fib

fib&/&*

Theurge about him: The Red Talons view the Fangs as the “alphatribe” in many places, or at least that’s what they say.

But many Talons have never even met a Silver Fang.

They’ve heard stories of the Fangs’ greatness -we all have - but all of those stories go straight out the window if the first Fang a Talon meets is crazy, stupid, or inbred. Pedigree goes a long way, but Talons won’t always follow a leader into certain death based on it.

Note I said “always.” In the olden days, if the Fangs JzZ4M Ouch. The first reaction I got from a lot of Talons when they heard my tribe was, “What does he want?“ The Hem-the-Smallest-Sounds died before the Red Talons and the Shadow Lords joined forces in Eastern Europe.

Swift-as-the-River, another member of the Blue River Sept, said this when I spoke to him after the caem’s destruction: The Shadow h d s fought bravely in battle beside Red Talon and Black Fury. They suffered battle scars, but won the fights. Afterwards, they howled as loudly as any Talon in victory. Perhaps we only dismt the Lords because an alpha said we should? fib&/&* The Silent Striders worry the Red Talons greatly.

They have no real territory, they don’t look or smell much like wolves, and they truck with ghosts (willingly or no). When they show up, they almost always bring bad news, and while most Red Talons know enough not equate the messenger with the message, some of them don’t think that way. Throughout most of the world, the k at the Striders as flawed somehow - after I imagine this is because on the flatlands of Africa, catching prey is mostly a matter of speed, and nobody beats the Striders in a foot race.

Hears-the-Smallest-Sound has this to say about the Silent Striders: Wolves are predaturs. Jackals are scaoengers. The Silent Sniders are something in between, and the stench of canion follows many ofthem. I mt the striders, but r do not mt what follows them. fi/m.zq* Red T A l O W bo;lJ’ of GarouAustralia, for example-the Talons ari looking more askance at the Fangs every month. I think that if the Fangs lose all credibility in the eyes of the Red Talons, the Garou Nation may lose another tribe.

While I was with the pack, I used to trash-talk the Fangs a lot. Not that I’d ever met one, of course - bigotry starts at home, damn it. Snow Runner put me in my place once: Have you ever led a pack? Have you ever acted as alpha or been responsible for a pack eating, sleeping, mating, being safe from enemies or staying warm? Have you ever sired or how initi ‘mea, “slinklng O Talons the time I visited, the Talons and a Sta Strange&&, a Red Mark Roar-of-the-Sea was our Caller of the Wyld for some time. The spirits listened to him, the elders listened to him, but his voice put the Talons to sleep.

U&W The Talons have a strange relationship with the soabout it, and that kin the Uktena stand ns in the American shoulderto-shou way of doing things to heart. I happen to know that in Northern Mexico, the Impergium’s had a resurgence, and the Talons have had help in pursuing it.

The sept to which Strange Smile belongs was actually founded by Uktena, so of course she had some things to say about them: Our l e h s here are Uktena. They lead by keeping the sept safe and protected, not by charging into battle, come whatmay. They leadlike wolves, thinkingfortheentirepack, rather than their own glory. When a new threat arises, they investigate it themselves, cautiously and carefully. In fact, they often cannot rest until they learn all about it. w040 Much of what I said for the Uktena holds for the Wendigo, too. However, the Wendigo are fierce, bloodand for the real hard-line Red akes them very nervous.

Other times, the Talons tread carefully on Wendigo territory, never sure of what the natives will do next.

While visiting the Sept of the Weeping Daughter in Alaska, I spoke with Moonbeam-Runner, a Philodox Chtzpfer Two: Flesh who once acted as an emissary to the Wendigo Sept of the Cold Sun: The Wendigo always have warm places to skep and phty ofbbody meat. But Idway miffthematarejdly befweeating. z3&&phdD4mm I know they aren’t a Gaian tribe, but a couple of points need raising here.

I mentioned earlier that the mistake that cost the lives of three Garou - one Actually, I called it a “miscalcul hate the humans for being Another thing about the Talons and the Dancers that I’ve picked up over the course of my travels: They’ll never admit it, but they have a “there but for the grace of Gaia go I” kind of mentality about the fallen tribe. It would be all too easy for most Talons to give in to Rage and join the Dancers, or fall to the Wyrm, and it’s a rare Talon who isn’t tempted by the notion at least once.

I myself have had limited experience with the Fera. I met a Corax once in a European sept, but beyond that, my experience is limited to what I know from stories. However, I did manage to run across quite a few Red Talons with experience in dealing with the other Changing Breeds.

The Talons are often confused about the Breeds, and in the past have been sucked in by the propaganda that the Silver Fangs and other tribes (mine included) have spread about them. As much as it would be tempting to say that since the Talons are so immersed in their feral side, they wouldn’t have followed the human-like jealousy and lies that precipitated the War of Rage, it’s not that simple. To the Talons, the other Breeds are rival predators, and so when the time came to rally support in the War of Rage, the Fangs knew what buttons to push. &hh I spent some time with the Kucha Ekundu in Africa and they told me of the werehyenas. I didn’t believe it at first, but their Galliards told stories that didn’t vary much from sept to sept, so I’m starting to think that there might be a breed of Fera that most of the Garou Nation doesn’t even know about out there.

