Get Your Motor Running [Werewolf: The Forsaken]

Last time, I gave you an overview of the contents of The Pack, and the crowd went wild. As well you might, as this book’s going to be amazeballs.

Yeah, I went there.

I do have a Lodge for you, but I’m going to make you hold on just a little more. Before we get to it, let’s talk some about what a supplement is. That’s obvious, right? It’s in the name. The material’s supplementary to the core book, something you can add to the main work to bring out more of the flavour of certain parts. Some folks like to have all the flavour, all of the time, and add in all of the supplements. Other people, however, want to mix in only one or two extras. They want a kick of paprika, but don’t need the tumeric or cumin; they like the pickle on the burger but think the onion rings and bacon are overkill.

I’m drifting. Then again, shouldn’t you expect a food metaphor from someone who wrote a cookbook?

Anyway. What I’m trying to get at is a point that I picked up working with Ethan on early Werewolf and then had beaten into me (in the good way) by Matt McFarland.

Every supplement needs to work for people who only have the corebook.

Sometimes that’s hard, because what’s in one supplement or another should logically reference something else. Sometimes, that’s worth a small call-out. Other times, supplements only work with others; while you can mix them in with just the base it won’t bring out the same depth of flavour. But these last aren’t something we do with the Chronicles of Darkness. Each supplement stands alone; each picks a part of the game and shines a spotlight on it.

That’s what we’re doing with The Pack. It’s the book you want when you want your games to have a greater focus on the pack as a thematic element.

Now, that does raise the question: What happens when we introduce a system in one supplement that gets used in another? The Pack introduces systems for Lodges, and odds-on we’re going to use them in other books. Every developer has their own way of doing things, mine is to hold fast to the “only the core book” philosophy. So we condense the basic principles and systems and present them along with the Lodges in each book, along with a small call-out for The Pack.

You’re not here for that. You’re here for this. This is the Lodge I promised you.

Fire all of the guns at once. Explode into space.

The Thousand Steel Teeth

Steel Predators, Road Wolves, Gear Dogs

He’s on the road out of town, pedal to the metal. The wolves were on his bloody trail, but he knows they’re territorial animals and no way they’ll track him on the highway. He glances at his wing mirror and his eyes widen; he sees a car coming up behind, headlights bright in the night. The shape behind the wheel has a grin that’s far too wide, and filled with way too many teeth.

The Thousand Steel Teeth are road warriors, hunters of the highways, oil-smeared wolves riding war-wagons bound with spirits. Claws hitting tarmac isn’t enough for a gear dog; no thrill matches that of hunting from a chariot of steel. The Lodge exists wherever mankind has clogged the air with exhaust fumes and wherever the roads stretch out for miles. Prey fear the Thousand Steel Teeth because not much is as terrifying as being pursued by an adrenaline junkie werewolf screaming down the road in a van made of murder-spirits. The Lodge isn’t just about roaring engines and blood on the asphalt though. Gear dogs provide the Forsaken with vital lines of transport, communication, and mechanical expertise.

The Thousand Steel Teeth choose those who would take to the road as their sacred prey, hunting humans and Claimed and Uratha alike upon steel steeds. Holiness is in the snarl of the machine and the thunder of the wind, and divine exhilaration in the sheer speed and adrenaline and impact of vehicle against flesh. So many prey think they can outrun the judgment of the hunt or the wrath of the Urdaga. So many prey think that taming a beast of metal makes them a superior predator than the wolves. The Thousand Steel Teeth prove them all wrong.

Most gear dogs come to the Lodge from the Iron Masters — Uratha who believe the flows of traffic and movement that run through humanity’s domain hide deeper secrets and mysteries, or who simply thrill at the sensation of hunting on the wheel. A surprising number of Storm Lords and Bone Shadows also join the Thousand Steel Teeth, usually because they concern themselves with spirits of machinery and travel; the Lodge has hunted down no few bizarre possessed and Claimed vehicles bent on their own bloody rampages along the tarmac.

Gear dogs in less densely settled areas tend to be nomadic, travelling from place to place and claiming only the roads as their territory. This sort of lifestyle has its benefits for other Forsaken; nomadic Steel Teeth take on the role of trusted messengers and couriers who always get the delivery through no matter what obstacle gets in their way. More settled Steel Teeth build lairs where they can tend to their great passion — garages and workshops of customized and modified vehicles. Gear dogs are often in deep with biker gangs, illegal racing circuits, highway police, car thieves, and — in lawless lands — actual road bandits. Adherents know the road networks like the back of their hands, learn every shortcut and underpass in the bustling, clogged city, and call upon little gods of wheel and steel at their bloody shrines to road-rage and tar.

Totem: The Smoke Drinker

The Smoke Drinker has an eternal thirst that it cannot slake, a craving for speed and oil it cannot sate. It’s a snarling thing of billowing fumes, grinding gears, and shining chrome, roaring out its utterances with all the subtlety of a thousand engines. The Smoke Drinker thunders through the Shadow at the head of a mad cavalcade of spirits of smoke and steel; its heralds are sinuous, snaking road-spirits that ooze tar and spew smog. The totem never stays in one place for long, loping along an endless journey through the Hisil.

