m NJHV

The Talons call the full moon the “Seeing Moon,” which makes some sense. Under the light of the full moon, the Talons hunt proudly and visibly. They know that they can be seen, so they don’t try to hide. A Red Talon Ahroun is usually the alpha of a pack, almost always the strongest wolf, and expects to be followed without question. But these leaders don’t rest on their laurels. If a pack suffers a defeat, the alpha accepts the responsibility and does whatever is necessary to make restitution. If a pack member dies, the alpha often travels to that member’s home sept to sing a dirge (hence my trip to Snow Runner’s home sept). All of that in mind, Red Talon Ahroun are dangerous. They are most often theTalons who hunt down and kill humans, just because they consider the ultimate defense of Gaia their role, and killing humans is, after all, a form of that defense. Talon Ahroun cultivate and revel in their rage, and they often fight smarter than Ahroun of other tribes. They don’t want to inspire stories or win poetically. They just want to win the fight. The Talons know what we all know - the Wyrm is eating the world, the Weaver is badly out of control, and the Wyld is.. . well, the Wyld. But they see the possible causes and solutions a little differently than some of the other tribes. Right or wrong, who can say, but their beliefs definitely deserve consideration. m NJH Let’s dispel a myth: The forest is not the Wyld. It m NJHV The Talons are slightly less realistic about the Wyrm, however. Most Talons believe that the Wyrm is Chapfer Two: Flesh But the Talons consider the humans just an extension of the Wyrm, so the notion that the humans have a place under Gaia doesn’t usually cross their minds. 7% N ! @ P I said before that the Talons rely on patterns, just like all animals. But they consider those patterns - seasons, life and death, etc. - sanctioned by Gaia and to level forests and otherwise periodically sees that vision, but has never seen the cccoon open or what the wolf might be changing into. She seemed to feel the wolf represented the Garou Nation as a whole. I think it may be a bit more specific than that. T&M4dfFP! The Red Talons follow Griffin as their tribal totem. I always thought it was interesting that they feels that killing the hu neath him, shoved He wasn’t behind me, of course, but I knew he was around. I said, “I’m here for my own reasons, and just because I’mnot a lupus doesn’t mean I’mnot a hunter.” Griffin left me alone after that. I’m not sure if he approved of my answer or not, but I got out of the sept alive and no one knew I was homid, to my knowledge. though they were free to follow him as long as the Talons claimed him as their tribal totem. He then called upon Grifin, ever hungry, ever fierce Grifin, and bade him guide the Talons in battle and keep their predator’s heart sharp and true in the years to come. And Wolf faded into the Umbra, refusing ever to serve as tribe, pack, or sept totem in his pure form again. The other tribes each had to make amends to their totems and each demanded a price and this is why pack totems make demands of their charges. But Grifin makes no demands of his children, though he does shun humanborn Garou ’ since they were the cause of all the trouble. And there you have it. Doesn’t cast the rest of us in a very favorable light, true, but I can see it happening. Talons follow other totems regularly. Some of them are well known to other tribes (I’ve mentioned Raven already). Some are unknown outside the Talons, either because they don’t get on well with nonlupus, or because the Talons don’t see a reason to share their knowledge. GP@5 The totem of the entire tribe is the world’s greatest hunter. The Griffin hunts down his prey with the eyes of the eagle, rends it with the lion’s claws, and eats with the wolfs hunger. Griffin doesn’t like homid Garou, and that almost cost me my life once. I mentioned before that I occasionally had to pass myself off as a lupus to get the Talons to give me the As you may know, Lion was once the totem of the White Howlers. But when that tribe fell, the totem didn’tfallwith it. Instead, Lionslunkoff,pridewounded beyond repair. The story is that Griffin went and found Lion and pulled him up by the bootstraps, as it were. Now he’s a member of Griffin’s brood, and sometimes acts as a pack totem. Normally, Lion is very hidebound and traditionoriented, but when he acts as a Talon pack totem, he exhibits his more predatory side (which means that Lion as pack totem is often female, as the lionesses do most of the hunting). Naturally, Lion is most revered by the Kucha Ekundu, though I’m told they’re very careful about making that allegiance public. Of course, natural Cape hunting dogs and lions don’t really get along, but then, neither do wolves and wolverines. M N d Mammoth isn’t, of course, a predator, but Griffin has a soft spot for extinct animals. The Mammoth will sometimes act as a totem, but more often, will respond to a Song of the Great Beast. I actually saw that happen once when I was unlucky enough to be present when a Red Talon caem was invaded by Wyrm-forces. The battle wasn’t going well, and the Talons