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from humans who would kill them and fiomuwah who would breed with them. Although we are loath to fight our fellow Garou, we will not allow our Kinfolk to sire cubs for the Bone Gnawers or Glass Walkers. m W!&P COMN Not long ago, before the great storm in the East but after the First War began again, the elders of our tribe met, secretly, in asmall sept called the Weeping Daughter. There, they decided that the other tribes would be too slow to appreciate the progress we had made with the new Impergium. They debated and fought, and finally decided that over the coming years, the fiercest Red Talon cubs would be taken to the best-hidden caerns and taught the ways of the tribe, without ever seeing a human being or even a human-born Garou. This meeting, called the Winter Council, decreed that when the Talons were old enough, they would be bound into packs for the express purpose of reinstating the Impergium in places where it was most needed. The first of the packs was formed recently, bound together by Griffin and sent to the human-hive called Montreal. We have not yet heard of their doings, but surely such pure Garou are destined for great things. The other tribes do not know of these Winter Packs, and they cannot know, for they would surely oppose us. But as time goes on, and the tribes see how easily the humans shrink back to their hovels when the true predators come for them, they too will lend us their cubs for these packs. mc&z* Perhaps the beings that rent the Umbra into a great tempest during the Wyrmcoming awakened, or perhaps something much worse. But recently, the spirits carried tales of a great battle far to the east, where adragon, a bird, and a tiger fought with an ancient evil. We never saw a prophecy about this, and the spirits were vague, but we understand that not only was the evil destroyed, but the battle claimed the lives of thousands of humans as well. While we are reluctant to guess as to what truly happened, many Talons the world over have asserted that Griffin came to Gaia in three forms - Sabertooth Tiger, Great Crane, and a third that we have never seen (dragons are supposed to the be creatures of the Wyrm, but perhaps that is not always the case). These Talons believe that the three-bodied Griffin struck down the evil being and the thousands of humans he would have used as an army. Some young Talons now wish to travel to these foreign lands and search the Umbra for any trace of Griffin and his mysterious “third body.” Gmmm We do not howl of what will happen, for we do not know. Even though we keep and hold prophecies of tomorrow, we have rarely been able to make sense of them enough to use them. If that were our only curse, the Red Talons would be doing well. But other misfortunes hamper us with each passing moon. HO!.&E In the cold lands north, in the tom lands of the Russia, and in Europe where were visit our new Impergium on the humans, they murder our Kin with false claws. In the lands south of us, the so-called United States, they kill the last of the gray wolves and then say they do it to keep their children safe from wolves. Strange, is it not? If they would simply leave us alone, wolves would never trouble their children. But we will not allow the humans to kill us without wringing the blood from their bodies. Other tribes, those tainted with human blood, do attempt to help us from within the dazing human leadership. But as we know, human-made laws carry no instinct, no true reason not to break them. Impose penalties, and some humans, if caught, may pay a price, but the culling will continue. The world has changedmuchsince the First Times; the humans now practice the Impergium on us. r n R d / * P The strange storm in the East and the appearance of the three-bodied Griffin, despite the good it may have done, also heralded the appearance of Anthelios, the Red Star. It appears only in the Umbral sky and has grown closer to Gaia recently. We know little about it. We have our prophecies, but they make no sense as usual. We hear the howls from other Red Talon septs about a child that should not be, about the metis’ curse being lifted, and about the Red Star gathering the fragments of Rorg and forming its own obscene world. We do not know what to believe. Our Theurges ask lupus Garou of other tribes, and they all feel the same way about the star. It is a predator, something to be feared and destroyed as soon as possible. But we cannot reach it, and even now, as we howl on this glorious night, it shines down on us, laughing. Some tribes call it the “Eye of the Wyrm.” And they may be right. But we will not scurry for cover like humans in a storm. We will perform our rite in defiance of this evil, and someday soon, we will find the means to destroy the Red Star. And then the tribes will listen to us, and we will ask them for an answer. The question is an old one, and the rulertribes have had some time to think on it. How will humans be controlled without killing them? CAGVW One: Blood If there is no answer forthcoming, then we will cull the herds like never before. Our allies will rise up around us in a great pack, we will gather the Winter Cubs, and we will take to