This, however, would change with the coming of the Great Winter. Some told of a spirit pact between the tribe and the Incarna of Winter that went awry, while others claimed that the focus of the tribe on their vagabond Kinfolk families allowed the Wyrm to creep into places beneath the Earth, festering there, and that Gaia used the ice to cleanse herself from the taint and teach her children a lesson.
Whatever the case, most human Kinfolk families succumbed to the cold, forcing them southward, while the great wolves remained. The Tribe split accordingly: some followed their human families into unfamiliar territories, while others stayed behind, hunting with their lupine Kinfolk. In the south, the Howlers first encountered other Garou, the Fianna. At first, cultural differences as well as the plight of their Kin set Garou against Garou for several hundred years, until both sides agreed to careful breeding alliances.
The Howlers, however, remained wary, for the Fianna had made alliances with the Faeries , strange spirit -like creatures whose bargains always took more than at first seemed.
During this long period, the White Howlers were made a part of the Garou Nation , learning of the existence of other tribes, such as the Get of Fenris or the Silver Fangs. When the Ice Age ended, the White Howlers returned to Caledonia, reuniting with their feral cousins, who had never left the land.
Cultural shifts among their Kin, as well as the innovations that they had picked up during their stay in the south, like animal husbandry and farming, made tribe culture more wide. Only when the first clan was taken as slaves did the Howlers finally react in fury. The Roman invasion also stirred numerous Wyrm beasts, who began to attack the tribe. When the first Roman Fomori appeared, the Tribe chose to attack.
After a tribal Council, the whole tribe marched southward to rip out the heart of the invaders. Some eschewed the segmented body armor of their fellows, needing nothing beyond the horny carapaces, crusted shells, or matted pelts of their blasphemous bodies. Some possessed three eyes, the third a rheumy yellow orb that allowed them to see through darkness or see even the most adroitly hidden foe.
Others had no eyes at all, relying on their broadsplayed nostrils or slithering tongues to relay information about their surroundings to them. Giants, tall as trees, allied with skittering creatures so vile that the very light around them bent away rather than fall upon their foul presence. Where the Romans found these putrescent allies we may never know, but find them they did.
They unleashed them upon our land and our Kin and our. Their soldiers trampled our fields, burned down our woodlands, and poisoned our wells. They no longer held forth the pretense of diplomacy or the hope of peace, and the harsh truth became clear.
Unless we took drastic action, the Romans would irrevocably taint our land, destroy our people, and put fail to our sacred duty. We had to do something. The Great Council Our elders could no longer ignore the threat the Romans presented. They called for a great gathering, held on the Isle of Mull, at the site of one of our oldest and most sacred caerns. Hundreds of White Howlers, many who had never met more than a handful of their own kind outside of those of their local sept, traveled across the width and breadth of Caledonia to attend the council.
The Kin of the Cerones dutifully ferried the travelers across the Firth of Lorn that lay between the mainland and Mull, and up into the sandy beaches of Loch Buidhe, where the Sept of Silver Horn met them, protectors of the Red Deer Caern on the island. Representatives of septs from across Caledonia came to the Great Council, where the wisest, bravest, and cleverest put together a plan. Many skirmishes had been turned in our favor when we killed the leader and routed his forces in the ensuing chaos.
Noting this, our elders formulated a desperate plan. We took great care in planning the campaign. The Romans had retreated well beyond our reach, sequestering their headquarters deep in the southernmost parts of the land we call home. It would take a coordinated campaign of stealthy travel and orchestrated attacks in order to accomplish the debilitating blow we needed to strike against their army.
Thousands of soldiers were garrisoned beyond the wall, hundreds of fomori, and an unthinkable number of traitorous former Caledonians who had been brought over to the Roman side through bribery, blackmail, or force. This was not a job for a single pack, a solitary sept; it would take the entire Tribe. Those who had gathered at the Great Council traveled back to their home septs, and began preparations.
Months later, they set out again, this time accompanied by every White Howler their septs could muster. On two feet or four, they went southward through the forests and glens.
By currach and coracle, they skirted the shorelines and braved the waves of our glistening seas. Through the Umbra, accompanied by whatever spirit allies they could muster to their task, they journeyed deep into the land held by the foreigners. Forest dwellers faced mountain passages. The horse-tribes lost their steeds to savage river-crossings. Those of the islands found themselves nearly lost away from the shore. As they traveled, they encountered many threats: hungry ghosts and restless dead, Wyrm-creatures and tainted spirits.
