Rules

The Wyrm cannot force any living creature to swear loyalty to it. Even Black Spiral Dancers, Buzzards, Skull Pigs, and other Changing Breeds who belong to the Wyrm ultimately do so by choice. Of course, this choice may not be entirely free, and such choices can almost never be undone. Some creatures grow up with the Wyrm whispering to them in the back of their minds, surrounded by mentors or parents who use some combination of threats, brutality, and temptation to encourage them to embrace corruption. Ultimately, however, each individual must make his or her choice.

For many, the choice is an exceptionally final one. Garou who dance the Black Spiral, Skull Pigs who devour Wyrm-tainted bones, and Rokea who willingly accept balefire into their bodies and minds become not merely servants of the Wyrm, but living avatars of corruption. No force short of death can undo such a drastic and final choice. Even thinking of going against the Wyrm’s desires requires a great effort. Rejecting the Wyrm would kill them. Other members of the Changing Breeds who fall to the Wyrm retain slightly more of their free will, but their choice is still brutally final.

The few members of tainted groups like the Scabs or Black Spiral Dancers who reject the Wyrm usually do not survive long. Their teachers and fellows view refusing to accept the Wyrm as a betrayal punishable by death. Most take the easy and final escape of suicide, but a very few flee from their own kind. These creatures live lonely lives, battling with insanity and fearing discovery by either the Changing Breeds or agents of the Wyrm. A handful find ways to spy upon the Wyrm’s other minions and pass messages to members of the Changing Breeds, but other shapeshifters will never embrace or even trust them. These rebels have not fallen to the Wyrm, but their upbringing still taints their bodies and minds sufficiently that none of the Gaian Fera will ever accept them. Most eventually either kill themselves, or give into the corruption in their blood.

Powers: Basic Chulorviah powers, Immunity to the

Delirium. All Chulorvian elders are capable of Mindspeak-style communication with other Kraken-Born from up to 500 miles away. Finally, each elder possesses a unique array of Gifts chosen by the Storyteller, generally between five and 15.

Becoming an agent of the Wyrm is sometimes the result of a swift and hideous choice, but more often, the path to corruption is far slower and more complex. The Wyrm can warp the minds and bodies of anything that it comes into contact with. Contact with some of the most potent of the Wyrm’s toxins will taint any who manage to survive. Others spend too long in a Wyrm Caern, a Hellhole, or in Malfeas itself and become physically or mentally tainted; coming too far under the influence of an Urge Wyrm is a sure-fire route to mental taint. A shapeshifter or occultist might attract the attention of a powerful Bane, or perhaps even one of the Maeljin Incarna, and find that it has formed a connection to her mind through which it can poison her thoughts. Some attract attention by fighting against Wyrmspawn, others because they are powerful or important individuals who demonstrate a vice or weakness that the Wyrm can exploit.

Physical Taints

The Wyrm corrupts everything it touches, including the bodies of its victims. These physical transformations and sickness can include everything from deformities like those common to metis Garou to wounds that refuse to heal and which even a werewolf’s regeneration cannot repair. Such transformations cause victims pain and disgust at the fact that their body now contains visible and often hideous traces of the Wyrm. Someone afflicted with this sort of taint owes no allegiance to the Wyrm, and it cannot affect him in any way, except by the problems his affliction causes him. Minions of the Wyrm can sense these tainted individuals, and they show up as Wyrm-tainted to Garou using Sense Wyrm to investigate the sickness or deformity.

Afflicted with hairlessness, a withered limb, masses of writhing warts or something even more disturbing, the victims of these problems often search for cures and solutions. However removing deeply embedded physical traces of the Wyrm is exceptionally difficult. While certain spirits and rites have the power to cure completely Wyrm afflictions, finding such cures takes a great deal

of time and effort. The Wyrm can offer a cure, either sending a Bane or Black Spiral Dancer, or appearing in the victim’s dreams. This cure might fade over time, or cure only part of a larger affliction. In either case, only continued service to the Wyrm can cure a physical deformity permanently, and even then, only as long as the heads of the Hydra find benefit in doing so.

Sometimes exposure to especially strong manifestations of the Wyrm provides a conduit into the mind of an individual, allowing one of the Urge Wyrms to corrupt her thoughts and dreams. She can also attract an Urge Wyrm’s attention by giving in to excesses of a particular emotion, receiving taint simply because she gives in to her vices one time too often.

Mental Taints

Urge Wyrms cannot forcibly corrupt someone, but they are insidious and persistent. The victim hears an aspect of the Wyrm whispering advice and commentary in the back of her mind. In addition to being an uncomfortable and confusing experience, Urge Wyrms seek out individuals who have personalities they can most easily influence. Someone inclined to fear would most likely be contacted by Foebok, just as a greedy individual would hear Vorus in his head.

In return for a cure or because of ceaseless whispering by an Urge Wyrm, sometimes one of the Changing Breeds signs on the metaphorical dotted line and swears allegiance to the Wyrm. That sort of clean and final choice is relatively rare. In cases like the Balefire Sharks, where the choice is to serve the Wyrm or die, a few of the Changing Breeds value life more than loyalty and honor, but most are unwilling to so obviously betray everything they believe in. The Wyrm can however be both subtle and patient. In return for curing an affliction, the Wyrm may ask an individual to perform some small service. A bane may ask someone to arrange to have a captured Black Spiral Dancer escape before she can be questioned and killed, or make a call to warn a Pentex employee of a planned raid on one of the company’s facilities. Often, this task is both easy and essentially free of risk. If she performs the task, she had aided the Wyrm, but just as importantly, she has started on the path of corruption.

The Path of Corruption

When corrupting someone who suffers from a physical taint, an agent of the Wyrm approaches the target and offers a cure, for a price. If the individual performs the first task, in short order there’s a second, usually just as risk free but perhaps a bit more difficult and involved. In return, the dream voice, Bane, or Black Spiral Dancer cures some of the less obvious but lingering symptoms of the character’s affliction. Each task comes with a promised reward, but the tasks become more difficult and dangerous as time goes on. If the victim’s allies ever discover his betrayal, the Wyrm’s agents will offer to help the victim escape without asking anything in return — this time. After a while, the tasks requested bring nothing in return beyond not informing the character’s pack or other allies of what he has done. Somewhere in the midst of performing these “small favors,” the individual performing them belongs to the Wyrm, but the exact point where this happens may not be obvious except in retrospect, which is exactly the way agents of the Wyrm prefer it.