So, You Wanna Be Wyrmy?: BSDs as PCs
Jan. 2nd, 2005 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dunmurderinAgain, not published anywhere; just something I'd been noodling around with. Unfinished in spots, but long enough that I figured folks might get a kick out of it. Updates/revisions will be posted as comments
So, You Wanna Be Wyrmy?:
Black Spiral Dancers as Player Characters:
Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting. -- Alan Dean Foster, "To the Vanishing Point"
Welcome, young cubs and cliath. You stand before me today, on the precipice of a great and terrible choice. A choice that will determine every moment of the rest of your life. For some of you, it is a choice your parents and siblings have made. For others, you will be the first of your line to make this choice. It will not be easy, this I grant you, but nothing worth having is ever easy.
What is the choice, you ask? Ahh, you are eager, young one. This is good. The choice you are being offered is simply this: Live Free or Die. I can see by your faces you think you have already chosen to live free, but I can tell you that you do not understand what freedom truly is. Not yet. Not yet. Those of you who come to us from our misguided siblings, you think freedom is what you left behind, that you have been dragged into slavery. Not true, not true. You who have been raised among us, you think that freedom is only what your elders have. Not true, not true.
Our people threw off the shackles of Gaia’s oppression in order to help save the Wyrm from the Weaver’s madness. For this, the Father gifted us with a taste of the freedom he will someday have, so that we might work harder for him. He has freed us body, mind and soul. We can do what we want, when we want…that is his gift to us, children. Freedom. Tell me, can you refuse it? -- F’ngar Strict-Discipline, Black Spiral Dancer Theurge
# # #
Introduction:
Who the hell would want to play a Black Spiral Dancer? They’re all crazy, sadistic, disgusting bastards! What kind of sick freak thinks campaigns based around ripping babies into bloody gobbets, raping horses, carrying off women and generally destroying all that is good, kind and decent in this world would be fun?
Well, me for one. And my roommate. And the same kinds of folks who like playing Sabbat, Nephandi, Unseelie Fey, Fomori, Waywards, Mauraders, and all the other Evil Splats of the World of Darkness.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse is unusual in that unlike most of the other games in the World of Darkness, it discourages players from taking on the roles of the bad guys. Granted, fomori and Pentex agents are an option, but the Black Spiral Dancers are generally relegated to the realm of NPCs. On the one hand, this makes sense. Black Spiral Dancers are nasty creatures, and unless players are willing to take them seriously as characters are generally best left as NPCs. On the other hand, one could say (or whine), that almost every other game has stats, even sourcebooks, for Evil PCs, why not Werewolf?
Toward that end, I’ve sat down over these last few months to come up with a guide toward creating and running Black Spiral Dancers as Player Characters.
The Only Rules That Matter:
When you’re playing a Black Spiral Dancer or Black Spiral Dancer kin, there is only one rule to keep in mind: THIS ONLY A GAME. As much as I’m irritated by the repeated and rather heavy-handed warnings in Wyrm sourcebooks about how the Black Spiral Dancers are not admirable chaps fighting the good fight, the fact of the matter is they’re not. Playing a savage baby-eating son of a bitch in a role-playing game might be a fun night. Emulating those activities in real-life is a sure sign you need to be locked up tighter than a Silver Fang’s ass. If you’re here looking for justifications of criminal activities, beat it, you’re not welcome on this page or in this hobby.
That’s said, let’s get our dancing shoes on and boogie on down the Spiral, shall we?
Black Spiral Dancers: Another Look:
“Even a bad man can love his child.” -- Gene Wolf ‘The Hero As Werwolf’*
Something to keep in mind when creating a Black Spiral Dancer character or campaign is that most of what we have heard about the Dancers comes from the Garou Nation. In other words, the Garou Nation are hostile witnesses. Granted, there’s not many ways you can spin slaughtering innocents and the destruction of the environment into a positive thing, but we only have the Gaians’ word as to the Dancers’ motives for what they do.
Playing a Black Spiral Dancer gives you the opportunity to take a look at things on the other side of the fence. To give the heretofore faceless enemy not only a face, but a personality, a family, a life beyond that of simply being a killing machine.
“But you said Black Spiral Dancers aren’t misunderstood!” No, they’re not, they are exactly what they are. This does not mean, however, that they cannot be sympathetic characters.
Strictly speaking, a sympathetic character is one that the audience can empathize with. We understand the character’s motivations, even if we don’t necessarily agree with their actions. We root for them because we like them, even if we wouldn’t want to meet them in a dark alley anytime soon. Generally speaking, the good guys are meant to be the sympathetic characters, but sometimes we find bad guys cast in this role.
