Werewolves and Claimed

Angela Citysmith
Angela Anderson, née Lang

Type: Werewolf
Pack: The Architects of Steel
Tribe: Iron Masters
Lodge: The Bale Hounds
Auspice: Ithaeur
Aspect: Isib-Durume, The Shadowbinder
Born: 1973



Virtue: Fortitude Angela will attain her goals, and little things like sanity, morality, or mortality will not be allowed to stand in her way.
Vice: Pride Angela is above all others, werewolves and morals alike. They are clever, she is genius. They are strong, she is powerful. They will die, and she will live forever. They build homes and territories... and she builds cities.

Background: Angela is a woman consumed by pride and ambition. Her goals are lofty, huge, all-encompassing. To most people they would seem too high to reach, like trying to catch stars. But Angela believes them possible – nothing is beyond her grasp. With the proper efforts, one can build cities.

It is Angela’s aim to reshape the spiritual landscape of London. Her research and experimentation has led to the discovery that it is possible to channel Essence flow with careful planning – by directing sunlight in the appropriate places at certain times, by absorbing lightning strikes during storms, by using the right materials. Angela has managed to affect the spiritual world in small ways with her tests and experiments. But her dreams are bigger than that – by far. Logically, if one can affect a single room with the right planning, then an entire city could affected with enough forethought, resources and willpower. The implications of this are beyond belief. One can create ley lines and loci, nodes and power-centers. More than that, one can shape a city's resonance in such a way as to influence the mortal herd, instill emotions and habits of thought. With the right architecture and urban planning, Angela believes it possible to create a Garden of Eden... or a darkly Panoptic dystopia.

Most werewolves and spirit dwellers that know of her goals think that Angela is naive at best, deranged at worst. Spiritual engineering on this sort of scale has occasionally been attempted -- in Amarna and Heian-kyō most famously. But not for centuries. Not in a modern city of fourteen million souls. There are previous few outside her pack who believe it is remotely possible – and even within the pack there are doubts. Rather than be deterred by the logistical problems involved, Angela felt spurred on. The chance to prove her control and her mastery was... intoxicating. She made London her target because as the largest and most populous city in the United Kingdom, if it worked here, it would work anywhere.

To reach her ambition will require substantial skill, connections, resources, money and knowledge. An architecture student before her First Change, Angela began by setting up a property development company, using seed money from her wealthy parents. She started small – local work, setting a standard and making a name for herself, networking with others in the property business. She quickly expanded her operations – both the scope of the work she took on and the area she covered. She secured valuable commissions, won awards for her work, and in 1995 married Theodore Anderson, the heir of the Anderson & Smithfield construction fortune. By the age of thirty Angela was one of the big names on the UK construction scene, a seemingly unstoppable property juggernaut with stock in several construction and architecture firms.

But even with all she'd done, it wasn't enough. Reshaping the spiritual side of the city takes a lot of effort and dedication. In London she has been laying down the roots for fifteen years, in other cities across the UK for less. But this kind of engineering takes time, and the balance is delicate. Slowly but certainly, it became that her goals were too large for even a werewolf to accomplish in a mortal lifetime. This was unacceptable. Angela has poured most of her life into this endeavour. Nothing would stop her from seeing it through – not even death, it seems.

And so Angela hedged her bets in a way that even her packmates don't suspect. Her pride has driven her to a fall -- into the embrace of the Bale Hounds. Though even her packmates don’t know it, Angela has sworn a dark pledge to Lamashtu, the twisted Incarna of Pride. She does not lead or participate in an active cult, and keeps only loose connections to other followers of her patron, though she can call on friends in low places if need be. She considers herself not a worshipper, but a client; Lamashtu offered her a blessing of unending youth and vigor in exchange for certain — services, a bargain that Angela initiated herself. The thought of dying before she could complete her ambition was utterly anathema, and she feels that she’s gotten the better end of the deal.

Naturally, Angela hides her true affiliation quite well. She comes across as cold and professional to other Uratha, somewhat condescending but otherwise reliable and powerful. She has a crushing disdain for weakness that makes some wonder if she wouldn’t be happier in the Storm Lords; she does not let slip that she has come to see the Forsaken tribes’ dysfunctional relationship with Luna as one of the most contemptible weaknesses of all. She isn’t above acting as an “ally” to another pack if it suits her own purposes, though she has difficulty treating other werewolves as peers. She is not above making deals or exchanging knowledge if it is of benefit to her. Years in the property business has taught her that profit is always the bottom line – what will she get out of a deal?

Angela carries herself with a cold, regal grace that is in every way predatory. She has managed to function among human society for years since her Change, and has become so skilled at repressing her casual passions that she at first seems to be almost emotionless. When her bestial heart does get the better of her, though, she becomes almost rabid with anger. Angela is an obsessive personality, and her need for personal control borders on the pathological. No step is too extreme for her. She has sold her soul to a Maeljin, and she would sacrifice anyone – friends, family, packmates – who gets in her way. Nothing will stop Angela from carrying out her vision of a New London.

And that London bears precious little resemblance to a Garden of Eden. Unless, perhaps, one is a Bale Hound.

Angela lives with her family in a large, Neo-Victorian house in Bloomsbury, which she herself designed. Her husband, Theodore Anderson, stays there as little as he can, avoiding a wife who increasingly frightens him in favor of alcoholism and a succession of mistresses. Angela also has a son, twelve-year-old Leon, a quiet, socially-remote boy who has seen some terrifying things. He spends most of the year at the Hawksworth Preparatory Academy, and so Angela usually has her lair to herself.

Eye Color: Amber
Hair Color: Dark blond
Skin Tone/Complexion: Fair.
Hair Style: Long, pinned up in an elegant do in business meetings.

Figure Notes: Trim, muscular, Angela is a shade taller than most women, and has several elaborate tattoos emblazoned on her body.

Clothing Notes: Most of the time, professional and classy. She opts for jeans and t-shirts when conducting werewolf business.

Tribe: Iron Masters
Lodge: The Bale Hounds
Auspice: Ithaeur
Aspect:

Never needs to attune a fetish, and the Fetish Rite is a 3rd dot ritual, not a 4th dot; rolls to summon spirits (Call Gaffling, Call Jaggling) suffer a -1 penalty.

Isib-Durume, The Shadowbinder

PMental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 4, Resolve

4+Totem

5
TPhysical Attributes: Strength

2+Totem

3 (4/7/5/3), Dexterity 3 (3/5/5/5), Stamina 4 (5/7/6/5)
SSocial Attributes: Presence

2+Demonic Pact

6, Manipulation

2+Demonic Pact

6, Composure 4

PMental Skills:Academics (Research) 4, Computer 2, Investigation 3, Occult (Demonology) 4, Politics 3, Science (Architecture) 3
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Stealth 4, Survival 1, Weaponry (Knives) 2
SSocial Skills: Animal Ken 1, Empathy 2, Expression 2, Intimidation (Veiled Threats) 3, Persuasion (Cutting Deals)

0+Demonic Pact

6, Subterfuge (Misdirection) 4

Merits: Allies (Bale Hounds) 4, Allies (Architecture & Construction Firms) 5, Fetish (Bale Blade) 4, Fetish (Skinsheath) 2, Language (First Tongue) 1, Resources 5, Retainers (Architects of Steel Pack Members x4) 4 each, Striking Looks 2, Totem (Warbuilder) 8
Lair: Neo-Victorian House; Size 3, Security 2, Library (Demonology, Megapolismancy) 2, Locus 4

Willpower: 9
Harmony: 2
Derangements: Fixation (Mild)
Banes: Crossroads (Mild), Uninvited (Mild), Cannot Cross Running Water (Severe)

Initiative: 7 (7/9/9/9)
Defense: 4 (4/5/5/5)
Health: 9 (11/14/12/9)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Speed: 11 (12/17/18/16)

Primal Urge: 6
Renown: Cunning ●●●●●, Glory ●●, Purity ●, Wisdom ●●●●●
Gifts:
1st: Bloody Moon (Tainted Moon) 1, Two World Eyes (Crescent Moon) 1, The Heart of Things (Wisdom) 1, Sense Emotion (Insight) 1, Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1, Death Sight (Death) 1
2nd: Gravid Moon (Tainted Moon) 2, Read Spirit (Crescent Moon) 2, Befuddle (Wisdom) 2, Scent of Taint (Insight) 2, Hone Rage (Rage) 2
3rd: Broken Moon (Tainted Moon) 3, Gauntlet Cloak (Crescent Moon) 3, Blending (Stealth) 3,
4th: Master's Counsel (Wisdom) 4, Bone Hex (Ending) 4
5th: Dark Moon (Tainted Moon) 5, Spirit Pack (Father Wolf) 5, Gauntlet Wraith (Eclipse) 5
Rituals: ●●●
1st: Ritual Mind, Rite of Dedication, Chiminage Rite, Rite of Hallowed Ground
2nd: Rite of the Sin-Eater, Rite of the Shroud, Banish Spirit, Blessing of the Spirit Hunt, Call Gaffling, Call Human, Cleansed Blood, Scarlet Messenger
3rd: Shrieking Glyphs, Bind Human, Bind Spirit, Call Jaggling, Rite of Healing, Shadow Projection, Wake the Spirit,

Fetishes cost 1/2

Fetish Rite
Essence:

15-Demonic Pact

12/3
Totem Bonuses (Included): +1 dot in Strength (Given), +1 dot in Resolve (Given)

Infernal Pacts:
Silver Tongue:
The Benefit: Presence to 6, Manipulation to 6, Persuasion to 6
The Sacrifice: -3 to Essence pool (Minor x3)
Silver Hand:
The Benefit: Lord of Demons (Pride)
The Sacrifice: Free Will (Deadly; Pride)
Silver Heart:
The Benefit:

Angela Citysmith's heart has been replaced with a beating chunk of silver. Angela does not age, does not suffer wound-penalties, and does not need to fall unconscious upon having her last health box filled with either Bashing or Lethal. If all of her health boxes fill with aggravated damage, she falls down, seemingly dead, but unless the silver heart is removed from her chest and destroyed, she resurrects at the end of the scene.

