By Diane Keating (unshetek@best.com)
But the Sept Warder wasn't there. Nobody was there -- living, anyway. The place looked like a bomb hit it, which is exactly what happened.
As the pack chased around the caern, surveying the wreckage and trying not to look down when their feet stepped into a soft, warm, slimy spot that went Squish, they found graffiti in both human scrawl and Garou -- yes, Garou, not Pictish -- glyphs. The scrawl said, "APL was here," "APL is always watching," "Meat is Murder," "Never Again" and various obscenities. The glyphs said, "You should be ashamed of yourselves."
The pack seer was the first to recover from the shock. She said, "You remember those guys that Strong-as-a-Tree and Eyes-of-the-Pillar were talking about bringing up here to see about an alliance? Those guys who saved them from DNA and have been sinking Endron ships off the coast?"
It made no sense. Why would a group of radical environmentalists, who called themselves the "Animal Protection League," suddenly turn their destructive judgement on a caern and its sept along with it?
The pack shuddered. It was said that these guys had enough firepower to have the human authorities scared enough to declare them, collectively, on the top ten list of public enemies. They couldn't turn to them...no...the authorities cannot hear about this...
But what could a pack of Fostern do against professional arsonists and snipers?
Seeing a chance to nurture a little muscle to back up their demands for reform, a Coalition of environmental and animal rights groups took the loose confederation under their wing, providing safehouses, legal counsel, training and materials. The APL however, had more than its share of seriously deranged and unstable individuals under its banner and they put pressure on their patrons to get them more sophisticated equipment and more and better supplies for their raids. C4 and SMGs don't come cheap, and the Coalition was forced to pressure their membership for more money for a "special fund," which was laundered through international banks.
With "better" materiel, the APL started becoming more vicious and pushed the envelope of their clandestine operation. One of their raids actually killed several workers and one of their own, and the manhunt was on. Maintaining safehouses and paying for ruthless lawyers to get their "hit squad" off, the Coalition's funds grew stretched beyond even their considerable means.
Then the Garou Nation stepped in.
Several more militant Septs offered sanctuary to the fugitives and even a few Garou joined the APL. One of these was a Ronin called "Karen," a granite-eyed Theurge with flaming red hair.
"Karen" quickly rose to the top and took control of the APL's operations. Soon enough, APL was back on track with supernatural might in addition to their cunning and ruthless tactics. Attacks were so sudden, swift and vicious that the APL didn't need paranoia-inducing graffiti to get their message home: they didn't wield paranoia, they became the source of it.
The Urge Wyrms of Corruption and Greed had already rooted themselves in the Coalition and spread to the APL soon after they were annexed, themselves already infected by the Urge Wyrms of Hate and Frustration. Seeing its brethren doing so well, Foebok, the Urge Wyrm of Fear, decided to join them. Together, the Banes started whispering in the ears of the leaders of both the Coalition and APL - including "Karen."
"The Bete are exploiting animals," they whispered. "You've seen it yourself -- Red Talons, Silver Fangs, Black Spiral Dancers, Black Furies and Silent Striders are keeping whole wolf packs to themselves and driving them like cattle to impregnate by rape. Just so they can stall the inevitable. The Garou Nation will die, there's nothing they can do about it. The Garou treat the wolves like whores and gigolos in a brothel -- liberate the wolves -- at all costs."
Many Garou didn't join the Animal Protection League. Their reasons were their own but one unfailingly recurring reason was that many of the more pacifist tribes and individuals had a dislike for the bombs that had become APL's stock and trade. They were vindicated when reports came back that APL Garou were strafing and burning to the ground Lupus-held caerns and especially ones that harboured breeding packs. There were also reports of APL Garou falling into Beast-of-War Frenzies during their raids, again and again; more shocking still, the APL Garou were beginning to speak those frenzies in glowing and proud terms. Reports on the local media of "secret wolf-breeding compounds," littered with out-of-context soundbites from interviews gleaned from Sept members fueled the coffers of the "Wolf Liberation Project" of the Coalition and the APL. Many Garou were beginning to be seduced by the proselytizing and if they didn't give lip service to the APL outright, they at least said, "Well, you can't argue with success..." And the APL were quite successful...
Between sheer viciousness and the creeping seed of desperation, "Karen" and her band of outlaws found themselves tolerated if not lauded. More Garou poured into the APL out of peer pressure, and their raids, philosophy and politics became more vicious, festering in the soupy hate of the Beast-of-War.
Meanwhile rumours abounded surrounding "Karen." It was whispered that she was Ronin because she'd been a Lost Cub, and that she was a Lost Cub because her tribe would not claim her. Emphasis on "would not."