In movies like The Professional, Silence of the Lambs, and Pulp Fiction, we are led to sympathize with people we would ordinarily think of as criminals because we’re given a chance to see the person behind the bad guy mask. In movie series like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, we come to root for the villains because they’re the best-drawn characters in the series. In films like From Dusk to Dawn, we root for the [BLANK] Brothers because the alternative is so much worse.
But this sympathizing with the villains isn’t limited to movies. Characters like Cancer Man (or The Smoking Man, for you PC freaks!) on The X-Files, Spike on Buffy or the entire Bundy family (Married with Children) engage us. We may not particularly like them, but we watch them because they speak to us and to our darker natures.
It is this empathy that you should bring to creating a Black Spiral Dancer PC. Remember that the Dancers are a twisted, mirror version of the Garou Nation. And that some of them used to be Garou.
There But For Gaia’s Grace…
Luke Skywalker: Is the dark side stronger?
Yoda: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
Empire Strikes Back
The scariest thing about the Black Spiral Dancers is the fact that what happened to them could easily happen to any Garou. The White Howlers fell because of their own arrogance and arrogance continues to be a problem for the Garou as a whole today. Despair, hopelessness, rage, and overconfidence are all flaws that can overtake a Garou, bringing them to the top of the slippery slope that leads to the Spiral.
It’s important to remember that the Black Spiral Dancers are the only Garou tribe that is consistently growing. One reason is that the Dancers have no restrictions on who they breed with, but the population growth also has to do with the fact that it can be so easy for a Garou to fall and the Dancers are always willing to welcome these fallen Garou into their fold.
Also, remember that the White Howlers were related by kinship ties to other Garou tribes. Geographically speaking, it makes sense that the Howlers would have shared kinfolk stock with tribes like the Silver Fangs, Fianna and the Get of Fenris. The Fianna and the Silver Fangs took in many Howler kinfolk prior to and after the Howlers’ Fall. These days, it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for a Gaian Garou of Irish or Scottish descent to have White Howler/Black Spiral Dancer genes. In some cases, breeding will tell.
Character Creation:
NOTE: Some sections of Character Creation may have been taken from existing WW source books but when I was originally writing this, I didn't credit them. I think this is the case because some of these bits quite honestly seem too good to be stuff I pulled out of my ass. I put this disclaimer here as a kind of CYA thing until I can verify with my books as to what is mine and what ain't
Step One: Character Concept:
This is the starting point for your character, the nugget of an idea that forms the basis for the character’s full background and personality. A concept doesn’t have to be complicated; in most core books a concept is one or two words, like “Lost Cub” or “Corrupt Cop.”
Once you have this nugget, you have a few more choices to make:
Breed: Homid, Metis or Lupus. Unlike the Gaian tribes, the Black Spiral Dancers are 50% Metis. Since they don’t hold to the first tenant of the Litany (“Garou shall not mate with other Garou”), Metis are more common and are treated better among the Dancers than they are by other tribes. Black Spiral Dancer Metis are still sterile and are deformed like their Gaian counterparts. Homid Dancers will be the next most common group, with Lupus BSDs being the rarest group.
Auspice: Ragabash, Theurge, Philodox, Galliard or Ahroun?
Ragabash: You’re a trickster and the only limit to your pranks is how much you think you can get away with. Your pranks and teasing are to help the others keep from falling into a rut. If they get hurt or killed in the process, well, that just makes it funnier. "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye...then it's just *fun!*"
Theurge: The Father has given you the ability to glimpse some of His mysteries. There are a variety of techniques that will allow you to see more clearly. Sacrifices, ordeals of body and spirit, meditation, you and your fellow Theurges have tried them all. Sometimes, you use the techniques of the Gaians, twisted to your own purposes.
Philodox: It is unfortunate that the freedom the Father gives His chosen people must be bounded, but sacrifices must be made so that the war can be won. It is your place to sit in judgement over the others, to shepherd them and, when necessary, to cull those who are weak, stupid or simply too insane to be trusted to keep the Veil.
Galliard: You keep the stories of your tribe. You sing the songs of fallen warriors, of victories won. You also know much of the gossip in the Pit. Who’s sleeping with who, who’s out of favor with the elders, who’s on his or her way up.
Ahroun: You are a warrior, ‘nuff said. You fight the good fight, sometimes against Gaians, sometimes against monkeys, sometimes against your own if they don’t watch it. Some assume you’re stupid. Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re wrong to their very great peril.
Origins: Origins takes the place of “Tribe,” since Tribe is more or less a given. Instead of choosing a tribe, you need to decide on how your character happened to become a Black Spiral Dancer. There are two main choices:
“True Dancers”: These are Black Spiral Dancers born into the tribe. These BSDs are more likely to be Metis than homid or lupus.