Silver Heart
The Sacrifice: Then No One Can (Envy; Deadly)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Bale Blade (Hishu)................. 5(L)............ 11………..Silver
Bale Blade (Gauru)................. 5(L)............ 18………..Silver, 8-Again, Hone Rage
Claw (Gauru)........................ 1(L)............ 11………..8-Again, Hone Rage

Tribe: Hunters in Darkness
Auspice: Irraka

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve

2+Totem

3
Physical Attributes: Strength

3+Totem

4 (6/8/7/5), Dexterity 3 (3/4/5/5), Stamina 3 (4/5/5/4)
Social Attributes: Presence 2, Manipulation 3, Composure 2

Mental Skills: Academics 2, Occult 2, Science 1
Physical Skills: Athletics (Running) 3, Brawl (Claw) 4, Drive 2, Larceny 1, Stealth 3, Survival 2
Social Skills: Empathy 2, Intimidation 2, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Resources 3, Totem (Warbuilder) 7
Lair: Flats; Size 1 each

Willpower: 5
Initiative: 5 (5/6/7/7)
Defense: 3 (3/4/4/4)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Health: 8 (10/12/11/8)
Speed: 12 (13/16/19/17)

Primal Urge: 2
Renown: Cunning ●●●●
Gifts:
1st: Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1,
2nd: Cracks in the Armor (Cunning) 2
3rd: Deep Pockets (Cunning) 3
4th: Savage Rending (Father Wolf) 4
Essence: 11/1
Totem Bonuses (Included): +1 dot in Strength (Given), +1 dot in Resolve (Given)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru)........................ 2(L/A)............ 14………Cracks in the Armor, Savage Rending

Warbuilder

Warbuilder is a potent urban ant-spirit, a totem of both war and construction. It is virtually without emotion, a trait Angela finds endearing. Warbuilder appears as an ant roughly the size of a cat,, with a particularly ornate and heavy carapace scarred with strange patterns.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 4, Resistance 4

Willpower: 8
Essence: 15

Initiative: 8
Defense: 0
Armor: 4
Speed: 13
Size: 2
Corpus: 6

Influences: Ants ●, Diligence ●
Numina: Material Vision, Know the Path

Bonuses: +1 dot in Strength (Given), +1 dot in Resolve (Given)
Cost: 57

Ban: Warbuilder abhors sloth. The pack must spend several hours daily in productive activity, whether building or moving things, patrolling, or fighting. Even if one of the Architects is badly injured, he cannot engage in bed rest for the entire day without offending the pack totem.

Thomas Cushner

Type: Werewolf
Pack: Architects of Steel.
Tribe: Bone Shadows.
Lodge: Lodge of Hallowed Halls
Auspice: Elodoth
Aspect: Hissu-Kag, The Envoy
Born: 1970

Virtue: Faith Thomas is a man of strong convictions and profound faith. He believes in an ordered, rational universe, and he believes in his Alpha and in her mission to build up that universe. This belief gives him strength.
Vice: Sloth Thomas is not a man who likes to have his convictions challenged.

Background: Even as a child, Thomas was quiet and thoughtful. His brother and sister would run and play, shout, scream, make a nuisance of themselves. Thomas was so quiet that people often forgot he was there. He never caused trouble, and he hated conflict – his siblings fought each other often, his parents would tear into one another. Thomas would try to keep the peace between them, to convince them to be friends. As a child it was hard, but as he grew up Thomas became more skilled at it.

Upon finishing high school, Thomas still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He had brains, but no direction – so he did what any confused young man would do. He enrolled in a philosophy course. Furthermore, he found that he enjoyed it. Classes in comparative religion struck a chord with him, and Thomas graduated with a combined degree in Philosophy and Comparative Religion. He became a teacher at a London college, passing on his knowledge.

The First Change has come upon Thomas during his studies, and from that point he had been fascinated by the spirit world. Entities shaped by beliefs, entities that are formed out of concepts and exist as free-floating ideas, the Hisil seemed the perfect place to him. And so, Thomas talked to them. And talked to them. And talked to them. Thomas has perhaps better relations with the spirit world than any other werewolf in London. He isn't necessarily the best ritualist or the most respected wise man, but Thomas has put shoe leather to the ground and simply talked to more of the local spirits for longer than anyone else.

For quite some time, Thomas plunged into the depths of knowledge concerning spirits and the Shadow. He gained spirit allies. His papers bought him entry into the Lodge of Hallowed Halls. He was pursued by several packs for his good relationship with spirits, but it was Angela Citysmith who caught his attention. Thomas wanted to do good with his life, and recognised that the spirit world reflected all of humanity, including its darkest aspects of humanity. Angela’s goal of shaping the spirit world appealed powerfully to Thomas. He could see the great potential in her ideas and, even better, believed that she could achieve them. And he wanted to be a part of it.

He agreed to become the beta wolf of the Architects of Steel, and Thomas turned out to be the ideal second in command. He was dedicated to Angela and her objectives, working with the spirits to smooth the way towards her goal. Thomas works like Angela's third hand, performing every task she gives him with flair. While Angela focused on drawing up architectural plans and funding building schemes, Thomas negotiated with spirits, other werewolf packs and anyone else required. He became the face of the Architects, the man in front of Angela, protecting her vision.

If the truth were to come out about Angela's true affiliations, Thomas would be the packmate most likely to stand beside her no matter what — in fact, he’d be the one most likely to join her in her pact with the Calipha of Pride. Angela herself suspects that his loyalty is enough that he could withstand the truth and continue to assist her all the better. She has yet to test him on the matter, however. She’s not an evangelist for the Bale Hounds — she considers herself a businesswoman, and right now she’s not entirely convinced that headhunting Cushner for Lamashtu would help enough to be worth the risk.

Thomas is a middle-aged black man in excellent condition. He prefers nice but not overly formal clothes, usually a neatly pressed, buttoned-down shirt and slacks, and could almost be mistaken for a harmless accountant or clerk if not for the intense sensation of heat that follows him. In wolf form, his coat is surprisingly tawny, almost the color of a lion’s.

Ultimately, Thomas is a man of ideas. He's an extremely rigorous, logical thinker, which makes it a simple matter for him to understand the viewpoints of spirits. Unfortunately, he can sometimes value his own beliefs and ideas over the evidence in front of him. It is that habit, more than anything else, that makes him a possible 'catch' for Lamashtu.

Eye Color: Green.
Hair Color: Black.
Skin Tone/Complexion: Dark
Hair Style: A very carefully styled mess.

Figure Notes: Varies. Thomas is a glutton, so he eats, puts on a bit of weight, then sheds it. It is a vicious cycle. It takes a lycanthropic metabolism to keep him at anything resembling healthy weight.

Clothing Notes: Modern, casual, comfortable.

Tribe: Bone Shadows.
Lodge: Lodge of Hallowed Halls
Auspice: Elodoth
Aspect:

Gain a Spirit specialty in one auspice skill, and increase Allies (Local Spirits) by 1; gain a mild Fixation derangement.

Hissu-Kag, The Envoy

SMental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 4, Resolve

2+Totem

3
TPhysical Attributes: Strength

3+Totem

4 (5/7/6/4), Dexterity 3 (3/4/5/5), Stamina 3 (4/5/5/4)
PSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 3, Composure 5

PMental Skills: Academics (Religion) 4, Investigation (Dreams) 3, Occult (Ghosts, Spirits) 4, Politics (Spirits) 3
TPhysical Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Stealth 2, Survival (The Shadow) 3
SSocial Skills: Empathy 4, Expression 3, Intimidation 2, Persuasion 4, Socialize 3, Subterfuge (Lying) 4

Merits: Allies (Local Spirits)

4+Aspect

5, Contacts (Local Ghosts, Local Spirits, Local Werewolves) 3, Language (First Tongue) 1, Resources 2, Status (Academia; Adjunct Professor) 2, Totem (Warbuilder) 10
Lair: Small Flat; Size 1, Security 2, Library (Religion) 1

Willpower: 8
Harmony: 5
Derangements: Fixation (Mild)

Initiative: 8 (8/9/10/10)
Defense: 3 (3/4/4/4)
Health: 8 (10/12/11/8)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Speed: 12 (13/16/19/17)

Primal Urge: 3
Renown: Cunning ●●, Honor ●●●●, Wisdom ●●●
Gifts:
1st: Sense Malice (Insight) 1, Death Sight (Death) 1, Instant Measure (Honor) 1
2nd: Ward Against Humans (Warding) 2, Beyond Reproach (Honor) 2, Ghost Knife (Death) 2
3rd: Aura of Truce (Half-Moon) 3, Forge Contract (Honor) 3, Corpse Witness (Death) 3
4th: Shining Example (Honor) 4
Rituals: ●●●
1st: Boundary Rite, Banish Human, Chiminage Rite, Ritual Mind
2nd: Call Gaffling, Echoes of Truth
3rd: Bind Spirit, Call Jaggling, Wake the Spirit
Essence: 12/1
Totem Bonuses (Included): +1 dot in Strength (Given), +1 dot in Resolve (Given)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2L............ 13………Shining Example

Paul Lessner

Type: Werewolf
Pack: Architects of Steel.
Tribe: Hunters in Darkness
Auspice: Rahu

Virtue: Faith Paul believes in the law absolutely, in its justice and fairness and universality.
Vice: Wrath The rage of the Full Moon burns brightly in him, and it takes little to tip Paul over into his own private brand of police brutality.

Background: Joining the police force was Paul Lessner’s destiny, his fate, his dream. His home life may have had something to do with it, raised in the Council Estates of South London. His parents marriage was not a happy one -- it had started happily enough certainly, his father Jamesm strong, handsome, his mother swept off her feet, but then it turned sour. James drank. He lost his job. He drank more. He hit Paul's mother, and struck Paul himself. And when Paul's long-suffering mother finally filed for divorce, James grabbed him and tried to flee the country. Half-drunk and out of his mind, he told Paul that if he tried to run away, he’d go back and kill Paul’s mother. So the six-year-old child kept quiet. The police caught up with him on a ferry to France, and James would go on to spend a good many years in prison.

From that day forth, Paul was obsessed. His mother, now raising him alone, encouraged the idea and gave him toy police helmets, batons, toy guns, plastic handcuffs, the works. The police were his heroes and one day he would become one of their number. There was no other option.

He applied at eighteen, was accepted, passed all the physical and mental fitness tests. He entered the training program, learning how to work as part of a unit, how to fire a weapon, how to use a taser. He was zealous and dedicated, as honest as the day was long yet filled with contempt for those who broke the law. Then two things happened in quick succession that shattered his dreams. The first was Paul’s First Change. Shortly after he was put on active duty for the first time, the Full Moon shined down on him, and the face of Luna the Destroyer was burned into Paul's blood. Never the most restrained of individuals to begin with, the full moon burned with a malignant fury upon him, unmooring him from all thoughts of holding back. For some of the Uratha, the Change is quick. But for Paul, it was a slower process, and those weeks were an unstable time for him. Then he was assigned on a team hunting for a kidnapper, a petty pimp who had panicked and held a runaway girl hostage to avoid judgment. It was Paul who found him… and beat him to death with his bare hands, his rage out of control.