Evidently these Ajaba are beginning a comeback from hand, do have some I I Africa, the Kucha Ekundu (whom you’ll find are the exceptions to the tribe on a lot of topics) get on well P i with most of the Bastet, from what I’m told. But then, Africa’s Fera are supposedly in a loose coalition now anyway, so it could have more to do with that t h a acted as totem to is a human conhole I’ve seen both groups make the care of the Re‘tE Talons. To this day, Great Bear watches over the caern and our Half-Moons are taught a speclal rite to welcome the she-bear back, just in case she return.

Mob4 Once again, it depends on where you are. But most Talons see the werealligators as Wyrm creatures. Not only are they rival predators, but they’re reptiles (which Chnpfer Two: Flesh they will: Sometimes we hear soundsfrom the swamps, likegreat bellows. Sometimes these sounds echo from the sea, as though huge beasts were singing to each other through the fog. Ourseptleaders-Uktena, asI’vesaid-arecurious wamps to fid the source. wn for its skill in battle, eturn. e Red Talons is that which is an area that much about. Because of know something about s. I spoke with Creepsem are so darned pissed off at the I can’t believe I’m writing this down, but if the Red Talons ever took advantage of the Ratkin’s numbers and position within every major city - if the two groups ever decided to learn from each other - the human race would be in some serious shit. It would require some major lateral thinking on both groups’ parts, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. think they’ve got it easy because they don’t live in the cities. The cities provide protection we don’t think about, and in the woods, all bets are off.

The Talons don’t see the vampires and the human mages as much as some of the other tribes do, because they stick to the wilds. All that means is that they see monsters the likes of which us homids couldn’t imagine.

Fomori in the bodies of giant bears, materialized spirits from Gaia-knows-what part of the Umbra, Wyrmholes that have festered for decades because nobody ever goes to that part of the forest - the Talons deal with all of that as a matter of course. Just bear that in mind if you The Bone Gnawer filled in some gaps in the story f r r f i I I I i I P i I (obviously, neither the bumnor the vampiresknew about “Red Talons,” and who knows what vampires would be doing in the woods anyway?) but even if it’s half true.. ..

M+#LL Strange things happen around caerns. Odd flowers grow, strange mushrooms sprout up, and some of these things can be used as “magical ingredients.” Trouble is, harvesting them can weaken the caem, if done carelessly. Spellcasters are human, which means that Talons assume that they’re going to be careless from the start.

When I visited Poland not long ago, I visited aTalon sept where the moss that grew near the center of the caern was an odd violet color. The Talons just said it had always been that way, and that sometimes humanscame looking for it. The most recent human to do so, they said, called up fire when the guardians attacked him and then vanished, screaming in pain. The Red Talons just assumed that Gaia had taken offense at his behavior and struck him down. Sounds about right to me. n=bd The Red Talons kill people. That’s a harsh, uncomfortable fact (and one I’lldiscuss more later on) but they do.

And sometimes those people don’t fade, but stick around as vengeful spirits, or worse. Most Red Talon ritemasters learn a special rite that very few Garou outside the tribe know about. It repels human ghosts but does nothing against the more familiar spirits (including Banes, unfortunately). Red Talon lore holds that they learned the rite from the Silent Striders following that tribe‘s exile from their homelands, but no one’s really sure (and of course the Talons don’t really care much where they learned it).

The problem is that dead humans don’t always stop at ghostly hauntings. Sometimes they come back bodily as well, and that rite does nothing to stop such horrors.

Of course, as these “zombies” have bodies, the Talons can respond to such a threat in the normal way, but I’ve heard stories about walking corpses healing claw and fang wounds in seconds and calling up storms and winds.

I’ve also heard that if one finds the beings responsible for its death, it is utterly relentless in tracking it down and killing it. I visited a Red Talon sepr whose bawn bordered a small town in Wyoming. The sept was holding a Gathering for the Departed when I arrived, for a young Ahroun tom to pieces by a human he’d killed not a month before. The Talons had no plans to investigate this. They were all terrified, because one of their most basic precepts -humans and weak and easy to kill - had just been utterly destroyed. I imagine it’s the same anywhere a dead human returns for revenge. fi3m4VY Something else, too, on the subject of not-sohelpless humans. I heard a story about a Red Talon ChapferTwo: Flesh pack that came across a group of humans hunting on their lands. They attacked, of course, and found that not only were the humans prepared, they wielded strange powers that forced the Talons back and held them at bay. The humans also carried silver in the guns, and killed two Talons before the rest of them got smart and disappeared.

They harried those “hunters” for three days, keeping them away from the caem’s center and picking them off when they could. When they finally killed the last one, their Theurges examined the bodies with every Gift and fetish they had access to. Those “hunters” were human, completely and unequivocally.

RdT&NdBWrnW Now that I’ve talked a little a b u t Red Talons and their relations with the tribes, the Fera, and some of the other strangeness out there, I feel that the reader probably has a good sense that the tribe isn’t perfect or a collective paragon of what it is to be Garou. Likewise, they’ve avoided some of the mistakes the other tribes have made.

