Corax Internal Affairs

Chapter Two: Going Through Customs v/y-- -7 Every night when trouble comes You’re first in line to stick your finger in.

Simple Minds, “Seven Deadly Sins”

One point of information before this goes any further: I’m corvid-breed, New York raised. Learned all my humanisms from a cabby who lived down Marine Park way, and I’ve been walking on two legs for a while. I’m told this means I’ve got a quote-unquote “skewed perception.” To that I say, well, hell yeah I do. You think you’re gonna get the same take on matters from me that you would from a European homid, or a Tengu, or one of the laughing types from out Northwest? Christ on a pogo stick, even you can’t be that monumentally naive.

But it brings up an important point. You’ve been getting the way I see things. If you want a broader perspective, you should go find a few other teachers and hear what they have to say, then sit down for a bit and cross-reference.

Figure out what you think is true. Me, I’m just telling you what I’ve seen and heard, and if that ain’t good enough to get you started, pluck me and sell me to the Colonel.

Orinking Lyes A lot of people have trouble reconciling the fact that on one wing, we’re supposed to be these wacky trickster types. (I mean, hey, it takes serious stones to pull afast one on the Sun.) But on the other, we’re carrion-chomping beasts ofplague and desolation. Most homid-type observers don’t get it. They want to buttonhole us into some little high-concept niche role, like we’re wereGalapagos Finches or something.

It’s two sides of the same coin, you see? Our job is to observe, right? We’re here to make sure that there’s awitness to everything that goes on. If things were the way Gaia intended, every life, every death would have a respectful witness in us.

And while the Wyrm and the War of Rage may have bollixed that plan up pretty good, that doesn’t keep us from trying to fulfill our end of it. We still watch. We still watch, when we can, everything. That means going into the dark places, the famines and the genocides, the battles and the murders. That means not flinching when we see the horrors that make the vampires and Shadow Lords turn pale. Why? Because, goddamnit, every single corpse sprawled out on a battlefield was a life, a voice, a unique perspective on the world, and now it’s gone, gone because some vampire needed a snack, or some Garou got a flea up his butt, or some tin-star dictator needed to show off how big his plumbing was, but gone - Forever. om, and it works a lot in kennings, like Old what the hell we’re talking past the basic grammar. t an example. Ahem. ‘‘Over the movies back and forthSomeone’s got to bear witness to that life. And pardon my grammar, but that someone is - has got to be - us. ‘Cause no one else will do it, and even if they tried, they’d screw it up.

Of course, bearing that kind of witness means we see horrible, horrible things every day and every night. You know something? It wears on you. It grinds you down. It can drive you crazy faster than a skateboarder going down Everest. It can wreck your head.

Which is why we have to laugh about it. If we don’t, if we can’t heckle the moments of absurdity, we lose it. Raven knows this. Raven understands. That’s why Raven gave us this sense ofhumor, so that we could realize that we were beak-deep in a dead man’s eye and still find a reason to go on. And yeah, that goes for us corvids, too; we come from a fine tradition of feasting on carrion, but it’s a little sobering to find out what kind of hopes and dreams your latest snack might have had before they passed on. So maybe we can’t stretchour beaks into smiles, but we chuckle with the best of ‘em. (Let’s face it; you strip a lot of this deadly serious stuff down, the vampires and the Wyrm and everything else, and by itself, it’s pretty damn ridiculous. I mean, think about it like this: All of creation is being threatened by a big lizard with a self-esteem problem? Looking at the horror in that way diminishes it, and makes it bearable for at least another day.) I bull you no shit here: Things are that bad, and we’re in the uncomfortable position of maybe being the only ones who know how bad things really are. The way I see it, we’ve got two choices. One, we can laugh. Two, we can drive ourselves suicidal thinking about the ramifications of what we know. Gaia don’t approve of the latter, and if you try it, Raven will call you a wuss.

So laugh, kid. It’s the only hope you have. (beep Oraughts One of the most important things we do is record the last sights of the dying. That’s why we drink eyes, kid, not because vitreous humor tastes that good. No, when you do it right, you can drink down the last thing that the poor bastard’s eye saw.