Given his early experiences as an exacerbating circumstance, and certain irregularities in the investigation (as no one missed the victim terribly), Paul was let off very lightly. He was discharged from the police service and ordered to seek counselling, though no charges were brought. It was a harsh enough punishment. In just over a year, Paul had gained everything he had wanted... and lost it. He was back to living with his mother, without a job, without a future, and without his dreams.

He fell into depression and alcoholism. It takes a very great deal of alcohol to render a werewolf drunk, but Paul tried gamely every night. One evening, he stumbled into the territory of the Architects of Steel territory in a drunken stupor. One of Thomas's spirit-spies discovered him, and so Thomas and Angela took him to the Architect's base to sober up and question him. Paul spilled everything and Angela offered him a deal – he’d join their pack, train their fighters in police tactics, train them to work together and defend the Architect's territory. It wasn’t the police, but it was the next best thing for Paul. He took the deal.

Paul is a broad-shouldered, dark-haired young man in peak physical condition. He keeps his unruly curls in what is essentially a military buzz-cut, and usually wears the clothing of a security guard -- as close to a uniform as he can manage. He spends most of his time patrolling the Architects' territory, drawing a paycheck from one of Angela's firms. Officially, he is a security guard. He is now in charge of organizing patrols and guarding the pack territory.

Paul is not a very imaginative or clever thinker, though he does have an absolutely prodigious memory for rules, regulations, and the like. When confronted with problems, Paul refers to those precedents, or else tosses problems up the ladder to the proper authorities, that is, to Angela and Thomas. He has a prodigious temper, however, and if Angela's betrayal were ever revealed he'd be the first to call for her head.

Tribe: Hunters in Darkness
Auspice: Rahu

SMental Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 3, Resolve

3+Totem

4
PPhysical Attributes: Strength

4+Totem

5 (6/8/7/5), Dexterity 3 (3/4/5/5), Stamina 4 (5/6/6/5)
TSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 2, Composure 3

TMental Skills: Computer 1, Craft 1, Investigation 2, Medicine (First Aid) 2, Occult 1
PPhysical Skills: Athletics 4, Brawl (Knife) 4, Drive 2, Firearms 2, Larceny 2, Stealth (Blending) 3, Survival 2, Weaponry 1
SSocial Skills: Intimidation 4 (Physical Threats), Streetwise (Gangs, Rumours) 3, Subterfuge 2

Merits: Contacts (Police, Legal) 2, Danger Sense 2, Fast Reflexes 2, Fighting Style (Dirty Fighting) 2, Resources 1, Totem (Warbuilder) 8,
Lair: Squalid Flat; Size 1

Willpower: 7
Harmony: 5

Initiative: 8 (8/9/10/10)
Defense: 3 (3/3/3/3)
Health: 9 (11/13/12/9)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Speed: 12 (13/16/19/17)

Primal Urge: 4
Renown: Cunning ●●, Glory ●●, Purity ●●●
Gifts:
1st: Speak with Beasts (Nature) 1, Clarity (Full Moon) 1, Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1, Feet of Mist (Stealth) 1, Crushing Blow (Strength) 1,
2nd: Father Wolf’s Speed (Father Wolf) 2, Blending (Stealth) 2, Anybeast (Mother Luna) 2
3rd: Death Grip (Full Moon) 3, Voice of Command (Dominance) 3
Essence: 13/2
Totem Bonuses (Included): +1 dot in Strength (Given), +1 dot in Resolve (Given)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2(L)............ 14………
Truncheon...............................3(B/L)...........9.........Crushing Blow
Knife.......................................1(L)..............11

Nicholas Kwaku Atenka
Nicholas Atenka

Type: Child of Anansi
Clan: Ghanaian
Born: 1980

Mr. Atenka at the Ascot Racecourse, Spring 2007

Virtue: Faith. No matter how seemingly dire the circumstances, the Atenkas always come out on top in the end -- or at least make a clean getaway and laugh about it later. It’s a trend that been borne out by history, and Nicholas believes in it wholeheartedly: that easy, justified self-confidence bleeds out into his personality.

Vice: Lust. Nicholas likes the finer things in life. Beautiful people happen to be included in that category. It takes a heroic effort and equally heroic good looks to tempt him into monogamy, and even the couple times that it’s happened, he hasn’t established the best long-term track record.

Background: Nicholas Atenka comes from money. In order to talk about him, then, we have to talk about what specific kind of money he comes from. The Atenka family has been a local power in Ghana since precolonial times, when they maintained landholdings and merchant operations around the city of Nasande -- then a small but prosperous trading town, a hundred miles or so northwest of Accra. Atenka Holdings was incorporated in the late 1920’s, with the fortuitous discovery of gold on family-owned property near the town, and with an equally fortuitous string of fudged regulations and malleable British officials to iron out the paperwork in the family’s favor. Nasande got bigger. In the intervening years, the Mampamhwe Mine was largely worked out, but the Atenkas diversified. Now, they have interests in cacao, timber, and bauxite, but primarily operate as a land development and construction firm -- lord knows they own most of the land to begin with. Nasande is now a small city of 150,000-odd people, and the buildings just keep going up. Ghana’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world, after all.

Now, while the Atenkas do have a reputation of sorts, it is important to note that they’re not "designated antagonist" evil. However, they do tend to be a rather potent combination of intensely self-interested and ridiculously charismatic: at best, they produce folk singers, activists, and PR reps; at worst, Boss Tweed-style political gamesmen, long con artists, playboys, and used horse salespeople. Nicholas’ father, Solomon Atenka, falls just about in the middle of that range. As the C.E.O. of the holding company and patriarch of the family, he’s effectively bought out Nasande’s local government and police force, and rules over the city in shady yet laissez-faire manner. Thanks to his efforts, Nasande is raking in entirely more foreign infrastructure investment than it should, even though most international investors soon realize that their “subcontractor” is pulling the strings and taking the lion’s share of the profit...the Atenkas are very, very persuasive. In the streets, the common man needs to know who to bribe to get by, and sure, there’s that big honking estate on the outskirts of town, but the city’s doing decently enough on the whole that nobody seems to care. It’s a cushy setup.

It’s this setup that Nicholas was born into. The fifth of eight children, he was not in line to take over the family business -- thanks to a quirk of inheritance particular to the Atenkas, that honor is to go to Solomon’s eldest nephew, on his sister’s side. That notwithstanding, Nicholas was still absurdly well-off, and, once he showed himself to be competent, gently encouraged to work in the family’s interests: the Atenka filial strategy seems to be “have an awful lot of children, let the free spirits off to do their own thing, and pick the next generation of power brokers from those most suited to it.” His upbringing was pampered, his schooling private, and his higher education abroad, namely an economics degree at Oxford -- while he himself wasn’t overtly brilliant, both he and his family were ridiculously good networkers, and it’s something of an open secret that he either donated, glad-handed, or (possibly) blackmailed his way in.

University was a whirlwind of cocktail hours, dance parties, black-tie galas, and beautiful, beautiful people. Nicholas was in heaven. Sure, he learned economics somewhere in there, but that really wasn't the point. The friends and connections he'd made -- as well as his frequent excursions to London -- had given him a major soft spot for the English high life. It was loads of fun, of course, and that was the main draw…but there were also opportunities to be had there, of the kind that his family hadn't yet gotten around to exploiting.

In this, Nicholas differed somewhat from the rest of the Atenkas, who, while supremely influential in their own local sphere, tended not to range too far from the nest geographically. After returning home for a number of years to work for the family business as a sales liaison to international clients -- and, of course, to spend a great deal of time enjoying his considerable wealth -- he made a pitch to his father. The Atenkas, at present, had no property holdings and limited personal influence in Great Britain. Nicholas would go back to London and fix that, acting as speculator, purchasing agent, and one-man branch office. His current plan is to build or redevelop a series of high-end luxury condos for the city's upper crust, alongside a few middle-class apartment blocks aimed at immigrating African professionals, with the expectation that the former project will fund the latter.

And that, nominally speaking, is just what Nicholas is doing right now, having been in London for about the past six months. Of course, that's not all he's doing. While he does feel quite strongly about his new business initiative, and will work to see its success, he is, at heart, a ridiculously wealthy guy in his twenties who likes having as much fun as is remotely feasible. So, by day, he schmoozes with the city's propertied upper class at board meetings, golf games, and business lunches, and by night…well, he's going clubbing, or drinking, or dating, or dancing with that same upper class, and others besides. Strictly on a proportional basis, Nicholas' nights are far longer than his days.

One last note. Nicholas’ business venture is legitimate on its face, but it does have some supernatural ramifications as well -- specifically, that “apartments for immigrants” project is an explicit attempt to get more Children of Anansi to settle in the city. Thus, on a broader level, he aims to scout out London’s supernatural landscape, evaluating the risks and opportunities it would present to a small incoming colony of werespiders.

Personality: Nicholas is smooth. Nicholas is effortless. Nicholas is the coolest person you know, and it doesn't even seem like he has to try at it. And so, Nicholas can convince nearly anybody to do nearly anything, because everything he suggests sounds like a fantastic idea. You would find this mildly uncanny, if he weren't so charismatic that you couldn't bring yourself to describe it as such. When he parties, he's never a raucous drunk, but invariably manages to become the center of attention by the end of the night, and invariably goes home draped with one or more beautiful people. In business settings, he's not always the most academic person in the room, but he's sharp, and he's so good at selling himself. In short, there is not a velvet rope in the world that can hold him back, and he knows it.

A few other notes. Like his ancestor, Nicholas has a bit of the trickster's instinct, often pulling one over on the more pompous windbags of his circle with barbed wit or subtle pranks. Also like his ancestor, he can be a little distractible from time to time…most notably in his romantic life, to rather unfortunate effect. While he feels slightly less beholden to family tradition than, say, the rest of his family does -- which is why he's ranged as far north as he has -- he is also slightly more responsible than they are, to humanity at large. Emphasis on the "slightly," here: he's still very much the devil-may-care opportunist. That said, though, he does maintain a number of deeper friendships among his vast sea of casual acquaintances and hangers-on, and generally tries to do right by those people.

