Umbra-they

Umbra-they

**of Note**

arrived at the secluded monastery and were greeted by the Sept of the Snow Leopard as valued guests. Shigalu was the oldest Stargazer caem and held the tribe’s greatest treasures, although young Garou like Antonine and Wen were not allowed access to them. Maybe after years of service to the tribe, they would be allowed to view them.

But not yet.

They spent three idyllic months there, learning to meditate as Stargazers, encountering spirits valued by the tribe and gleaning secrets from them-the famed Gifts that allowed Stargazers their uncanny sense of balance. They also learned about the darker matters threatening the tribe and the world, about the Wyrm and its devouring maw and corrupted minions. But most of all, they learned about the Weaver, who had caused the Wyrm to become a force of pure corruption. It was the Weaver that the Stargazers had to be wary of. The other tribes paid her little heed, figuring her to be too distant to affect their fates so deeply.

“It is like a finger pointing to the moon,” a venerable Shigalu monk said. “The Weaver is the moon, but the other tribes worry about the finger.”

His words carried wisdom beyond their mere meaning, for he demonstrated to Antonine and Wen the power of sound, how its very vibrations could unlock thoughts in the mind, awakening one to instincts long buried in most humans. He instructed them in the chants that could reveal the Elemental Mind, the primal mind unhampered by the duality of logic and forms, a mind that flowed like water, rose like fire, spread like air and rooted itself like earth in the True Gaia Realm beyond the Weaver’s webs of falsehood.