Mind you, you have to ask the body’spermissionfirst. Don’t ask me why; that’s just the way it’s done. You’ll learn, kid, that certain things are just done a certain way because, well, because they’ve always been done that way - and every time some smart-ass new chick comes along and tries to modernize procedure, everything goes to hell.

So, in any case, there’s a ritual to how this goes. First you find a body, preferably one that’s not too thoroughly decomposed. You settle down, get a good position, then ask the corpse’s permission to violate it. (That’s another difference between us and crows. A crow sees a corpse as a buffet.

We realize something died to provide for us.) Then, if the corpse gives its okay - and it’s just a gut feeling, the body doesn’t sit back up and tell you that it’s groovy - then you can plunge your beak in.

You can only drink from one of a corpse’s eyes. If you drink from the right eye, you see the good in the sucker’s death. If you drink from the left eye, the sinister one, you see the evil. It’s best to switch back and forth between corpses too much of either view will drive you off your rocker.

On the other hand, there are times when you need to know the best - or worst - in what happened, and then you don’t have a choice as to which eye you can drink out of.

We can do this for animals too, you know. And believe me, a rat’s or a dog’s eye sometimes sees some pretty interesting - and terrifying - things. Trust me, you will never use the expression “gunned down like a dog” again once you’ve seen that shotgun barrel swing into line through another body’s eyes. On the other hand, better than half the time all you get is an image of oncoming headlights.

Gross as it sounds, we can even share memories that we get this way. As long as a little bit of that eye’s jelly is in your stomach, you can barf it back up and feed it to another Corax. This lets the guy getting the sloppy seconds see exactly what you’ve seen. Plus, he can then pass along what he’s taken from you and share the vision with someone else.

Usually, memories can be saved for up to a week this way.

Look, I know it sounds gross, but it works, okay? We birds have been feeding our young this way since before there were mammals, all right, so don’t get so high and mighty about what you will and won’t put in your beak.

Besides, I’ve seen you eat hot dogs -you want to know the secret of what’s really in them?

Heh. Didn’t think so. &elves describing it duty is so deeply izgained must first ask thecad cesses obtained, the longer and clearer the vision oba1 drinking while in Corvid large for the bird to perform and if a wereraven tries it in ing an eye, he is totally focused on what he is doing. This is perhaps the only time when a Corax can be easily surprised, the receipt of a corpse’s last vision requires complete er concentration. ; even the local kids knew ud my coat on the ground next to the body, then knelt down next to the victim’s head. Then I whispered, that said that the corpse was cool with the procedure. So to C o r d . It took a minute as a result of the accrued bud knows how many other bodies but someune like me to take rocess was done, I hopped up on ose and stuck the beak right to this one, like he’d been crying when he died. It was the left eye, so of course I got lousy reception, but certain things were clear enough.

Things like the big sign reading Aesop Research Company on the wall behind the killer, things like the almost palpable Wyrm-taint hovering in the background, and things like the fact that the killer had all the hallmarks of beingfomori. Ifnothing else, the tentacle that smashed this poor fool’s face in was a dead giveaway.

The aqueous humor was smooth as it went down. It would probably be the h t thing to go smoothly for a long time. - from the journals of Raina Fader, Private Investigator Point of the Moot There are werewolves in these streets Mawgojzeta But you only hear me howling at the moon Fish, “Goldfish & Clowns”

Our moots aren’t exactly what you’d think they are.

Most First Changers imagine a moot as some kind of glorified Cub Scout jamboree. That may be what some of Corvid form. There are no exceptions, primarily because tall tree for us to meet in. Wide is good, too - it prevents I I I I I i the tamer Garou moots are like, but ours are a little more focused, less formal. (We don’t have “Cracking the Bone” and “Calling the Wind” and “Marking Your Territory” and all that stuff.) More business gets done.