They fought bravely before continuing their journey, all while avoiding the attention of far-ranging patrols of Roman guards, bands of their formori collaborators, or locals sympathetic to the foreign invaders. They organized themselves, according to the plan drafted by the eldest and most wise of the Tribe, and waited for the time to be right.
Then, on a night when the moon was full and the misty fog hung heavy enough to cover their approach, the best and brightest of the tribe attacked each of the Roman headquarters in a coordinated effort that left no opportunity for retreat, and little for retaliation. Battle with Rome Many White Howlers died that night, but many, many more foreigners fell, including every leader present.
In fact, the Garou carried out the slaughter with far less sacrifice on their part than expected. The White Howlers expected to have to fight their way into the Roman headquarters, past the fomori legions as well as their human troops.
They destroyed everything within the rampart walls — barracks, armories, buildings. They tore down, burned, and left in ruin anything built by Roman hands or by the efforts of enslaved Caledonians under their foreign masters. The Garou laid waste to the fortresses, and their inhabitants, killing thousands. By the time the sun rose over the razed Roman fortresses, every foreigner within those turf walls lay lifeless, their dying blood seeping into the Caledonian soil.
Small repayment against the wounds they had caused to our land and our people. With dawn, the mists, and our packs, disappeared back into the wilderness, and began making the long trek homeward. As they travelled, their victory howls echoed through the hills, as wolf-Kin picked up their song and set the forests ringing with the choirs of their triumph.
Their songs of joy, however, were not long-lived. Riding on the swell of their victory, however, few of the White Howlers paid heed and their more sanguine companions quickly chided those who did into silence.
Weeks passed, and as the Garou continued homeward, the portents grew stronger. Tempers flared, and those who had bonded over their battle grew surly and short with one another.
Accusations of theft, dishonesty, or worse flew between former shield-mates, and the sense of camaraderie that had been born in the days before the attack on the Roman headquarters fled like mist before the midday sun. Some feared that the air of apprehension that plagued the travelers was a portent of ambush; they began to see foreign trackers on their heels and refused to pause to make camp, or eat, or rest, pushing themselves and their companions to exhaustion.
They crossed the first of the Roman walls, stopping only to mark the carefully set stones with the yellow waters of their disdain as they reclaimed what had been taken from them. The longer their journey continued, the more it became clear that something was wrong.
As they crossed the northern wall, the signs became unmistakable. The further north the Garou traveled, the worse the attacks became, until every night was a siege, and every pause to rest an invitation to battle. Along the way, the returning Garou discovered ruinous pits where Wyrm-minions had boiled up from beneath the ground and begun tainting the entire environ around them.
It matters little, in the end, who shed the first tear for their fallen kinsmen, or whose mourning wails, gnashing teeth, and hair tearing ushered in the horror. In the end, every Garou came unto it as they returned to their homes and found them violated. No sept remained unharmed. Every sacred place lay desecrated with the blood, bile, and tears of the innocent. Every tribe of Kin now ran polluted by the touch of the profane. Retribution Regardless of which region the White Howler raiders returned to, the tragedy they met was the same.
Their enemies had not been idle during the Garou attack. As the seemingly triumphant warriors returned to their homeland, they discovered grisly evidence of Roman raiding parties. Wherever their Kin had dwelled, be it wolf packs in the deepest forest or hill fortresses behind sturdy walls, only ruin remained. The fortunate fell in the first waves of attack, torn limb from limb or eviscerated with claws so tainted that no natural creature would come near enough to the corpse to feed on their remains.
Corpses hung from rafters and trees, strangled, and strung up by their own innards. Heads, limbs, and other body parts were mismatched on patchwork corpses, like blasphemous dolls puzzled together by a cruel and artless child. Forest glens and wooden fortresses alike lay in ruins, razed to the ground, only the ivory shards of burned bone left to give testament to those consumed in the blaze. However, no matter how cruel their deaths, they were merciful compared to the fate of those who survived.
Those Kin who had survived the initial onslaught did so tainted by the memories of the fomori attack, but also by the poison of their words, their deeds… and their seed. Some had become fomori themselves, bodies and spirits twisted by the corruption carried by their attackers. Entire villages had transformed into cannibalistic war bands. Wolf packs that had once hunted alongside our lupus now twisted into marauding hellhounds, monstrous beasts that destroyed any living being they could sink their cruel yellow fangs into.
The fomori visited crimes upon our Kin far worse than torture or murder. The things that emerged were neither Kin nor Garou. Poisoned claws tore their way out of Kinfolk wombs.
Scaled monsters were born where hopeful hearts prayed for human babes or wolf cubs. Half-spirit monsters strangled their mothers before taking their first breath, and then slipped off into the darkness to find other prey. The Wyrm had taken hold of Caledonia in the most painful way it could — in the spirits, minds, and bodies of our beloved Kin.
