how Pentex would be interested in that kind of place. But why purchase the nickel mines when they could just buy the diamond mines instead?” I responded.

“Because the diamond mines are owned by the gov­ ernment of Botswana. As one of their largest sources of income, I can’t see them being persuaded to sell, even by Pentex.” Tsania said.

“So, the nickel mines give them a reason to be here. But how do they profit in that way? And what is so inter­ esting in the Selkirk mine?” Stacey asked.

Jonathan chimed in. “They still profit. Look at how the Shasha River Sept has been fighting to get rid of the nickel smelter. I bet it’s some kind of diversion to draw attention away from the real reason they’re here.”

“Then let’s go follow those trucks.” I told them, and started back towards the cars.

I am an excellent tracker, but I’ve never gotten the hang of tracking vehicles. Jonathan is excellent at using Weaver magic to find electronics, which made following the trucks easy. We drove for nearly two hours to the outskirts of a small town called Letlhakane. From there we could see the giant open pit of the diamond mine. The Norilsk Nickel trucks were parked some distance from the mine, the crew missing from sight. We parked and trekked up to the side of the mine pit. Crews were working in the mine with large bulldozers and dump trucks filled with rocks. I could feel an overwhelming sense of the Wyrm. Whatever was down in that mine was worse than the balefire we found in Russia. My pack and I gave each other knowing looks. The other Garou traveling with us picked up on the grave tension between us.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Anton asked. “Yes.” I said simply. “Deidra, we should go back to the sept and inform the Elders of what we have found.” He addressed me directly.

“And what have we found?” I asked simply. Anton was their alpha, if I could convince him to stay, then I wouldn’t have any problems from the rest.

“The Wyrm, and Pentex, is clearly involved.” He pulled himself up to face me. I could tell he was stubborn, and I’m sure he had a lot of prejudices about taking orders from a Get of Fenris.

“We do not know anything yet. We have no idea what this is. The first thing the sept is going to want to do is send a scouting team to find out. So, let’s cut the time in the middle and scout now.” I stared him in the eye, putting as much authority and anger into that stare as I could muster. I’ll give him some credit; he lasted for a good thirty seconds before he backed down and simply nodded his assent. The other two nodded as well, and we were decided.

We again waited for the cover of night to enter the pit. For the rest of the day, we watched the miners for signs of the Norilsk Nickel crew, but could not determine where they had gone. Moon-Eyes noticed a section of the mine that people avoided completely. This was the first place we checked on once we entered the mine. The area was clear of rubble and debris and looked as though the miners hadn’t touched it for a while. A barricade indicating danger covered a hole near the wall on that side. I pulled the metal stand out of the way and walked into the cave entrance. It was large enough for one of the trucks to drive into, and it was cut out of the stone by hand. The floor was relatively clean, and we could see evidence that despite the warning signs, it had been entered recently.

The air grew stagnant and had a sulfurous tang as we traveled deep into the earth. The sense of the Wyrm felt stronger here, and we knew we were on the right track. We walked for almost an hour in the dark, always going deeper, before Listens-Through-Winds stopped us and pressed his body against the wall. We all stopped and strained to hear what his superior wolf ears had picked up. Faints sounds drifted up to us, of voices and boots on the ground. Someone was coming up the shaft towards us. We pressed against the cave walls, attempting to blend seamlessly into the shadows. A light preceded them, and two men wearing Pentex uniforms walked past us, too busy chatting to notice the group of Garou pressed to the walls. As they passed, Stacey reached out and grabbed one by the shoulder, swung him around and punched him so hard in the face that blood erupted from his nose as he fell to the ground. The other man whirled just in time for Listens-Through-Winds to bite his leg and tear out his hamstring. He fell to the ground whimpering and crying. I pulled Listens-Through-Winds back before he could rip out his throat. I shook my head once and the lupus backed off. Stacey kicked the uniformed man in the head and knocked him unconscious.

“Grab the light, let’s go.” I told them and started down the tunnel at a run. The end of the tunnel wasn’t far, and I stopped just before I would have run straight into a deep black hole. Thankfully, flimsy wooden boards served as a fence to prevent just that. Three more men were standing on the far edge of the hole and looked up at me with startled expressions. I didn’t stop to think and instead ran at them and punched the nearest one in the jaw. One of them was faster than the others and had a gun pointed at me.

“Stop or I’ll shoot.” He cried at me, his hand shaking. I ignored him and hit his friend again. The sound of a gunshot echoed through the chamber. When I looked up, I saw that Jonathan had shot the gun wielding man. Stacey had wrestled the third to the ground.

I pulled the one I had been hitting to my face by his shirt front. “What are you doing down here?” I growled at him. He sputtered, blood and spittle splashing on my face. I put him down and wiped it away. “I said talk.”

“We are watching the hole.” He said, his voice lisping through broken teeth.

“Watching it for what?” He started to laugh which devolved into a coughing fit. He didn’t say anything more.