Well, at first, anyway. Later on, things get, well, interesting. d7r ocebur e Coast in one swell foop. No, that’s too risky for us to attempt all that often.

Word that a moot is going to happen gets spread, as you might expect, by gossip. The details are left at way stations in the Umbra, along with a mandate to spread the news, so that word gets out to just about everyone who needs to hear.

Plus, this way we don’t rely on just one messenger - the ews travels along multiple vectors. This is how we spread rtant news, by the way. Everyone passes it along to e they talk to. Even if one of us gets detained, or - Gaia forbid - killed, the information routes lockage. Word gets through. Word alHere’s a big surprise: We hold our moots during the daytime! Imagine that! We’re creatures of the sun, and as a result, we get together while the sun is s amazed at how many other boojums just heads around that fact. So you’ve always Bone Gnawer or ugly-ass vampire creep favorite tree in the middle of the night, wa -which ain’t gonna happen. It’s kind o Oh, another thing: You always attend a moo rass tacks. Whoever actually is dumb enough to call the Gather (also called a Parliament, primarily by homids who are too anal-retentive to actually show up) gets to play host, which consists of finding a sufficiently folks from stratifying by altitude too much. The host also gets to serve as the Minister of the Parliament (dumb name, I know, but I didn’t make thiscrap up. I just show up at these things for the free food, anyway), which means that he’s in charge oftelling everyone else to shut up so that the serious business Of We open every moot with an invocation to Helios, thanking him for allowing US to get together Yet mother moots are always held in the highest tree we can find. What tree? Where? Crap, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Right. We very rarely call moots for one very good reason: A moot means a lot of us in one place at one time.

This is also known as putting all ofyour eggs in one basket.

There aren’t enough of us for us to risk a Saturday Night Massacre any more frequently than we have to. The right tree goes down and there go half the Corax on the East Cora can get done* time, and for giving us the light by which we can see the wonders of creation. Helios eats that stuff up, you know, but we actually mean every word of it. Our job, after all, is to poke at the dark places and drop a little illumination on them. Without Helios’ help, we’re reduced to the odd spiritual Maglite, which isn’t nearly as effective. Besides, we are genuinely appreciative of everything he’s done for us. Hard to believe, huh?

The next thing we do is offer up a prayer to Raven, asking him to watch over us. We don’t actually expect that he will, thoughRaven likes watching us scramble in and out of trouble. Mind you, if things look really hairy - say, if Wyrm-tainted squirrels climb up the tree and start assaulting the ravens in the back rows - Raven has intervened on occasions like that. The thing is, he always does so in a way to make the survivors look ridiculous.

Anyway, what happens next is Roll Call, but not in the way you’d expect. We don’t call the names of the folks who are actually at the Gather. I mean, if they’re there, we know they’re there, right? No, we call out the names of the folks who didn’t show. Anyone who’s recently seen one of those Corax spouts off, letting the rest of us know that she’s all right.

And if the Minister calls out a name, and there’s no answer? Then two things happen. The first is that a murder gets set up to go search for our missing cousin. The second is that we get ready to mourn.

Crashing the @arty We don’t have Parliaments of our own that often.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t crash everyone else’s. Garou are always happy to have us at That ensures two th worst, you’ll be rescu But don’t be afraid to experiment, kiddo. Go hunt with the Talons as a spotter. Drink mead with the Get until you puke. Sing with the Fianna and run with the Nuwisha when you can, because every time you do, it gives you a little more perspective on why we’re here, and what we’re fighting for.

Next is a check on all the local eggs. Each guardian gets up and gives a status report. Hopefully, this is perfunctory.

No news is good news when it comes to eggs.

New fledglings get introduced next by parents and/or current mentors - don’t worry, I’ll cover you. There’s semi-formal introductions, then some instruction, then a quiz. That’s right, a quiz. If you can’t answer the questions put to you about earlier events at the Parliament, you’re in for a world of hurt. Gotta go sit on the bottom branch if you screw the quiz up.

Yes, sitting on the bottom branch is a bad thing. Think about it.