The Steel Teeth prepare the way for their god of gears. Cultists maintain shrines of tangled chassis and machinery inscribed with sacred glyphs under soaring overpasses, in the dripping spaces beneath garages, in the corners of car factories; they anoint the rusted altars with gore and gasoline taken from kills on the road. Adherents caper through mad, frantic dances by moonlit roads, smeared with oil, scrubbing their own blood into the asphalt. Wolves howl to the snarls of finely-tuned holy engines. The ceremonies and sacrifices of the road feed the Smoke Drinker and provide its cavalcade of followers with thick, oily Essence at the Lodge’s gasoline holes.

The Smoke Drinker has predators of its own — clattering, shambling hunters made of rust, decay, and wreckage that are always on its trail, the servants of a terrible god of ruin called That Which Is Broken. Steel Teeth are set on the pursuit of spirits and Claimed from the nemesis’ court. The totem is terrified of obsolescence, falling behind the curve of vehicular technology, and has its adherents steal modern vehicles, take them to pieces and bring them into the Shadow as offerings that it can absorb into its own framework.

Bonds

Blessing: When she spends Willpower to add dice to a Drive roll, a Crafts roll to repair or modify a vehicle, or an Athletics roll to move between moving vehicles, the Lodge member gains the rote quality on that roll.

Aspiration: To improve and enhance a vehicle the adherent possesses.

Ban: A Lodge member cannot sleep in the same place on consecutive nights; she must travel to a different resting place at least a mile away.

The Sacred Hunt

The Lodge Sacred Hunt grants your character the ability to track prey even while she is in a moving vehicle; she suffers no penalties to the tracking attempt for the prey using a vehicle. While the prey is in a vehicle, your character can downgrade any lethal damage to bashing damage that is inflicted due to being hit by a vehicle, falling off a moving vehicle or her own vehicle being damaged or destroyed.

Tales of the Steel Teeth

• It’s a tough time to be a gear dog. A tar-skinned duguthim runs the local court of fumes and fuel, and has no desire for peace or mutual respect with the Thousand Steel Teeth. Adherents’ vehicles sputter and due in quivering submission any time they go near the Claimed lord. A gear dog needs to step up and tame the wildest, most savage spirit of the road — a vehicle so proud it doesn’t accept the duguthim noble’s authority.
• The Predator Kings have moved against the Steel Teeth. Lines of supply between Forsaken Protectorates are vulnerable to relentless attacks from wolves strong enough to flip trucks right off the road. The Pure are hitting the city packs hard, and the Protectorates need all the help they can get — so a Steel Tooth convoy sets off, loaded with talens and gathra. The convoy has to make it through the Predator King blockade.
• The moon and the stock market prices of the big car manufacturers have aligned; it is time for the sacred Hecatomb. One hundred cars must burn in a grand sacrifice to the Smoke Drinker. Cue a night of thievery and high speed chases as the Steel Teeth compete for the finest rides they can steal.
• The Steel Teeth have made a treaty with the road spirits, and for a price they’ll ensure green lights, clear roads and healthy engines for Forsaken packs. Problem is, the Lodge stick their snout in whenever a pack tries to subdue the roads in its own territory, rolling up to support the spirits. Local Blood Talons are on the verge of violence, but the Steel Teeth refuse to back down; they seem to think the roads are theirs, no matter where the asphalt lies.

Tools

The Thousand Steel Teeth have access to the Lodge Connections Merit, but only for the purposes of vehicle- and travel-related matters.

Iron Leviathan Harpoon (Fetish ••)

The barbed head of an iron leviathan harpoon will punch through the hide of any road-prey.

Effect: When thrown at a moving vehicle, this fetish weapon ignores the prey’s Durability entirely. A vehicle with an iron leviathan harpoon stuck in it suffers a -2 penalty to all Drive rolls.

Nomad Chain (Fetish •••)

Just a small trinket or talisman, but it marks the steed as having an owner.

Effect: An Uratha with the Ward the Wolf’s Den Warding Facet can settle into the driver’s seat of the vehicle and use the Facet for a modified result, targeting the vehicle itself. For the rest of the month the vehicle is warded — the fetish adds the werewolf’s Glory Renown to dice pools and values to contest, resist or withstand supernatural effects from anyone other than the wielder. If an effect outright destroys or incapacitates the vehicle, the wielder may spend one point of Essence and suffer one point of aggravated damage to nullify it entirely.

Roadkiller (Fetish ••••)

Roadkillers are hungry, angry vehicles whose headlights glare in the night.

Effect: A Roadkiller is a vehicle fetish that inflicts twice the normal damage from hitting characters or objects. If a Roadkiller wrecks another vehicle by ramming it, the fetish regenerates any Structure that it has lost.

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A depressing lack of back-matter this week. Normally I get a bit meta, and talk about music. I’ve already threaded the most obvious music choice throughout the post, and you don’t want me being meta up here.

So again, I’m taking requests from the booth; the floor’s open. Give me some werewolf-y recipes you’ve come up with. Link’em or post them here. Tell me about your tastes in food.