Converted Dancers (“Conversos”): These are Gaian Garou who have “fallen” to the Spiral. There are three possibilities here, based on how the character came to fall. The characters could have turned to the Spiral by choice or been seduced by the Wyrm or by promises of Black Spiral Dancers. The character could have been driven to the Spiral, by their own Rage or arrogance. Or, lastly, they may have been forced toward the Spiral, since the Dancers often kidnap Gaian cubs (and kinfolk) and offer them the choice of dancing the Spiral or dying. The differences between Converted Dancers and True Dancers are superficial, at best. So long as a Converso proves him or herself worthy, he or she is given the same level of respect as any other Spiral.
Step Two: Choosing Attributes:
Prioritize Physical/Mental/Social and assign points (7/5/3) accordingly. Consider what your character is like.
Note: for born BSDs, you cannot take Appearance over 3 to begin with; though you can buy up to five in appearance with freebies at the usual cost of 5 freebies X dot in attributes. This is to help reflect the fact that BSDs are highly and deliberately inbred and that unearthly attractiveness is a rarity among them.
Step Three: Choosing Abilities:
Prioritize Talents/Knowledges/Skills and assign points (13/9/5) accordingly. Again, consider what your character would be likely to know. Our Glasswalker probably knows more about computers than she does about Archery, for example.
Step Four: Advantages:
Backgrounds: You have five dots to assign to Backgrounds.
Note: According to the Book of the Wyrm, 2nd ed., Black Spiral Dancers who have been born into the tribe cannot take Pure Breed unless they buy all five dots in it.
Gifts: You start off with three Level One Gifts. What gifts you can take are determined by your Breed/Tribe/Auspice. Converted BSDs lose *all* gifts from their tribe of origin and must choose BSD gifts. You can buy additional gifts with Freebie points, but they must be Level One Gifts from within your Breed/Tribe/Auspice.
Renown: is determined by your Auspice
Rank: Generally, BSD characters will start off with the rank of cliath. For BSD cubs, drop gifts. For BSDs of higher rank, use the creation guidelines found in [BOOK THAT I STILL NEED TO LOOK UP AFTER ALL THIS TIME CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!].
Step Five: Finishing Touches:
Rage: is determined by your Auspice.
Gnosis: is determined by your Breed.
Willpower: Black Spiral Dancers start out with Willpower of 3, even converted BSDs (to reflect the general instability of the clan).
Freebies: You’ve got 15 Freebies to spend as you will.
Merits/Flaws: You can purchase Merits or Flaws, either by spending Freebies or by balancing them. You can gain additional freebies by purchasing Flaws, but you cannot go over 7 points of Merits or Flaws, without ST approval.
Step Six: Spark of Life:
White Wolf doesn’t generally consider this a step for character creation but personally, this part is the most important part of developing a good, solid character. The Spark of Life is what turns your character from a collection of dots and adjectives into a “real” person. Here are some things that should go into your character’s Spark of Life:
Personality: What type of person is your character? Meek? Arrogant? Cowardly? Some combination? Why? If he/she is a Converso, what were they like before they danced the Spiral?
Appearance: What does your character look like? Tall? Short? Thin? Fat? What nationality are they? Are they attractive? Hideous? How do they dress? How do they stand?
Motivations: Why does your character do what he or she does? Why does he/she serve the Wyrm and how does he/she feel about it? This is quite possibly one of the most important things you can know about your character.
Everybody does what they do for a reason, even psychopaths. The reasons may not be entirely clear to others around said psycho, but to the individual in question, they are crystal-clear.
Derangements: You don’t have to be crazy to be a Dancer, but it helps. In many cases, the Black Spiral Dancers view derangements as a gift from the Wyrm or as a sign of favor from a particular Urge Wyrm.
How to Handle The Icky Stuff:
Communication, communication, communication: Talk to your players, individually and as a group. Find out if there’s any particular subject, such as rape, child endangerment, or drug abuse that bothers them. Decide what you yourself are and are not comfortable with handling in game. Discuss the types of characters your players are looking to play and the type of game they’d like to run. From there, you’ve got a basis to:
Set Limits: Based on having talked to your players, and on your own comfort levels, decide what sorts of things you will and will not allow ‘on-screen’, so to speak. In fact, I’d suggest having three sorts of limits:
What you will allow
What you will NOT allow
What you are willing to compromise on
Use a Safeword: It's not just for BDSM anymore! Have some sort of signal for when things get too rough, a word or a gesture or something that players can use to call a time out to things. Holding up crossed fingers, for example.
Fade to Black: You’ve seen this technique used in the movies, where the action will fade out on one scene and resume later on in time. In online games, this is sometimes used to fast-forward the action or to avoid posing out a graphic or nasty scene. Make sure your players know that they are still expected to RP the consequences of the scene, even if it wasn’t played out, but that you’re not going to go through the gory details of the action.
