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An Alternative Cosmology for Werewolf: the Apocalypse

by Joel GAzis-SAx White Wolf's Book of the Wyrm describes a world in which the Weaver has gone mad and the Wyrm has become evil. In previous remarks, I have made it clear that I am unhappy with the Werewolf gaming system for its promotion of a completely unsympathetic "enemy". The following cosmology is an attempt to rectify that situation while, at the same time, providing a playable framework for conflict.

This puts them in opposition to both creatures of the Wyld and of the Weaver. They *need* the toxic waste dumps to stay alive. Plus, like Frankenstein's monster, they are lonely. They want to create more of their own kind (for each is a unique mutation). They have penetrated many of the industries responsible for toxic pollution and labor to increase the domains of the world in which they might live. They are opposed to the Wyld because they cannot survive and reproduce under the conditions of the Wyld. They may be at odds with the Weaver when servants of the Weaver find the toxic waste sites a threat to their own survival.

Meanwhile, the Weaver is still busy chopping down rainforests and introducing order into the Wyld. As my wife and I have thought about this, we realized that a third order of lycanthropes might exist. These are servants of the Weaver. These species are The strongest contribution that White Wolf has made in its represented by were-creatures which interbreed with domestic Storyteller system of games is to break down the barrier between "us and the monsters". The depiction of the Black Spiral Dancers in animals such as dogs. Their willpower is low and they are easily Book of the Wyrm has bothered me as a deviation from this gaming dominated. They do not rage as readily as the Garou and Black world view. Where Vampire goes to great lengths to include nearly Spiral Dancers. They are more like the humans than their cousins of the Wyld and the Wyrm. all of the Vampiric experience, Werewolf leaves the "us vs. them" mentality unquestioned and, I think, ends up being just another This tripartite conflict, I think, satisfies two objectives: first, it "hack and slay" roleplaying game despite earnest efforts to creates a roleplaying system in which there's not just "good guys incorporate and show respect for cultural, sexual, and other and bad guys". Each group has its own objectives which are differences. understandable in the context of their creation and their need for survival. The Garou need the Wyld. The Black Spirals and Formori The one thing that I learned from my three-month long sojourn in former Yugoslavia last summer at the height of the ethnic cleansing need toxic waste dumps. The children of the Weaver need the comforts of organized city life. (Who will make their dogfood if was that everybody you talk to has traceable reasons for doing some pretty horrible things. The Serbs are not, for example, simply they don't have them?) Second, these divergent interests lead to wild-eyed killers -- they have a culture, set of values, and interests inevitable conflict. Toxic waste poses a threat to both the Wyld and which have led them to behave in sometimes just, sometimes unjust the Weaver because it makes certain parts of the environment uninhabitable. Both wolves and domestic dogs die in the toxic ways. This is true of all peoples. wastes. Humans perish, too. The Weaver is always trying to push It occurred to me that what WW:tA could stand was an appreciation the toxic waste sites into the Wyld, away from its servant of this kind of reality. The Black Spiral Dancers, I thought to populations, and the Wyld, with servants of its own, resists. The myself, are not just helpless pawns of the Wyrm (though the Garou Black Spirals and Fomori struggle to survive. Like Mary Shelley's may understandably see them so.). They may have minds and Creature, they find themselves torn between a desire for reprieve feelings which bear examination and our understanding. from their loneliness and their anger towards a world which rejects them for what they are. There will be no easy answers in this In my new cosmology, I see the three corners of the existential triad conflict. remaining intact with some changes in focus. The interests of the Garou would, in this cosmology, remain largely the same. They What this gives us, among other things, are playable Black Spirals seek to protect the Wyld. The Weaver opposes this position as it and Formori. Suddenly, they are not just "evil" (though you may builds still more cities and factories. The critical difference is that still dislike what they are and what they do): they have reasons and the Wyrm is still functioning to keep the balance. But something has ethics of their own. I believe that at the heart of the White Wolf happened which both the Wyld and the Weaver find stressful. Storyteller system is an attemt to incorporate the lessons of cultural relativism. As WWt:A presently stands, it fails to live up to this The Weaver has succeeded in upsetting the balance. Cities grow out standard. The Black Spirals are just too alien, too evil, to take of control. Their peripheries become polluted. The Wyld retreats. seriously in any way other than as targets for murder. Black Spirals The Wyrm has sought to compensate for this. It has seen that the who are torn between their own desires for preservation and their polluted areas are unreclaimable and so it has reasoned that to fury at the spirits of the Wyld and the Weaver make, I think, more reestablish the balance, it must create a new Wyld, one which can interesting opponents than the straw men presented in the Book of survive in the barren patches of land and sea which are the the Wyrm. As it stands now, WW:tA amounts to little more than a byproducts of the Weaver's activities. The Black Shadow Dancers comic book: I believe that with a cosmology like the one I have and Formori are the avatars of this new Nature. Where toxic wastes proposed, it can rise to the level of great, great roleplaying kill creatures of the Wyld and the Weaver alike, these new experience. creatures of the Wyrm thrive in the chemical waste dumps.

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7/21/2012 4:29 AM