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Table of Contents

Introduction 4 Themes 4

Liminality 4 Transaction and Mediation 4 Mass Extinction 5

How to Use This Book 5 What This Book Is 5 What This Book Isn’t 5

Inspirational Media 6 New Conditions 6

Chapter One: Running the Gauntlet 8

Resonance 8

In the Flesh 9 In the Shadow 10

Places of Power 10 Verges 10 Ley Lines 11 Loci 11 Places-That-Aren’t 11

World Between Worlds 12 Building It Up 12

Tearing It Down 13 Ties That Bind 13

Gathra 13 Broods 14 Courts 15

All Under Heaven 16 Influences 16

Sacred Law 18 Instinctual Wisdom 19 Manifestations 20

Chapter Two: Invasive Species 21

The Human 22

Infestation 22 Acclimation 23

The Uratha 24 Infestation 25 Acclimation 25

The Others 28 Vampires 28 Mages 28 Prometheans 28 Changelings 28 Sin-Eaters 29 Mummies 29 Demons 29 Beasts 29

Shadow Laws 30 Symbols and Semiotics 30 Creating New Rites 30

HUNGRY SHADOWS

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Chapter Three: Gods and Monsters 32

The Divine Corpse 33 State of Decay 33 The Ayatlu: The Horned Kings 34 The Halaku: The Crow Host 35

Host Avatars 36 The Apostle of Annihilation 36 The Valravn 38

Essence Alchemy 40 Dissolution 40 Congealation 41 Fermentation 41 Projection 41

The Purified 42 Ablution 42 Siddhis 42 Making a Purified Character 43

Ecstatic Hunger 44 The Peerage 45 Noble Numina 45 Claimants to the Throne 45

Men of Renown 46 Pandaemonium 46

God-Like Traits 47 Rank 47 Omens 47 Idols 48 Anchors and Aspirations 48 Workings 48 Crises 49 Titanomachy 49 Dying and Rising 49

Chapter Four: Hunting Grounds 51

True Animism 51

Lay of the Land 51 Natural Resources 52

Shadows on the Wall 53 Lay of the Land 53 Natural Resources 54

Trappings of Faith 55 Lay of the Land 55 Natural Resources 55

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Place Prologue introductory story here

INTRODUCTION

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Hidden on the other side of the ephemeral membrane known as the Gauntlet lies the Hisil, a reflection of the world as it is experienced, not as people think it should be. Resonance flows and shifts, transforming the Shadow like a reflection on an oil slick. Here, everything has a spirit and a voice. Here, everything is fluid and changing. It is a world built out of, and defined by the pursuit of, Essence. But everything that lives, hungers. And anything that has the capacity to live forever hungers forever. Spirits are always on the lookout for their next meal, and their next meal could be a peer fallen on hard times.

The Shadow is a place of dark animism, where everything has a hungry spirit.

The Shadow is a place where nothing comes free, and all agreements need to be paid in advance.

The Shadow is a place where things cannot help but be what they are, even when it hurts like hell.

THEMES

Given that the Hisil gives serious weight to emotional and experiential reality, as represented by Resonance, theme and mood are vital elements of any game involving the Shadow and spirits. Games involving spirits in the Flesh or mortals and other non-Uratha in the Shadow are going to be about transgression, about the boundaries you and others set, how they thicken and thin, and how

you cross them in intentional and unintentional ways. In an animistic world, what can be called “environment” can become “society” and the world explodes into an interconnected web of societies.

LIMINALITY Essence flows, essence blends, essence bleeds. Spirits consume and become one another to grow, they can become bloated magath or tainted by Wounds, they can merge with beings and objects of the Flesh, becoming the monstrous Claimed. All the heirs of the Border Marches can make flesh flow and warp the way Essence does. By stepping sideways, beings of the flesh become ephemera; the lines between mortal and spirit become blurred. You are what you eat. Spend enough time in the Shadow and who (or what) will you become?