Nicholas speaks in a velvet-lined bass-baritone, and with a moderate Ghanian accent: strong enough to be noticeable, but still easily intelligible to Britons. The interviewer in this TV segment has a different vocal timbre, but gets the accent about right.

Eye Color: Black
Hair Color: Black
Skin Tone/Complexion: Medium-dark West African, somewhere in the low thirties on the Von Luschan.

Hair notes: Close crop on top, along with a well-manicured moustache and chin scruff. Simple in principle, but he obviously has a very good stylist.

Figure notes: Nicholas is average height, and, while not ripped in a bodybuilder or linebacker sense, has the build of a naturally slimmer person who works out a lot. Think “Olympic swimmer,” or “varsity lightweight crew:” dude is clearly doing very well for himself physically. This extends to his face, which is roguishly good-looking and prone to sly smiles. Basically, he is the second male lead in a very well-funded heist movie: the one that gets the less wholesome but more interesting girl in the end.

When Nicholas is in full or partial spider form, that spider looks like this spider:

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l2...gabonensis.jpg

If you’re not brave enough to look at the picture, it’s a sleek, smallish black tarantula with purple highlights. I think it looks quite dapper, considering. While I’m fudging the species a little bit to get the look right, Nicholas’ variety of spider is native to hills and grasslands, and nests in burrows in the ground lined with silk webs, venturing out to hunt smaller insects. The parallels to the Atenka family are not necessarily subtle, here.

Clothing notes: There is classy, and then there is damn classy. Nicholas is the latter. Prefers dark, bespoke suits, occasionally with understated pinstriping, over an open-collared button-down shirt and black loafers; in business settings, he straps on a tie, but it’s not the norm. Tends toward rich, cool colors for the shirt and other accents: most often purple, burgundy or deep blue, but occasionally goes for crimson. Does not dress down overmuch, but when he does, it’s still elegant, well-tailored and capable of getting into all the best clubs ahead of the line. On the other hand, when he dresses up, the guy looks ridiculously good in a tux.

Accessories: Black leather billfold; black-band, gold-framed luxury chronometer; smartphone with entirely too many functions; designer sunglasses, worn often. These last are fashion-only -- Nicholas has perfect vision. Also, almost always wears a thin, tasteful gold chain necklace with a small gold pendant in this shape: this is the Adinkra symbol known as “Ananse Ntontan,” representing Anansi as patron of creativity, wisdom, and communication. As such, it's worn more for personal reasons than for show, and it’s often under his shirt, though it does get worn more prominently at parties and such.

Also, Nicholas has a car. This car. A car that, more specifically, is a 2007 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, because Nicholas has a sense of humor.

Type Child of Anansi
Clan Ghanaian

TMental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 4, Resolve 2
SPhysical Attributes: Strength 3(5/4), Dexterity 3(6/5), Stamina 3(4/3)
PSocial Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 5, Composure 4

TMental Skills: Academics 2, Occult 1, Politics (Networking) 4, Science (Economics) 2
SPhysical Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl 1, Drive 2, Larceny 4, Stealth 3
PSocial Skills: Empathy 3, Expression 2, Intimidation 3, Persuasion (Cutting a Deal, Seduction)

4+Clan

6, Socialize (Schmooze) 4, Subterfuge (Bluff) 5, Streetwise 3

Merits: Allies (Old Money) 3, Allies (African Immigrants) 4, Contacts (~High Society~) 5, Luxury 2,

Once per adventure, reroll a failed roll with a +3 bonus

Prey’s Charm 3, Status (Atenka Holdings Ltd.) 3, Striking Looks 2
Lair: Highrise Apartment; Size 2, Security 3, Secrecy 3

Willpower: 6
Harmony: 7

Initiative: 7 (12/9)
Defense: 3 (4/4)
Size: 5 (7/5)
Health: 8 (11/8)
Speed: 11 (16/14)

Primal Urge: 2
Inborn Aspects: Shapeshifting, Regeneration, Shadow Bond
Aspects:
1st:

With a good enough yarn, a Cahalith can hold her audience captivated indefinitely, so long as she maintains the story. Upon activating this Gift, anyone with hearing distance of the story will sit down and listen for its duration, even spirits that might not normally understand or grasp the meaning of the tale. To enact this Gift, the Cahalith must be able to tell a story in song or words. While lyrical tales happen in other art forms, this Gift requires spoken words. Cost: None Dice Pool: Presence + Expression, minus the highest Composure of the gathered listeners (or the highest Resistance if those are spirits) Action: Extended and resisted, each roll represents one minute, and the Gift can last for up to one full scene. Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The story stirs something vile and brutal within listeners. They become angry, and are likely to attack (this is especially true of spirits). Failure: No successes are added. During that minute, listeners are free to act as they see fit. Success: During a minute where the Cahalith achieves any successes, listeners must spend a point of Willpower and must succeed on a Composure + Primal Urge roll in order to take any action that might interrupt the storytelling. Exceptional Success: The story is so potent, at its end the Cahalith feels truly triumphant, gaining a point of lost Willpower at the culmination of the tale.

The Unending Story ●,

Uratha often need a speedy exit from a messy scene or a place to conceal themselves for a quick change of skins. In the city, this is can be hard to come by. Strip malls and supercenters are crowded and sometimes electronically monitored. This Gift directs the werewolf toward the nearest adequate place to conceal oneself for a scene. This Gift functions only in cities. Cost: 1 Essence Dice Pool: Wits + Subterfuge Action: Reflexive Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The bolt-hole turns out to be automatically compromised in some way. The dumpster is filled with rot-liquefied fish; the alley is full of cops making a drug bust, etc. Failure: No hiding place is apparent. Success: The nearest useful bolt-hole is discovered. The character receives a +2 bonus to any Stealth rolls made to enter the hiding place without being detected. Exceptional Success: The bolt-hole might be large enough for the whole pack, or contain something the character needs or have some added benefit, such as a secondary means of egress.

Concrete Bolt-Hole ●
2nd:

As the Werewolf Gift of the same name (Scheherazade’s Gift 2): Since time immemorial, a storyteller sitting down to pass along a tale by the fireside has been granted certain indulgences. A man comes to town with a tale; someone will bring him a pint. If an aunt sits at the table to talk the old family yarns, someone is bound to bring her a slice of cake and some tea. So it is with a Child of Anansi. With a successful performance of this Gift, the storyteller begins an engrossing tale meant to keep her audience attention distracted from her goal. She may involve the people listening, or call up local history. Regardless, as she’s telling the story, she can make a small request of the listeners and they are compelled to agree. Cost: 1 Essence Dice Pool: Manipulation + Persuasion, contested by the listener’s Composure + Primal Urge Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The target sees the story for what it is, an attempt to manipulate those listening. This may cause the target to respond with hostility. Regardless, the Cahalith suffers a –1 to all social actions against anyone who heard the story for the reminder of the scene. Failure: There is no compulsion for the listener to obey the Cahalith. Success: During the course of his story, the Cahalith can give a single command to one listener. If successful, the target will perform one task for the Cahalith without being aware of the manipulation. The command must be within the confines of the tale told, and must not put the target in direct danger. The task must be something that can be completed within the given scene. Exceptional Success: The listener obeys the compulsion with greater fervor. On future rolls involving the listener, the Cahalith gains +2 to all pertinent Social rolls.

The Storyteller’s Indulgence ●●,

The classic bait-and-switch trick has a con artist swapping worthless junk for an apparently precious item. This trick does the same thing, projecting an illusion of value onto something worth nothing at all. To pull this off, the trickster takes a worthless item or collection of items — a stone, sheaf of papers, laptop-sized board, ratty bathrobe and so forth. Weaving an enchantment around that item, the trickster finds a “mark” and pretends that the item is somehow valuable. A combination of magic and eloquence bamboozles the target, and the trickster eventually convinces the target to take the item in exchange for a more valuable treasure. The illusion wears off in an hour or so; by that point, the trickster is long gone. In game terms, the were-spider’s player rolls his Intelligence + Subterfuge + Primal Urge while instilling the “pearl” with illusionary value. Unless the mark can win a contested roll of her own Intelligence + Subterfuge (+ Primal Urge or other appropriate trait, if she’s a supernatural being), she’ll be utterly convinced that the “pearl” is whatever the trickster says it is. When the enchantment wears off, however, she’ll realize that you always have to watch out for Anansi and his ilk.

Pearl of Great Price ●●,

Even the most well-connected Uratha runs dry of associates after a while; this Gift can open new doors for her. When the character is in a situation in which she needs the services of a certain kind of professional, she can use this Gift to contact the professional. The char-acter enacts the Gift and then uses some form of communication to contact the person. This may be done via phone, email, IM, letter, smoke signal — whatever form of long-distance communication the Uratha has at hand and knows how to use. This Gift does not speed up the communication, or make a broken cell phone work. In essence, the Uratha is asking a communication-spirit for help in the form of a connection to the resource she needs. The Gift does not reward the Uratha with a name or introduction of any sort, just a means to communicate with whomever she needs via a ring tone or a fortuitously delivered piece of mail. The Gift cannot make a broken cell phone work or otherwise create a miraculous line of contact; a means of communication must be at hand before the Gift can be used. The Gift can’t be used to contact a particular professional. A character can’t use it to contact “the hitman who killed Mayor Franklin,” although she could use it to contact a contract killer. Nor could she contact “the mayor,” but she could state “someone with the ability to stop Proposition 82.” Of course, the person on the other end is not any way predisposed to work for you, nor are you provided with a ready explanation as to how you got the number. For example, a character’s sister gets shot in a strange part of town, and he needs to quickly contact a back-alley doctor to fix her up without alerting the authorities. The Uratha could enact this Gift, asking for “the best blackmarket doctor available in the city,” and then hit the dial button on his cell phone. If successful, this Gift will dial the appropriate person. It’s up to the character from there. Cost: 1 Essence Dice Pool: Presence + Streetwise Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The Gift contacts an enemy, the police or in some other way provokes the authorities. Failure: The communication fails — a wrong num-ber, busy signal, out of service area, unexpected network delay, dead letter office or similar result. Success: The number of successes indicates the dots in the particular Skill that governs the profession of the person contacted, up to the normal maximums. Exceptional Success: The person contacted may have some reason to need a job, or may have otherwise been in a generous mood when contacted.