Their numbers halved and halved again, until finding a human or wolf with our blood in their veins was like searching for a single fish in an endless sea of blood and tears. What followed was a war the likes of which the White Howlers had never imagined waging. Those who returned, those few who had remained behind and survived, and we who underwent our First Change in the days following the fomori onslaught banded together, and set out on the hunt. I wish I could say that all that comes after was a blur, but that would be an untruth.
I remember it all succinctly: every battle, every enemy, and every blow of the horrible years that would follow. We unleashed our Rage on the fomori with no holds barred. We lived lives of revenge. I was born, for all intents and purposes, out of the Rage-filled frenzy. My nursery was the ruin of a place I cannot remember, bloodstained, and littered with the corpses of those whose names I cannot recall.
This burden I bear, for remembering all that comes later. This is the price I pay, for never being able to forget. We lost many in those years, more by far than in the attack on the Roman headquarters. Yet not a one of us who fell died with regret in our hearts.
The price was not too high when measured against all the wrong inflicted. With heavy hearts, we took to this task, but it sapped our will. Each blow against our turned Kin broke our spirits in ways that the destruction of their makers never could have. This grim duty continued far longer than anyone could have anticipated, longer perhaps than any Tribe could weather. Years after the fomori were no more; our tainted Kin still gave birth to their spawn with heartrending frequency.
Those who survived face an even crueler fate, doomed to madness, even as children. To depravity made all the fouler by their youth. To corruption. To taint. We bore the destruction of our Kin like iron cloaks around our shoulders, garments woven of guilt and pain that no amount of time passing could allow us to put aside. Still, even after we had we slain our enemies and returned our sullied Kin to the cycle once more, even as our hearts were broken and our spirits bowed, even then our work was far from finished.
Just as our families had been defiled, so had our land. Minion or Master? However, many feel the situation is not as it first was taken to be. Chaos crept in amongst the formerly restrained ranks. Soldiers mutinied and rebelled where they had never dared before. Corruption raised its filthy head, higher even than the eagle banners the armies bore forth.
Did the Romans let the Wyrm into their ranks by recruiting the fallen fomori warriors into their army? Were the fomori the rust eating away at the steel of their Legion from the inside out? It matters little in the end, I suppose, for the result was the same. The Legion turned to the Wyrm, and Caledonia bore the brunt of the new alliance.
And, no matter how wounded we were, of body or spirit, our duty called us to cleanse it. They tore open every dark spot, every ill too great to cleanse completely, every Bane breeding ground previously closed off for an eternity, and the spiritual pollution ran in rivers of ichor and taint across the land.
The ground itself wept at their desecration, sinking into cavernous maws that consumed entire valleys or tearing itself apart with the fervor of its sorrow, leaving subterranean gashes extending far underground. From those deep places emerged a host of Banes and beings that only the most depraved soul could have ever imagined into being.
Over the weeks, months, and years that followed, we did what we could to right the wrongs. We now, with bodies wounded and souls scarred, did what we could. We worked together in a way that our Tribe had rarely managed in the past, no longer divided by the diversity of our Kin and clansmen, but united in the enormity of our pain and loss. We formed great packs with more members than even an entire sept would have rallied before and hunted the evils back to their lairs, destroying and imprisoning them before moving on to the next in a seemingly endless sea of targets.
We moved ever northward, hoping against hope to sweep our land clean of the taint that had infected it while we pursued our shortsighted campaign against the Roman leaders. It was to there, along the northwestern coast, that we tracked the last of the Banes: further north than the sacred caerns of the Cerones, further west than holdings of the all-seeing Smertae. In a desolate wasteland of jagged rocks and pounding surf, where no living thing survived the hostile marriage of land and sea, and where only storms and nightmares were born, we found the Pit.
But this? This was different. We fought our way into the Pit, slaying foul spirits and twisted monsters alike. The stone walls rang with our battle cries and the screams of our enemies. The scrabble-soil beneath our feet ran red with their blood and black with the filth they shed as their evil lives ended on our claws and blades. Deeper and deeper beneath the surface we went, far further than any of us had ever traveled underground.
Their forces grew stronger as we went, and many of our heroes fell as we made our way down into the very bowels of the earth. Finally, the last of our enemies fell, and the tunnel fell silent along with it.
A few feet further, just beyond the battle, the narrow passage opened onto a chamber. In that chamber was a portal of swirling colors too dark to truly discern. Even as we watched, it waxed and waned, shining like an oily bubble that could, at any moment, pop and release whatever lay beyond. We entered the chamber, cautious for a trap, and approached the portal even more cautiously. Our seers. The sigils around the portal drove one Theurge mad, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.