TRANSACTION AND MEDIATION Spirits are incapable of agreeing to something without payment, would-be Ritemasters must dedicate themselves to wield the power of the laws of the Shadow, and even those “laws” are more like agreements and treaties between choirs and courts. In the Hisil, negotiation, domination, and supplication are vital skills. Shamans, spirits, witches, and werewolves must all learn how to wield gathra, and how to act as intermediaries for mortals.Sam

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MASS EXTINCTION From the perspective of Deep Time, the Sundering was mere moments in the past, and the world is still reeling from the upheaval it caused. There still exist spirits who remember (and resent) the Sundering. There still exist beings who if they cannot be revenged upon the gods of the Border Marches, will take vengeance on their descendents. Perhaps the Flesh and Shadow will come to equilibrium, but it sure isn’t going to be anytime soon. Some of the dinosaurs are still limping along, but you aren’t a dinosaur, you’re one of the rats, and you’re going to inherit the earth one day.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Chapter One: Running the Gauntlet is, simply put, "Book of Spirits: Volume Two". It is a guide to Spirits and the Shadow, how to give Resonance (and especially Loci) more weight in your games, how to design and role-play Spirits and come up with evocative Bans and Banes. It will also include a guide to using Influences, as well as new and updated Numina. This chapter also gets into how Spirits, Hosts, and Uratha push at, tear, and maintain the Gauntlet, and the politics of the Broods, Courts, and Totems that work alongside werewolves.

Chapter Two: Invasive Species covers the things that can be found in the Shadow that aren't really supposed to be there. Here you'll find mortal occultists, witches, shamans, and mediums, the Awakened, the Begotten, and other meddlers in the Shadow. Here you will learn about the Shadow from the perspective of outsiders, and how cultures both mundane and occult incorporate Spirits and the Hisil. Here you will find Merits and Tells to flesh out characters meddling in the Shadow, Fetishes, Talens, and a new approach to Rites as well as a guide to designing your own.

Chapter Three: Gods and Monsters is an examination of the movers and shakers of the Shadow. Potent Spirit Nobles, Royal Avatars, and a look at how to incorporate Dihar and Ilusah into your Chronicles in a meaningful way without reducing them to little more than plot devices. Herein you will also learn about the bloated and monstrous Hive-Claimed, the bloody glory of Hosts ascendant, the secrets of Essence Alchemy, and the immortal former humans known as the Purified.

Chapter Four: Hunting Grounds is a set of alternate systems and setting hacks to emphasize or alter certain aspects of spirits, the Shadow, and their interactions with the Flesh. Here lie alternative approaches to Twilight and a different philosophy on territory for werewolves. Herein rest interpretations of spirits as something more divine, or as something more tied to the Flesh than ever before.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS An Expansion on the Second Edition Core: Werewolf crams a lot of information and tantalizing ideas, rumours, and secrets into an already busy book. This book is an opportunity to elaborate on what we love about Werewolf: The Forsaken, and build on some of the concepts that have already been put on display. A Study in The Shadow and Spirits: This book is primarily focused on the Hisil, its inhabitants, and how they interact with the Flesh and with stranger things. The Shadow is a reflection of things as they are, and things as they impact one another. Spirits act out these conflicts, and even take them further with their own instincts and ambitions. This book will expand on Broods, Courts, the Gods of the Shadow, Places-That-Aren't, and the outside agents both familiar and strange spirits work for or work with. Rites, Fetishes, Talens: Laws and pacts. The lives of spirits wrought into unique instruments. The fleeting, flickering power of Essence. Essence is fluid, ever-changing, ever-adapting, and arises in bizarre and surprising ways. The natural world could care less about what humans think is possible. This book will expand on non-Gift forms of magic that use the power of Spirits and the Shadow, and the people who practice them.

WHAT THIS BOOK ISN’T An Equipment List or Night Horrors Book: There will be some examples provided in this book. Example Spirits, antagonists (or allies), Fetishes, Talens, Rites, etc. However, this book will not be dedicated to those things and will rarely come up. A Prefabricated Chronicle: This book will feature Hunting Grounds, settings displaying a diverse array of relationships between Flesh and Shadow. These settings will have conflicts, high concept ideas, and new ways of interacting with the Shadow. They will not be plug-and-play adventures for you and your group.

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INSPIRATIONAL MEDIA These are stories told by others that make us want to tell stories about Spirits and the Hisil.