Foot in the Door ●●,
3rd:

Some animals are simply captivating. The way a snake moves, the sinews beneath a panther’s silken coat, the distant majesty of a soaring bird. The character is able to channel some of that and turn on the charm when dealing with a crowd. The player rolls the character’s Presence + Persuasion. Those affected can resist with a Resolve + Composure roll (alternately, the Storyteller may resist with the highest Resolve + Composure score within the affected range). If the character’s successes beat those of the crowd, they are given over to her primal allure. Any Social rolls made with those affected are made with a bonus equal to the successes achieved on activating this Aspect. This ability affects those within the character’s Primal Urge score in yards. Once active, it cannot be turned off. It lasts for one scene.

Hypnotic Allure ●●●
4th:

Ducking into a hole, niche or other hiding place, a trickster literally disappears from there and reappears in another niche nearby. The new hiding-place must be within 50 feet of the original one, and has to be large and dark enough to reasonably accommodate the shapechanger in his current form. The player spends one point of Essence to “skip” the space between the two locations. This Aspect works in any shape other than Hybrid, and is damned confusing to the trickster’s enemies.

Blank Burrow ●●●●,

As Bone Hex; (1E, Instant, Presence+Occult); upon a success, the target takes a -4 penalty to its next three rolls

Caught in Anansi’s Webs ●●●●
Essence: 11/1

Jean-Pierre Musavaka

Type: Child of Anansi
Clan: Congolese
Born: 1944

Virtue: Fortitude Jean-Pierre’s tough and weathered like old teak-wood, a bit eroded perhaps, but unbroken.
Vice: Greed The promise of a good pay day would bring Jean-Pierre back from the dead.

Background: When the discussions began about establishing a colony of werespiders in London, one of the questions first and foremost on everyone’s mind was protection. Given the regrettable tendency of the Uratha to adopt a “chew first, ask questions later” policy towards any shapeshifter with more than the standard number of limbs, and the fact that the Children of Anansi were, strictly speaking, muscling in on their territory, it seemed a good idea to have someone with the new colony who knew his way around a fight.

But who to send? This proved to be a tricky question for the clan elders in Nasande. Obviously, whoever it was had to be a good fighter. That wasn’t so hard, as Africa had seen some of the bloodiest wars of the last fifty years, and though the Children of Anansi tended towards love and not war, there were a fair few veterans among them. Secondly, they had to be loyal, which was a little trickier in what is essentially a race of tricksters and con artists. They had to be willing to move across the world to an entirely new society, which was also tricky. And they had to be steady enough not to cause needless trouble with the hair-trigger werewolves, and as anyone who has ever met a Child of Anansi can testify, finding one that doesn’t cause trouble is nigh-well impossible.

But Solomon Kwaku Atenka and the clan elders put their heads together, asked their relatives, and eventually coughed up a candidate in the form of Jean-Pierre Musavaka, an uncle-in-law of Solomon and a distant blood relative of Nicholas himself, on his mother’s side. He fit all of the criterion. Kind of.

In his earliest years, Jean-Pierre had been a small farmer in a remote part of the southern Belgian Congo. He helped his father farm peanuts, actually, flirted with the local girls, avoided the Belgians as best he could, and listened to the village’s one radio breathlessly when Patrice Lumumba announced independence in 1960. In a space of half a year, one of the most brutal colonial regimes in Africa had been disassembled. Things were looked up…

…and then the Congo crisis hit. Katanga seceded, mercenaries were called up, the Belgians started supplying money for arms, and it turned out that fighting paid better than peanut-farming. Jean-Pierre, at the ripe age of sixteen, signed up as a fighter, and he’d be doing it on and off for the next forty years.

First was the Congo Crisis, which would last well into the late sixties. Jean-Pierre, by dint of skill, the natural talents of a werespider, and a hefty dose of luck, survived the whole thing unmaimed. When it was over, he’d managed to amass a good amount of pay, and then it was back to peanut farming. Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre was not a very good peanut farmer, and so in the early seventies he signed up as a mercenary in Angolan Civil War. And then in the Ugandan Civil War and in the Rhodesian Bush Wars in the mid-80s. And in the First Congo War and in the First Liberian Civil War in the early and mid-90s.

He got better at it, and he got rich, and he didn’t really bother farming peanuts anymore. He built a big house and got married and had children. And it quietly ground Jean-Pierre’s psyche into the dust. Somewhere along the way, he broke, and no one noticed – not even Jean-Pierre.

He’d killed people. Lots of people, and though he never killed civilians, he saw a whole lot of dead ones. He’s been shot, burned, blown-up, and has caught diseases for which there aren’t even names, has seen friends and comrades die, and all for what? Add in the supernatural aspects – Jean-Pierre is well familiar with both the Cult of the Bloody Tongue and the Cult of the Spiraling Worm, and has fought and killed two Leopard-Men in his time – and by the dawn of the new millennium Jean-Pierre crawled into a bottle and refused to come out.

That’s where he was when Solomon Kwaku Atenka came and asked him to go London. His children were grown, he and his wife were old, and the Big Man of Nasande was offering a lot of money and a few pulled legal strings. So they moved to London, bought a very nice house, and now Jean-Pierre drinks himself to death in English pubs instead of African homes.

Truthfully, Jean-Pierre Musavaka is no one’s idea of a dangerous werespider mercenary. He’s a skinny little man with short grey hair and wrinkled skin the color of teak, with a comfortable beer belly. He spends most days sitting a pub, surrounded by a gaggle of cronies gathered from the African émigrés of London, debating politics, women, and (most importantly) cricket in middling French and worse English. He’s not a fan of the British, but his wife Marie adores the city, and so Jean-Pierre’s made his peace with it. He’s usually half-drunk, so that helps, and he still has that flirtatious, worldly-wise charm of an old Spider, which helps since he has all the associated bad habits.

That said, when Nicholas comes by and actually gets Jean-Pierre to sober up, the man is astonishingly dangerous. Despite all that he’s seen and experienced, he’s still sharp, a past-master at the booby-trap and the ambush, with more combat experience than most werewolf packs put together. When he puts on his mercenary cap, he’s cool and calm and impeccably sure of himself – he’s been shot at by professionals, and the supernaturals of London do not impress him.

Jean-Pierre’s spider-form is that of an African Funnelweb spider (family Agelenidae), a long, slender, brown-black creature of decidedly predatory aspect that moves much faster than any spider should.

Samantha Akuba Danquah
Sam, The Shadow Lady

Type: Child of Anansi
Clan: Ghanaian
Born: 1988

Virtue: Hope However dark things look, you can always walk away and start all over.
Vice: Gluttony Samantha has a whole lot of wants and needs, and sees nothing wrong in doing whatever is necessary to satisfy them.

Background: Here’s how it usually goes. The customer has a problem. Perhaps business isn’t as good as it might be, perhaps the wife’s cheating on him, perhaps he wants to cheat on his wife, whatever. But then he finds a card with a phone number and a little message, and when he calls the number, the smooth, elegant soprano on the other end tells him to go to a little park out in the West End, and to wear a rose-flower in his lapel or on his hat. So the customer goes there, and he finds… not exactly who he expected to see.

She’s young and beautiful, but carries herself like an old woman and walks with a silver-tipped cane. She’s dressed in men’s clothing of a bygone era, a sharp black suit with a lime-green fedora and a lime-green shirt beneath the black jacket and bright green gloves. She has a dead rose in her breast pocket, dark and withered. Her name is the Shadow Lady.

She’ll listen to the customer’s problem, and she never judges, and she seems to know what he’s going to say before he says it. She tells him that she’ll make the problem go away, but there’ll be a price. Not just a monetary price, though there’s that too. But something strange – buy a dozen Barbie dolls, each different, braid them together with a little girl’s hair and throw them into the Thames. Take a BB gun and break every streetlight on the block. Buy every issue of Maxim from 1988 and burn them on a pyre. If the customer balks, then the Shadow Lady sometimes gives a little demonstration – a chorus of unearthly whispers rises from the park bench, murmuring the customer’s name. After that the customer usually does what the Shadow Lady told him.

For a little while, his fortunes turn around. Business picks up, the home life gets calmed down, customer’s strutting around like a rooster. He goes to the Shadow Lady for more, and she tells him the future, and works her magic, and he pays her even more money… right up until the magic stops and the Shadow Lady stops answering phone calls and the customer’s right back to where he started. Just a few thousands or tens of thousands of pounds poorer.

And Samantha Akuba Danquah, the self-titled Shadow Lady, starts looking for another sucker.

Samantha (‘Sam’ to her friends) was born in the estates of Walthamstow, to a pair of Ghanaian immigrants. Her father was a too-smooth singer at local nightclubs from whom Sam inherited an absolutely lovely singing voice and the ability to turn into a giant spider. He ran off periodically during Sam’s girlhood, though he’d always come back. From her mother, a sensible, stolid woman who cleaned offices during the evenings, Sam got a figure to die for and slightly more ability to plan ahead than her dear old dad ever showed.

Two more things. First, Sam was a brainy girl, and she was good at noticing things about people – people said a lot if you just paid attention to how they acted. And second, Sam got the Second Sight pretty early on. School became all sorts of interesting when you could see who the local spirits were pestering, and helping her mum clean offices got to be downright fascinating.

It started as a summer job, really. The local corner store was having problems because of a brood of despair spirits in the neighborhood, and so Sam offered to help business by chasing them off (though she didn’t put it in quite so many words). Sam was genuinely nonplussed when Old Man Akoto gave her a hundred pounds and a bag with enough chocolate she could barely lift it as a thank you. But she caught on fast, and started making arrangements, and when she finished the local Comprehensive, she went into business full time. It beat studying for a paralegal’s job.

What Sam does is about one-half flim-flam and one-half spirit-herding. She’s a big believer in image, hence her outrageous outfits and the Shadow Lady title, and she’s a pretty experienced cold-reader by now. She still works with her mum as an office-cleaner, and tends to scout out her targets and plant her cards that way. Past that, she mostly moves spirits around – if someone’s business is failing, coax some greed spirits to take up residence, if they’re having trouble at home, joy-spirits can be lured over. People being people, Sam deals with a lot of lust spirits. With her customers making offerings to the spirits, Sam’s got a fair amount of pull at the lower levels of the Shadow – the whole business looks rather like a rickety chain of deals, with Sam juggling multiple spirits and customers at any one time and taking commissions and kickbacks off every deal.

She draws the line at anything more active than that – no possession, no violence, and no subversion of free will. Partially that’s because the whole idea squicks her out, and partially because the Guardians of the Veil would come down hard on her like a ton of bricks. That said, she has no problem cutting and running when her chain of deals falls through, which it invariably does – spirits get too demanding, mortals do the offerings improperly, spirits just get bored and wander off, or Sam just botches a deal (she’s still new to this whole thing). There are quite a few spirits and mortals who’d like to have a word with Sam, though she’s careful not to antagonize anyone from whom she can’t hide.