A Few Last Words:
They say we’re crazy. Really crazy. Bad crazy. And maybe they’re right, at least about some of us. But that’s okay because the Father wants us to be crazy. The madness is his gift to us, the gift of insight. The Father wants us to have whatever we want. To do whatever we want. We are truly free, not like those stupid Gaian fucks with their stupid rules about who to sleep with and that bullshit. That’s why they hate us. We can do anything we want, anything at all. Want to fuck another Garou? No problem. Want to snort coke until your septum drops out of your head? Have at. Want to run frothing at the mouth into every Gaian caern you find? Great! We can always use cannon fodder! ‘Course, everybody else in your Hive can also do whatever they want, but that’s okay. “An armed society is a polite society,” after all. If you’re stupid enough to get yourself killed, you were a waste of space anyway. But we aren’t stupid, just crazy. There is a difference. Those who don’t know that difference die, sometimes because Gaians kill them, sometimes because their own packmates take them out. Either way, it’s all good. Besides, it’s not like any one individual BSD is important or anything. Winning the war is important. Freeing the Father is important. Dragging more of those smarmy, self-righteous Gaians down along the Spiral is important. If you fall, there’ll be others to take your place. We’re the only tribe that’s growing. Ten percent of the Garou nation by some estimates and getting stronger every day. One day soon, the others will wake up and realize what we already know: the Black Spiral Dancers are going to win this war. -- Augh’dfkme, Black Spiral Dancer Galliard
# # #
Resources:
Unfortunately, to play a BSD as a PC, you may have to do a little digging for information. Here’s some places to start looking:
White Wolf Sourcebooks (or, the logical place to start):
Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The core rules of the Werewolf game. My personal preference is for the 3rd Edition, but whatever edition of the game you play, make sure you understand how Gaian Garou society works before attempting to portray a BSD. Most of BSD society is a tilted or even reversed image of Gaian society.
Book of the Wyrm (2nd Edition): This is, in my honest opinion, the better of the two editions of the Book of the Wyrm. It is longer, more detailed and, simply, a better conceived book than the first. The chapter on the Black Spiral Dancers is, for all intents and purposes, the BSD splatbook and discusses the tribe’s history from Before the Fall to the present, tribal gifts, the effect of the Spiral on various tribes and Black Spiral Dancer Camps. It also discusses the Wyrm himself, Pentex, and Fomori and other Wyrm creatures.
Mind’s Eye Theatre: Book of the Wyrm: Even if you don’t LARP, I recommend this book since it’s a useful look at BSD society as well as a look at corrupted versions of the other Bete.
Players Guide to the Sabbat: Specifically, Chapter Six, which is all about playing and running an evil, nasty character without having the game turn into a prurient gorefest.
Clanbook: Malkavian (Revised): Again, the Revised book is more highly recommended, particularly the section on playing an insane character.
Guardians of the Caerns: Particularly the chapter on Metis, if for no other reason than to see how the Gaian Garou handle things as well as how Metis come into the world.
Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth: A Book of Nod-style supplement about the Wyrm. Good, even if I don’t like the revelation in the last section.
Web Resources:
Most of these are about playing Malkavians, simply because when most WOD gamers think of playing insane characters, they think and write about Malkavians. By and large, most of the advice in these articles will work for insane characters in general. Ignore the blatantly vampiric bits and use what’s left.
http://home.earthlink.net/~esasmor/blacklight/malk.htm Stupid LARP Tricks for Malkavians. How to think like a Kook.
http://www.amaranthys.com/RPG/Wod/notsostupid_malkavian_tricks.htm Not so Stupid LARP Tricks for Malkavians (the link at the bottom of the first page doesn’t work, I found this one by accident)
http://malkav.freeshell.org/story/toplay/miscon.txt The Malkavian Misconception. Where did the impression that insane = silly come from?
http://timebomb.pair.com/malkavian/ The Malkavian’s Guide to Players.
http://malkav.freeshell.org/story/toplay/ -- Playing a Malkavian. All *kinds* of cool stuff here!
http://www.nocturnis.net/articles/werewolf/100/page1.html The Face of Rage 4/2000 from Ex Libris Nocturnis. A staff article about Black Spiral Dancers that is VERY cool. One of the first things I'd originally found about the BSDs way back when and highly inspirational to this work.
http://www.thelarper.org/archivearticles/edition_2/sex.html Sex and the Interactive Drama. Brian David Phillips, Ph.D. The LARPer August 2001, Volume 1, Issue 2. More about using safewords in non-sexual role-playing.
http://www.likesbooks.com/106.html All About Romance #106. Check out the article on the Gay Uber Villain stereotype for examples of why you don’t need to go over the top when creating a bad guy.
Books:
Grunts: A Fantasy With Attitude by Mary Gentle. A dark comedy fantasy novel spoof told from the orc’s point of view.