the hives. We will kill the humans quickly. We will not do to them what they would do to us - skin us, poison us, trap us. No, we will bring swift death down upon them with fang and claw, the way Gaia and the Triat intended when they made us predators. We will pull down their hives and call on our rite to refresh the soil. The soul of Gaia will be made pure again, and the Wyrm will abandon its quest to drive Her mad. This will be the way, and tomorrow, our cubs will sing of the peril and indignity we Red Talons faced some time ago. 2&& Silent listens to the joyous howls of dreams of the future, and one howl soars about the rest. Sunrise Heart has arrived. The old wolf calls for silence, and the other Talons drop their heads in respect. And off down the mountain they run. The tainted place has not been touched since the humans arrived. They are still there, still astride their metal beasts, still dead. The young Whole Mountain pack found them, crushed their vehicles and slew the humans, and carved the glyph for “taint” into the metal - and crossed it out with the symbol ofRage. But the r o d that the humans built, by clearing trees and beating down the earth, remains. Someday humuns will come looking and that could threaten the c m itself. Without the rite that Sunrise Heart now performs, Silent reficts , it might have been necessary to go hunting for the humans responsible and kill them, or at least scare them into never coming to the mountain again. That would have involved leaving the sept, donning the human skin, and perhaps even contacting the Wendigo’s Sept of the Cold Sun for assistance. Now there will be no need of this. Sunrise Heart walks around the metal beasts, howling out to Gaia to awaken. He rubs his muzzle over the sharpened edge of the smashed vehicle and his blood drips onto the human-made scar in the forest floor. And the forest answers. The plants shoot up through the dirt, although only a tiny bit of moonlight nourishes them. They overtake the vehicles, they blot out the road. Roots and moss cover the metal beasts, but do not touch the humans’ bodies. They will decay as Gaia intended. Mighty trees appearfim tiny saplings in less time than it takes to devour a mouse. The Garou howl in victory. Sunrise Heurtqhya, the great Red Talon ritemaster, has cleansed and protected this place. Silent mutely throws back his head to the sky. He cannot howl, but might, the urge from his wolf-heart is too strong. “Therestofthepackslept. Healonefeltthe touchof.. . he knew not what. Wolves don’t grieve. Not even for themselves. ” Alice Borchardt, Night of the Wolf The Red Talons are our last hope. An appropriately dramatic way to begin, yes? But I truly believe it. After nearly five years of travel and study among the Talons, I believe that they may well hold the secrets surviving the Apocalypse, to reclaiming our lupus heritage, and perhaps to defeating - or curing - the Weaver and Wyrm. I don’t mean to suggest that a sept of Red Talons has these secrets locked away somewhere and refuses to share them. That is not the way of Griffin’s tribe (although it certainly tends to be the way of ours). By way of preface, my name, among Garou, is Malcolm Night-Smile, a Galliard of the Shadow Lords, sometimes called Malcolm the Liar. Freshfiommy tewifying Rite of Passage, I found myself graced (although at the time, “saddled” more accurately summed up the way I felt) with a Red Talon packmate. She was the Ahroun of the pack and she was called Snow Runner. My adventures with that pack lasted only ayear, after whichamiscalculation on my part cost the lives of three of our five members. Snow Runner was among them. I took it upon myself to i n f m her home sept of her deathandtosingherdirge there. They wouldnotletme, but made me wait outside the bawn of the caern while they performed the Gathering for the Departed for her. When it was over, I was allowed into the sept, but grudgingly. The Talons -for there were no other Garou present - treated each other mly like family, and after only a day there, I could not longer deny that I was utterly alone. I decided then to take it upon myself to learn about the Red Talons , this mysterious and often derided tribe born entirely ofwolf. Few Galliards carry stories of the tribe, and many Garou raised by human families blanch at having a Talon around. That attitude is damaging and unnecessay, as I hope to illustrate. Duringthisreport, I try tobeasobjectiveasIcan, and the Talons have their @ws, just like all of us. I didn’t omit anything, so the reader may find me mentioning some of the tribe’s faults and wondering where the “last hope” comment camefiom. To that reader, I say: Read the whole document, and you’ll see what I mean. A word of dedication before we begin: My main “resource,” so to speak, for many issues concerning the Talons was a Red Talon Philodox called Hears-the-Smallest Sounds. While in Eastern Europe, I visited the Blue River Caern (before its fall to pollution, obviously) and spoke with the Master of the Rite. His name was Hears-theSmallest-Sounds, and he was very young to be given such apost. I later discovered that he had a voracious appetite for knowledge of all kinds , including more “humanish” meth-