So here’s an Idea I had for a Werewolf the Apocalypse chronicle that I penned up in about 2007. It took about 8 months or so to fully flesh out the idea and put together the outline of the overall storyline. I statted up the major NPCs, broke out a bunch of my supplements and made notes based upon what differences had come about in the published stuff from what had transpired in our high school gaming groups version of New York (I was basing it inside the same continuum because that’s what I knew and I liked where it had gone). I started talking to people about wanting to run a Werewolf chronicle and everyone in our group gave a collective “No” and demanded to do everything under the sun but Werewolf. Which of course this led to an extremely undeveloped and poorly conceived “Zombie Apocalypse in the World of Darkness” that I threw together on a duty day and didn’t really give much of a crap about that I royally screwed up on due to being so far out of practice in Storytelling that I had no business running a game. (Okay, maybe I’m just bitter and ranting right now)
Anyways, the Chronicle I wanted to run has been sitting dormant and waiting for over 5 years now and I’m pretty sure I’ll never get to run it. I liked the idea of the story too much though to give up on it entirely. I think the story is a solid idea and I want to share it with people. Unfortunately due to the difficulty of getting people together to play anything is next to impossible, let alone playing a system like Werewolf so I’ve resigned myself to only being able to share the idea of it via this blog with an overview of what I wanted to do. If you think you’d want to play a Werewolf campaign with me as Storyteller and think it’s an actual possibility that it could happen don’t read the rest of this entry because I’m going to give away pretty much everything that was going to happen from a major plot standpoint.
So to start off this Chronicle we would have a new pack being formed in New York City at the Sept of the Green. This pack will be the new wolves getting ready for their rite of passage. These would be the PCs. One of the requirements of this campaign is to have one of the PCs have a close female family member or the Merit: True Love (and I’d try to help set them up as someone useful with an important skill or connection and as a female) which will be important later. In general the characters would go through their normal early paces for a newly formed pack of werewolves. Hunting down Fomori (Wyrm-tainted humans), Banes (Wyrm spirits), and generally carrying out basic errands for the Sept.
The goal was to not have the real plot start until about 5 or 6 chapters into the Chronicle, just before anyone in the group would make it to Rank 2. They would be given the opportunity to really show themselves as useful members of the Sept by taking out a Wyrm tainted Garou who betrayed the Black Furies tribe and became a Black Spiral Dancer. [Name and description of the character here] In the end the players would eventually track her down after a long, drawn out chase and tracking sequence and would be forced to either kill her there or they would be able to take her back to the Sept for the appropriate punishment rites to be performed. They would also get some valuable information about the Black Spiral Dancer’s current operations and goals in the area that they would pass on to the Sept’s leadership. There would be a grand celebration and an automatic promotion for them to Rank 2 following this. They would get to lead the raid on the first BSD stronghold/operation after this.
A couple more sessions would go by with the pack joining other packs in the area for more successful hunting. Nothing here would be extremely difficult. It would mostly consist of Banes and Fomori with one or two nameless BSD wolves that they’d take out and ruin the machinations of the Wyrm forces. Things are going great until they come across the Elder BSD in charge of these things. She was [Black Furies’) lover and is here for revenge. This is [Black Spiral Dancer leader and her pack’s description]
Her pack is far more experienced, is empowered by the Wyrm, and in a much better tactical situation than the PC pack is when they meet. Basically the situation can’t be won by the PCs but they do have a clear route of escape. If the PCs did what PCs like to do and try to fight their way out I’d let them get almost slaughtered, and then drop a deus ex machina pack on the scene to get them out of there (which would probably be the pack my all-time favorite character Epithail was a part of because they were some of the most experienced and capable Garou in the area at that point in time). They would make it out alive, but defeated.
[Queen] would then become their bane for the next few sessions. Making their lives hell by using corporate and political contacts to screw with the Sept (which is located in Central Park) by arresting Kinfolk and various Garou by having the police crackdown on the “homeless” and “gang” population in the Park (which are mostly the Garou). A few of the higher rolling Glass Walkers within the Sept (mainly Epithail and Simon) would be running political/financial cover as best they could but would also be put under investigation themselves eventually. This would require the pack to use their heads and try to obtain either evidence to exonerate the Glass Walkers (getting it to the right people in the right way so as to not compromise it) or deal with the arrests of the “homeless”/”gangs” somehow. These sessions would be intentionally frustrating and would be tailored to the specific non-combat skills of the pack. It would be to set them up to get pissed off at [Queen] more and more. There would also be a few combat related sessions having to stop Fomori and Banes from hurting the Park.
Occasionally the members of [Queen’s] pack and [Queen] herself would be at some of the sites and would repeatedly get away because of better planning or bad luck. Following this shitty set of circumstances the PCs would eventually catch one member of her pack and be able to kill them or turn them over for punishment rites. Before their death though, they’ll reveal that the True Love/Family member of one of the PCs is being kidnapped as they speak. A call or investigation to said person reveals that this is the truth. Nothing can be done to stop it and the trail has basically been magically covered.
Eventually they get some clues based off of some of the information put together from the various sites they’ve been to and are able to piece together what’s going to happen. It’s some type of ritual that will be happening very soon. They are able to track down the location of the ritual to an abandoned chemical processing plant in New Jersey. There they find resistance and are able to fight their way through just in time to see the ritual being completed. The ritual tears the spirit of [Black Fury] out of whatever green Balefire ridden hell she is burning in and shoves her spirit into the body of the True Love/Family member, granting it a mortal body once more. The spirit being attached also allows her to shift into Crinos form (although that’s it, nothing else). It isn’t a normal “painless” transformation though.
This transformation, being unnatural and from the unholy scriptures of the Black Spiral is unbelievably painful. The body shifts and boils beneath the skin, eventually growing larger while the skin painfully tears apart over it, the nightmare beast standing there with everglowing green eyes that look like they have balefire pouring out from them. (I think I was watching Van Hellsing’s werewolf transformation when I got the inspiration on that one, the flaming eyes are just for effect though). They are forced to fight the reborn [Black Fury] but when she goes to deliver a vicious and brutal blow to the PC to whom the NPC is attached, she stops and the flame in the eyes dies off temporarily as the Crinos form shrinks back and grabs its head. Obviously at this point it is clear that both souls are in the same body and that there might be hope to save her.
The rest of the chronicle revolves around preventing [Queen] from kidnapping more Kinfolk to use in this ritual as the PCs gather more information on the ritual itself to see if they can reverse it. They kill off most of [Queen’s] pack and start to undo most of the damage she’s causing around the city. The chronicle is setup to allow the PCs to reverse this ritual and give her some semblance of her old life back (although the permanent effects of this were still up for debate, and the psychological scars she would have from it would require intense therapy and treatment). Eventually the PCs are able to capture [Black Fury] and use the reversal ritual upon her if they so choose. They then get the last bits of information they need to take down [Queen] and show up for a final confrontation with her.
The final confrontation would be a true final showdown though and PC death would be possible. [Queen] would be at her full strength and prepared with an unknown number of possessed Kinfolk at her command. How this battle turned out would depend upon PC prep and dice. The next chronicle would deal with the fallout of all of this and would involve a search for all the places where this ritual could be learned again in an attempt to eliminate them. Likely it would also end up leading to the Garou asking themselves if they would use the ritual themselves in preparation for the Apocalypse.
Needless to say, I’m sad that I don’t think I’ll ever get to run this campaign and tell the story. I can’t even write it as a piece of fiction because of how heavily tied to the old World of Darkness it is without getting major permissions from White Wolf themselves (which considering that old WoD is long out of print, that seems unlikely).
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