
Ouida Breaux, Rahu member of the Armée Sauvage
The Savage Army is French in origin, and it is in France that most wolves of the lodge live today.
The patron spirit that watches over the Savage Army is a curious creature, the Blood-Red Blackbird (Rouge Sang Oiseau).
Overview[]
Born from the Nazi occupation of France after that country’s conditional surrender in 1940, the packs of the Armée Sauvage saw the Germans as crass and clumsy invaders, raping territory left and right. These Forsaken had little interest in national pride, and cared little for the ideologies that fueled the war: they simply wanted safety and sanctuary for themselves, their kin and their territories. At first, the packs hesitated getting at all involved in this mortal skirmish. Wars were terrible, but history made clear that wars passed. But the spiritual landscape still held the suppurating scars of the First World War, and this new war ripped those old wounds open anew. It was made worse that the German occupation was granting advantage to all the Forsaken enemies. The Rat Hosts thrived in the ruined villages. Mad spirits found countless vessels and mounts to Claim as their own. Some of the monsters even marched alongside the Nazi interlopers. The packs of the various French villages had two choices: flee to safer regions (abandoning territory, kin and loci) or stay and fight. Some packs, like wolves moving with a food supply, chose to leave. Those that stayed decided to band together and help oust the interdictors. And so the packs that remained formed the Armée Sauvage, a lodge devoted to territory above all. The Savage Army was indirectly connected to the various groups of the French Resistance. While these packs had little concern over the intricacies of human politics, many of their kin engaged in that subversive guerilla war against the Nazis. Moreover, the enemy of an enemy makes a good friend, and the werewolves saw no reason to hinder the efforts by the so-called French terrorists.
The fights were bloody and brutal. Unable to take on entire battalions of German soldiers, the Forsaken instead picked off those who strayed from the larger herd. The wolves were resilient, but many perished. Many of their human loved ones died in the fighting, and even those uninvolved in the Resistance were sometimes made casualties. The Nazis often made vicious examples of those villages they felt were harboring members of the Resistance — whole towns such as Oradour-sur-Glane perished as unwilling illustrations of German wrath. Hundreds of people — a handful of them blood or allies of the Forsaken — were shot, hung or caught in mortar and Panzerschreck explosions. At that time, the lodge did not attempt to fix the wreckage of the Shadow. Doing so was comparable to pausing in the middle of a bare-knuckle brawl to bandage one’s fists — it was a futile effort, frustrating as a pack’s labors would be undone almost immediately. After the war, however, the lodge remained as a coalition of packs. Except now, with the majority of the Nazi oppression ousted, the Forsaken could concentrate on repairing the ruins in both the physical and spiritual realms. The Army exists to this day. Many packs dwell in the forests and mountains in and around France, though several still linger within the villages, walking among the mortals from time to time. The ravages of both world wars still affect the area today, much as it does wherever the horrors touched. The lodge must continue to hunt down ghosts from all sides of the conflict, still lingering in Twilight, driven murderous from the waves of death sweeping across the land. The Shadow, too, has barely concealed its injuries, and from time to time a Wound opens and regurgitates spirits: Gestapo with gas masks made of skin, ragged French peasants in search of their missing children (or missing limbs), magath that look like tanks comprising thick steel and corded tendon. The group’s work is hardly done, and in fact the Army drives itself to near-exhaustion at times trying to put down these flare-ups of history. Some members have moved away from the country and region. Some packs dwell in the hot zones of the world, quashing oppression wherever it plants it seeds. Others go among the Forsaken and attempt to teach them the lessons that history has taught. Most members, however, remain there in France. They still care little for the ways of humans (and their bitter politics), aiming still to uphold the purity and safety of their territories.
Membership[]
This lodge is open only to Ghost Wolves. The justification for this is that, in a roundabout way, both world wars were caused largely by the differentiation between several warring tribes. These tribes — or nations or races — held to specific ideals and violently desired that others hold to the very same ideals. That, the lodge says, is what war is: one tribe considering another tribe weaker. Hence, the lodge frowns upon such division among the Forsaken. They must be united without tribe, or they are not united at all.
