Broken Lands

The Broken Lands are emblematic of the Savage West, but they aren’t exclusive to the setting.

Overview
They could appear in other areas where a naturally low Gauntlet is battered further by an outside force comparable to an Umbral Storm. They would fit in well with other historical settings, or in very out-of-the-way places in a modern-day chronicle. It’s only in the Savage West where they become anything like common. Few things epitomize the chaotic spirit world of the Savage West like the Broken Lands. These are sections of territory where the raging Umbral Storms have temporarily worn down the Gauntlet to 1. The Periphery is strong here, and in places it seems as though the landscape itself has been altered. Unlike other Umbral locations such as Glens or Hellholes, the Broken Lands are mobile. The winds of the Storm Umbra can blow them from place to place, like the shadow of a cloud falling over the land. They can drift farther into the Umbra, seeming to vanish, only to reemerge elsewhere. A Broken Land is something right out of a tall tale. You hear tell of people finding a fork in a trail where there wasn’t one before, or a cave opening in a cliff that was solid two days ago. Horses don’t want to go down that path, and get real nervous the closer they get. Sometimes the path leads to a strange patch of wilderness where the animals don’t behave quite right — jackrabbits hunt coyotes, spiders spin webs out of silver, vultures eat the bones out of corpses without damaging the flesh. The sun might not come up for days, or the moon may shine green or red. But other Broken Lands are settled. The people who live in a Broken Land, settler or native, don’t even seem to know that something’s out of the ordinary. In a small town, a piano player plays tunes nobody ever heard in the West. A mob gathers to lynch a rooster, but everyone refers to the luckless fowl as “the mayor.” When a werewolf shifts, nobody reacts as though affected by the Delirium (WTA) — they don’t even notice at all. It’s impossible to predict just how the spirit has altered the rules of the flesh. Some might mistake the Broken Lands for something akin to the days of prehistory when the spirit world and the physical world were one. That’s not the case. The old ballads describe a harmonious relationship between the worlds. A Broken Land is more like a bruise; the land suffers, abused and torn, and the spirit spills out and floods the land, discoloring it. A place battered by an Umbral Storm until the Gauntlet falls eventually mends. For such a place to persist long enough to become a Broken Land, it needs a wellspring of constant spiritual force. This wellspring might be an abandoned caern, an ancient fetish, a sleeping spirit, or the remnants of an old rite. Garou who recognize a Broken Land may be able to heal it by cutting off that wellspring somehow. But the residents aren’t likely to take kindly to such action. Their connection to the spirit world extends to an instinctive understanding that there’s a power nearby, and that it’s theirs. Rescuing innocents from a Broken Land may be a tricky business, given that they’re likely to oppose even werewolves in order to keep what they consider their own.


 * Werewolf 20th Anniversary Wyld West Expansion Pack 28, 29