The others increased their care, fearful of sharing his fate. Still, the need to know what lay beyond, what was at the heart of this pit, drove them onward. While they worked, we gathered around the portal. We gathered close, as if unable to stay away.
Close enough to see hear whispers from the other side. Close enough to feel a phantom breeze, cold as the Great Winter and lifeless as the grave. Close enough to catch glimpses of what lay beyond that swirling portal — darkness, the kind that seemed to consume all light, and somewhere in that gloom, a spiral the likes of which none had ever seen before.
The Theurges consulted their ancestors; spoke to what spirits would answer their call in a place such as this, threw bones, entered trances, and performed all manner of rituals to aid them in their quest. The answer that came to them, while not unexpected, was sobering. The passageway beyond led across the Gauntlet and to Malfeas itself. The path led to the heart of the Wyrm. The Spiral Path I heard many accounts of that spiral in the days that came after.
Each tale contradicts the others, not to mention what I witnessed myself that day. Some spoke of an oily river, circling downward into the belly of oblivion.
Others saw a pathway gleaming like obsidian, every inch sharper and more jagged than the ones before. One seer, known for her adept work with the spirits of the restless dead, said she saw a shroud beneath which screamed countless souls damned to eternal darkness. She thought she recognized some of the voices, and the very idea set a white streak in her hair that was not there before we entered the cavern.
As for me, perhaps it was some trick of the darkness, or my imagination playing tricks, but I saw neither stone nor water in that glistening spiral. It writhed and twisted sinuously, inviting me to tread the deadly pathway down its spine into the obscurity at its center. Somewhere, down further than it was possible to see, I swear that I could sense the languid blink of a hooded eyelid, and the gleam of venom dripping from an onyx fang.
Decisions Some sought to enter the portal that day. They howled, frothed, and snarled that this was our duty, our obligation, our right. Here was the path to the heart of the Wyrm, and we were destined to tread it — to beard the Beast in its den, to get revenge for all the transgressions against our land, our Kin, our world.
Others argued that we did not know enough, that we had not enough of our Tribe with us to take on such a challenge. Our pack, although large as most septs before, could hardly expect to slay the very Wyrm in its own lair, unaided.
To battle evil, wherever it dwelled. To gain revenge for our fallen friends and family members. What if our entry breaks the bonds on that portal? Would you unleash whatever lies beyond onto the rest of the world? Have our Kin not suffered enough? Would you grant the Wyrm itself entry into our lands, all because you are too impatient to think with your heads, not your claws?
Have you learned nothing from your battle in the south? All of us still bore the weight of what had befallen our Kin during our attack on the Romans. No one was willing to argue it worth the risk to inflict such horrors upon them again, not if there was another option. A Call Goes Out Therefore, leaving guards and messengers in the cavern to watch the portal, we returned to our septs carrying word of what we had seen.
Recognizing this was more than a matter of our own land and people, we sent word. Through spirit messenger and Moon Bridge, by runner and horse and boat, we used any means possible to entreat the other Tribes to come and aid us in this, the most sacred of tasks. The Litany is clear, and the law is not just ours, but given from Gaia to every Tribe. Surely the rest would join us?
We thought they would jump at the chance to strike our enemy deep in its serpentine heart? We were wrong. Our messengers encountered diplomacy in some places. Other audiences offered disbelief, or suspicion, or outright hostility.
Whether polite demurrals, or promises to consider the possibility, the results were the same. The responses formed a harmony of rejection, and the Nation turned its back on us as one. We would not take refusal lightly, however. We who had seen the portal, seen the pitch-black spiral pathway, we knew what was at stake. Each of our auspices gathered, seeking the Garou who shared their moon-birth.
They entreated, each in their own way, to those who most closely shared their duties, sending desperate word across the globe. Come let the light of your wisdom guide us through this terrible dark place. Come help us find the path to victory and to revenge. Come lend us your arms, your claws, your fangs, and we will slay the Wyrm for once and for all!
Come help us uphold it! Each auspice howled out its supplication, and each. Only missing were the voices of those whose role it was to sing the stories of old, and to witness the making of new ones. Only the Singers did not lend their voice to these pleas. We heard the whispers of our wisest, speaking of the effects of holding watch over the portal for so long, and of the fates they feared we would face when that portal was finally breeched.