When she’s not ‘on the job’ Samantha tends to be cool, even austere – she’s spent so much time dealing with alien spirits and dissecting the emotional vulnerabilities of her customers that it’s hard for her to turn it off and just hang out – but despite that she enjoys being around people. She’s a bit on the creepy side as a result, something which isn’t helped by the aura of strangeness that surrounds her, as all that spiritual energy starts to rub off (also she’s a were-spider, so there’s that).

All the same, Sam tends to be popular. First, she’s got money, lots of it, and she spends it like water. Her usual dynamic is to do a series of deals and arrangements, which requires a lot of careful planning, negotiation, and just general effort. Then when it inevitably collapses, she takes the money and splurges on the clubs, clothing, the best food, presents for people, trips abroad, and so on, and tends to run out in a couple of months. Then it’s back to work.

Secondly, Sam is drop-dead gorgeous. It’s a withdrawn sort of beauty, the kind that doesn’t flaunt itself but instead draws you in through the deep-green eyes and long, black hair that goes just past the shoulder. She favors black, usually skinny black jeans and black tanktops and t-shirts that accentuate her slender figure, with jewelry that looks like silver but is usually highly polished steel or white gold. Even Sam’s spider-form is pretty, that of a jewel-like Cucumber Spider (Araniella cucurbitina) with translucent limbs and a lime-green abdomen.

Lucas King

Type: Werewolf
Pack: The Cold River
Tribe: Ivory Claws
Auspice: Pure

Virtue: Prudence Though Lucas affects the outward look of a rabble-rousing thug, he’s a much more thoughtful and calculating individual than most realize. He doesn't risk his own neck, he gets other people to do it for him.
Vice: Envy Lucas thinks of himself as singularly free of prejudice, an equal-opportunity cynic, but that's not really the case. He tried to be a good guy, he tried to care and do the right thing, and that got him nowhere, and now Lucas resents the people who still keep trying, especially if they succeed. Hatred, fear, lust, greed, that's what really drives people, isn't it?

Background: Born in Stoke-on-Trent, Lucas King drifted through life without ever really fitting in. He was a fast-talker, but that just got him into more and more trouble. Men always thought he was trying to chat up their girlfriends; women wondered if he’d still be there in the morning. Lucas tried doing things right, living life how he’d been taught to, and it got him nowhere. Sure, it was easy for him to make people like him. With a little effort, he could make anyone like him. But that wasn’t enough. What good was that for getting through life? After a particularly terrible defeat for Stoke City, he found himself in a bar, trying to talk his way out of a misunderstanding. It didn’t work. As he lay bleeding on the street outside, he decided that he’d had enough.

It didn’t take much to live up to his reputation. He had to stop worrying about the ‘right’ thing to do and go with the flow. For Lucas, it was deceptively easy. He let his job tail off and started tending the bar of a pub that a lot of hooligans used as a hangout. He got talking to them, worked his way in slowly. He gained their trust, joined them in drinking until all hours and assaulting rival supporters for daring to wear the wrong colors. For Lucas, life was simple. But then, things changed. What looked like a gang blocked his way to the ground for an evening game. Nobody else around, just him and the freaks. He ran forward, punching and biting and clawing. There was something about these people; they didn’t look human. They didn’t look right. He heard what felt like voices telling him that they were alien, other. He tore into them savagely, and they returned the favor. Only when a distant uncle showed up and his acquaintances revealed as werewolves that Lucas was able to see what he had become. He felt like he’d reached the next level. They broke him of his human weaknesses, his foolish impulses, and brought him before Silver Wolf.

For a few years, Lucas ran with his uncle's pack, but the First Change had re-ignited something in the young man. A drive, a desire, an ambition, or perhaps just some kind of bloody-minded contrariness. Lucas decided that Stoke was too small a place for a man of his ambitions. It was a dying place, worn out and tired and too small. And, perhaps, he just didn't like being told what to do. Lucas started talking to the other werewolves of Stoke, and in the space of a few months, he managed to rustle together a pack of young layabouts who were ready to hit the big time. They were ready to go to London.

In London, Lucas's pack secured a territory near the river, in the Patmore Estate in Battersea. They called themselves the Cold River, set up shop in a small bar of the same name by the riverside, and got themselves a totem. And it was then that Lucas had an idea. An absolutely brilliant idea. He made his bar a haven for football hooligans of the old school, the ones who just wanted a chance to get drunk, to hate, and to beat up anyone who looked at them cross-eyed. He listened to their complaints, he told them what they wanted to hear, forging their hatred into a weapon. He joined the British National Party, to give his gang a figurehead, and he decorated his bar with football paraphernalia. Lucas didn't actually care. It felt good to have followers, people who'd people who would do what he told them for any excuse.

On the whole, Lucas thinks he's done rather well for himself. He's the alpha of a strong pack, he's got a territory carved out near the heart of the city, a dangerous totem and a gang of mortal thugs at his beck and call. The next logical step is to make a name for himself, to do something big. He's been eyeing Revelation, hoping for a chance to take down the apostate Cinder, but the last time the Cold River and Revelation had a rumble, Cinder nearly took him apart thanks to some bizarre faerie witchcraft. He's looking for a rematch, but on his own terms.

Lucas’s never been much of a fighter. He can hold his own, but he relies on his pack to help out when things get really violent. Away from the flashing teeth and blood-slicked claws of combat, he’s capable of twisting any situation to his advantage. If he weren’t so likable, people would call him slimy, but he’s avoided that so far. He's a chameleon, a cynic and a demagogue. He tells people what they want to hear, and he's good at it because he never believes it. He used to care, but that never worked out, so why bother?

Lucas’s a tall, reasonably handsome young man. He’s slim but wiry, corded with defined muscle from the trials he's gone through. He never combs his dirty blond hair, but that just adds to his air of roguish charm. His green eyes look deceptively honest no matter what he says. Normally, he wears torn blue jeans and a T-shirt featuring the St. George Cross, the English flag, along with steel-toed boots, heavily scuffed from delivering a good kicking. In wolf form, he has a dark coat with a pale splash of fur across his throat and breastbone.

Tribe: Ivory Claws
Auspice: Pure

TMental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 3, Resolve 3
SPhysical Attributes: Strength 2 (3/5/4/2), Dexterity 3 (3/4/5/5), Stamina 3 (4/5/5/4)
PSocial Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 5, Composure 3

TMental Skills: Academics 1, Crafts 2, Investigation 4, Occult 1, Politics (Far-Right) 2
SPhysical Skills: Athletics

2+Totem

4, Brawl 3, Drive 2, Larceny 3, Stealth (Urban) 4, Survival (

Totem

Cold)

2+Totem

4
PSocial Skills: Empathy (Sympathy) 4, Expression (Demagogue) 4, Intimidation (Break the Defiant) 3, Persuasion 3, Socialize 3, Streetwise (Gangs) 4, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Allies (Skinheads & Hooligans) 5, Allies (Criminal) 5, Contacts 3, Resources 3, Retainer (Cold River Pack Members x3) 5 each, Striking Looks 2, Totem (River at Midnight)

7+Pure

8,
Lair: Cold River Bar; Size 3, Security 2, Locus 2

Willpower: 6
Harmony: 5

Initiative: 6 (6/7/8/8)
Defense: 3 (3/3/3/3)
Health: 8 (10/12/11/8)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Speed: 10 (11/14/17/15)

Primal Urge: 4
Renown: Cunning ●●, Glory ●●, Honor ●●●, Purity ●●●●
Gifts:
1st: Warning Growl (Dominance) 1, Ward Against Humans (Warding) 1, Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1, Loose Tongue (Evasion) 1
2nd: Luna's Dictum (Dominance) 2, Father Wolf's Speed (Father Wolf) 2, Silent Fog (Weather) 2, Hone Rage (Rage) 2
3rd: Voice of Command (Dominance) 3, Ward Against Technology (Warding) 3, Primal Howl (Father Wolf) 3, Deluge (Weather; Pack) 3
4th: Break the Defiant (Dominance) 4
Essence: 13/2
Totem Bonuses (Included): +2 dots in Athletics (Given), +2 dot in Survival (Given), Survival Specialty (Cold) (Given), Deluge (Weather 3) (Pack)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2(L)............ 12………8-Again, Hone Rage
Steel-Tipped Boots...................1(B).............6.........

Jacko “Leerie” Leary, Gordon Boyd and Trevor Cracked Bone

Tribe: Ivory Claws
Auspice: Pure

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 3
Physical Attributes: Strength 3 (4/6/5/3), Dexterity 2 (2/3/4/4), Stamina 4 (5/6/6/5)
Social Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 2, Composure 3

Mental Skills: Crafts 3, Medicine (Barbed Arrow) 4, Politics 1
Physical Skills: Athletics

2+Totem

4, Brawl (Claw) 4, Drive 2, Stealth 2, Survival (

Totem

Cold)

2+Totem

4
Social Skills: Empathy 1, Intimidation 3, Socialize 2, Streetwise (Gangs) 4

Merits: Fast Reflexes 2, Iron Stamina 1, Resources 2, Totem (River at Midnight)

7+Pure

8
Lair: Flats; Size 1 each

Willpower: 6
Initiative: 7 (7/8/9/9)
Defense: 2 (2/3/3/3)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Health: 9 (11/13/12/9)
Speed: 10 (11/14/17/15)

Primal Urge: 3
Renown: Cunning ●●, Purity ●●●
Gifts:
1st: Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1 , Warning Growl (Dominance) 1
2nd: Barbed Arrow (Agony) 2, Father Wolf's Speed (Father Wolf) 2
3rd: Ward Against Technology (Warding) 3, Deluge (Weather; Pack) 3
Essence: 12/1
Totem Bonuses (Included): +2 dots in Athletics (Given), +2 dot in Survival (Given), Survival Specialty (Cold) (Given), Deluge (Weather 3) (Pack)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2L............ 13……………8-Again, Barbed Arrow (11 dice)

River at Midnight

River at Midnight tends to manifest itself as patterns in nearby water or as fog or condensation on glass. Sometiems a face emerges, sometimes simply abstract designs. When the spirit goes to battle it emerges as a shambling, roughly bipedal mass of dark, brackish water.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 3, Resistance 4

Willpower: 8
Essence: 15

Initiative: 6
Defense: 1
Armor: 3
Speed: 13
Size: 8
Corpus: 12

Influences: Cold ●●
Numina: Material Vision, Blast (Water)

Bonuses: +2 dots in Athletics (Given), +2 dot in Survival (Given), Survival Specialty (Cold) (Given), Deluge (Weather 3) (Pack)
Cost: 45

Ban: Every week, the pack must swim for one hour in cold, frigid water at midnight.

