Slick Sims nods: Those icons of Cockroach. The bottom line showing we were around in the Middle East before Chinese ciuilizution got started. And the fact that we know well that we were around in Ancient Rome since 60 BCE. Discounting theories that we had members of the tribe wandering unrecorded by any historians who had found Rome on their own (not as ridiculous as you might think; moon bridges make trying to track our movement an academic exercise at best), we’re left with trying to find exactly where our culture and the Roman culture met. The obvious answer is with Pompey’s conquering of Jerusalem in 63 BCE. It’s still not impossible that we might have begun in China and made our way to Jerusalem later via the Mesopotamians, except that we’ve no proof to suggest we were among the Mesopotamians. Needless to say, though, the Roman Empire was full of surprises and new ideas for us. We would have arrived just in time to see burnt brick become the standard building material, and we would have seen the paved roads and the aqueducts. The philosophy of the Ancient Greeks challenged us and perhaps to our relief, the pantheistic religion would have allowed us to blend in much more easily than we’d previously known. Rome was a city beyond what we could have Dynasty’s state ideology,) until the fifth century BCE, when Mahayana Buddhism is introduced to China. Mahayana, a later sect of Buddhism, offered much more to the tribe than the original Theravada did. Mahayana incorporated more elements of Hinduism that the Boli Zouhisze used to hide themselves within. Guanshiyin, in female form as “mother of the human race,” was used as a symbol for Gaia. In what probably seemed a note of extreme irony for the Boli Zouhisze, the three forms of Buddha taught in Mahayana were used to refer to the Triat. As with the camouflage adopted in Judaism, these depictions of Gaia and other spirits remained steady throughout history and can still be found today. The Mother of Peach Trees caern still has many images of Gaiathat are clearly inspired by depictionsofGuanshiyin. Awhfi#Romfi &iph Now, the strong evidence that we have surrounding our activities in China, as compared to the shaky evidence of our activities in Palestine could suggest that we actually originated in China and then migrated to the West, making the Boli Zouhisze the original Glass Walkers. There are only two slight problems with this. I I f t I I I I i i P I I possibly dreamed could exist - if our people did revere Cockroach as a city spirit in those early days, then imagine their delight with Rome! In fact, Rome held so much appeal to us that it’s amazing how little time so many of us actually spent there. Rome was the center of the Western world. And the Wyrm has always had its agents in humanity: vampires. Needless to say, they were rife throughout the city and did their best to manipulate the Senate, usually through blood magic that ensnared humans in the Wyrm’s coils. (We have the specifics of this magic very well documented now. It takes seven vampires, surrounding the human in a circle. The human has to drink a chalice filled with the mixed blood of all seven vampires. It’s probably the same one used then as today.) The other major tribe in Rome, the Silver Fangs, saw the same problem as we did but were predictably clueless as to how to challenge it. We never saw eye to eye and our tribes feuded regularly. We told them that trying to muscle the vampires out of the Patrician families and political bodies was a fight in which we were hopelessly outgunned, but they didn’t listen. Ironically, we were the ones to notice that the cities offered few opportunities here. But the legions provided us with opportunities the city itselfdid not. The blood magic tended to wear off, and away from their vampiric patrons it was profoundly easy to track down their servants and destroy them. Being out in the wild open, away from shelter during sunlight kept the actual vampires away, too. Our greatest problem was discipline; the Roman legions’ highly trained formations didn’t quite jell with our tendency to go berserk. We did our best to become officers as soon as possible, putting ourselves away from the battles. And since Caesar had proven how much pressure a charismatic, popularly supported general could wield, we cheerfully used our newfound influence to cap the vampires’ powers and clamp down on their ensnared humans. We also got a little edge over the Silver Fangs, too, and perhaps most importantly, we managed to expand our tribe’s geographical focus, a lot. The vampires responded to us by throwing all their weight into the Praetorian Guard, but we did very well out of the legions anyway. This was also probably when we ran into most of the other tribes for the first time, and very little of it was friendly. There were some Garou from other tribes in the legions as well, but by and large the other tribes were the people the Romans conquered, not the Romans. This started a long tradition that’s probably true today: We allied ourselves with the winners, they allied with the losers. Not that we entirely forsook the city, either. We are an urban tribe, when it’s all said and done. The Silver Chapter O w : Myfho/o5iea! h 5 i c I_^_--- Fangs and bloodsuckers pretty much had every angle into the Patrician families and senate that could be found, but there was one religious office they missed: the Vestal Virgins. We went to great lengths to somehow push one, or more than one, of our Kinfolk into this highly sought after position for two reasons. First of all, any criminal who managed to lay eyes on one of the Vestal Virgins was immediately pardoned, and given how many illegal activities we favored, this was a nice thing to be able to call upon. Secondly, in a city filled with vampires, controlling the sacred fires seemed like a useful advantage. It’s true that Rome wasn’t a haven of Gaia’s beauty. There was a lot to despise and the Wyrm had his talons stuck into its heart. In the end, the worst of it was the Roman’s lead smelting, which produced hideous levels of pollution on a global level, and this created a powerful Bane named Stannum. Stannum is mentioned in a few writings by our tribe at the time as a massive Cyclops, whose hands each had eighteen fingers tipped with poisoned claws. His eye was smoke, and his breath bumed like silver. Striking at him only broke him into lead dust that rapidly reformed. Despite this, at the time he was easily defeated but impossible to destroy. The former would not be true when we came across him again. But between our military influences and other factors, it seems we had at least some kind of check on it. Given more time, maybe we could have flushed the vampires out and made it into something even greater than it was. But, it wasn’t to be. Between the Visigoths and the Huns, as well as the Get of Fenris if you believe them, Rome fell. If the Get of Fenris were responsible, then they can be blamed for the suffering and increased power of the Wyrm in what came next. M&QdgempHdh mHdm The Middle Ages were not our greatest hour, but contrary to what many modern Glass Walkers thinkand quit smirking at the camera, Backup, I’m aiming this at you - the reason isn’t because of a lack of worthwhile human endeavor. Throughout the period, there was a great deal of philosophical thought, development of art, and even scientific advancement. It wasn’t very widespread, of course. Literacy was abysmal, superstition (some of it true, some of it false) was rampant and the breakdown of political systems that defines the era meant that the majority of people were too busy trying to survive to worry about learning anything that didn’t directly help them. Remember though, this doesn’t mean that humans of the time were ignorant, it’s simply that learning the most productive ways of farming were much more important thanexperimentingwithnew ones, for example. Leaming and advancement takes time, resources and risk,
Glass Walkers · Werewolf