Attributes: STR 3/5/7/6/4, DEX 2/2/3/5/5. STA 3/5/6/6/6; CHA 4, MAN 3, APP 2/1/0/2/2; PER 2, INT 4, WITS 5
Abilities: Alertness 5, Brawl 4, Dodge 3, Expression 5, Primal-Urge 4, Subterfuge 4; Animal Ken 5, Drive 3, Firearms 5, Demolitions 3, Melee 4, Leadership 5, Stealth 3, Survival 4; Computer 4, Enigmas 2, Law 3, Medicine 2, Occult 3, Rituals 4, Science 3
Backgrounds: Allies 5, Resources 3, Rites 3
Rage: 4
Gnosis: 7
Willpower: 5
Corruption: 4
Gifts: (!) Smell of Man, Persuasion, Eyes of the Hunter, Spirit Speech; (2) Jam Technology, Name the Spirit, Command Spirit, Axis Mundi, Buffalo Run, Staredown,Vengeance of the Scorned; (3) Elude the Posse, Pulse of the Invisible, Disquiet, Exorcism.
Rites: Questing Stone, Talisman Dedication, Spirit Awakening, Summoning, Voice of the Jackal, Stone of Scorn. Rite of Wounding, The Great Hunt, Breath of Gaia.
Fetishes: "Karen" will have any number of talens on her at all times. Her favoured talens for APL strikes are Slaggers, Popcorn, pinon nuts charged with Vengeance of the Scorned, awakened C4, and other nasty "anti-personnel" type surprises.
Flaws: Hatred (of everyone in general), Intolerance (of biology), Phobia (3 pt.: Demophobia), Twisted Upbringing.
Merits: Time Sense, Daredevil, Berserker, Venus Midsky.
Roleplaying notes: "Karen" is a crusader in the first degree. She is ruthless, purposeful, intelligent and a master bully. Inside, she is a very confused, cruel, hateful individual that any decent-minded, good-hearted person wouldn't hesitate to euthanize out of general principles, but who has made herself "too important" to kill. She will not hesitate to cajole, shame, browbeat or otherwise manipulate as many people as possible into doing as she says. She makes up for her outlaw status and borderline-Wyrmy tactics by proselytizing and propaganda. Handle any opposition with a snide, cutting remark, a flippant platitude, a sharp riposte.
Quote: "I strike at you for the simple crime of existing. Even the most devout vegan slaughters billions of microorganisms every day, and by displacement prevents the births of thousands upon thousands of macroorganisms. Gaia has abandoned every one of us - it isn't rocket science to figure that out. And even though the old bitch has turned her back on us, doesn't mean we can't make a difference with our own glorious, compassionate deaths! Onward -- for Gaia!"
Background: "Karen's" mother had been bitten by a Red Talon métis with the Gift: Awaken the Beast. She'd always believed herself to be a werewolf, and identified strongly with the tribe of the wolf that bit her. Somehow, unthinkable as it sounded, she entered a Red Talon forest and managed to find a wolf to mate with.
"Karen's" father was the scapegoat of a Red Talon pack, desperately desirous to mate with one of the females who were coming into season but daring not for fear of being ripped to shreds by the pack. When he came across the woman in a wolf pelt, crawling about and flirting with him so fetchingly, he couldn't help himself -- and thus was conceived the first Homid Red Talon in remembered history.
Far from the forest amongst the farmlands along the Vermont/New Hampshire border, the woman bore her girl-child and raised her to be cunning and vicious. Old books on lycanthropy and woodcraft replaced the Bible that all her neighbours kept in their houses. "Karen" also had to live with the day-to-day reality of farm life, which meant, more often than not, killing animals. The little girl rebelled, as they will, and both she and her mother went vegan, living off their crops -- "Karen" by choice, her mother by force.
Raised away from other children, Karen's dominant instincts came to the fore early and she became quite anti-social. Things got worse after her Firsting - she revelled in her "new" powers and took to bullying her mother even more. Finally, after learning from an errant wolf spirit that the Red Talons had been her tribe and they sought the ultimate genocide of the human race, "Karen" attacked her mother one last time with lethal intensity, and abandoned the farm of her upbringing for the forest.
The Talon pack she took up with instantly recognized her for what she was and called a Hunt. Somehow "Karen" eluded her pursuers and was forced to become a Ronin. But she never gave up her bullying instincts, militaristic tendencies, and the Red Talon imperative: Liberate Gaia. Genocide to Humanity.
The APL is just another step in that direction for her.
Outcasts and misfits have a rough life in general but it's even worse if you are viewed by your own people as an aberration. "Karen's" tribe despises her even more than other tribes would despise a Pale One, for the simple act of her birth and existence. Did she not surround herself with any number of other Garou, including not a few Get of Fenris and Wendigo, they'd have surely hunted her down and slain her by now.
Raised alone with an insane mother, in an insular community, and told that she was a waste of skin by her own people, "Karen's" hatred festered and boiled out a good deal of her heart - ideal conditions for the Wyrm to gain a foothold...
A very few daresome and vindictive Garou whisper of "Karen of the Ronin-ikthya" but never where she or her supporters and followers would hear, for they are all infected with her madness.