Out of Character (OOC):
:: (Non-Werewolf) In-Character Information requires advanced knowledge of Werewolf and Spirit lore (spec skills, and 3+ dot rating knowledge sources. Storyteller approval required::
THE EXILES RETURN
Wait What!? Despite talk about how spiritually empty outer space supposedly is, part of the primary reason the moon's surface made a good prison for spirits, apparently space is not as empty as we think it is. The planets are powerful celestial spirits and their attendants have no issue getting to Earth across the vacuum of space. Or are they? Individual stars most likely have spirits as well though they don't reside outside the solar system. The spirit of the North Star doesn't live light years away but local enough to get essence. While it's never stated in occult academia, its likely that these celestial spirits reside within the Earth's atmosphere. The gulf of space is documented as being hazardous to life and also spiritual life. This would be a great question to ask mages that study the more powerful and abstract spirits in the Shadow. And, based on the little bit of green exposition above, apparently there are entities further out. From alien places and spirits of the void itself, and Idigam have been known to communicate and call upon them. Are these just generated from human belief/investment in the concept of aliens and cosmic objects? Or are they truly from another place where essence is produced by... something else?
It is these patient, careful idigam that the Uratha fear. The Moon-Banished have always been versatile, able to alter themselves to adapt to whatever challenge they face. But upon returning from their lunar prison, the more intelligent and powerful of the idigam learned to alter the world around them. Essence was like sculptor’s clay, and they warped spirits into whatever form they wished. Drawing on an eternity of darkness and nightmares, they reshaped spirits into weapons and servants. Even then, though, their servants were simply powerful spirits — deadly, certainly, but werewolves were long accustomed to horrors from the spirit world. And then Gurdilag made a terrible discovery, and the idigam gained their most horrifying weapon: The Su'ur.
This story is true.
If any other idigam ever learned to create these walking abominations, it never gained the notoriety that Gurdilag did and never before it found the method of doing so. Did it share with its fellows? But all of the Idigam possess an affinity for manipulating Essence, and all of them channel that affinity in different ways. As such, when the Uratha ran afoul of an idigam, they faced a foe that could attack not just their flesh, but their souls as well.
Packs of Uratha, bonded by totems and living in accordance with the Oath of the Moon (and thus maintaining their Harmony), could stand against the idigam long enough to escape. Lone wolves, Ghost Wolves, Zi’ir and Bale Hounds, however, stood little chance. The Pure, who were just as outraged as any werewolf by the Su’ur, rarely saw the Moon-Banished. Some philosophers among the Pure believe these horrors were created by Bitch Luna to bedevil the world, but that they were unable to approach the righteous children of Father Wolf. More realistic werewolves assert that because the Forsaken have a direct tie to Luna, the idigam bear a grudge from their imprisonment. Gurdilag, however, was just as happy to make Su’ur out of the Pure as any werewolf.
1. A Gift that studies spirits can be of some use. In addition to learning about the idigam’s capabilities, the Gift user can learn about the idigam’s history. By retracing its movements, the werewolf can eventually find the place in the Shadow where the idigam accepted a ban. The spirits in that area are usually inclined to be helpful to anyone attempting to destroy the Moon-Banished. Other Gifts, rites and techniques that can be used to gain information about spirits (including recruiting help from human sorcerers — not a tack that the Uratha would usually take, but idigam often make for exceptions to such rules) might lead to the same conclusion.
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum
Case Study: Gurdilag
and the Return of the Idigam
(Idigam Part Two)
and the Return of the Idigam
(Idigam Part Two)
“It turns out what we did in Apollo was probably the worst way we could have handled it operationally.” — Kriss Kennedy, project leader for architecture, habitability and integration at NASA ’s Johnson Space Center, as quoted in New Scientist Space
The following is additional information on Idigam, the chief antagonist of Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition -The Idigam Chronicle (WtF2.0) from source material from Werewolf: The Forsaken 1st Edition (WtF1.0) adapted for use in WtF2.0. The following events mentioned below are canon in our current Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen.
Sources:
- Werewolf: The Forsaken 1st Edition Corebook
- Werewolf: The Forsaken 1st Edition Corebook
- Night Horrors: Wolfsbane sourcebook for WtF1.0
:: (Non-Werewolf) In-Character Information requires advanced knowledge of Werewolf and Spirit lore (spec skills, and 3+ dot rating knowledge sources. Storyteller approval required::
THE EXILES RETURN
At the close of the 1960s, several spirit entities of great power and almost incomprehensible form manifested throughout the world. These spirits struck out at the strongest loci, overwhelming the local spirit guardians and squatters. Werewolves who opposed these monstrous entities did not recognize them at first, but soon the name from the past returned to them — idigam. Spirits that arose before Pangaea had fully formed, spirits that Father Wolf had banished to prisons far beyond where any werewolf could reach.
Note: At the time, the Uratha (the People), believed all Idigam were Moon-Banished and had escaped their lunar prison. Only in the last few years have the Forsaken realized that there were Earthbound Idigam slumbering and awaiting their chance to awaken with their brothers and sisters. Since Earthbound are already coalesced it was easy to mis-categorize these more solidified creatures as something else: a magath, Maeljin, or other maligned entity.
No werewolf knows exactly how the idigam were released, or how they found their way back through the deeps to Earth. None can even be sure how many had escaped or where all the survivors went. All that mattered at the time was opposing them. Each idigam was powerful enough to challenge several packs at once, though, and over the next decade, the idigam were the greatest menace the Uratha faced.
