Fetish Drums

Fetish Drums are a type of fetish in where a spirit is bound to a drum(s). Fetish drums have a long and proud tradition among the Garou, Bastet, some Gurahl, Mokolé and Nagah.

Overview

The Garou often add deep, stirring rhythms and music to their rituals. The instruments they most often use are drums, particularly in Uktena and Wendigo rites. More than just instruments, some of these drums are powerful fetishes in their own right.

Most fetish drums require a Dexterity + Performance roll to activate, the difficulty being the drum's Gnosis. Such activation is never a combat action. The drummer must spend time letting the rhythm gain its own life and tempo, letting it feel its own pace. If the drummer takes particularly long, the Storyteller may want to substitute Stamina for Dexterity.

Hammer & Klaive changed it to a Dexterity + Performance roll (difficulty 6) to activate.

List of Fetish Drums

• Fetish Drums - Level and Gnosis Variable
• Spirit Drum - Level 2, Gnosis 5 - This drum helps the drummer to call Gafflings, Jagglings and other minor spirits. The player rolls Dexterity + Performance versus the drum's Gnosis, the number of successes adds to the Dice Pool to call the spirit in a Rite of Summoning. Any Wisdom-spirit can empower this drum.
• Slit Gong - Level 4, Gnosis 7 - This immense drum, carved from a single tree trunk, is used by Australasian and Pacific Northwest Garou. Slit Gongs' huge size makes them suitable for use in caerns only. During a rite, the drummer may add the successes he gains on this drum to the ritemaster's successes. To create a Slit Gong, one of the following spirit types must be bound into the drum: Tree, Enigmas or Wisdom.
• Taltos Drum - Level 3, Gnosis 6 - This drum is an aid to healing rituals, The number of successes the drummer gains while drumming equals the number of Health Levels healed in the listeners. This method of healing can be used only once per week (pr per month at the Storyteller's discretion). To create a Taltos Drum, one of the following spirit types must be bound into the drum: Unicorn, Healing or Snake.
• Bata'a - Level 1, Gnosis 5 - This cone-shaped drum, possessing both large and small heads, adds one die to any Gifts or rites dealing with the Umbra. If the drummer knows the secret language of the Lucumi (the people who invented the drum type), he may send messages by drumming, even into the Umbra. To create this fetish, one of the following spirit types must be bound into the drum: Wisdom, Enigmas or Music.
• Daruma - Level 4, Gnosis 9 - This Tibetan drum is made from two human crania tied together to form a sphere. It opens the way from the world of the living to the world of the dead. Specific people can be called back for a short time by drumming. When it is played (after activation), the user rolls Charisma + occult. This difficulty is five plus the order of magnitude of years since the person's death: a character dead a hundred years would be a seven. If the drummer has Past Life and is trying to "drum up his ancestor", subtract one from the difficulty for every point in Past Life. One success will bring the shade of the dead to the drummer. Three enables all to behold the dead clearly, and let the shade gesture in response to questions. Five enable the dead to speak and be understood. This drum fetish is very powerful and very dangerous. No good ever comes of talking to the dead, and their influence over the living grows each time this ritual is performed. The Storyteller should emphasize this, and allow the players to dig themselves deeper and deeper into trouble as they use this device.
• Ronin: War Drum - Level 4, Gnosis 7 - This tiny wood and leather drum is worn close to the heart. It is activated by thumping upon it and will grant one Rage point to the user for every success on the activation roll. The power can only be used once per day. The spirit of a War Drum is normally friendly, but there are exceptions. If the spirit was tricked or forced into the War Drum, it will drive the character into a frenzy if he botches his activation roll. To create a War Drum, a spirit of War or Rage must be bound into the Drum. Bitter Rage Banes often try to imitate War-spirits.
• Nagah: Danbhalah's Drum - Level 4, Gnosis 6 - Nagah from Africa, the Caribbean and the Southeast United States learned to make these fetishes to summon their targets to them. While they involve more work and are far less subtle than the Gift: Summon the Accused, they have their advantages as well. The drummer keeps his target in mind while pounding out a primal rhythm on the drum. If he stops drumming before the target arrives, the drum loses control over that target permanently. As soon as the drum starts pounding, the target, no matter how far away, does everything she can to get to the location of the drumming without knowing (or caring) why. While the target's main impulse is to find the site of the drums, she doesn't neglect her own well-being. Answering the call of the drum does not cause her to ignore her own survival instincts. She may risk a little violence to answer the drum, but she won't behave stupidly. Though Danbhalah's drum can call a subject from anywhere, it's most efficient when calling someone in the same general region; it can take a long time for a target in Syracuse, New York to arrange for travel to Nahia, Brazil (especially if she doesn't have a passport). The target's finances obviously play a part as well. If the summoner has no idea where the target might be, he had better be prepared to drum continually for weeks. Luckily, a nest of Nagah looking for the same target can alternate drumming so long as the rhythm isn't interrupted (roll Dexterity + performance to check). Each time a new player takes over, he has to make an activation roll. Failing the activation roll frees the target from the drum's control permanently. Botching the activation roll rips the drum pad. Danbhalah's drums are loud. There is no way to quietly play a drum of Danbhalah. If the drummer is n a building, the rhythm will resonate through the entire infrastructure, quickly making enemies of the neighbors. If the drummer is in the wilderness. the target may not be the only one trying to find the drummer....
