The Cult of Fenris are one of the three wayward tribes of Garou, being at odds with the rest of their kin. Driven by hauglosk to extremism and zealotry, the Cult of Fenris believes all other Garou to be fundamentally compromised by the Wyrm. In contrast, many other Garou see the Cult as having been misled by their zeal into serving the Wyrm's ends by blindly raging against it in everything they see.
(For their counterpart in older editions, see Get of Fenris.)
Overview[]
The Cult of Fenris is an object lesson in the perils of hauglosk. According to many Garou, the fall of the Cult was the point of no return for the collapse of the Garou Nation. The Cult of Fenris is itself but a single facet of a greater tribe pledged to Wolf, but the Cult raised its collective voices louder, and those pledged to Wolf either joined them or found membership among the other tribes.
The tribe’s outlook is one of nonfalsifiable orthodoxy — impurity is everywhere and everything is the Wyrm’s fault, and to disagree with this perspective is proof of one’s own collusion with the Wyrm. From the outside, many Garou wonder if those among the Cult of Fenris have themselves been misled into pluralistic hauglosk by pernicious leaders, tricked into serving the Wyrm’s ends in their blind rage. Were such betrayal the case, theurges argue, the Cult would not even truly be following Wolf anymore, but some aspect of the Wyrm — unless Wolf himself has led what remains of his tribe into Wyrm-thrall.
Garou and Cult of Fenris packs do sometimes find themselves opposing a common enemy. In most cases, the Cult is, arguably, acting against agents of Triatic imbalance and the Wyrm, but its absolute intransigence often causes Cult members to regard other Garou as fundamentally corrupt. Even more dangerous are entire packs of the Cult — “tribally pure,” with no members of other tribes — that seek to take caerns away from “traitorous” other werewolves, or show up at some burgeoning battle, at once aligned with and against a rival pack.
History[]
For most of their history, the tribe of Wolf that would one day become the Cult of Fenris were respected members of the Garou Nation. Their zeal and propensity for violence as a first resort led to conflict with other tribes, namely the Stargazers and Children of Gaia, but were not generally seen to be especially anomalous by the other tribes. Then, the world entered the Era of Apocalypse.
At the time, the Cult of Fenris was only a subsection of this tribe. The Apocalypse befalling the world only radicalized them further, making them call for the Garou to take the fight directly to the Wyrm in a new wave of action and unwavering dedication to Gaia, in response to the Wyrm growing bolder than ever. Their peers in the rest of Wolf’s tribe felt the eerie comparisons to the White Howlers’ great declaration of intention before their descent into the Black Labyrinth. The Cult did not take kindly to those who pointed out this obvious fact. “It will be different,” they declared, “because the White Howlers were only one impure tribe.”
At a great meeting of the tribes, the Cult called for one final, glorious charge into the Wyrm’s maw to avert the Apocalypse. They claimed that this time, with a coalition of the most morally pure Garou, they would resist the Wyrm’s temptations and emerge victorious. But the assembled Garou of other tribes called out their rally as suicide, whereupon most of the Cult of Fenris camp decided that all Garou had fallen, and only the Cult’s pure vision could serve Gaia. After a torturously long and bloody duel among champions of the tribes at the grand moot, renowned Garou solemnly declared a deadlock, and the Cult of Fenris abandoned the tribes to their fates, pledging their enmity and exiting the gathering.
Interactions with other Garou[]
In broad strokes, the Cult of Fenris and the Garou have the same goals. They seek to bring the Wyrm to heel and restore Gaia to a healthier state. Their operations are similar; a Fenrir pack and a pack of Garou are equally likely to strike on a reckless mining operation or a den of fomori. Both factions wish to turn the tide of battle from its current, dire trajectory.
Anything beyond that is separated by a wide gulf. The Cult’s worldview, once a secret doctrine within Wolf’s tribe and exposed for the Nation to see at the final concolation, is that the Wyrm is in everything, non-Fenrir included. The Impergium, the only time the Nation ever came close to winning the war, didn’t go far enough. The Wyrm’s victory was assured once the wolves relented. Only the Cult of Fenris has a heart hateful enough to do what needs to be done. They know there’s no such thing as collateral damage and that bringing so-called allies in line is sometimes far more critical than fighting an always-present enemy. There’s nothing to live for in this Wyrm-cursed world, and so it’s better to slaughter and rage, taking out as many living things as you can until you stop drawing breath.
While most tribes are against the Cult’s doctrine on moral grounds or from a more self-centered perspective, the strongest opposition often comes from certain members of the Red Talons who have a utilitarian bent. As the closest to the Cult ideologically, their problem isn’t that they’re committing violence; it’s that they’re committing useless violence. Indiscriminate murder provides an opening for the truly wicked to escape.