And so we did not sing our request to the Galliards, did not lend our pleas to those that had already fallen on deaf ears. Instead, as is also our role, we howled prophecy out to the Garou, words born of fate, and predictions destined to be fulfilled, though we still know not exactly how. We will not march to our fate with bowed heads, grim though it may seem. Our hearts are full, for we know we do our duty. We shall dance that blackest of spirals to the heart of the Wyrm and, win or lose; we will meet our fate with our heads held high.
Our tale does not end here. Our song will continue. Tonight Now we gather. Our people: every scout, every warrior, every seer, every healer, gathered here in a wave of bodies that stretches from the cavern to the surface. Because of my duty to Lion, I sit here at the entrance to the Pit, and tell my tales as my people march past into the depths. I will join them, when dawn comes and my stories are at an end.
It will take every one of us working together, to have a chance of succeeding. To have a chance of surviving. But the night is half-over and my stories are nowhere near told. Lion tasked me to tell all, and I will do my best. The moon is setting. I must go on. Chapter Two: Culture I have spoken of the history of my people, but that is much like telling the shape of a thing without speaking of its nature. We are more than our past, more than our present, more than whatever it is that will come upon the dawn.
We are White Howler, and to know us is to know of our duty, our ways, our minds, and our hearts. Gaia created all Garou to fight the Wyrm and to protect all that she created — the world and the Umbra, the physical and the spiritual — from taint, corruption, and destruction.
But our Mother also gave each Tribe additional tasks, ones to which we were uniquely suited, and the White Howlers are no different. First and foremost, we are the keepers of our lands, and our hearts and souls are connected to Caledonia in a fashion most Tribes find impossible to truly understand.
When the Great Winter forced the majority of us from our homeland, it changed our people in a deep and fundamental fashion. Many of the generations that came after we returned were spent reinventing ourselves as a Tribe, and recommitting ourselves to this primary duty. Our second duty, no less sacred than the first, is to tend to those who have gone before us but not returned to the cycle. Whether Garou or not, our people are a part of the world around us, and they have a spirit like every.
When they die, their spirits should rejoin with Gaia to one day be called back into Her sacred service. But sometimes a soul holds too tightly to this mortal realm, whether through fear, greed, or a desire for revenge.
That soul is no longer the person it was before, no longer capable of reason or true choice of action. It is our burden to protect the living from those who are not, and when possible to return those affixed to this world back to the cycle, that they might once again know Gaia and her mercy.
Our tribe does not stand alone. While we are fierce and noble, strong and dutiful, without our Kin we would be nothing. Our mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers, on four-feet and two, lend us roots to weather the harshest storms. They inspire us when we are flagging, support us when we falter, and give us wisdom of a sort we could not find on our own.
Our Kinfolk are the heart of our tribe. Wolves of Caledonia Silent death on snow-white paws, our wolf Kin are unmatched for their ferocity, cunning, speed, and stealth.
Their fur is as silver-white as ours is in our pelted forms, broken with grey-black markings making them nearly invisible whether along the foggy shorelines or in the depths of the darkest forests. Storytellers say that in the oldest of times, before and during the Great Winter, it was not unusual for our Kin to rival a man in height even with all four paws on the ground. While that is rare in these times, it is still not unheard of, a circumstance that has fostered many legends among human taletellers.
No animal is faster in the forest than our wolves; a greyhound might outdistance them on the open meadow, but in the woods, our Kin are unstoppable. A full-grown bear or boar might be the match for a single wolf, but an entire pack can bring down either without great effort. It is their spirit. Their dedication to one another and to their duty is an inspiration to all of our Tribe. Log In I am new here. Remember me. Error: No match for email address or password. Password forgotten? Click here.
Advanced Search. W20 White Howlers Tribebook. From Onyx Path Publishing. Selected Option:. Softcover, Standard Color Book. Average Rating 47 ratings. White Howlers Tribebook includes: The story of the White Howlers from the ancient times to their great sacrifice. Ideas for using the White Howlers in a story set in the modern nights Note: Just like the original run of Tribe books, only the first page of the opening comic section is in color in this book. Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased.
Reviews 3. Please log in to add or reply to comments. Brian S. I am so glad Onyx Path made this book. It covers all the information I wanted to know about the tribe before the fall to the Wyrm. My only problem is not with the book or the content, but in the delivery. USPS, despite a note on my door saying otherwis [ Chris G. I suppose I should start with a few things people not too familiar with the White Howlers and Werewolf: the Apocalypse.
The Howlers were one of the sixteen werewolf Tribes in the game, originating from the ancient tribes of Northern Britain and Scotlan [ Alexander L. It may take up to minutes before you receive it. The file will be sent to your Kindle account. It may takes up to minutes before you received it. Please note : you need to verify every book you want to send to your Kindle.
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