Werewolf The Forsaken ed 3 - The Pure.pdf - Forsaken - Kubz

“Child, we do not hate you for being born who you are.

Each of us was born of wolf and man, and marked

by the moon harlot with her silver

when the Change came on us.

We cannot hate you because you were born

of the blood that murdered our Father,

for many among us were born of that blood as well.

“But you have heard our truth, and you reject it.

You have felt the wrath of the spirits,

and you do not abase yourselves before them.

You wear the silver brands of the slave with honor,

rather than purging them from you with lame.

“We do not hate the ignorant child.

But you are grown, and you know, and you still do not kneel.

And for that — you will burn.”

— Hunter’s Voice, Fire-Touched

This book includes:

• An intensive treatment of the

society of the Pure, from their

legends and history to

modern-day practices of

indoctrination and penance

• A full treatment of each of the

three Pure Tribes: Fire-

Touched, Ivory Claws and

Predator Kings

• A plethora of Gift lists, rites,

fetishes, totems and other

tools to craft the perfect Pure

werewolf or pack

• A sample setting where the

Pure are in control, ready

to be used as the basis for a

chronicle or dropped into an

existing game

PRINTED IN CHINA

www. worldofdarkness. com

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BY AARON DEMBSKI-BOWDEN, JAMES KILEY, MATTHEW MCFARLAND AND CHUCK WENDIG

WORLD OF DARKNESS ® CREATED BY MARK REIN • HAGEN

Smoldering

They were all looking at me. I think I’m the only

alpha who survived.

“We did it!” I’d never seen Ember so happy. She

was beaming, her strawberry blond hair falling down

around her face. I could smell the blood from the bite

on her leg and I knew it had to hurt her, but nothing

was going to dim her joy today. She couldn’t stay still.

She was rocking back and forth on her heels, and I

was reminded of how young she really was. Gurim-

Ur had chosen her when she was only 14, and unlike

me, she’d been lucky enough to be discovered by our

people. For her, this was a victory against an enemy

she’d never truly known. I envied her that.

I stepped forward and hugged her close. She

buried her face in my chest, and I felt her start to

cry. I didn’t blame her. None of us had slept in three

days. Few of us had eaten. We were wasted, spent, but

every one of us would sleep well tonight. We had won

the greatest victory in the region’s memory.

• • •

We’d all lost battles before, but this was some-

thing different. Something new. Something worse.

When something really bad happens, there’s

always that moment in your mind when you think

No, wait, this isn’t real. I can change this. But you can’t.

And now I can’t.

There weren’t many left of us. I could already see

the urge to lee starting up in people’s eyes. We were

scattered and bleeding and hurt, and the survivors

were ready to turn on each other. Out of anger?

Frustration? I saw faces from maybe six or seven

packs, all streaked with blood and tears. It was almost

funny — we ran away together, moving like a real

pack as we led. The ight was over, the ritual couldn’t

be stopped, and we inally had to run. Totem bonds

shattered, pack brothers and sisters dead and dying

all around, and the survivors led, howling, like a true

wolf pack. We had no bonds to one another — it was

all instinct.

And that was showing. When the heartbeats

have slowed, the tempers lared and the accusations

lew. That’s instinct, too.

• • •

Ember let me go and wiped her tears away. “Come

on,” she said. “Let’s go ind out if everyone else is all

right.” She limped off, her slight body melting down

to Urhan form. I followed, but I kept my human skin.

I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the scents that would

greet me. I knew, after all, that we had not won this

battle unscathed.

I trotted up over the hill just as Ember was start-

ing to howl. She’d found her brother. His body was

splayed out on the ground with a massive wound in

the chest — one of the Forsaken was actually so low

as to carry a silver-loaded shotgun.

I stood behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She changed to Hishu form, and I don’t blame her. It’s

hard to cry as a wolf, and the grief simply stays, caged,

inside the heart. As a girl, she could weep. “Why?”

she sobbed. “They could have fought him as Uratha.

They could have killed him that way. Why this? He

never even had a chance.”

Crouching down next to his body, I tried to

comfort her. “Had he been given the chance,” I said,

“he’d have killed them. They knew him. They’d heard

of John Red-Hands.” She looked back at me, eyes

brimming with tears. It broke my heart to see that,

and I silently swore that she’d hold the head of her

brother’s killer as his body lay cooling. “Remember

Auren told us that?”

She nodded. “That’s right. She said they’d spoken

his name at their gathering and shown fear.” Her face

crumpled again. “But I thought they would have the

honor to…” she couldn’t inish before the sobs came

fresh.