needed reinforcements, r T d O rzS e wiser than we.”That but there wasn’t anyone nearby to contact. And then, suddenly, the Mammoth came crashing through the trees and started stomping on invaders, throwing them into trees with his trunk - it was really magnificent. I’ve heard that Mammoth was once a favored totem of the Croatan, but that the great spirit went into hiding after the tribe fell and only the Talons knew anything about calling him up. I rather doubt that the Uktena don’t have the same rites that the Talons do regarding Mammoth stashed away somewhere, however. For what it’s worth, I hear rumors about Mammoth making appearances in the Appalachian Mountains, and the folks living up there finding his tracks and trying to sell them. Just rumors, as far as I know. ~~~X The Stargazers might like to think they’ve got Sphinx locked up, but that’s really not the case. Sphinx is a member of Griffin’s brood, and recently started getting back to her roots, so to speak. After the ’Gazers left the Garou Nation, Sphinx slowly started withdrawing from them and spending more time among the Red Talons. The result is pretty frightening. Sphinx has always liked riddles, but has recently begun asking some pretty tricky ones that have exactly one right answer. If you don’t get the answer right, the Sphinx considers you inferior and eats you. The theory goes that the Sphinx feels all predators should know these answers, and any that don’t - Garou especially deserve to be prey. The Sphinx acts as a kind of councilor to Griffin, checking Rage with wisdom, but given that Sphinx has gotten bloodthirsty of late, I wonder how that will affect the tribe’s totem. WOh&P/h The Talons revere Wolverine. It’s far and away the totem that the Ahrounofthe tribe respect the most, apart from Griffin, of course. It’s so vicious that the Talons are the only tribe who’d consider taking it as a pack totem (except for some Wendigo, and even then they revere a more humanized version of the spirit). Wolverine-packs frenzy at the drop of a hat, and will tear their opponents to shreds. They’re also almost impossible to hurt. Some Talons, however, recognize that Wolverine isn’t the best totem to follow if long-term survival is a goal. Wolverine doesn’t like strategy or discussion, it likes to keep its claws wet. A pack that follows Wolverine is the first to enter a battle, regardless of the odds. WOF+% A!!@& The story goes, you’ll remember, that Wolf doesn’t act as a totem in his purest form anymore. But aspects of Wolf sometimes do, and this is where you’ll find Fenris, the wolves that accompany the Wild Hunt, and the Wolf of the Woods. Chnpfer Two: Flesh I asked every Talon Theurge I met about this totem, and got the same answers each time. They all knew he existed, but had never met him. They all knew he was present in every Garou caern, but not as a totem. Reports varied on whether he acts as a pack totem or not, but one story that endured was that every so often, the Wolf of the Woods dies and chooses a Red Talon to “inhabit.” That Talon, always a mature wolf who has yet to breed, disappears and becomes the Wolf of the Woods, never seen again by his packmates or sept, except in fleeting glimpses and scent marks. &Hp All tribes have little mini-societies. Some date back millennia. Some started yesterday, but all of them are true members of their respective tribes with a slightly different take on how things should be done. I’m almost embarrassed about this, but I know more about Talon camps than I do about those in my own tribe. But Talons aren’t usually very secretive. They wear their opinions in the open. It isn’t that they can’t lie, but they can’t do it while speaking (or, more accurately, communicating) in the “wolf language.” So if you need to know whether a Talon fits into a given camp, ask. They might respond with “None of your business” but they won’t lie to you. A word on numbers: The Talons are dying out. If it weren’t for the fact that most Talons fall into one of these camps, at least philosophically, they’d cease to exist. I happen to know that the Anti-Extinction Faction (or Whelp’s Compromise, as it’s known in most of the tribe) has dwindled to almost no members over the last few years. Qdky4fki Red Talons kill humans - I covered that before. But they kill them quickly and cleanly, ordinarily. Talons aren’t much on torture, except perhaps the Dying Cubs. This “camp” is the most like a secret society, in that they have their own rites and practices. They learned rituals from somewhere that allow them to “feed” the Earth with a human’s pain, which means the longer they keep the human in pain, the more sustenance the Earth draws. That means that they’ll drag out an unfortunate victim’s death out for days if they can, sometimes healing him with Gifts so they can start over. They learn Gifts from pain-spirits, but haven’t really scratched the surface of what they can learn, because the camp is composed chiefly of young Garou. These guys are dangerous, and not just because they might grab the wrong human some day and bring down retribution on the tribe (or on the Garou in general). One nigh-universal truth I’ve learned as a