Kevin “Moxie” Moxley

Type: Werewolf
Pack: Brick and Bone
Tribe: Ghost Wolf
Auspice: Irraka

Virtue: Hope If it was just himself, he wouldn't care so much, but Moxie can't stand it when other people are down and out.
Vice: Greed Moxie never was able to pass up a chance to make a buck, even when he really should have.

Background: Not every werewolf gets to be someone. For every one with a good education and a lofty goal, there are two more with no real hope and no real goal beyond surviving each day. Some of them have lived that way all their lives; others end up on the run from the authorities and the Pure. Brick and Bone is both. The pack is full of misfits and dispossessed, all Ghost Wolves and all with something to hide from. They never know whether the people keeping an eye on them are from the local benefit office, or whether the Anshega have found them. Other Forsaken consider them a bunch of screw-ups, which is accurate if not particularly nice, and none more so than their alpha, Kevin “Moxie” Moxley.

Some people just don’t get a break. Kevin’s one of those people. Even before his Change, he couldn’t hold a flat for more than six months, and with a criminal record including drugs, petty theft, burglary and a count of arson behind him there was no hope for him of getting a real job. The stupid thing is that none of it was his fault. Sure, he nicked the odd car and sold some speed on the side, but nothing serious. Nothing really bad. He wasn’t getting kids hooked on crack or mugging old people on the street. At least, he’s pretty sure that he wasn’t. He just couldn’t get by with what he had, so he took things he thought nobody would miss. He was wrong.

In and out of prisons through his 20s, Moxie couldn’t settle down. In his own mind, he was the victim. Things went wrong for him, and every time he tried to fix them, they just got worse. A friend got in trouble with a loan shark in Manchester, so Moxie did his best to destroy the evidence. A small fire turned into a large fire while he was helping himself to the contents of the safe, and he was arrested for arson. He underwent his First Change before going to court, and ran. He didn’t stop running until he was in Germany with just the clothes on his back and a rusty knowledge of the language. He tried being productive, putting himself to use on a building site, but the local werewolves wanted him out of their territory yesterday. He stuck around for as long as he could before running back to England.

In Sunderland, he found others in the same position as he was. No territory, no pack, no direction. Werewolves just trying to get by when the world didn’t want them to. Moxie could deal with it if it were just him, but seeing others in the same position ticked him off. He gathered them together and formed Brick and Bone. They quested for a patron, looking for a spirit to watch over them, and they found one willing to take them. If only he’d paid more attention to the way it worded their ban, Moxie might have saved them all some trouble, but he just couldn’t follow everything. He’s regretted that for a long time.

For a while, the packmembers plied their trade across the north of England and overseas, under the cover of a group of cheap laborers who don’t mind being paid cash-in-hand with nothing going on record. All of them had a shady past, with the police after them for everything from petty theft to arson. Worse, wherever they went, the Pure soon find them and use them as prey. Brick and Bone had a high turnover, but just about everywhere the pack ended up there was a Thihirtha Numea who needed to skip town but didn’t want to brave the journey alone. The situation was made worse by the pack’s patron’s ban — a particularly convoluted bit of wording that has a habit of attracting more trouble than the pack can handle. When things get too much for Brick and Bone to handle, they moved on again — often leaving the local werewolves to clean up the pack’s mess.

All this travelling started to wear on the pack, and so Moxie had a bright idea. There was one city where even a bunch of screwups like Brick and Bone could settle down. London. A few years back, they moved to London, took a tiny slip of territory that no one else seemed to want around the Blackheath, and tried not to get on the bad side of every other werewolf in London.

Unfortunately, the pack isn’t very good at it. If something can go wrong for Brick and Bone, it will. Beshilu hide in the building sites the packmembers work on, and the number of off-the-books workers who end up Urged or Claimed skyrockets whenever the pack is around. It’s not the pack’s fault, but no one ever believes them when they say that. Their reputation follows them like the smell of burning buildings, their totem’s ban just causes more and more trouble with mortal and supernatural authorities alike, and just when things couldn’t get worse, Moxie found out why no one wanted the Blackheath when a psycho crow-faerie with a disturbingly keen smile paid him a midnight visit. Moxie doesn’t sleep very well any more.

Moxie can’t help but worry. If he were on his own, he’d be fine, stealing what he wanted when the dole money and illegal laboring dried up. Now he’s got a pack to lead, and he doesn’t want to let his packmates down. He helps them out, and they help him out. It’s the closest he’s had to a family in a long time. He’d do anything to keep them safe and keep them together. Now if only he just wasn’t so bad at it.

Moxie’s a short, scrawny man in his late 30s. He’s perpetually dirty, and the grime settles into the lines on his rat-like face to make him look almost 10 years older. He keeps his hair hidden under a woolen hat even in the height of summer, and wears at least three layers of grimy clothing at any one time. His jeans always have holes in the knees, and his boots look one step from falling apart. In his Urhan form, Moxie has long, midnight- black fur that harkens back to Black Shuck.

Tribe: Ghost Wolf
Auspice: Irraka

TMental Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 2
SPhysical Attributes: Strength 3 (4/6/5/3), Dexterity 3 (3/4/5/5), Stamina 4 (5/6/6/5)
PSocial Attributes: Presence 2, Manipulation 3, Composure 3

TMental Skills: Crafts (Construction Work) 2, Investigation 2, Politics 1, Science 1
PPhysical Skills: Athletics (Beat a Hasty Retreat) 3, Brawl 3, Drive (Heavy Machinery) 2, Firearms 1, Larceny (Breaking and Entering) 4, Stealth 4, Survival 3, Weaponry 1
SSocial Skills: Animal Ken (Dogs) 1, Empathy 1, Intimidation 2, Persuasion (Wheedle) 2, Socialize 2, Streetwise 4, Subterfuge 3

Merits: Allies (Construction Workers) 2, Allies (Petty Criminals) 3, Fleet of Foot 3, Languages (First Tongue, German; Native is English) 2, Quick Healer 4, Resources 1, Retainer (Brick and Bone Pack Members x4) 4 each, Totem (Ebon-Eyed Magpie) 7
Lair: Off-the-Books Construction Site; Size 4, Locus 2, Secrecy 4, Workshop (Excavation, Construction) 2
Lair: Rented Apartment; Size 1, Security 1, Secrecy 3

Willpower: 5
Harmony: 6

Initiative: 6 (6/7/8/8)
Defense: 3 (3/3/3/3)
Health: 9 (11/13/12/9)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Speed: 14 (15/18/21/19)

Primal Urge: 2
Renown: Cunning ●●●, Honor ●, Purity ●, Wisdom ●●
Gifts:
1st: Loose Tongue (Evasion) 1, Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1, Wolf-Blood's Lure (Father Wolf) 1, Feet of Mist (Stealth) 1, Left-Handed Spanner (Technology) 1, Concrete Bolt-Hole (Urban) 1
2nd: Sand in the Eyes (Evasion) 2, Anybeast (Mother Luna) 2, Nightfall (Technology) 2, Slip Away (New Moon) 2, Foot in the Door (Urban) 2
3rd: Playing Possum (Evasion) 3, Deep Pockets (Cunning) 3
Rituals: ●●
1st: Banish Human, Funeral Rite, Rite of Dedication, Shared Scent
2nd: Call Gaffling, Cleansed Blood, Hallow Touchstone, Rite of Contrition, Rite of Dormancy
Essence: 11/1
Totem Bonuses (Included): Concrete Bolt-Hole (Urban 1) (Given), Foot in the Door (Urban 2) (Given)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2L............ 11……………

Tribe: Ghost Wolf
Auspice: Cahalith

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 3
Physical Attributes: Strength 2 (3/5/4/2), Dexterity 3 (3/4/5/5), Stamina 4 (5/6/6/5)
Social Attributes: Presence 2, Manipulation 3, Composure 2

Mental Skills: Crafts (Construction) 2, Investigation 2, Science 1
Physical Skills: Athletics (Running) 2, Brawl 3, Drive (Heavy Machinery) 3, Larceny 1, Stealth 2, Survival 2
Social Skills: Empathy 1, Intimidation 1, Persuasion 2, Socialize 2, Streetwise 3

Merits: Allies (Petty Criminals) 2, Fleet of Foot 3, Resources 1, Totem (Ebon-Eyed Magpie) 4
Lair: Flats; Size 1 each

Willpower: 5
Initiative: 6 (6/7/8/8)
Defense: 2 (2/3/3/3)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Health: 9 (11/13/12/9)
Speed: 12 (13/16/19/17)

Primal Urge: 2
Renown: Cunning ●●, Honor ●, Wisdom ●
Gifts:
1st: Wolf-Blood’s Lure (Father Wolf) 1, Pack Awareness (Gibbous Moon) 1, Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1, Concrete Bolt-Hole (Urban) 1
2nd: Anybeast (Mother Luna) 2, Foot in the Door (Urban) 2
Essence: 11/1
Totem Bonuses (Included): Concrete Bolt-Hole (Urban 1) (Given), Foot in the Door (Urban 2) (Given)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2L............ 10……………

Ebon-Eyed Magpie

Ebon-Eyed Magpie is a small, black-and-white bird, indistinguishable from most of its kind but for its eyes of black cut-glass. It is a very talkative and active totem, albeit a troublesome one.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 1, Finesse 6, Resistance 2

Willpower: 4
Essence: 15

Initiative: 12
Defense: 5
Armor: 1
Speed: 20
Size: 1
Corpus: 3

Influences: Thievery ●●
Numina: Material Vision, Thieve

Bonuses: Concrete Bolt-Hole (Urban 1) (Given), Foot in the Door (Urban 2) (Given)
Cost: 30

Ban: Ebon-Eyed Magpie demands that Brick and Bone steal one small thing that will be missed from every person who gives them anything (money, information, a job), and leave it where it will be found. If they fail to do this, Ebon-Eyed Magpie tends to take matters into its own beak rather than punish the pack for it.