Frankly, the lodge members are suspicious of those who wish to join their ranks. Most of the members of Armée Sauvage are part of a legacy. They, or their forebears, have claimed territory in those parts of France (and surrounding regions) that were negatively affected by World War II. The lodge members have been members, or were grandfathered in by trusted mentors or pack alphas. Strangers wanting to be a part of this are viewed with distrust. Why would a stranger purposefully pick up the mantle and take on an obligation not his own? The Savage Army doesn’t believe that altruism is common (if even possible at all outside the ranks), and so the Ghost Wolves assume that strangers must seek to do them harm. Or, at the bare minimum, will botch any task handed to them and do further harm instead of mending what was broken. Still, joining the ranks as a pack outside the lodge’s legacy is not impossible, just difficult. A new pack must jump through countless hoops to prove both trust and ability. The pack will be given task after task, some small, others large, and will be expected to fulfill them with utter complicity. If the pack is told to deliver a cryptic message to an old radio-spirit at the top of a half-wrecked silo, the pack is expected to do so quickly and without error. If the task is to hunt down a battalion of war-spirits that seek to march into Belfort and stir up conflict, then the pack best do so before the jackbooted spirits make it to town. If the pack meets all expected tasks, the pack can join. The pack is ceded some territory — small at first — and is expected to clean up what the pack has before being allowed to gain more. Any pack that makes too much of an aggressive play for more territory without first improving what the pack already has will be taught swiftly the error of its ways.
Game Mechanics[]
The following are an overview of the game mechanics.
Prerequisites[]
- Harmony 6 or above
- Honor •••
Benefits[]
In a strange way, these Ghost Wolves agglomerating in a single lodge almost makes them their own unique tribe. Therefore, Blood-Red Blackbird grants them access to a spread of potential Gift lists. At the time of joining, an individual may choose one from one of the following three Gift lists: Inspiration, Dominance or Warding. From that choice, the werewolf may purchase Gifts as if he has a tribal affinity with them (i.e., new dots x 5 instead of new dots x 7). Inspiration comes from Blackbird’s song, Dominance comes from the fact that Blackbird is very demanding and Warding is due to Blackbird’s powerful territoriality.
Fetishes[]
This lodge makes good use of fetishes. Most of its fetishes, however, are legacy items passed down from pack to pack, or werewolf to werewolf, since the time of their creation during World War II. For this reason, many of the group’s fetishes are actually old items from the French Resistance, Allied Forces or German invaders.
- War Maps (•) War maps (or cartes de guerre) were crucial during the war. Movements needed to be precise, whether invading a small French hamlet or attacking those invaders. These fetish maps are dusty, torn up and beaten all to hell — but the lodge still uses them to plot their movements within the Shadow, as well as to track spirits. On a successful activation, a werewolf can name a single spirit, and if the spirit is in the region demarcated by the map, the map will show the spirit’s exact location. This location is indicated by a small, smoldering burn hole in the map — it glows red as wisps of sulfurous match smoke drift upward. (The burn hole doesn’t remain, and the map fixes itself after two minutes.) The maps are born from any kind of air elemental (specifically wind-spirits, as they can get high enough in the Shadow to look downward upon a region indicated by a given map). This fetish only works in the Shadow — though stronger versions (•••) are said to exist that work in the physical world, helping users to pinpoint the location of manifested spirits as well as the Ridden.
- Shadow Box (••) The Shadow Box, or Cabinet Fantôme, is actually an old British Mark III suitcase radio given to members of the French Resistance by Allied spies. When opened and activated, the Shadow Box allows the Forsaken to send one message to a specific spirit, and receive one message from that specific spirit in return. The Forsaken does not need to enter the Shadow to do this, and the Shadow Box does not guarantee that the spirit will answer, only that the message will be delivered. If the spirit replies, its “voice” is transmitted through choppy, staticky frequency (though the voice is ultimately understandable). A few parameters apply to this fetish. First, the given spirit must exist in the spirit realm within a 50-mile radius. Second, the Forsaken must have met the spirit previously either while in the Shadow or while the spirit was materialized in the physical realm. They may attempt to communicate with spirits they have never met before, but doing so incurs an additional –4 penalty, making such an action very difficult. A Shadow Box is made with the spirit of an old carrier pigeon.
- Blackbird Mauser (•••) The German Mauser C96 pistol (9mm parabellum) was commonly carried by Nazi lieutenants, and the French Resistance pilfered the weapons when able and turned them upon their oppressors. Some within the group — with the help of blackbird-spirits — created fetishes from these old pistols. Some call them “klaive pistols,” as many within the lodge carry them as ritual weapons. While many of these Mausers are capable of still firing the appropriate 9mm ammo, using a Mauser as a fetish requires no bullets to be present in or around the weapon. When the fetish is activated, the werewolf can make a single Dexterity + Firearms roll, with a +3 bonus for attack. Normal attack penalties apply when necessary. A single feather fires from the barrel, point first. If successful, the feather does an amount of lethal damage equivalent to successes rolled. This attack bypasses and ignores all armor. The attack is also almost entirely silent — hearing the sound would require a Wits + Composure roll with a –5 penalty. The most interesting part about this fetish is the aftereffect of being shot: a small blackbird emerges from the wound hole and flies off to freedom. (This causes no additional damage, however.)
References[]
- WTF: Lodges: The Splintered, p. 11-17