Bane (WTA)

Banes are spirits in service of the Wyrm in its modern role as the bringer of the Apocalypse. Other Wyrmish spirits exist which fulfil the Wyrm's purpose in a more sustainable and natural way, but those tend not to draw as much attention as the malevolent and destructive Banes, and are thus typically ignored.

Overview

Garou glyph for "Bane".

Banes run the full gamut from weak and relatively harmless to hideously powerful creatures capable of rending reality around them. Their forms are legion, each reflecting an aspect of that cosmological force. Most are grotesque, but many are subtler. Destruction, deception, and corruption take many forms, and if inhuman beauty and lustful seduction serve the Wyrm’s needs, such is the face Banes present.

Banes are attracted to dark, destructive impulses and emotions, and they gather in the Umbra where such emotions bleed through from the mortal world, awaiting an opportunity to slip past the Gauntlet and possess a fleshly host. They are, inherently, of the Wyrm, and annihilation is the only sure way to rid an area of their influence.

Banes are generally sophisticated enough to have their own ambitions, which often come at the overlap of what they exemplify (greed, hunger, pollution, etc.) and the intentions of any greater spirit entity they may serve. Banes are also often nasty and cunning, and may intentionally twist their purposes toward something that benefits them individually. For example, a Bane of famine may seek to starve other Banes of spiritual nourishment, even as they possess a host to set a wheat field alight or spoil the food at the church pantry.

When material beings establish relations with Banes, unless they themselves are active agents of the Wyrm, it’s done in utmost secrecy. The Banes in question are either “snitches” for the Wyrm’s forces or subjects for scholarly theurges and mages to interrogate about the Wyrm’s current state. In any case, it’s a dangerous ploy. Expulsion from a sept or chantry is the lightest punishment if these relations are discovered, and it’s very possible the Wyrmspawn are luring the individual into a false sense of security.

Organization

Most Banes are associated with some greater spirit, at least in the context that Garou understand things. Banes themselves seem to possess enough sentience and autonomy to pursue their own ends, but they frequently do the bidding of more powerful spirits — which is, in fact, the only indication outsiders have of some of the motives among the more enigmatic spirits. Chances are, if you’re ordering a Bane around, you’re not doing so to the benefit of anyone else.

Spiritually attuned agents of Pentex also often put Banes to use, or their efforts result in Bane infestations of afflicted areas. In this case, Banes may be subservient to Fly, or they may have a more complex relationship among the greater spirits that command them.

Possession

Weak Banes are frequently used to infect humans and animals, turning them into fomori. More powerful Banes can completely possess their host, obliterating all traces of their previous personality. These Banes can also materialize in the real world, without needing to possess a host. They will simply manifest horrible twisted versions of their spiritual form in the real world and go about their business.

Physical hosts invite Banes to possess them, whether consciously (“I want revenge!”) or unwittingly, as with an individual in the throes of despair. Banes don’t spontaneously appear. Similarly, the presence of Banes amplifies negative emotions. Banes don’t cause the emotions they intensify, but their presence makes them worse. A Bane may inhabit a brutal captain of a private military contractor, one who sees bullying and violence as a path to power; or a Bane may inhabit a grieving father, driven by sorrow to cruelty against “the wrong child” who survived an accident. Occasionally, Banes may possess even lower-order creatures, such as by being drawn to an animal kept captive in wretched conditions, or an animal forced into starving retreat by the vanishing of its habitat.

Types of Banes

Nothing about a Bane's nature compels its existence to conform to any type of category. Indeed, many Banes (especially those of the jaggling order, which form the bulk of the Wyrm's legions) are by and large unique individuals, spawned from specific spiritual circumstances that are unlikely to ever occur again in the exact same way, unless orchestrated to do so. However, recurring events and environments of a suitably 'clear-cut' nature can lead to more-or-less identical Banes being created as a result, of a type common enough for the Garou to afford a generally recognized name to each category.

The Banes in question probably don’t know themselves by these names, but such categorization effort are sufficient for communication around caern-fires, so the current system has stuck.