TELEVISION Avatar: The Last Airbender & Legend of Korra created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko: The relationships between spirits, their purviews, and the mortal world are explored here. Even seemingly-gentle forest spirits can be lethal when offended. Koh, for example, has a particularly nasty Ban; it is his nature to steal the face of anyone who displays any kind of emotion in his presence. Mushi -Shi by Yuki Urushibara: While spirits are just a part of life, the simple acts of spirits feeding or reproducing can have catastrophic effects on the lives of humans who happen to be food. One woman runs afoul of a spirit that consumes memories, but is given a job at a tea shop so that the constant influx of stories from travelers will keep the spirit sated. Stranger Things created by The Duffer Brothers: This show best illustrates the “feel” of the Shadow, the primal nature of its inhabitants, the ever-present threat of things breaching the Gauntlet, and the trauma of becoming one of the Ridden.

BOOKS The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben: This book illustrates alien perspectives and social structures in the form of interconnected communities of forests. Just imagine the consequences of everything in these vast, multi-faceted webs of life, and in more biomes besides, housing a spirit. The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone: Set in a world where the industrial revolution involved overthrowing the gods, the books of the Craft Sequence focus on interactions between humans, god-like spirits, and the environment, and how all those things relate together. Here you can learn how to present human sorcerers meddling in forces beyond their comprehension, Royal Avatars, the Ridden, and how exploiting humans, spirits, and the environment isn’t all that different.

NEW CONDITIONS This book features Conditions that aren’t included in Werewolf: The Forsaken or Chronicles of Darkness.

You are crowned with the mythic power befitting a scion of the Great Predator and the Warden Moon. Consider renaming this Condition for each unique title your pack ritemaster can bestow and write a sentence or two describing how it might look on the subject. Resolution: See the Shadow Crown Rite (pg. 27)

Your character is (or believes they are) suffering from a supernatural curse that brings him ill fortune. Choose a particular area in which the curse manifests; any failure in that field becomes a dramatic failure. The victim may spend 1 Willpower to negate this effect for one action. Possible Sources: Some supernatural abilities Resolution: Remove the source of the curse, or undergo therapy to break the delusion.

Your character has been killed while on a sojourn outside her physical body, resulting in a shocked sense of self. Upon gaining this Condition, roll her current Willpower points (not dots) as a dice pool. Ignore 10-Again on this roll, and do not roll a chance die if she has no Willpower left. She keeps one Willpower point per success, and immediately loses the remainder. While this Condition is in effect, your character does not regain Willpower from Virtue, Vice, or equivalent traits. She still regains Willpower from rest, surrender, and any other means of regaining Willpower. Resolution: Regaining full Willpower.

CROWNED (PERSISTENT)

CuRSED (PERSISTENT)

Soul Shocked

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Title of the Book

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Chapter One: Running the Gauntlet

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CHAPTER ONE RUNNING THE GAUNTLET

You Cannot Study The Darkness by Flooding it with Light

Edward Abbey

In the Shadow, you don’t walk on the ground; you walk on spirits of Soil and Stone, perhaps dormant and sleeping, perhaps simply biding their time. You aren’t walking beneath trees, but beneath spirits of Ash and Oak, Birch and Maple, slowly crawling in an attempt to strangle and consume one another, spirits of Rot and Fungus flitting amongst the roots, passing messages, while the trees keep their own counsel, their leaves whispering in a smattering of First Tongue. That isn’t air you’re breathing, it’s muthra of wind and weather left behind by the local climate. That isn’t water you’re drinking, but fluid flesh ripped from spirits of lake and river; better run before the waters swallow you whole. Everything moves and twists with hunger; the weak are food or servants, your peers are rivals and allies until they fall on hard times, and the strong are anathema you cower under unless you can be of service.

RESONANCE

An ever-present phenomenon of the Flesh, Resonance is the absolute foundation of the Shadow, the source of all Essence and all spirits. Resonance is the experiential reality of the world. If the rusted out hulk of a car in the woods behind a school becomes the beloved secret playground of local children, it will become Resonant with emotions like Joy or Shame, and concepts like Secrecy, in addition to the material reality of Cars and Decay. How we experience the world impacts how we see it, and this in turn impacts the Resonance of people, places, and things, turning the urban Shadow into a place thick with emotional/conceptual weather. Cultivating suitable Resonance in a territory to suit your needs, whether you’re a spirit, Uratha, or something stranger, almost always involves curating and manipulating the mortal herd. Or, more rarely, the land itself.

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