• Galliard: Thunder Drum - Level 2, Gnosis 6 - This fetish doesn't actually have to be a drum; any easily portable musical instrument will do, as long as it can play low, threatening tones (no one has ever crafted a Thunder Banjo, for instance). The Garou beats the drum while marching into battle, unnerving his foes with its quiet, yet pervasive rhythm. The activation successes are subtracted from the initiative scores of any opponent who hears it, for the first turn of combat only. The Garou must beat the drum for at least two turns before rolling to activate the fetish. To create a Thunder Drum, the Garou must bind a war-spirit into the instrument.
• Pounders - Level 1, Gnosis 7 - Come in many forms throughout the tribes. The Get of Fenris adore them and shape great massive brass and hide drums that boom for mile around; Glass Walkers have been known to bind them into drum kits and employ accompanying instruments for their raves. (Some have even managed to create the fetish using drum synthesizers, to the disgust of just about every other tribe.) In all cases, a Pounder is bound with a fire-spirit and causes the same effect. The fetish is sounded toward the end of a moot and just before the revel. The fire in the drums stirs the Rage in the hearts of those Garou attending, granting them an extra three points of Rage for the revel. (This can have the negative side effect of leading to considerable frenzy!) In addition, the noise panics Wyrm-creatures, who often twitch at the sound and inadvertently revel themselves. Perception rolls to find such creatures hiding are made at -1 difficulty.
• Haunting Drums - Level 4, Gnosis 8 - A strange and unusual drum fetish, which have become an element unto themselves in the few septs that have begun to employ them. They are bound with a bat-spirit, and when played and successfully activated, anyone hearing the whole tune loses their sight for a number of days, instead finding all visual input interpreted as sound. As a general rule, lupus adapt more quickly than metis to the experience, who in turn do better than homids. Since the whole tune must be herd for this to have effect, the haunting drum is not particularly effective as a defensive measure unless someone else is stopping opponents from attacking the drummer or covering their ears. Further, the effect isn't selective, so the drummer's allies must have their sense of hearing blocked somehow or succumb to the effects themselves. But as a tool of punishment, it works well. In fact, it normally follows or precedes a Rite of Punishment, particularly the Rite of Ostracism. In this case, the drum's effects are meant to prove or disprove guilt by trial: If the accused can survive alone and blinded, then he's obviously worth keeping around regardless of what he did. When played, the fetish rolls its own Gnosis against a target number of the victim's Willpower. Every day after they have been blinded, the victim may roll Perception against a difficulty of how many successes the fetish gained. Once they get one success on this roll, their senses return to normal.
• Silent Drums - Level 4, Gnosis 7 - The Silent Drums are a simple fetish with a very unusual history. Silent Drums are always made in sets of two, and take the form of hand-played drums with a bird-spirit bound into them. When activated and played, a drum makes no sound, but the other drum made at the same time will begin to play. No roll, other than the roll to activate, is required. The effect of the drums lasts for one scene and can work over any distance not separated by an ocean, and the receiving drum does not need to be activated for it to work. The unusual history begins with the Get of Fenris, the first to create this fetish. They were made to connect war parties to their home sept, with both drums activated and ritual drumming performed back and forth between those at the sept and those away. In addition, they acted as an emergency system of sorts: If the drum suddenly began beating at any other tie, the war party was in trouble. After the advent of Morse code, however, the fetish was snapped up by the Glass Walkers and turned into a spiritual Morse code transmitter, undetectable and unjammable by mundane means. They employed the device to quickly and efficiently co-ordinate multiple packs in large scale strikes. Recently, however, the Silent Drums have fallen out of favor among the Glass Walkers as the invention of the SpiCom makes it mostly obsolete. Many still exist, however, and may still find some use; after all, the drums can't be tapped by any third party.
• Bastet: Reaching Manguare - Level 5, Gnosis 8 - A Bastet-only drum, originating among the South American tribes but having spread to all groups within the Breed. Made from massive hollowed-out six-foot-long logs, with a slit cut into the top for sound to escape from, these drums are always made in pairs. Bound with a Wyld-spirit, playing the Manguare creates an invaluable asset for the Bastet: a temporary Den-Realm. This realm allows them to move into the Umbra as if they were stepping sideways, rolling Gnosis to do so. While very useful, these fetishes do have one great disadvantage: They're insanely huge, heavy, and slow to activate. As such, they're not useful for quickly escaping into the Umbra, but they come very much in handy to create a base camp for extended operations against a foe. During the War of Rage when large groups of Bastet came into direct conflict with Garou, these fetishes became strategic elements in campaigns, with advancing the drums forward becoming a major goal.

References

• WTA: Werewolf Players Guide, p. 126-127
• WTA: Outcasts: A Players Guide to Pariahs, p. 64
• WTA: Werewolf Players Guide Second Edition, p. 127
• WTA: Nagah, p. 100
• WTA/cMET: Laws of the Wild: Changing Breeds 4, p. 100
• WTA: Book of Auspices, p. 103
• WTA: Hammer & Klaive, p. 69-70