Anyway, then we get into old/new business, which is basically going around the tree sharing gossip. Depending on how late this runs, there’s also storytelling and singing, and Renown gets slathered around at times like this.

That’s why you take your Renown wherever you can get it, kiddo. There aren’t that many chances to get it, and there’s always a dozen of us yammering at once on the few occasions when it’s available. Practice shouting, that’s my advice.

Parliament can never, ever run past sundown. To do so is disrespectful to Helios, natch. So, at every Parliament, as soon as the sun starts heading down, we all take off and do a circuit over whatever city we’re in. We start at the perimeter and spiral in, calling out every damn thing we see along the way. If things work right, we hit the center of town at sundown on the nose, at which point the Parliament’s over.

Officially, anyway. In the real world, that’s when we all go out for a beer.

Camps There’s a big difference between social animals and pack ones. Garou, for example, are pack animals. The wolves may not talk to one another, but they feel naked unless there are four or five other fur coats around. The members of the pack may hate each other - Raven knows I’ve seen it often enough - but the wolves are almost incapable of functioning on their own.

We, on the other hand, are social animals, which means that we need company, and often. However, the thing is, it’s only company that we need - partners are right out. Ninety-nine percent ofwhat we do is observation and discovery, and having too many eyes trying to focus on the same target can mean that nobody sees anything straight.

But during down time, we love to get together to gossip and swap info. Raven actually mandates the latter - he’s made it damn clear that we’d best share everything we learn with the first three Corax we come across. Dissemination of information, you see, spreading the word. Nothing gets lost and everything gets backed up. C‘mon, you’ve got a computer, kid - you know about parallel systems and redundancies.

I analyze it, and then reduce the place with some kinda efficiency, but on the other hand, a lot of times a murder just devolves into a bunch of birds sitting in a tree or a trendy coffeehouse, bitching about who gets to be in charge.

There are very, very few permanent arrangements our kind has come to. Some are more organized than others, to be honest - the Sun-Lost aren’t even what you’d call connected. Still, there are a few of us who’ve taken a look at the strength in numbers shtick and doped out how to make it work. (zhe Sun-Eost We’re in the accurate information biz, after all. RuHelios and wandered off into the Umbra full time.

However, information swap isn’t the only thing we off wanted you and no one but it. Don’t ask me why they do things like that; they just do.

We always know when one of the Sun-Lost dies. A single feather shows up at the spot were the deceased’s spirit egg hatched. No one knows how it gets there, though I suspect Wind-spirits. Whaddevah. It happens. That’s why we think Huginn and Munin are still alive, by the way. No one’s ever seen a feather for them. And yes, we know their hatching places.

Stupid question, do we know where to look. Of course, we know. We’re Corax, ain’t we?

A~~~~ the Sun-Lost Malcolm, I am sure that, barring catastrophe, you will be goddamned Crows* On the other hand, we got Lug0si in our flick; they got IggY POP in theirs. It ‘1 balances in the the one tofind this. You&notknowme, norshould you. Suffice to say that I gave of myself to craft the egg that hatched he who end.) Murdersoperate on the committee principle, namely, gifted you with flight. you might me you,. grandfatheT, that whoever yells loudest is in charge. Mind you, an organized squad of Corax can scout out an enemy position, ifyou cons& me at all.

Chapter Two: Going Through Customs In a nutshell, then, the arrangement is this: We almost never work together long-term, because we drive each other nuts when we do. Short-term, however, every Corax is willing to sit down with every other over a beer or a roadkill squirrel and swap stories. Eldest Corax goes first, then we go around the table in order. Young ‘uns like you are expected to shut up, listen and take notes, ‘cause at the end of the meeting, the youngest one there is expected to spit back, verbatim, what he’s heard. Sure, it sounds harsh -but how else is he going to spread the word unless he can repeat what he’s heard, exactly. Otherwise, it turns into one big game of Whisper Down the Lane, and you know how accurate that can be. beers, or go flying over the city and leave messag one another - because we don’t have to.

