The Answering Tiger was a nigh-incomprehensible spirit that took residence in the Pioneer Valley in 2019 and remained there until its destruction in 2024. It is one of the two primary antagonists of The Book of Hungry Names, the other being its 'partner' Eater-of-Names.
Overview[]
Although the Answering Tiger was definitely an agent of the Wyrm, its actual nature is unclear. While it did share some characteristics with Nexus Crawlers, its omnipresence and the esotericness of its abilities make even its classification as a Bane dubious. Elton Dey, a scholarly theurge - albeit one of unremarkable Renown and extremely limited information at the time - described the Tiger as ‘an idea, an error in thinking that perpetuates itself among humans and Garou, both more and less than a standard Bane'.
Appearance[]
As befitted a spirit of its strangeness, the Answering Tiger rarely manifested any kind of physical form, being more of an event than an entity. The only physical signs of its work, most of the time, were the stripy ripples that permeated its illusory realities when it gave up the pretense of said realities being real from the perspective of its captives. These ripples resembled the patterning of a tiger's pelt, hence the spirit's name. The effect is also similar to the aurora-like appearance of Nexus Crawlers in the Umbra, though aside from the visual similarities and approximate power levels, the Tiger and that spirit type have little in common.
When the Answering Tiger directed its full wrath towards a single target, as when it trapped Daphne Clear within its false narrative and attempted to stop Eater-of-Names from destroying it, fungal blooms would sprout along the affected area, sometimes taking the shape of a tiger for brief moments. Objects possessed by the tiger would similarly become swiftly covered in these blooms.
History[]
The Answering Tiger began its existence as the spirit of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, a massive nuclear station that provided a substantial amount of Vermont's electricity at the expense of the region's groundwater's drinkability. The Garou of the Broad Brook Sept worked in tandem with human protestors and the state government to get the plant shut down in 2014, untethering the Tiger from its place of origin.
After its successful survival of Vermont Yankee's decommissioning through its web of false realities, the Tiger was approached by Eater-of-Names, who offered to guide the Tiger towards Broad Brook and give it the tools to solidify its victory. Eater-of-Names promised that if the Tiger achieved its full potential, it could blind all of humanity to the death of Gaia, allowing the Wyrm and its servants to finish their great work with no resistance in the way to slow them down and muddy their progress.
Eventually, the two began to diverge in their goals, as the Tiger sought to break down the barriers between truth and falsehood and take Gaia's place as supreme spirit, while Eater-of-Names wished only for the annihilation of all things, as do all Black Spiral Dancers. To him, the Tiger's dreams to replace Gaia were akin to casting down a tyrant, only to raise up a new one in Her place. As such, Eater-of-Names attempted to destroy the caern on which the Tiger fed, before it grew powerful enough to bring its lies into reality.
At the height of its feasting in February of 2024, Eater-of-Names attempted to directly intervene by destroying the caern and the Tiger attached to it. However, before either party could complete their work, the surviving Broad Brook Garou intervened, resulting in Eater-of-Names' plan being unveiled, for which the Tiger turned its minions against him. Depending on player choice, the Broad Brook Garou then either finished the destruction of the caern and the Tiger, confronted and defeated it directly, or, the most complicated outcome, allowed it to devour the caern's energy.
If the lattermost option came to pass, the Tiger gained a substantial, but still limited, ability to conjure its illusions into reality. Within the depths of its lies, however, the specter of Katherine Aslanian-Dey emerged. She weaponized the fact that in the false world of the Tiger's creation, the Broad Brook Sept had slain it. Before the Tiger could gain a hold of its newfound power, its nigh-utopian lie burst forth from its spiritual innards, confining it to the role it had made up to placate the dead and chaining it to insignificance.
The 'ghosts' of the Broad Brook Sept's protectors of old, now allowed to roam reality in a partially-real state, spread across the world and came to aid those faraway Garou in their moments of greatest need, while the Tiger remained a slave to the false truth that it itself had concocted.
Abilities[]
Strange alchemies transpire in a nuclear plant, and the Answering Tiger, over the course of his existence, came to understand that like any god, he could create worlds. He could even transcend his destruction in the physical world—the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee itself—and live on in his attributes. In his names. He could create a world where he won, and hide there.
The worlds of the Answering Tiger's creation were, however, illusory. They were dependent on the Answering Tiger's existence, limited in scope, and could not contain information that the Tiger was itself not aware of. Other than that, however, they were indistinguishable from reality, save for the parts that the Tiger decided to change, which itself were often breathtakingly seamless. These false worlds were almost closer to a parallel timeline - a 'what if' where the Tiger commanded the flow of time - than any mere chimerical party trick. The things and people inside were more 'not real' in the sense that they existed at the behest of the Tiger and were not the authentic versions of themselves, rather than being 'not real' in the sense that they were in any way intangible or less substantial than their 'real' counterparts.
Eater-of-Names even learned to use the Tiger as a sort of supercomputer: Entering its simulations and using it to extrapolate possible futures and uncover the past through the Tiger's vast imagination and understanding of the present - though using a being whose very existence is composed of lies to tell of the future carried several obvious major risks.