Lodge of Death

Jesse Cartwright, Rahu member of the Lodge of Death

A Lodge of the Bone Shadows, members of the Lodge of Death seek out the wisdom of bygone spirits, travelling into the Stygian depths of the Underworld for secrets and knowledge lost in time. They seek to uncover the final mysteries of death, which few (if any) other werewolves can even bring themselves to face.

The spirit patron of the Lodge of Death is Hithethal-Us .

Overview

The Hirfathra Hissu as a tribe are renowned for going where other werewolves fear to tread, searching for wisdom that has been left untouched. Those Bone Shadows of the Lodge of Death, however, feel that the greatest mystery lies not in the howls of the Cahalith or some pocket of the Shadow, but in the inevitability of the grave. 

Bone Shadows might join the Lodge of Death for any number of reasons, be it sheer morbid curiosity, desire to know the fate of lost relatives or less benign reasons such as a temptation to use ghosts as more easily controllable servants than spirits.

Membership

For a Bone Shadow to join the Lodge of Death, they must die.

The first step in joining the Lodge of Death is for the applicant to petition a member of the lodge. The Lodge of Death doesn’t have a good reputation among other Uratha, and so members don’t advertise their allegiance unless the surrounding territories belong to Bone Shadows, at least in part. Once an applicant finds a member, however, that senior member is honor-bound to take the applicant as a student for a period of at least three lunar months. During that time, the applicant helps the lodge member with their research, accompanies them on exploration missions and learns what the lodge believes and does. The student receives little in the way of occult or ritual training, however, as they are expected to be well-versed in spirit and ghost lore before ever applying to join the lodge. After this brief apprentice period, the lodge member gives the student a frank appraisal of whether they feel the applicant has the intelligence, perseverance and courage to join the Lodge of Death. Rejection here can be take the form of a heartfelt talk in which the werewolf explains where the applicant is weak or a gruff refusal and a slammed door. In either case, the applicant doesn’t need the senior member’s blessing to proceed, but very few applicants survive the next step without it. If the mentor grants their blessing, they marks the applicant with the ashes from the mentors own funeral pyre.

The second step involves calling the applicant’s pack together to witness the applicant’s funeral. The applicant lies on a pyre, listening as their packmates refer to them in the past tense and talk about their achievements, qualities and frailties as though they will never see them again. Once the rite is successfully performed, the ritualist lights the pyre. This marks the transition to the third and final portion of initiation into the lodge. As the werewolf’s flesh and hair burn, they must keep still. The idea is that because they are dead, their soul gone on to its great reward, so they no longer have any need to cry out in pain. How long this must go on varies, but if the applicant bears the blessing of their mentor, the fire only burns for a few minutes. If the applicant decided to press on without their mentor’s blessing, the pyre might burn for hours, or even indefinitely. More than one stubborn applicant has died rather than leap from the pyre, but those fools are afforded more respect than the ones “rescued” by their packmates. The flames die, however, when Hithethal-Us appears. The spirit rises up with the smoke and grants its blessing to the applicant, welcoming them into the Lodge of Death. The spirit then whispers something in the applicant’s ear — the details of their own death. The new member understands from then on how they will die and that they are powerless to stop it.

Game Mechanics

The following are an overview of the game mechanics.

Prerequisites

• Honor •
• Wisdom •••
• Occult ••• with a Specialty in Ghosts, Death or another applicable field

Benefits

Members of the Lodge of Death know the times and circumstances of their deaths. Therefore, lodge members do not fear an untimely end. Members of the lodge do not fear for their own lives (though they might feel afraid for loved ones), and are immune to supernatural attempts to instill fear. Also, members’ Harmony ratings are treated as two higher when considering triggers for Death Rage. That is, a member might have Harmony 6, but does not need to check for Death Rage if injured outside of combat.

Fetishes

Pain Poppet ••: This fetish resembles a small, human-shaped doll sewn together from scrap fabric and stuffed with sand, straw or gravel (though some more extravagant werewolves use chips of bone). The werewolf can attune this doll to a target and then squeeze or claw the doll to inflict pain upon the victim. The fetish works on living and unliving targets, including other werewolves, mages and vampires, but it does not work on spirits. The user focuses on a target in their line of sight and growls softly. If the fetish is successfully activated, it is attuned to that target and remains so until the werewolf releases it or until the next sunset. Whenever the werewolf “hurts” the Pain Poppet (squeezing it, sticking it with a pin or a claw, etc.), the target suffers a –2 to all rolls and to Defense, just as if they were suffering wound penalties

Tooth of Death Wolf •••••: Few of these teeth are known to exist. The fetish must be formed from a wolf canine, inlaid with silver symbols of death. The size of the first Tooth of the Death Wolf suggests that it came from one of the ancestral wolves of Pangaea. These fetishes are guarded by the Lodge of Death, for it allows an Uratha to bring back to spirits of the dead to be questioned. When placed in the mouth of any inanimate dead animal (not invertebrates) and activated, the spirit of the dead animal returns (in its ephemeral state) to the side of the body where it will answer a number of questions equal to the successes on the activation roll. These questions are answered to the best of the spirit's ability - although the spirit will react to the Uratha normally. It cannot answer any questions concerning the afterlife - it can only recall the events of its existence up to the moment it stopped living. It is not omniscient. Once questioned, the spirit cannot be brought back using the Tooth of the Death Wolf.
This fetish is extremely painful to the animate dead, such as vampires or possessing ghosts, who cannot beat its touch when activated. Such creatures must make a Resolve + Composure roll (or Resistance, in the case of a ghost) to be able to endure the fetish's presence; failure indicates that the undead must withdraw at least 30 feet from the fetish's location. It is unknown what spirit empowers this fetish.

• Durability 2 (reinforced to 7), Size 0, Structure 7
• Action: Instant

References

• WTF: Lodges: The Faithful, p. 45-48