Ney,Frothy,Rumar

14

"I've heard of Black Tarn," Elton says. "I heard she did great things, once, when Chemikon tried to drive that pipeline through your land."

Apparently she did. You wouldn't know. Seeing your hesitation, Elton buys you a taco from the dirtiest taco truck you've ever seen, and says, "A good theurge learns to adapt to the spirits he finds himself among. But so does a Garou of any auspice. Come with me."

The first thing you notice is that Elton's eyes move from one apparently empty point in space to another, as if he's perceiving the spirit world as clearly as you perceive the graffitied streets and parked cars.

"The barrier between worlds is thin here," Elton says. "The Broad Brook Garou made it that way, and made rites to remain in close contact with their spirit allies. What rites have you learned, Thunderhoof?"

"When I was closer to Beaver, I could sort of move into the Umbra."

"Rites? Is it a rite when I turn into a wolf and start biting?"

"Nothing really, but I'm eager to learn!"

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"I do appreciate your enthusiasm for all things mayhem-related, Thunderhoof," Elton says. "But no. I mean like stepping into the Umbra, binding a spirit to a talisman…"

"No and no," you say.

"Well, at least you can read," Elton says. "And fortunately for you, Katherine and I rewrote the old Broad Brook rite to detect the local spirits. It used to require an elaborate ritual. Now, only a few gestures are necessary."

He hands you a double-sided piece of paper with diagrams that at first look like dance steps.

"You can use a knife, a claw, really anything," the Shadow Lord says. "Our elders did all the hard work, hundreds of years ago: you're just flipping a light switch."

Oh, you get it: they're movements of a blade. You're sort of "parting" the local space, to peer into the Umbra. It won't work outside Broad Brook, but it'll let you interact with the spirits here. It'll take you a few minutes to read it, a few hours to memorize it.

"But you didn't use this," you say. Elton's eyes still sometimes dart to something you can't see. And he's not holding a knife.

"Owl's Gift," the Shadow Lord says. "If she lives anywhere, she lives in the woods not far from here. We'll need to find Nin, eventually. And help her. But that's for later. What I need to explain is that she isn't just in the woods. She's nearly everywhere: with me, with other Garou who are blessed with her seeing-Gift, and everywhere in the spirit world. In other lands, other spirits grant a Gift like hers: spiders, wolves, eagles. Spirits grant Gifts, but it is the connection between your nature and the spirit's that create a Gift."

"My old pack always warned me how dangerous spirits could be."

"But it's not just that, right? It's also what I've done. My legend, Clay called it."

"My nature? Like when I complained about Black Tarn?" I feel a bit bad for impugning her and Beaver.

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Elton smiles and says, "You have a contemplative and spiritual nature, Thunderhoof. That's not bad for a Garou, though sometimes you really will need to rip someone in half."

You shrug. You can kill if you must.

Elton continues: "If you choose to hone that spiritual clarity, spirits of mystery and peace will be attracted to you. Of course, on the other hand, you may struggle to compact with more warlike spirits. And of course, not all spirits will accept you. They must follow their natures, too, and they're bound by laws to serve Garou only of certain auspices or tribes. And in addition to that, well, you have to impress them."

"'Make your legend,'" you mutter, reciting Clay's words.

"An opportunity denied you by your old pack," Elton says, with sudden anger. "Glory, Honor, Wisdom: the truths around which we live, that shape our existence as Garou." His fingers twitch, writing Garou glyphs in the air almost faster than you can see. "They're solid things to us, as real as gravity. That is what I think your pack failed to impress upon you. These are what we offer the spirits: our legends. But our accomplishments are not consumed in earning a Gift. They are given meaning. And as the spirits feed, they grow strong. Look at this ruined land." He can see what you cannot, but you can feel the deep wounds in the dirty streets, something worse than mere poverty.

"Can I speak to the spirits without joining a tribe?" I don't want to overstep my authority.

"Will I have to perform services to earn the spirits' Gifts?" I don't want to run errands every night.

"Can I ask how many Gifts you have?"

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"Of course!" Elton says, perhaps smiling at the mental image of you hauling water for some demanding spirit. "Chiminage is always necessary."

"Chiminage?"

"That's the term I learned," Elton says. "I don't think anyone in the Americas still uses it. In Germany—you know, the clocks, all very efficient!—we learned to organize our obligations to the spirits around nights of Chiminage: fixed spans of service. No more and no less, because the spirits will take more if they can. Don't let them. Always ask them, 'how many nights of chiminage for this Gift?' We've made sure they have to answer truthfully. Never give them more: if you do, they really will feed off your legend, stealing your spiritual power and giving nothing back."

You finish your taco. Great Gaia, that's an excellent taco. And when you look up, you think you see a shifting light in the filth of an alley catches your eye. Was it a rat, in that alley? Or the echo of a rat?

"It's like I can almost see the spirits here."

"Is what you're saying literally true, that I can heal this land by helping the spirits?"

"What about joining a tribe?"

"Do Garou distort their beliefs to gain access to Gifts?"

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