A Infeliz, art by Steve Prescott.
Los Infelizos (The Wretched Ones, "Los Penitentes" and "The Bastards") are a doomed mixed Shadow Lord and Uktena bloodline of Garou from Werewolf: The Wild West.
Overview[]
In a forgotten corner of the Savage West, the land is too poor to interest the Wyrmcomers. The soil here is cracked and the arroyos, more often than not, run dry. Here the vast inhospitality of the cliffs and canyons keeps the invading wagon trains at bay and makes a squalid but relatively safe haven for the unwanted, the weak and the deformed.
These badlands, the protectorate of the Infeliz, a wretched "tribe" of outcasts. No true tribe claims them, and the hand of every decent-thinking Garou who rides with a straight back is raised against them. Even the Bone Gnawers can despise them, and so the Infeliz must endure banishment from the green bosom of Gaia.
History[]
The Infeliz owe not only their personal origins to inbreeding, but their tribal ancestry as well. When proud Shadow Lord conquistadors first rode up the river valleys from Mexico, they left their chosen breeding stock safe in the cities. Yet, the Indian women in one of the villages where the invaders "diverted themselves" were close Kinfolk of the Uktena, but the Wyrmcomer riders did not even recognize their own cousins until it was too late.
Some of these unions of conquest produced offspring. The Shadow Lords were free to destroy the resultant Kin - as is their ancient custom - but they were reluctant to murder the full Garou pups who were born. Still, some of the conquistadors were so shamed that they smothered their own children.
The priests of thunder raised the half-breeds and taught them the Law of the Mother, but always with an eye toward reminding the bastards of their misbegotten nature. As they grew, the so-called "infelizos" surprised and alarmed the priests with their aptitude for uncovering secrets and carrying on other dark conversations with the spirit world. Such was the inheritance Uktena mothers and wet nurses fed into the cubs' mouths with their first milk.
After the revolt of Texas and the collapse of the Spanish Empire north of the Rio Grande, the Shadow Lord landowners slowly retreated to their cities and left the ranchos and all of their serfs behind. Of course, they could not bring the Infelizos with them, and so they abandoned the half-breeds in the arid country, where the rivers were drying up. They did leave their offspring with something, though: Before their departure, the priests managed to impress upon the bastard children the wickedness of bastardy. Left without spiritual guidance apart from one another, the children did their best to repent.
Children of the Unclean Dust[]
Shunned as impure by both remaining Shadow Lord Kin and the retreating Uktena, the Infelizos now keep one another's company only. They were constantly neglected and otherwise mistreated by their fathers, who made no effort to hide the shame and loathing these half-breed children engendered. Left to their own devices, it's only natural that the children might turn to a baroquely mystical world of visions and divine, apocalyptic punishments. Their ritual calendar grows into a frenzied fusion of Iberian Catholic dogmas and the Garou Litany, in which the Wyrm is God and Gaia is His Virgin Mother and unwilling, incestuous Bride.
In the minds of the Infelizos, the Wyrm is the cruel Creator of the world, the All-Father of wretchedness who deliberately filled the world with suffering in order to teach His children how to obey and how to repent. The Wyrmcomer Tribes are the favored of the Father, as their ongoing punishment of the "Pure Lands" demonstrates.
Within a generation, the Bastard Garou and Kin are breeding indiscriminately with homids, lupus, renegade Kinfolk and one another. They manage to produce a strain of metis that the Wretched Ones greet with great weeping and dark satisfaction, for they see in the deformed pups further proof of their own darnation. However, a majority of Infelizos choose to abstain from the pleasures of the flesh, as they believe that it is better for Garou cubs never to be born at all than to invite them to share in a world of tears. Ones who lack the will to abstain from mating often have themselves sterilized by other members of the community - an event that spurs great ecstatic fervor and dark rituals among the Infelizos and that gathers "family" from miles around.
It is particularly honorable for Infeliz males to castrate themselves, for in this way, they proclaim their allegiance to the Raped Virgin Gaia and cast aside the legacy of the Father.
Character[]
Infelizos tend to have low Rage and Willpower but extraordinarily high Gnosis as a result of their abject existence. Most are born either metis or homid. As a bloodline rather than a true tribe, they have no tribal guardian of their own and, hence, do not have access to tribal Gifts, but they can freely learn Breed and Auspice Gifts along with certain bizarre rites known only to themselves. A majority of Infelizos have one or more Battle Scars, the mementos of self-inflicted punishments.
Destiny[]
By the time the frontier closes, nearly all of the Infelizos are deformed, sterile metis, with only a handful of the old and sick among their homid or lupus population. Even the non-metis are largely incapable of reproducing, as nearly all of the males have made ecstatic sacrifices to the Virgin Gaia that leave them incapable of sexual intercourse.
Because they render themselves unable to carry on the Infeliz bloodline, the Wretched Ones are doomed to die out.
The last of the Infelizos dies screaming of self-inflicted wounds in a New Mexico hospital in 1937. Although he takes the majority of his people's dark secrets with him to the grave, the fragmentary transcription of his final sickbed ravings becomes one of the most unsettling of the mystical texts of the Uktena. This so-called Litany of the Penitentes, filled with strange visions and horrifying prophecies, continues to guide Theurges and other Garou struggling to comes to grips with the approaching Apocalypse.
Gallery[]
References[]
- WTWW: The Wild West Companion, p. 141-143