The thing is, we like our associations t choice, fluid things. day or two, but after In short, it drives me n inefficient one. If I’m too damn the feathered equivalent) to fly, I’m for what I’m supposed to. alone. We cover more groun advantage - there aren’t enough of us left that we can afford to waste birdpower on redundant observation. And this way, each of US gets to follow hunches, which means that no one’s gut feelings get disregarded.

There are rare occasions when a bunch of us (bunch? flock? The words for this sort of thing always sound so lame.) actually do band together in some kinda semi-hemidemi-formal arrangement. These so-called “murders” generally form around one particular mission, and disband as soon as the important things get taken care of. (Yeah, the technical term is an “unkindness” of ravens, but no one ever remembers that. Yet another reason to resent the of the community any o gossip on occasion. That’s why ome, to schmooze with Corax who l have left you a trail to where a misplaced soul wanders lost. She is a sad little ghost, banished from her proper Umbra.

You must find her and guide her to a place where she can cross back to her own realm.

If you do this, she will remember you, and in a year and a day, will tell you a story that will sawe your life. If you do not do this, then you will die eight days later.

I, ofcourse, wiUwitnessneitheroutmne. Idohope,hever, that you choose the course I suggest. FareweU, Grandson.

Garnets-For-Eyes The Warrigan Battle-crow biddies, old and dry and fierce as autumn leaves. They’re found in the Old Country - ahem, “the Auld Sod.” Sod off, I say - they scare the hell out of me.

There are only three members of the Morrigan, and they serve Raven’s less pleasant aspect. Whenever a Corax joins the Morrigan, she loses her old name and takes a new one, one of the faces of the Morrigan from legend. Bebd, Nemain and Morrigu - always the same names, ever since they started writing legends down. It doesn’t matter if it’s your lover of 50 years who gets picked; the woman she was dies the second they settle that new name on her, and all she lives for from then on is battle.

They say, in the legends, that Morrigan and Dagda were married once, then something happened and she Cora turned cold and bloody. You can see that story all over again every time a new raven joins the Morrigan. You can see one light die in her eyes and a new, cold one start burning.

Word is that the three have the Sight, that the wind tells them when the next battle of the Garou is going to be.

It might be; they’re always there every time the wolves take up serious arms. They always bring eagles with them, too, to feed on the corpses after the Morrigan drinks their eyes.

Never cross one of the Morrigan. You do, your luck changes, and not for the better.

Murber’s Oaughters The Morrigan are scary because they’re genuinely nasty, and because Raven’s put his blessing of murder down on them.

Murder’s Daughters, on the other hand, are scary ‘cause they’re wannabes. Each and every one wants to be part of the Morrigan some day, and they’ve got this fugazi notion that the way to one of the three spots is to out-nasty the rest of the gang.

It’s stupid, ‘cause I ain’t yet seen one of the Daughters get picked for promotion, but they keep trying.

What do they do? Well, to improve their chances Murder’s Daughters are always picking fights, swarming things, and generally caught up in acting antisocial. The Daughters hang together way too much, and spend a lot of time after dark in the sorts of clubs where the vampires go.

Trying to be bad, yep, yep, yep. Pulling it off? Sometimes.

Chapter Two: Going Through Customs A murder of pissed-off sisters will pluck out your eyes and use ‘em for marbles, and they’re always looking for excuses to be pissed off.

Oh, and it’s a girls’ club only. No boys allowed. It’s a time-honored tradition dating back all the way to at least 1952, which is the first time anyone was gutsy enough to use the name in public.

On the other hand, I’m smart enough not to argue.

A Daughter Warns: What are you? Some yellow-ass coward, or just a hefty variety of stupid? Look, I don’t know if you’ve actually thought about this or not, but war is a fact of life. The Monigan know that, and they know how toget things done about it. You wanna come over here and tell me that I’m following a lame madition?

Come on, dipshit, something on your mind? Go ahead, say it!

I goddamn dare you!