But most Garou know the Red Talons as dedicated human-haters, and before I get deeper into their culture, it might be a good idea to address that side of them.

Red Talons kill people. Actually, most Garou do, or have, or would if necessary. I have, and I’m sure the reader has as well. In fact, the first living thing I ever killed, other than the occasional mosquito, was a person, during my First Change. Rather than relate the story (which really isn’t relevant to the Talons), I’ll just say that ending another human life pushed me into a spiral of guilt and grief that lasted.. . well, really, it hasn’t ended. And the guy wasn’t an innocent bystander, either, but that’s not the point. There’s something in the human mind that’s wired against killing other people. Yes, that impulse to preserve life gets ignored with amazing frequency, but it’s there, even if most folks who kill don’t admit it. A lot of “normal folks” (that is, humans who aren’t soldiers, cops, etc.) who kill, even in self-defense or by accident, end up in therapy or dead by suicide. The impulse to preserve human life is very strong among humans.

Red Talons do not have that impulse. Not only that, they are taught from the time they undergo their First Change that killing humans is anecessary adjunct to what we as the Garou do. If the other tribes don’t know that, that’s too bad. But, the Talons are told while still bristling from that first bout of Rage, if you find yourself on a mission and there are humans around during a fight, don’t feel compelled to protect them, or even to let them leave the area alive. And most of them, trying to make sense of what’s happening and coping with the sudden ability to retain information and obey long-term principles, take that to heart.

It took some time to get this kind of information about the Talons. They teach their cubs by example more than explanation, so finding Talons willing to have conversations about their tribe’s beliefs and practices (to say nothing of doing so with a homid) was difficult. But persistence pays, and I hope the reader will find this enlightening. rn& A Red Talon undergoes his First Change at about two years of age, roughly coinciding with sexual maturity (just like us homids, in other words). With luck, that change happens inanareanotfarfromaRedTalonsept, but given how thin the tribe is spread these days, that’s not a common occurrence. We all know what the First Change is like - th rsts of anger, hunger, In the Talons’ defense, humans are responsible for a lot of their troubles. Wolves have been slaughtered for centuries or longer, humans defile the Earth, and so on.

The Red Talons firmly believe, with more conviction than any fundamentalist on the planet, that if every last human were destroyed, Gaia would heal Herself and the Garou could just go back to being wolves. What the Talons miss, or perhaps just ignore, is that most Garou didn’t start out as wolves. So would the Talons, if they ever achieved their goal, kill off the homid Garou, too?

The usual response I got when I asked that question of Talons was something like (‘Ofcourse not.” But I could tell it wasn’t something they’d ever considered.

If you have a Red Talon packmate, know that he would as soon kill a human being as look at him. By ending that life, the Talon sees one less human that will ever take a club or a gun to his cubs or Kin. The Talon does not see a mother or father, a child, a provider, or anything capable of love. The Talon sees only an enemy.

AflT&m,7 No. The narrator is speakin rience, but we’ll break in he stincts. Actually, it’s less a matter of ignoring and more of reshaping - a wolf will fight to protect itself, but won’t naturally attack and kill humans. The Talons work to make the new cub realize that by killing humans, he is protecting himself.

I don’t know how much time passes between a Talon being “found” and undergoing his Rite of Passage.

I never had the good fortune to arrive at a sept where a that having a hardcore, human-killing Red Talon, or indeed any Red Talon, would derail the story.

I used that phrase when I was telling a tribemate of mine about this project. She scoffed and asked if there was any such thing. The Red Talons absolutely have their own culture, it just differs considerably from any other tribe. They have their own form of storytelling, their own naming protocols, their own etiquette, and their own “take” on the Litany, the five auspices, and just about everything else in our society. t en, lupus Garou wind up pends on the sept in which it is performed.

Most often, the cub leaves the sept and returns only when he has performed a specific goal, and that’s how the Talons usually do it.

Most often, that goal is in some way related to the sept’s borders and protecting them. I’ve heard of Talons being required to safeguard a pack of wolves for a full month, and of others being asked to hunt down and slay the human responsible for the death of a favored Kin wolf (killing humans does factor into Talon Rites of Passages fairly often, I’m afraid).

The specifics vary, and the Talons don’t exactly have centuries of unbroken, rigid tradition to dictate their rites. When the cub succeeds and returns to his sept, he is considered a true Garou. Sometimes the older Talons will carve pictograms into the cub’s flesh, or so the stories go. However, I’ve seen comparatively few Talons with such scarification, so it makes me wonder where that story got started. Really, a Talon who hasn’t passed a Rite of Passage would convey his status through body language so clearly that I don’t think such practices would be necessary. orm as relegends go) it wouldn’t be uncommon for a promising young Talon to be granted the honor of joining a Silver Fang pack, or for a lupus of another tribe to band together with a few Red Talons. As humanity has spread and conquered, however, the lupus breed has dwindled, which means that the Talons don’t see as much in common with the tribes. Also, ideological differences get in the way (no other tribe really advocates killing humans wholesale, after all). Nonetheless, most Talons wind up in packs with members of other tribes. what happens then depends on the Talon.