Villains By Necessity by Elizabeth Moon. After the Last Battle Between Good and Evil, a group of fantasy villains joins forces to save the world from the Forces of Good.
Black Spiral Dancers as Player Characters:
Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting. -- Alan Dean Foster, "To the Vanishing Point"
Welcome, young cubs and cliath. You stand before me today, on the precipice of a great and terrible choice. A choice that will determine every moment of the rest of your life. For some of you, it is a choice your parents and siblings have made. For others, you will be the first of your line to make this choice. It will not be easy, this I grant you, but nothing worth having is ever easy.
What is the choice, you ask? Ahh, you are eager, young one. This is good. The choice you are being offered is simply this: Live Free or Die. I can see by your faces you think you have already chosen to live free, but I can tell you that you do not understand what freedom truly is. Not yet. Not yet. Those of you who come to us from our misguided siblings, you think freedom is what you left behind, that you have been dragged into slavery. Not true, not true. You who have been raised among us, you think that freedom is only what your elders have. Not true, not true.
Our people threw off the shackles of Gaia’s oppression in order to help save the Wyrm from the Weaver’s madness. For this, the Father gifted us with a taste of the freedom he will someday have, so that we might work harder for him. He has freed us body, mind and soul. We can do what we want, when we want…that is his gift to us, children. Freedom. Tell me, can you refuse it? -- F’ngar Strict-Discipline, Black Spiral Dancer Theurge
# # #
Introduction:
Who the hell would want to play a Black Spiral Dancer? They’re all crazy, sadistic, disgusting bastards! What kind of sick freak thinks campaigns based around ripping babies into bloody gobbets, raping horses, carrying off women and generally destroying all that is good, kind and decent in this world would be fun?
Well, me for one. And my roommate. And the same kinds of folks who like playing Sabbat, Nephandi, Unseelie Fey, Fomori, Waywards, Mauraders, and all the other Evil Splats of the World of Darkness.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse is unusual in that unlike most of the other games in the World of Darkness, it discourages players from taking on the roles of the bad guys. Granted, fomori and Pentex agents are an option, but the Black Spiral Dancers are generally relegated to the realm of NPCs. On the one hand, this makes sense. Black Spiral Dancers are nasty creatures, and unless players are willing to take them seriously as characters are generally best left as NPCs. On the other hand, one could say (or whine), that almost every other game has stats, even sourcebooks, for Evil PCs, why not Werewolf?
Toward that end, I’ve sat down over these last few months to come up with a guide toward creating and running Black Spiral Dancers as Player Characters.
The Only Rules That Matter:
When you’re playing a Black Spiral Dancer or Black Spiral Dancer kin, there is only one rule to keep in mind: THIS ONLY A GAME. As much as I’m irritated by the repeated and rather heavy-handed warnings in Wyrm sourcebooks about how the Black Spiral Dancers are not admirable chaps fighting the good fight, the fact of the matter is they’re not. Playing a savage baby-eating son of a bitch in a role-playing game might be a fun night. Emulating those activities in real-life is a sure sign you need to be locked up tighter than a Silver Fang’s ass. If you’re here looking for justifications of criminal activities, beat it, you’re not welcome on this page or in this hobby.
That’s said, let’s get our dancing shoes on and boogie on down the Spiral, shall we?
Black Spiral Dancers: Another Look:
“Even a bad man can love his child.” -- Gene Wolf ‘The Hero As Werwolf’*
Something to keep in mind when creating a Black Spiral Dancer character or campaign is that most of what we have heard about the Dancers comes from the Garou Nation. In other words, the Garou Nation are hostile witnesses. Granted, there’s not many ways you can spin slaughtering innocents and the destruction of the environment into a positive thing, but we only have the Gaians’ word as to the Dancers’ motives for what they do.
Playing a Black Spiral Dancer gives you the opportunity to take a look at things on the other side of the fence. To give the heretofore faceless enemy not only a face, but a personality, a family, a life beyond that of simply being a killing machine.
“But you said Black Spiral Dancers aren’t misunderstood!” No, they’re not, they are exactly what they are. This does not mean, however, that they cannot be sympathetic characters.
Strictly speaking, a sympathetic character is one that the audience can empathize with. We understand the character’s motivations, even if we don’t necessarily agree with their actions. We root for them because we like them, even if we wouldn’t want to meet them in a dark alley anytime soon. Generally speaking, the good guys are meant to be the sympathetic characters, but sometimes we find bad guys cast in this role.
In movies like The Professional, Silence of the Lambs, and Pulp Fiction, we are led to sympathize with people we would ordinarily think of as criminals because we’re given a chance to see the person behind the bad guy mask. In movie series like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, we come to root for the villains because they’re the best-drawn characters in the series. In films like From Dusk to Dawn, we root for the [BLANK] Brothers because the alternative is so much worse.