Hermetic Orber of Swift Light This is the business arm of the Breed: basically, a bunch of guys who do their Gaia’s-gossip thing for the right price.

It’s HQed out of Manhattan, with posh offices on Madison Avenue at a yearly rent that will make you puke. By tradition, there’s only one actual raven in the joint, though the rest of us can make some dough by hiring out as freelance couriers and the like. Word is that the Corax who runs the place has been doing some reorganization; for one thing, the IPO went gangbusters. Word in the grapevine is that soon there’ll be a bit more of a permanent structure, not to mention some electronic backup for the gossip net.

It’s gonna be interesting seeing how it all shakes down.

A Hermetic Bargains: Oh, stop flaring your nostrils. Gaia intended us to be Her messengers and scouts, but She can’t have expected us to do it for free. Let’s face it, nothing’s free. Not even the benevolent protectionofyour totems, right? Soare yougoingtakeafewdeep breaths and start bargaining, or what?

Chasers Chasers are loose murders of young brats like yourself who get together to play X-Files. Yep, it’s real fun to go poking after spooky stuff, ain’t it? Just make sure that if you join a band of Chasers, at least one of you has the brains to keep an eye on where the exits are. Finding a nest 0’ Banes is great; deciding to play “Clean Out the Nest” with your little buddies is a one-way ticket to the Great Deep Fryer in the Sky. Most Chaser murders break up after a year or two; that’s about how long it takes for the members to realize they cramp each other’s styles.

A Chaser Ruminates: That corpse isn’t just the victim of your average, everyday vampire, fiends. Look at the discoloration around the edges of the wounds. That kind of pre-mortem inflammation is above and beyond the norm. I’m thinking we have a Giovanni on our h a d . Anyone care to drink an eye and verify? @men’s Laws (With a Mob Cowarb Hehos) There are certain rules and regs that the entire breed lives by, no ifs, ands or buts. Most of these got laid down by Raven before he shooed us all over the planet, but a few were added out of respect for Helios. The thing is, some folks might try to puff these things up as sacred commandments, but they’re as much common sense as anything else. As long as you keep these in mind and use your head for something other than a neat place to put your hat, you’ll do just fine.

There Are Mo Secrets It’s your duty to uncover every secret you can, even the unpleasant ones. Left alone in the dark, secrets fester, rot and turn into some damn unpleasant things. It’s our duty to uncover things that others want hidden, because odds are, if someone’s taking the effort to hide some information, that information’s dangerous. If you hear a rumor or catch a detail that nags at you, you had best follow up to the best of your ability or there’ll be hell to pay. You never know if that lead you ignore as being “too ridiculous” will turn into the thing that bites you in the ass.

Share W h a t you Know Information does no good in a bottle. It doesn’t matter if you know the three magic words that will save the world; as long as those words are locked in your brainbox, they’re not doing anyone any good, including yourself. Odds are you’re not going to be able to do a damn thing about most of the secrets you uncover, but that’s not the point. After all, we’re nothere to takecareofthemesses, justtouncoverthem.That’s why it’s necessary to share what you know. Tell others, who can tell others, who can tell others who just might be able to do something about whatever you’ve stumbled over.

On a more somber note, the sooner you spread the word over what you know, the safer you are. If you’re the only one who knows what the local Pentex subsidiary is up to, you’re a prime target. If you tell three other Corax, who tell three more each, who tell a buttload of Garou, well, suddenly you’re way down on the hit list priority.

And if they do catch you, ifword of what you found gets out, at least you didn’t die in vain. reach T h e m W h a t Cheyll Eearn Not everyone accepts the straight dope from us, or even likes us. And sometimes, the very folks who won’t listen are the very same ones you need to get information to. In that case, Raven has authorized use of unnecessary and ridiculous force.

More to the point, the methods don’t matter - the informationhas togetthrough. Itdoesn’tmatterhow. Itdoesn’tmatter ifyouhave togetawholepackofGarouhowlingforyourblood or if you have to make yourself look like an idiot to get a Simba to listenif they have to know, then it’s your job to let them