Lodge of the Second Moonrise Member
The Lodge of the Second Moonrise is a Lodge of the Rahu.
The spirit patron of the Lodge of the Second Moonrise is Isi'is-ur, "Anguished Wolf".
Overview[]
The Lodge of the Second Moonrise is composed of werewolves who wish to repent. Many of them are not truly Rahu, but they all think of themselves as Full Moons, self-identify as Full Moons, and try to live as though they are Full Moons. Many of them are Ghost Wolves, have performed the Rite of Renunciation in order to atone for some horrible crime they committed before being "saved."
All members of the lodge believe that their moment of salvation came at the hands of either a Full Moon werewolf, a Ralunim or Mother Luna herself. "Salvation" here is typically as bloody an event as one would expect from werewolves - most lodge members, in fact, barely survived it. Some committed terrible violations of the Oath. They might have habitually consumed human flesh, sired or bore a Ghost Child, or even betrayed a pack to an enemy. They might have hunted down and slain other werewolves with no particular reason for doing so (although killing the People is against the Oath, killing sworn enemies such as the Pure or the Bale Hounds isn't usually cause for tribal expulsion by itself). Some members of the Lodge of the Second Moonrise actually were Pure, or even Bale Hounds or Zi'ir. That, they say, is the power of Luna to grant salvation. Even the Empty Souls can be refilled.
The lodge functions as much like a religion, in that it requires faith that Luna will accept a non-Rahu into the auspice if he is "pure" (with reference to the Renown category) enough. Members look up to the true Full Moons in the lodge reverently and treat them as spiritual guides and leaders, which, in fairness, they are usually quite qualified to be. It does happen, of course, that a Rahu who is manipulative or simply sick uses the members' faith for his own ends, but when this happens, the false preacher usually ends up being discovered and torn to shreds by other members of the lodge. This, the lodge feels, is proof of their beliefs: once the lodge has been cleansed of impurity, all of the members will ascend and join the ranks of the spiritually clean, guiltless Rahu.
Group confessions are common. The members of the lodge - who refer to themselves as "Rahu," no matter what their actual auspice - gather together and tell stories of their terrible deeds pre-salvation. As is common in such situations, this frequently becomes a contest to see who can tell the most horrific, lurid tale of depravity, and the truth often gets stretched more than a little. The members have no fear of retribution at the confessions, however. Once "saved," a member of the Lodge of the Second Moonrise cannot be held accountable for his prior actions, at least by the lodge. Other parties have certainly been known to search for a hated enemy only to discover that this enemy now considers himself a holy, penitent warrior for Luna and, worse, has a pack of other such warriors ready to fight for him.
The lodge's totem spirit is a conceptual spirit of pious anguish. It calls itself Isi'is-ur, "Anguished Wolf," and it takes the form of a silver wolf with a bloody smear across its otherwise pristine face. Despite the name, the spirit is not a wolf-spirit and bears no relationship to the Firstborn or any of the other, minor wolf-spirits that act as lodge totems for the Uratha. Isi'is-ur is a spirit of a rather complex concept, that of frenzied and often violent religious zeal. In fairness to the spirit, though, it is just as deluded as the werewolves it protects. It honestly believes that the members of the lodge will one day be accepted as true Rahu, and that it, in turn, will join the Fury Choir.
Membership[]
Joining the Lodge of the Second Moonrise is simple. The character simply needs to find a member of the lodge and pour his heart out. The lodge actively recruits whenever it can, searching out Pure werewolves who are unsure of their place in their own society, Zi'ir who might be able to be saved, and Forsaken who teeter on the brink of becoming Broken Souls. They nurse them back to health, spiritually speaking, all the while telling them what magnificent warriors they will become and how a place at Luna's side awaits them. By the time the already broken werewolf is able to make any true decisions, the brainwashing (combined with a werewolf's natural instinct to follow the pack) has taken hold, and he gladly completes the initiation requires. These consist of an emphatic recounting of the evils the werewolf committed before he was "saved," and a ritual combat.
A Forsaken initiate does not have to renounce his tribe, though most do in order to make a clean break from their old lives. Initiates who were previously Pure or Bale Hounds, however, must formally become Forsaken, though they can choose to remain Ghost Wolves. Perhaps ironically, Pure initiates have the greatest chance of becoming Rahu, because they gain an auspice when "converting" from the Anshega to the Forsaken.
Defection From The Pure[]
The Pure don't have auspices, so if one of these werewolves "defects" and joins the Forsaken, where does his auspice come from? It depends on how he came to be Pure in the first place.
If the werewolf Changed with no influence from the Pure, then he has an auspice and leaving the Anshega simply reinstates it. This assumes that he was inducted into one of the Pure Tribes with no say in the matter; a werewolf who deliberately left one of the Tribes of the Moon to become Pure and now wishes to change back probably faces a series of spirit quests before Luna would consider recognizing him.
The Pure prefer to capture werewolves before they Change and subject them to painful, torturous rites that strip the auspice away. If such a werewolf wishes to defect to the Forsaken, he never had an auspice. Once he has undergone whatever spiritual cleansing is necessary, he might take on the auspice that corresponds with the moon phase on the night he officially becomes Forsaken. Luna might grant him an auspice based on the moon phase under which he Changed originally (he might not remember, but Luna assuredly does).
Rumors among the Lodge of the Second Moonrise state, though, that a Pure werewolf who leaves the Anshega and in the process strikes some important blow for the Forsaken is allowed to choose his auspice.
Game Mechanics[]
The following are an overview of the game mechanics.
Prerequisites[]
No special traits are required to join the Lodge of the Second Moonrise, though all members have at least one dot in Purity Renown.
Benefits[]
While the lodge makes frequent prayers and supplications to Luna to grant them access to the Gifts taught by the Ralunim (Full Moon Gifts and Purity Gifts), she has yet to do so. The power that Isi'is-ur wields as a lodge totem, however, has enabled the members of the lodge to learn either Strength Gifts or Dominance Gifts as though they were affinity Gifts (the character picks one list upon joining the lodge).
References[]
- WTF: Signs of the Moon, p. 175-176