But this sympathizing with the villains isn’t limited to movies. Characters like Cancer Man (or The Smoking Man, for you PC freaks!) on The X-Files, Spike on Buffy or the entire Bundy family (Married with Children) engage us. We may not particularly like them, but we watch them because they speak to us and to our darker natures.
It is this empathy that you should bring to creating a Black Spiral Dancer PC. Remember that the Dancers are a twisted, mirror version of the Garou Nation. And that some of them used to be Garou.
There But For Gaia’s Grace…
Luke Skywalker: Is the dark side stronger?
Yoda: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
Empire Strikes Back
The scariest thing about the Black Spiral Dancers is the fact that what happened to them could easily happen to any Garou. The White Howlers fell because of their own arrogance and arrogance continues to be a problem for the Garou as a whole today. Despair, hopelessness, rage, and overconfidence are all flaws that can overtake a Garou, bringing them to the top of the slippery slope that leads to the Spiral.
It’s important to remember that the Black Spiral Dancers are the only Garou tribe that is consistently growing. One reason is that the Dancers have no restrictions on who they breed with, but the population growth also has to do with the fact that it can be so easy for a Garou to fall and the Dancers are always willing to welcome these fallen Garou into their fold.
Also, remember that the White Howlers were related by kinship ties to other Garou tribes. Geographically speaking, it makes sense that the Howlers would have shared kinfolk stock with tribes like the Silver Fangs, Fianna and the Get of Fenris. The Fianna and the Silver Fangs took in many Howler kinfolk prior to and after the Howlers’ Fall. These days, it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for a Gaian Garou of Irish or Scottish descent to have White Howler/Black Spiral Dancer genes. In some cases, breeding will tell.
Character Creation:
NOTE: Some sections of Character Creation may have been taken from existing WW source books but when I was originally writing this, I didn't credit them. I think this is the case because some of these bits quite honestly seem too good to be stuff I pulled out of my ass. I put this disclaimer here as a kind of CYA thing until I can verify with my books as to what is mine and what ain't
Step One: Character Concept:
This is the starting point for your character, the nugget of an idea that forms the basis for the character’s full background and personality. A concept doesn’t have to be complicated; in most core books a concept is one or two words, like “Lost Cub” or “Corrupt Cop.”
Once you have this nugget, you have a few more choices to make:
Breed: Homid, Metis or Lupus. Unlike the Gaian tribes, the Black Spiral Dancers are 50% Metis. Since they don’t hold to the first tenant of the Litany (“Garou shall not mate with other Garou”), Metis are more common and are treated better among the Dancers than they are by other tribes. Black Spiral Dancer Metis are still sterile and are deformed like their Gaian counterparts. Homid Dancers will be the next most common group, with Lupus BSDs being the rarest group.
Auspice: Ragabash, Theurge, Philodox, Galliard or Ahroun?
Ragabash: You’re a trickster and the only limit to your pranks is how much you think you can get away with. Your pranks and teasing are to help the others keep from falling into a rut. If they get hurt or killed in the process, well, that just makes it funnier. "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye...then it's just *fun!*"
Theurge: The Father has given you the ability to glimpse some of His mysteries. There are a variety of techniques that will allow you to see more clearly. Sacrifices, ordeals of body and spirit, meditation, you and your fellow Theurges have tried them all. Sometimes, you use the techniques of the Gaians, twisted to your own purposes.
Philodox: It is unfortunate that the freedom the Father gives His chosen people must be bounded, but sacrifices must be made so that the war can be won. It is your place to sit in judgement over the others, to shepherd them and, when necessary, to cull those who are weak, stupid or simply too insane to be trusted to keep the Veil.
Galliard: You keep the stories of your tribe. You sing the songs of fallen warriors, of victories won. You also know much of the gossip in the Pit. Who’s sleeping with who, who’s out of favor with the elders, who’s on his or her way up.
Ahroun: You are a warrior, ‘nuff said. You fight the good fight, sometimes against Gaians, sometimes against monkeys, sometimes against your own if they don’t watch it. Some assume you’re stupid. Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re wrong to their very great peril.
Origins: Origins takes the place of “Tribe,” since Tribe is more or less a given. Instead of choosing a tribe, you need to decide on how your character happened to become a Black Spiral Dancer. There are two main choices:
“True Dancers”: These are Black Spiral Dancers born into the tribe. These BSDs are more likely to be Metis than homid or lupus.