• Anger Swarms - Appear as a swarm of insects driving people to become more violent and vicious. They are unable to feed off a Garou's Rage.
• Asklepians - Minor spirits of pandemics and pestilence, capable of rapid self-replication.
• Bitter Rages - Exist for the sole purpose of driving Garou mad. They feed on Rage, and in turn they fuel that Rage, pushing their prey into frenzies of ever-increasing proportions. In many ways, they are the spiritual equivalent of a rabies attack.
• Dissonant Gestalts - Spirits of indoctrination and ignorance, heavily intertwined with their victims.
• Drattosi - Hideous creatures that live in huge radioactive pits within the Umbra. They act like gigantic mockeries of antlions, preying on whatever Umbral traveler is unfortunate enough to stumble into their mephitic traps.
• Dream Makers - these Banes served to create the world, working as servants of both the Weaver and the Wyld. What exists now is but a faint echo of the power these dark spirits once represented, the power to shape an entire universe at the whims of their masters.
• Elemental Banes - these Wyrmish elementals mirror the traditional four elements in corrupted form: toxin (water), smog (air), sludge (earth), and balefire (fire). Balefire banes are the most feared as they can produce horrible mutations in creatures that come in contact with them.
• Furmlings - Minor Banes of balefire and raw aggression, possessing animals to drive them mad.
• Gray Masses - life grows even in the face of death, a part of an endless cycle that isn’t meant to change, but Gray Masses are different.
• The Maeljin Incarna - the 13 demon lords of Malfeas, the Maeljin Incarna each serve one of the heads of the Hydra. Each is more hideous than the last. Fortunately they are generally found only in Malfeas, so Garou are unlikely to ever encounter them directly... at least until the Apocalypse comes and they ride out at the front of the armies of the Wyrm. The Maeljin Incarna are easily capable of destroying entire septs of Garou by themselves.
• Howling Insanities - The most feared Banes in existence, as they can actually possess werewolves.
• Nexus Crawlers - these powerful creatures warp reality around them like Silly Putty. Reality literally melts around them. They are one of the most powerful Wyrm-spirits Garou are ever likely to encounter... and many Garou never live to tell of such encounters.
• Ooralath - mindless Banes for the most part, the Ooralath are nonetheless adept hunters. They almost always attack with the tactical advantage, outnumbering their prey and striking from cover.
• Phantasmi - an unfortunate few of the damned once-humans suffer a greater agony when they die under Garou talons. For them, the Corrupter has a special fate in mind: a destiny of pain and revenge.
• Psychomachiae - are powerful banes that feed on carnage and death. They often possess weak-willed humans and send them on killing sprees. They may also subtly whisper into the ear of their targets, encouraging them to engage in ever more brutal acts. Many callous vampires unwittingly attract psychomachiae, due to their brutal feeding habits.
• Scavenger Packs - Banes that possess a pack of animals in the way to possess a human (creating Hollow Men).
• Scrags - these are warrior banes covered in chitinous armor. They frequently run in packs and will actively hunt creatures of Gaia.
• Scryers - are a weak type of Bane whose only apparent purpose is to spy on targets for stronger Banes.
• The Souleaters - entities which can infect anyone and transmit through Vicissitude or Sanguinus.
• Whisperer - Banes that look too similar to Pattern Spiders. With the one difference is having a human mouth under their abdomen. They whisper to humans using computers that they inhabit in.
• Wyrmholes - these rare Banes are an acute danger, for they can birth Banes into the material world by the dozen, releasing the newly physical spirits of pure malice

Gallery

Rage card depicting a Bane.

Kalus

Oil Bane

A Bane possessing a pile of electronic waste

References

• WTA: Book of the Wyrm First Edition, p. 96-110
• WTA: Book of the Wyrm Second Edition, p. 28-35, 115, 117-124
• WTA: Freak Legion: A Players Guide to Fomori
• WTA: Possessed, p. 22-23
• WTA: Players Guide to Garou, p. 134
• WTA/cMET: Mind's Eye Theatre: Book of the Wyrm, p. 127-134
• WTA/cMET: Hengeyokai: Way of the Beast Courts, p. 230-232
• WTA: W20 Book of the Wyrm, p. 145-152
• WTA: Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition, p. 65, 69, 441-448
• WTA: Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition, p. 243-253
• WTA: Shattered Nation, p. 129