Despite this extreme divide, the Garou and the Cult do occasionally have relations beyond the latter denouncing and sabotaging the former. The Fenris cultists still claim to fight the Wyrm and occasionally do come through in that regard. A Garou pack and a Cult pack may come together to take on a deep Bane spirit infestation in their area or raid a Pentex front. These alliances are very brief and almost always end in violence. Once the mutual threat is gone, a Fenris cultist isn’t about to let the opportunity to take out “inferiors” pass them by.
Tribal Culture[]
The specific forms that hauglosk takes tends to sift the Fenrir into two camps (not to be confused with actual camps) with regards to the subjects of their hatred: Slightly more common is a general anti-human, anti-natalist sentiment that many Red Talons find offensively familiar: A call for a forced return to an imagined prelapsarian golden age of a culled human population at one with the land and of the Garou (specifically the Fenrir) as the warrior-kings of a new Impergium.[1]
Only just behind is a far more familiar type of hatred to many, one that the Fenrir tend to bring over from their times as ignorant Kin: Ecofascism, accelerationism, ethnonationalism, all the most abhorrent '-isms' come to the fore as the Fenrir's hauglosk demands a constant stream of new targets to direct its petulant wrath towards - preferably targets defenseless enough to not stand much of a chance of winning when they fight back. While the former type of Fenrir may have more actual werewolves among its ranks, the latter often finds it easier to make human allies, usually among occultist and aesthetic neo-pagan alt-right groups that have been pushed into targeting the same marginalized groups as the Fenrir by whichever distant billionaire-of-the-week is actually responsible for their woes.
These two groups find it easier to work amongst one another than outsider Garou might expect: Both groups describe their victims, be it humans in general or some humans in particular, as 'of the Wyrm', and both sides have little difficulty convincing themselves that their shared target is just a cutout for whatever 'invisible Wyrm-menace' they've been shadowboxing for the past few years. At the end of the day, it's still an excuse to let out all of their pent-up anguish at the state of the world at the most convenient target within reach. It's not like being consistent would make the Fenrir be any more actually effective at their stated goal of purifying Gaia.
Renunciates[]
Some among Wolf’s pledged, rather than follow their fellows during that great schism, abandoned their Patron Spirit and pledged to other tribes. Trusting in the Patron Spirits to perceive any evidence of poor faith, the other tribes have accepted them, but being a former Wolf-pledged often earns Garou suspicion in their packs. Nowadays, these ex-members, whether they abandoned the tribe after its fall to hauglosk or got pulled into its thrall before realizing the error of their ways, are called renunciates.
Like the Black Spiral Dancers, there are also escapees from the Cult of Fenris, though they are even fewer in number. Most of Wolf’s tribe who refuse to accept the Cult’s doctrine fled long ago or are too inexperienced to make it safely away. Still, every so often, a lone wolf arrives at a sept begging for sanctuary. Recorded escapees include those freshly recruited after their First Change before they realized they had other options and those who abandoned the Nation to join the Fenrir and soon regretted it. The risk of taking these escapees in isn’t that they could deceive the Garou; it’s that the Cult of Fenris only accepts one way for a member to leave the tribe: death. If an entire sept must die with the renunciate, so be it.
Patron Spirit[]
When the Cult of Fenris became the mainstream among Wolf's tribe, so too did their version of their Patron. The Cult worships Wolf in his inchoate aspect as the eponymous Fenris: Fierce, uncompromising, and utterly intolerant of weakness or corruption in all their many, many forms.
Favor and Bans[]
It is unknown what Favor Fenris bestows upon his children in the wake of their usurpation of the tribe. However, given how often he is characterized as putting blind unity and obedience to the cause first and foremost among what he demands from the Fenrir, it is likely that his Ban has to do with questioning authority or refusing to submit to one's "betters".
Cult of Fenris Septs[]
Edition Differences[]
In contrast to the 5th edition of Werewolf: the Apocalypse's general trend of preserving the continuity and 'story' of older editions while altering the mechanics of the setting, the Cult of Fenris is effectively a new tribe, only based off of the Get of Fenris of old. The tribe's old name in the 5th Edition continuity is never stated (and assumed to not be) to have been 'the Get of Fenris', and the Cult's characterization is not intended to be a 1:1 reflection of their counterpart's in older editions.
Gallery[]
References[]
| Werewolf: The Apocalypse Tribes | |
|---|---|
| Garou Nation | Black Furies · Bone Gnawers · Children of Gaia · Galestalkers/Wendigo · Ghost Council/Uktena · Glass Walkers · Hart Wardens/Fianna · Red Talons · Shadow Lords · Silent Striders · Silver Fangs |
| Beast Courts | Hakken · Stargazers |
| Independent | Boli Zouhisze · Cult of Fenris/Get of Fenris · Siberakh · Singing Dogs · Stolen Moons/Skin Dancers · Ronin |
| Fallen | Black Spiral Dancers (White Howlers) |
| Extinct | Bunyip · Croatan |