Converted Dancers (“Conversos”): These are Gaian Garou who have “fallen” to the Spiral. There are three possibilities here, based on how the character came to fall. The characters could have turned to the Spiral by choice or been seduced by the Wyrm or by promises of Black Spiral Dancers. The character could have been driven to the Spiral, by their own Rage or arrogance. Or, lastly, they may have been forced toward the Spiral, since the Dancers often kidnap Gaian cubs (and kinfolk) and offer them the choice of dancing the Spiral or dying. The differences between Converted Dancers and True Dancers are superficial, at best. So long as a Converso proves him or herself worthy, he or she is given the same level of respect as any other Spiral.
Step Two: Choosing Attributes:
Prioritize Physical/Mental/Social and assign points (7/5/3) accordingly. Consider what your character is like.
Note: for born BSDs, you cannot take Appearance over 3 to begin with; though you can buy up to five in appearance with freebies at the usual cost of 5 freebies X dot in attributes. This is to help reflect the fact that BSDs are highly and deliberately inbred and that unearthly attractiveness is a rarity among them.
Step Three: Choosing Abilities:
Prioritize Talents/Knowledges/Skills and assign points (13/9/5) accordingly. Again, consider what your character would be likely to know. Our Glasswalker probably knows more about computers than she does about Archery, for example.
Step Four: Advantages:
Backgrounds: You have five dots to assign to Backgrounds.
Note: According to the Book of the Wyrm, 2nd ed., Black Spiral Dancers who have been born into the tribe cannot take Pure Breed unless they buy all five dots in it.
Gifts: You start off with three Level One Gifts. What gifts you can take are determined by your Breed/Tribe/Auspice. Converted BSDs lose *all* gifts from their tribe of origin and must choose BSD gifts. You can buy additional gifts with Freebie points, but they must be Level One Gifts from within your Breed/Tribe/Auspice.
Renown: is determined by your Auspice
Rank: Generally, BSD characters will start off with the rank of cliath. For BSD cubs, drop gifts. For BSDs of higher rank, use the creation guidelines found in [BOOK THAT I STILL NEED TO LOOK UP AFTER ALL THIS TIME CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!].
Step Five: Finishing Touches:
Rage: is determined by your Auspice.
Gnosis: is determined by your Breed.
Willpower: Black Spiral Dancers start out with Willpower of 3, even converted BSDs (to reflect the general instability of the clan).
Freebies: You’ve got 15 Freebies to spend as you will.
Merits/Flaws: You can purchase Merits or Flaws, either by spending Freebies or by balancing them. You can gain additional freebies by purchasing Flaws, but you cannot go over 7 points of Merits or Flaws, without ST approval.
Step Six: Spark of Life:
White Wolf doesn’t generally consider this a step for character creation but personally, this part is the most important part of developing a good, solid character. The Spark of Life is what turns your character from a collection of dots and adjectives into a “real” person. Here are some things that should go into your character’s Spark of Life:
Personality: What type of person is your character? Meek? Arrogant? Cowardly? Some combination? Why? If he/she is a Converso, what were they like before they danced the Spiral?
Appearance: What does your character look like? Tall? Short? Thin? Fat? What nationality are they? Are they attractive? Hideous? How do they dress? How do they stand?
Motivations: Why does your character do what he or she does? Why does he/she serve the Wyrm and how does he/she feel about it? This is quite possibly one of the most important things you can know about your character.
Everybody does what they do for a reason, even psychopaths. The reasons may not be entirely clear to others around said psycho, but to the individual in question, they are crystal-clear.
Derangements: You don’t have to be crazy to be a Dancer, but it helps. In many cases, the Black Spiral Dancers view derangements as a gift from the Wyrm or as a sign of favor from a particular Urge Wyrm.
How to Handle The Icky Stuff:
Communication, communication, communication: Talk to your players, individually and as a group. Find out if there’s any particular subject, such as rape, child endangerment, or drug abuse that bothers them. Decide what you yourself are and are not comfortable with handling in game. Discuss the types of characters your players are looking to play and the type of game they’d like to run. From there, you’ve got a basis to:
Set Limits: Based on having talked to your players, and on your own comfort levels, decide what sorts of things you will and will not allow ‘on-screen’, so to speak. In fact, I’d suggest having three sorts of limits:
What you will allow
What you will NOT allow
What you are willing to compromise on
Use a Safeword: It's not just for BDSM anymore! Have some sort of signal for when things get too rough, a word or a gesture or something that players can use to call a time out to things. Holding up crossed fingers, for example.
Fade to Black: You’ve seen this technique used in the movies, where the action will fade out on one scene and resume later on in time. In online games, this is sometimes used to fast-forward the action or to avoid posing out a graphic or nasty scene. Make sure your players know that they are still expected to RP the consequences of the scene, even if it wasn’t played out, but that you’re not going to go through the gory details of the action.