As I reached down to hit him again, Moon-Eyes grabbed my shoulder and pulled me away from him. I turned to ask him what he was thinking and I heard a dry crackling noise coming from deep within the chasm. The rest of the Garou were backing away from the pit, and some had started changing to Crinos form. I let Moon-Eyes pull me away from the hole and willed the change as well. Listens-Through-Winds changed to Hispo form and bared his teeth in a snarl. Jonathan pulled out a large gun — I wondered where he kept the thing. Stacey had unstrapped her ancestral labrys from its harness on her back.

Anticipation and tension filled the space and made my heart beat faster in my chest. Four creatures, about the size of large dogs and made entirely of gemstone climbed out of the hole. They had shards of metal embedded in their skin, and large slits at the front of their heads filled with sharp rows of metal teeth. As they climbed, we could see the gemstone was armor plating over thin ephemeral bodies. They crested the edge of the pit and caught sight of us then emitted an earsplitting screeching sound. Jon­ athan unloaded four shots into the one nearest him and it fell back into the pit with a spray of ichor. The rest of them sprang forward to attack.

Stacey and I cornered one and took turns snapping and swiping at it to divert its attention. They were slow but strong, and neither of us wanted to find out what happened when you got bit. Listens-Through-Winds pounced on the back of one of them and worried at the

space between its head and its body. He eventually worked his way between the armored plates and was able to snap its neck. I followed suit and leapt on the back of the one Stacey and I were fighting. Its diamond armor was near impenetrable, but my sharpened claws were able to gouge into it and chunks of stone went flying. It reared back to shake me, and revealed a soft underbelly. Stacey took the opportunity to cut into the creature with her labrys and it fell under my weight. I looked around to see that Moon-Eyes, Anton, and Tsania felled the third one.

Jonathan had his gun pointed down the hole and was firing shots at something that had yet to emerge. I could hear the ping of the shots hitting something solid below. A wide sliver of diamond armor crested the hole followed by another and two more before I realized that it was a large hand of a creature similar in shape to the smaller ones that had come up before. The thing’s hand indicated it should be ten times their size, but I swear it was bigger. It barely fit through the edges of the hole as it came crashing out and filling the chamber.

“That.” The forgotten miner gasped through choking laughs.

What was it? Based on the reports from the sept, it was a Greed Bane. More than likely it had been sealed in the earth years before, and the mining operation had inadvertently uncovered it. I’m guessing it spent the years forming the gemstone shell around itself as armor for just such an occasion. Pentex more than likely heard about it and came to try to harness its power.

I fell back into the tunnel with Jonathan as he con­ tinued to shoot at the creature with little effect. The top of the chamber was high, more than likely large enough for the creature to emerge totally from the pit, but the tunnel wasn’t quite big enough by my estimation. I called to my pack to join me in the tunnel in hope of luring the thing all the way out of the pit and exposing its underside. They followed my order, but the creature did not emerge any further. It nearly filled the entire chamber, but I knew we were only seeing about half of it. Anton and Tsania fell back as well, but Listens-Through-Winds continued snapping and biting at the thing, tenacious as hell. I reentered the room and took up a flanking position and started slashing at the creature with my claws. The stone chipped away, but we didn’t seem to be hurting or slowing the creature at all. I remembered how Listens-Through-Winds snapped the neck of one of the smaller creatures earlier. The next time the creature came close enough, I sank my claw into its stony hide and latched on. I swung myself up and started climbing, hand over hand.

The other Garou saw what I was doing and rushed into the room to divert the Bane’s attention. I crested its back and thrust my claws into the spot between its head and body and started to dig. The creature reared back and started whipping around, and I nearly flew off. Then it extended to its full height and crushed me against the chamber ceiling. I flattened myself across its back to reduce the force of the blow, but it started to grind me back and forth between against the ceiling. I could feel my bones bending under the pressure, and I was sure I had lost three layers of skin. The Garou on the ground

started attacking its vulnerable underbelly, forcing it to stop its assault on me. It doubled over and I was able to recover my grip on its neck. I started digging in again. This time I worked fast and furious and held on tight as it swung me back and forth. I cleared away the armored carapace and plunged my claws deep into its neck, my arms disappearing in reddish grey flesh. I felt a resistance and pushed harder until I felt my claws snap past what­ ever was there. It instantly stopped moving and crashed down sliding back into the chasm with me on its back. I pulled my arms out of the thing, but it was falling faster than I could move. I had just freed myself as I was falling past the wooden barriers and I leapt from the creature’s back. I was off by only a foot, but it was enough to make the difference. Anton reached out and grabbed my hand as I hurdled past. Tsania was holding onto him and I swung hard into the side of the pit wall. Despite having the breath knocked out of me, I scrambled up and over the side of the pit.

I stood panting next to Anton as the other Garou took stock of the situation. The Pentex workers had been trampled in the fighting. Speaks-With-Trees checked us over for injuries and helped us heal. He also performed a Rite of Cleansing on the area and on me again, just in case.

We returned to the Shasha River Sept victorious, and Tsania sang our deeds to the sept in a moot called in our honor.

Okay, that’s it for tonight. I think you have a better understand of how the Wyrm works across the world?

Is that is? There isn’t any more? There is more, but it will have to wait for another time. I think we’ve talked enough for one night.