The Lodge of the Field is a Lodge of Uratha (mostly Ghost Wolves) centered around Lycaon-Ur, whom they believe to be the mythical figure of the same name. Members call themselves "Hounds".
Background[]
According to the lodge's mythology, King Lycaon of Arcadia was once visited by a being in gold, silver and lightning. The entity tasked Lycaon to cook his own sons and eat their flesh. It spoke: "The spiritual essence of humankind lives within the body, within the heart and the meat. The gods need sacrifices to hold up the heavens and keep the world in order. For your devout obedience, I shall bless you to become a vessel for this essence, and your hunger shall become a sacrament." When Lycaon asked the being if it was a god, even calling it Zeus, it answered that it was merely a messenger. Lycaon was transformed into a creature half man and half wolf, hungering for Essence that was contained with human flesh.
If this story is true, no one can prove it. An Uratha-like being that called itself Lycaon surfaced in 1109, near the Silesian capital Wrocław. A battle between King Bolesław III of Poland and Emperor Henry V of the Holy Roman Empire had resulted in a field in which the dead piled up, attracting wild dogs that feasted on the flesh. Among these dogs were also Ghost Wolves, wretched creatures hungry for Essence, since the Tribes of the Moon and the Pure Tribes denied them any access to their Loci. Lycaon revealed itself to these creatures and told them the true purpose of the Uratha, rejecting the myth of Father Wolf and Mother Moon: Their divinely ordained duty is to devour the flesh of humankind, becoming holy intermediaries whose consumption feeds the gods themselves. The Ghost Wolves founded the "Lodge of the Field" to honor their patron, but kept it a secret from the other tribes, bidding their time. The Ghost Wolves of the Lodge of the Field largely ate human carrion during their sacred feasts — corpses disinterred from graveyards or stolen in other creative ways — but the cult needs the occasional fresh, bloody sacrifice to cement the lodge’s bond.
Around 1945, Silesia is in turmoil. The war is drawing to a close, with Wrocław (Breslau) being the last city to surrender. Hundreds of native Germans are driven away, only to be replaced by Polish families from the east. The native Uratha, already beleaguered through the dangerous spirits that the war has bred, lose any foothold they had in the region, often choosing to follow their mortal families in order to protect them. In following vacuum creeps a strange cult of Ghost Wolves that feed on human flesh and have strange allies in the form of Claimed, witches and loyal Wolf-Blooded. They take any Loci quickly, entrench themselves into the infrastructure and prove themselves extremely capable of finding and converting nuzusul.
As of 2014, Silesia is again contested. The Lodge of the Field has more members than any of the local Forsaken or Pure, and any scrap of ground they gain is paid in blood. Worse yet, members of both desert their packs to join the Lodge of the Field. Lycaon-Ur resides in a secret bunker from World War II beneath Wrocław, his maw a conduit to something else, some angelic furnace of raw Essence. Some believe that he seeks to become a true Firstborn- Devourer Wolf - by making his Hounds a true Tribe. Envoys have been sent out to assemble other Ghost Wolves and introduce them into the Lodge.
Powers[]
The Hounds of the Field themselves benefit from their lodge’s centuries-long development of the spiritual alchemy of Essence. Lodge members gain double the usual Essence from consuming human flesh, and every time they do so Lycaon himself gains a single point of Essence. Lodge members add their Primal Urge to their maximum Essence pool. Spending a point of Essence as an instant action allows a Hound to inflict gnawing hunger on a human whom she touches, and lodge members with very high Primal Urge can force spirits of hunger to Claim victims.
References[]
- WTF: Werewolf: The Forsaken Second Edition, p. 273-277