I held her close and rocked her, stroking her lovely

hair. “They don’t have honor,” I whispered. “Your

brother did. He’s gone to Taga Dan , now.”

• • •

Prologue:

“We’re never going to recover from this.” Helen

said to me. She was dry-eyed by then, but she looked

as if she’d aged a decade in the last 10 minutes. I used

to think that was just something they said in ilms.

The tears started again, and she was in my face, spit-

ting and pointing and shrieking, “You should have

seen this coming!”

Maybe that’s true.

“Leave him alone.” These words from Caroline

Dawnsprinter. Her eyes, like everyone else’s, were

locked onto me. But she looked awed; the way new

Changers stare at the Mother and really see Her for

the irst time. The look in Caroline’s eyes unnerved

me much more than Helen’s spite. “Leave him alone,”

Caroline said again, barely more than a whisper. “He

killed John Red-Hands. I saw him do it.”

That’s also true.

When we irst heard the Fire-Touched were

coming, that name had been on everyone’s lips. Our

packs gathered around campires outside the city to

talk it all over. It was the irst time we’d all assembled

together, and the hate was hotter than the ires that

night. Hell. We were enemies. We hated each more

than we hated the Pure. We knew everything about

the other local packs, all their mistakes and sins

against the Oath, so it made it that much easier to

scorn them. All we knew about the Pure was that

they were coming to our hunting grounds, and that

John Red-Hands was at the head of the horde.

That night the alphas decided we had to use sil-

ver. That bastard had to go down fast, and we had to

be sure he wasn’t going to get back up. So when John

Red-Hands came to howl us down as faithless sinners,

we proved him right. I stood waiting for him, watch-

ing for the Uratha whose hands were covered in

blood even before the battle started. I had my father’s

shotgun and two shells loaded with my mother’s cut-

up silver jewelry, and when he charged into view, I

gunned him down.

When I pulled the trigger, I hated myself. He

never even had a chance. He was still crawling

toward me after the irst shot, trying to push his guts

back in. I hated myself when I pulled that trigger,

and that hate doubled when I pulled it again. Sure,

I hated him, too. He’d headcased more than a few of

us over to his side lately; he’d killed at least a dozen

of us during the past year. He was our bogeyman, and

I knew that Caroline wasn’t the only one who was

going to look at me differently for killing him. But

I hated him for what he’d made me do. For proving

him right. For making me a sinner.

And it’s not like it helped.

• • •

John was not our only loss that day. Ember and I

visited the bodies of four other Uratha, good Izidakh

all, and we said our goodbyes and howled with their

packmates. Though neither of us said it, we were

gladdened to ind that our other four packmates were

alive. They had suffered in the battle, of course. All

of them had engaged the Forsaken. Michael, called

Gurim-dakh among our tribe, had killed two himself,

and he sat quietly, his mind trying to reconcile with

what his heart knew to be right. Ember started to

go to him, to comfort him and tell him that he had

only killed unbelievers without souls, but I stopped

her. “It’s not easy, the irst time,” I said. “It still feels

wrong, even when you know better.” She nodded, but

she didn’t yet understand. Though she had seen battle,

she had never killed one of the People.

We didn’t ind Rachel until the morning light crept

over the valley. We found her in a stream, passed out

from loss of blood. We learned later that that Forsaken

scouts had found her during the irst few hours of

the rite, and that she had fought them off the best

she could. They chewed off her leg during the battle,

or perhaps to induce her to talk. She had never said

a word, never emitted a cry to give away our plans

or position. Ember and I howled with pride and took

her back to the others to be bandaged and treated,

and we called her Si Zi’the , “Silent Truth.”

• • •

“We have to make them pay. I lost both my

brothers in that ight.” Helen couldn’t be calmed. The

Blood was thick in her family, and she was raging

against the loss of her siblings. I didn’t know her well

— only well enough to dislike her — but I knew she

was on the edge of Kuruth right now.

I started to talk, to say that there was nothing we

could do until we found out exactly what had hap-

pened, but I was shouted down. A Blood Talon — I

think he was called William — yelled and stormed

over to me. I saw it coming but didn’t linch as he

knocked me to the ground.

I breathed back my hate and looked up at him.

He snarled at me.

“This is all your fucking fault. If you’d got it out

of that Pure bitch, we could have stopped it all before

it started.”

This, too, was true.

Werewolf The Forsaken ed 3 - The Pure.pdf

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