A Few Last Words:
They say we’re crazy. Really crazy. Bad crazy. And maybe they’re right, at least about some of us. But that’s okay because the Father wants us to be crazy. The madness is his gift to us, the gift of insight. The Father wants us to have whatever we want. To do whatever we want. We are truly free, not like those stupid Gaian fucks with their stupid rules about who to sleep with and that bullshit. That’s why they hate us. We can do anything we want, anything at all. Want to fuck another Garou? No problem. Want to snort coke until your septum drops out of your head? Have at. Want to run frothing at the mouth into every Gaian caern you find? Great! We can always use cannon fodder! ‘Course, everybody else in your Hive can also do whatever they want, but that’s okay. “An armed society is a polite society,” after all. If you’re stupid enough to get yourself killed, you were a waste of space anyway. But we aren’t stupid, just crazy. There is a difference. Those who don’t know that difference die, sometimes because Gaians kill them, sometimes because their own packmates take them out. Either way, it’s all good. Besides, it’s not like any one individual BSD is important or anything. Winning the war is important. Freeing the Father is important. Dragging more of those smarmy, self-righteous Gaians down along the Spiral is important. If you fall, there’ll be others to take your place. We’re the only tribe that’s growing. Ten percent of the Garou nation by some estimates and getting stronger every day. One day soon, the others will wake up and realize what we already know: the Black Spiral Dancers are going to win this war. -- Augh’dfkme, Black Spiral Dancer Galliard
# # #
Resources:
Unfortunately, to play a BSD as a PC, you may have to do a little digging for information. Here’s some places to start looking:
White Wolf Sourcebooks (or, the logical place to start):
Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The core rules of the Werewolf game. My personal preference is for the 3rd Edition, but whatever edition of the game you play, make sure you understand how Gaian Garou society works before attempting to portray a BSD. Most of BSD society is a tilted or even reversed image of Gaian society.
Book of the Wyrm (2nd Edition): This is, in my honest opinion, the better of the two editions of the Book of the Wyrm. It is longer, more detailed and, simply, a better conceived book than the first. The chapter on the Black Spiral Dancers is, for all intents and purposes, the BSD splatbook and discusses the tribe’s history from Before the Fall to the present, tribal gifts, the effect of the Spiral on various tribes and Black Spiral Dancer Camps. It also discusses the Wyrm himself, Pentex, and Fomori and other Wyrm creatures.
Mind’s Eye Theatre: Book of the Wyrm: Even if you don’t LARP, I recommend this book since it’s a useful look at BSD society as well as a look at corrupted versions of the other Bete.
Players Guide to the Sabbat: Specifically, Chapter Six, which is all about playing and running an evil, nasty character without having the game turn into a prurient gorefest.
Clanbook: Malkavian (Revised): Again, the Revised book is more highly recommended, particularly the section on playing an insane character.
Guardians of the Caerns: Particularly the chapter on Metis, if for no other reason than to see how the Gaian Garou handle things as well as how Metis come into the world.
Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth: A Book of Nod-style supplement about the Wyrm. Good, even if I don’t like the revelation in the last section.
Web Resources:
Most of these are about playing Malkavians, simply because when most WOD gamers think of playing insane characters, they think and write about Malkavians. By and large, most of the advice in these articles will work for insane characters in general. Ignore the blatantly vampiric bits and use what’s left.
http://home.earthlink.net/~esasmor/blacklight/malk.htm Stupid LARP Tricks for Malkavians. How to think like a Kook.
http://www.amaranthys.com/RPG/Wod/notsostupid_malkavian_tricks.htm Not so Stupid LARP Tricks for Malkavians (the link at the bottom of the first page doesn’t work, I found this one by accident)
http://malkav.freeshell.org/story/toplay/miscon.txt The Malkavian Misconception. Where did the impression that insane = silly come from?
http://timebomb.pair.com/malkavian/ The Malkavian’s Guide to Players.
http://malkav.freeshell.org/story/toplay/ -- Playing a Malkavian. All *kinds* of cool stuff here!
http://www.nocturnis.net/articles/werewolf/100/page1.html The Face of Rage 4/2000 from Ex Libris Nocturnis. A staff article about Black Spiral Dancers that is VERY cool. One of the first things I'd originally found about the BSDs way back when and highly inspirational to this work.
http://www.thelarper.org/archivearticles/edition_2/sex.html Sex and the Interactive Drama. Brian David Phillips, Ph.D. The LARPer August 2001, Volume 1, Issue 2. More about using safewords in non-sexual role-playing.
http://www.likesbooks.com/106.html All About Romance #106. Check out the article on the Gay Uber Villain stereotype for examples of why you don’t need to go over the top when creating a bad guy.
Books:
Grunts: A Fantasy With Attitude by Mary Gentle. A dark comedy fantasy novel spoof told from the orc’s point of view.
Villains By Necessity by Elizabeth Moon. After the Last Battle Between Good and Evil, a group of fantasy villains joins forces to save the world from the Forces of Good.