Jake Carter

Type: Werewolf
Pack: Brick and Bone
Tribe: Ghost Wolf
Auspice: Cahalith

Virtue: Justice Jake figures everyone deserves a chance at freedom, away from the oppression of Man and Machine.
Vice: Gluttony Freedom comes in many forms, the freedom to indulge, the freedom to get lost in drugs and drink.

Background: Jake Carter sees the machinery of control wherever he goes. Faceless corporations brand every street, marking their territory. Cameras monitor everyone as they go about their lives. The police and the ambulance service and schools and universities, all set up to instill control into people. Other people can see everything that happens on his territory from miles away, and there’s precious little that isn’t locked down in meaningless social rituals or local politics. That hampers his ability to protect his territory, putting him out of touch with the scrap of the city that he claims along with the rest of Brick and Bone. Outside control strangles his city, and Jake is sick of it.

It started at university. Bored of the trashy paperbacks and the dry course texts and sick of the petty backstabbing of students and faculty alike, Jake retreated to the library in search of other ways of doing things. There, he found Bakunin, Proudhon and Goldman, and something caught in his mind. He thought he’d found something. Not a better way of doing things, but something different, something that would put him back in touch with his surroundings. How could he feel at home in a city that was controlled from miles away? He had big ideas, but didn’t have the capability to do anything — at least, not until his First Change showed him otherwise. Along with other werewolves who wanted to change things as much as he did, he set about making things different.

He had mixed success. Protests and marches are all well and good, but they don’t go far enough. For a while he gave speeches, led rallies, and wrote articles for underground newspapers, but that never really changed anything. So then he shifted to direct action, bombing a small house that the local Fire-Touched used. Except the bomb fizzled, the Fire-Touched survived with minor wounds, and now Jake's on the run with an arrest warrant out for him and his name on a domestic terrorist watch-list. He ended up joining Brick and Bone just to get out of town quickly.

Jake’s a burned-out idealist at heart. He’s taken to psychedelics, losing himself in visions of what could be and what should be. He wants to make things better, change his territory for the better, but these days he's in hiding and on the run. When there’s nothing he can do toward his cause, he turns into a bitter, depressed man, drinking or drugging himself close to a stupor. The rest of Brick and Bone have noticed his problem, but he’s kept the depth of his fanaticism hidden from them. They don’t realize just how much he’s invested of himself in a cause that seems to be going nowhere.

Looking to be in his late 20s, Jake looks rather ragged around the edges. He doesn’t shave for weeks at a time, and his dark hair falls well past his shoulders. His green eyes sweep every room he enters, looking through everyone and making sure he knows where the exits are. He tends to wear jeans and a sweatshirt in any weather.

Tribe: Ghost Wolf
Auspice: Cahalith

SMental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 2, Resolve 3
TPhysical Attributes: Strength 3 (4/6/5/3), Dexterity 4 (4/5/6/6), Stamina 2 (3/4/4/3)
PSocial Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 2, Composure 3

SMental Skills: Academics (Leftist Ideology) 2, Computer 1, Crafts (Placards & Signs) 2, Occult (Spirits) 1, Politics (Activism) 4, Science (Demolitions) 3
Physical Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl (Claws) 3, Larceny 4, Stealth 2,
PSocial Skills: Empathy 2, Expression (Speeches) 4, Persuasion (Convert to the Cause) 4, Streetwise 3, Socialize 2, Subterfuge 1

Merits: Allies (Activists) 3, Inspiring 4, Resources 2, Totem (Ebon-Eyed Magpie) 7,
Lair: Studio Apartment; Size 1, Security 3, Secrecy 2, Library (Far-Left Literature) 1

Willpower: 6
Harmony: 6
Derangement: Suspicion (Mild)

Initiative: 7 (7/8/9/9)
Defense: 2 (2/2/2/2)
Health: 7 (9/11/10/7)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Speed: 12 (13/18/19/17)

Primal Urge: 3
Renown: Glory ●●●●, Honor ●●, Purity ●
Gifts:
1st: Relentlessness (Glory) 1, The Unending Story (Scheherazade's) 1, Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1, Concrete Bolt-Hole (Urban) 1
2nd: The Storyteller's Indulgence (Scheherazade's) 2, Anybeast (Mother Luna) 2, Foot in the Door (Urban) 2
3rd: Sagacity (Knowledge) 3
4th: Spirit-Skin (Inspiration) 4
Essence: 12/1
Totem Bonuses (Included): Concrete Bolt-Hole (Urban 1) (Given), Foot in the Door (Urban 2) (Given)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2L............ 12……………

Maddie Wishthound
Madeline Archer, Wishbone

Type: Werewolf
Pack: Brick & Bone
Tribe: Ghost Wolf (Formerly Fire-Touched)

Virtue: Temperance Most of the time, Maddie's restrained, almost austere.
Vice: Gluttony And then when no one's looking in her direction, she drowns her fears in drink, men, whatever it takes.

Background: Maddie's parents separated when she was four, and she has vivid memories of a messy divorce that left her mother clutching the neck of a gin bottle. Fostered away to the home of an abusive mother and an uncaring father, Maddie was taunted about her family life at school whenever the subject came up. She dropped out of school early, and spent her time in libraries learning a little about a lot of subjects. If ever she came across someone who had really studied a subject she’d be in trouble, but to Maddie's mind that didn’t matter. She wasn’t looking for other intellectuals to woo; her goal was just to find a group to impress. Maybe then people would look to her as something other than a problem and an out-of-towner — and if they happened to look up to her, then so much the better.

Maddie did her best to fit into any social group she finds herself in, and that didn't change just because she found out about her Uratha heritage. The Pure found her before anyone else did, and Maddie still has a broad burn scar on her left arm from her initiation. Let No Untrue Statement Lie. It's burned onto her very skin, in elegant cursive script. In the months that followed, Maddie meandered through life, still looking for a group to fit into. Finding herself near Stoke-on-Trent, she heard that the Ivory Claw Lucas King was setting up a pack of his own. He was going to go to London and take the fight to the Moon-Born. Maddie offered to follow him.

Maddie was exactly what the Cold River needed. Her skills run the gamut from computer programming to classical music; she speaks four languages, holds two degrees and can make men do what she wants with a few well-placed words. She’s a polymath, skilled in any field that she puts her mind to. She can't fight very well, but that's the least of her concerns. In her own mind, she's living a lie, breaking Rabid Wolf's oath with every breath she draws.

Maddie is a werewolf being run ragged. She knows she's not really as smart as she pretends to be. She knows she's not as educated, or as clever, or as strong as everyone thinks she is. If her pack weren't a bunch of thugs, they'd realize that. The pressure to perform is starting to get to her. She does her best to keep everyone aware of everything they need. She aids the pack on hunts and journeys into the Shadow, but recently she’s been spending more and more time on her own. None of her packmates have followed her to the small apartment that she rents, but if they did, they’d see Maddie drowning her fears in cheap whisky and worthless men.

Away from her pack, she plays to others’ expectations, building herself around what they know of her and what they expect her to be. Although that’s an advantage in many social situations, being all things to all people means that it’s more and more likely that someone will catch her out. She’s guilty about the lies and half-truths she tells, but there are so many of them, and even Maddie doesn’t really know if some of them are true or not. In the small hours around dawn, she wonders if she really has any truth left in her, or if even her memories are just another patchwork of falsehoods.

Then came the events of Halloween, 2009, when Lucas King tried to blow up an entire pleasure-boat full of tourists as a sacrifice to Jenny Greenteeth. Maddie had gone part of the way along, telling herself that the explosives were to destroy some large commercial freighter, that it was going to be all property damage. When she could deceive herself no more, she snapped and fled her pack, and after the dust had settled, Maddie joined Brick & Bone -- she knew Jake and Moxie, and they were thrilled to have her. Of course, now her new pack thinks of her as a moral bastion as well as a brilliant werewolf -- Maddie finds it kind of darkly hilarious. She thought of joining the Forsaken, but she's not quite ready to make such a leap.

A tall and attractive woman in her late 20s, Maddie has long, dark hair that frames her face. Her brown eyes sparkle behind the glasses she wears to aid her intellectual look. She typically wears long skirts along with long-sleeved shirts that allow her to show off her figure while hiding the branded letters on her left arm. She often wears tasteful golden jewelry, and her fingers always sport a multitude of rings. In Urhan form, she’s a slim wolf with an unearthly white coat.

Tribe: Fire Touched
Auspice: Pure

SMental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 4, Resolve 2
TPhysical Attributes: Strength 2 (3/5/4/2), Dexterity 3 (3/4/5/5), Stamina 2 (3/4/4/3)
PSocial Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 4, Composure 2

SMental Skills: Academics (Art History, Research) 2, Computer 2, Investigation 3, Medicine 1, Occult (Sagacity) 2, Politics 2, Science 1
TPhysical Skills: Athletics

1+Totem

3, Brawl 1, Larceny 2, Stealth 2, Survival (

Totem

Cold)

1+Totem

3
PSocial Skills:Empathy 3, Expression (Piano) 2, Persuasion (Fast-Talking) 4, Socialize 2, Streetwise 2 Subterfuge (Feign Expertise) 4

Merits: Encyclopedic Knowledge 4, Language (French, German, Italian, Russian; Native is English) 4, Resources 2, Striking Looks 2, Totem (River at Midnight)

8+Pure

9
Lair: Trashy Apartment; Size 1, Secrecy 3

Willpower: 4
Harmony: 6

Initiative: 5 (5/6/7/7)
Defense: 3 (3/4/4/4)
Health: 7 (9/11/10/7)
Size: 5 (6/7/6/4)
Speed: 10 (11/14/17/15)

Primal Urge: 2
Renown: Cunning ●●●, Purity ●, Wisdom ●●●
Gifts:
1st: Sense Emotion (Insight) 1, Sense the Flow (Information) 1, Partial Change (Mother Luna) 1
2nd: Scent of Taint (Insight) 2, Father Wolf's Speed (Father Wolf) 2
3rd: Blending (Stealth) 3, Sagacity (Knowledge) 3, Deluge (Weather; Pack) 3
Rituals: ●●●
1st: Rite of Dedication, Shared Scent, Rite of Contrition, Rite of Penance
2nd: Banish Spirit, Rite of Purgation, Call Gaffling, Cleansed Blood
3rd: Bind Spirit
Essence: 11/2
Totem Bonuses (Included): +2 dots in Athletics (Given), +2 dot in Survival (Given), Survival Specialty (Cold) (Given), Deluge (Weather 3) (Pack)

Attacks...........................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Claw (Gauru).......................... 2(L)............ 8………