A Lodge of the Hunters in Darkness, the Lodge of Ruin requires its members to suffer, bleed and break before they can join.
The spirit patron of the Lodge of Ruin is Coyote-Who-Howls.
Overview[]
Everything comes to an end. Every natural cycle, every hunt, every story and every life eventually comes to dust. Memories fade, and entire cultures pass away, leaving only whispers and refuse. This is the fundamental truth of the world, and the precept on which the members of the Lodge of Ruin base their beliefs. Before a Hunter in Darkness becomes a member, they must hear Coyote’s mournful howl and know that the end is not coming, it is here, in every moment. That means, of course, that every moment a member of the lodge lives, they are surviving the end of the world. The Rust-Walkers do not consider their worldview bleak, simply realistic. Similar to other Mennina, the Rust-Walkers revere the cycles of nature. They just choose to skip ahead a bit, finding perfection and enlightenment in destruction, death and entropy. This isn’t to say that they revel in carnage and waste themselves — they are bound by the same precepts of Harmony as any Uratha, and simply because the world is going to end someday doesn’t mean that they feel the need to help it along. They do feel, however, that many of the concerns of the Uratha and the world’s population in general are frivolous to the point of offense.
Rust-Walkers make their homes in junkyards, vacant lots, burned-out tenements and anywhere else that a cycle has ended. They congregate outside of cities, for the most part, reasoning that these areas will burn out first. Some members of the lodge take a broader view and claim territories on the ruins of older civilizations. Far from hiding their lodge membership, Rust-Walkers wear torn or discarded clothing, smear their palms with rust and wear broken glass, torn metal or chunks of stone as signifiers of their allegiance. For the Lodge of Ruin, the end of the world isn’t something to fear or ignore, but a fact to be remembered every day. The Rust-Walkers are creatures of the moment. If an action doesn’t benefit them in some immediate way, they usually ignore it. They understand the need to keep up their territories, but, considering that they usually choose areas that have already come to ruin, minimal upkeep is often all that’s required.
Members of the lodge usually don’t earn much in the way of Glory or Honor Renown (though many are renowned for Cunning), because they see stories and principles as transitory at best. They obey the Oath and keep true to Harmony, for the most part, but woe to any Uratha who enters a territory claimed by the Lodge of Ruin without permission. One werewolf’s life is inconsequential when weighed against the whole of time, and many Rust-Walkers are aggressive and feral enough to kill over trespassing.
Membership[]
Being accepted into the Lodge of Ruin is trying, both physically and spiritually. Members are required to hit rock bottom, to understand not death, but endings. Anyone asking to join the lodge is attacked savagely and beaten, clawed and bitten within an inch of their life. Rust-Walkers enlist aid from their packmates to make the beating as furious and inescapable as possible, as well as to restrain the applicant when they inevitably enter Kuruth. The Lodge of Ruin offers no warning or grace period. The Rust-Walkers are happy to explain their initiation policies to any Hunter in Darkness who asks, but once that werewolf states that they want to join the lodge, the punishment begins.
The Rust-Walkers shred the applicant’s clothes, smash their belongings and kill human family or friends the werewolf might be close to. Lodge members don’t research his family or travel out of the immediate area to perpetuate these killings, or thoroughly make sure everything the werewolf cares about is dead. The Rust-Walkers simply want to shock the Mennina into understanding the truth: someday, this will all be gone, and they must accept this truth now. Any fetishes the werewolf brings with them are burned, and the lodge members make it a point to find out what possessions the werewolf treasures most and smash them before their eyes. The werewolf is allowed to struggle, to lash out and may even state that they no longer wish to join the lodge, but all of these efforts are for naught. Even if the applicant isn’t accepted into the Lodge of Ruin (and even at this stage, acceptance isn’t a sure thing), they will come away from the experience with one piece of wisdom: act decisively, and be sure of the decision.
Eventually, the lodge decides that the new recruit has had enough punishment and begins the actual testing. The lodge requires that all members have a working knowledge of some aspect of modern life, as lodge members feel it’s not possible to appreciate the gradual end of the world if you don’t know what state the world is in now. This test might involve hacking a computer, entering a drag race, repairing a car or other vehicle or even taking a quiz on the geography of the city in which the applicant lives. After this test is complete, the Rust-Walkers ask the applicant if they truly wish to join. Not everyone who comes this far does. Some are bitterly resentful over the first part of the initiation, while others thank the Lodge of Ruin for the education but feel their calling lies elsewhere. If the Mennina still wishes to join, however, they are accepted into the lodge and asked to lead a special hunt to celebrate. At sunrise, as the night is dying, the streets of the barrio, the fields surrounding the junkyard or the deserts near the old ruins resonate with the howls of the Hunters in Darkness.
Members of other tribes don’t normally understand the lodge’s philosophies well enough to seek membership, but, occasionally, a werewolf experiences something that instills the kind of quiet nihilism typical of the Rust-Walkers. Coyote-Who-Howls doesn’t have any real loyalty to Black Wolf, and so Coyote is willing to accept members of other tribes into his lodge. Few such Uratha survive the initiation, though, as the Meninna always make it especially brutal.
Game Mechanics[]
The following are an overview of the game mechanics.
Prerequisites[]
- Craft, Computer or Drive ••
- Cunning ••
- Survival ••
Benefits[]
Members of the Lodge of Ruin may learn Shaping Gifts as if they were tribal Gifts. In addition, they pay a reduced cost (new dots x2) for the following Skills: Intimidation, Streetwise and Survival.
Rites[]
RITE OF THE FINAL SUNRISE •••: This rite allows a Rust-Walker and their pack to draw strength from the power of entropy. Taught to the Lodge of Ruin by Coyote-Who-Howls, the Rite of the Final Sunrise doesn’t refer to the last day of the world but to the being or object subjected to the rite, for whom the end has come. The rite requires an object or living being that is very nearly dead or useless. A terminally ill human being or an animal about to die of old age suffices, as does a machine that is irreparable. A machine used in this ritual must contain moving parts and require some kind of outside fuel to work. A gun, therefore, is acceptable, as is a car or a washing machine, but a sword is not. If the subject is human (or Uratha, as presumably this rite would function on a werewolf, although the Rust-Walkers do not attempt it), they need not have volunteered for the job, and indeed need not be dying of natural causes. Some especially vicious Uratha have been known to mortally wound a human and allow them to die slowly enough to perform this ritual. During the course of the rite, the subject dies or shuts down permanently, and a small amount of Essence is released, which can then be absorbed by the ritualist and any participants
Reference List[]
- WTF: Lodges: The Faithful, p. 81-83