The exile of the idigam predated the rise of the Gauntlet and the death of Father Wolf, and their primary goal upon return was to weaken the Gauntlet and enable their own travel back and forth to the spirit world. Beyond that, their motives were incomprehensible. Many idigam possessed humans and drove them to acts of bizarre organic creation, twisting and mutilating living flesh into impossible shapes. Most of them kidnapped other humans, broke down their bodies and used ritual magic to reassemble them into forms that simply did not function properly in the physical world.
The werewolves were able to capture and destroy many of the idigam, but they could not capture them all. Idigam still infest parts of the physical world, despite the fact that no new exiles seem to have appeared on Earth for more than 40 years. They are potent entities — no two alike, but each a match for several packs.
It was also determined later that the return of the Moon-Banished and awakening of the Earthbound coincided with the first Lunar Landing in 1969. Idigam would escape to Earth on spacecraft until 1972 and found other ways to trickle back after essence breached the lifeless surface of the moon after that. Stirred by the return of the Moon-Banished Idigam, the Earthbound soon also began to wake up. They consolidated power, jibbered madly at each other, and plotted their revenge on the children of their captors. This re-emergence of the Idigam has been a gradual crawl over the last 40 years. These enormous time gaps in contact with the Idigam usually means that the global werewolf population fails to see that there is a world-wide war going on. They usually mis-attribute conflict with an Idigam as a one-off or freak occurrence or entity. The formless ones do not operate on a timeline of human or Uratha attention span.
The Coloradoan and Rocky Mountain Territory werewolves experienced perhaps their greatest setback in known history, before Denver was found (in 1858) in the late 1970s. At a time when bizarre, incomprehensible spirits had begun to make their malignant presence felt all over the world, nowhere was that presence more immediately
disruptive and destructive than it was in the Colorado
Rockies. A gruesomely potent idigam, whom the spirits referred to only as Gurdilag, worked its way through the Shadow Realm until it wound up in downtown Denver.
Note: At the time, the Uratha (the People), believed all Idigam were Moon-Banished and had escaped their lunar prison. Only in the last few years have the Forsaken realized that there were Earthbound Idigam slumbering and awaiting their chance to awaken with their brothers and sisters. Since Earthbound are already coalesced it was easy to mis-categorize these more solidified creatures as something else: a magath, Maeljin, or other maligned entity.
No werewolf knows exactly how the idigam were released, or how they found their way back through the deeps to Earth. None can even be sure how many had escaped or where all the survivors went. All that mattered at the time was opposing them. Each idigam was powerful enough to challenge several packs at once, though, and over the next decade, the idigam were the greatest menace the Uratha faced.
The exile of the idigam predated the rise of the Gauntlet and the death of Father Wolf, and their primary goal upon return was to weaken the Gauntlet and enable their own travel back and forth to the spirit world. Beyond that, their motives were incomprehensible. Many idigam possessed humans and drove them to acts of bizarre organic creation, twisting and mutilating living flesh into impossible shapes. Most of them kidnapped other humans, broke down their bodies and used ritual magic to reassemble them into forms that simply did not function properly in the physical world.The werewolves were able to capture and destroy many of the idigam, but they could not capture them all. Idigam still infest parts of the physical world, despite the fact that no new exiles seem to have appeared on Earth for more than 40 years. They are potent entities — no two alike, but each a match for several packs.
It was also determined later that the return of the Moon-Banished and awakening of the Earthbound coincided with the first Lunar Landing in 1969. Idigam would escape to Earth on spacecraft until 1972 and found other ways to trickle back after essence breached the lifeless surface of the moon after that. Stirred by the return of the Moon-Banished Idigam, the Earthbound soon also began to wake up. They consolidated power, jibbered madly at each other, and plotted their revenge on the children of their captors. This re-emergence of the Idigam has been a gradual crawl over the last 40 years. These enormous time gaps in contact with the Idigam usually means that the global werewolf population fails to see that there is a world-wide war going on. They usually mis-attribute conflict with an Idigam as a one-off or freak occurrence or entity. The formless ones do not operate on a timeline of human or Uratha attention span.
THE DARKNEING OF DENVER
This was one of the first encounters between modern day Werewolves and the Idigam and also one of the best documented encounters. Though, like most things recorded by the People, its orally passed and just as prone to distortion as any telephone-game passed story.
The werewolves had never seen its like before, and try as they might, they couldn’t eradicate it by simple force of arms. Gurdilag spread things that were either its agents or
sloughed-off aspects of itself into the community from the vibrant locus that it had claimed as a phylactery. Whenever a pack of werewolves destroyed one of these agents, more (and stronger ones at that) replaced the fallen one immediately — sometimes while the survivors were still healing the wounds the fallen one had given them.
Gurdilag itself was rarely seen in more than a few horrifying glimpses of its un-form, but its agents quickly spread throughout the city, overtaking loci with a hivelike single-mindedness. Werewolves who stood against them were either cut down and devoured or, worse, overtaken spiritually and made fearsome agents of the idigam themselves. Eventually, the surviving werewolves were forced to flee Denver altogether, lest they be incorporated into Gurdilag’s bizarre, incomprehensible design.
They fled their homes, their families and their hard-won spirit allies in the face of what seemed an unstoppable onslaught, spreading out into the greater Rockies area with no plan beyond surviving into the next month, week, even night. Even a few loci in territories beyond
the boundaries of the city fell before Gurdilag stopped its expansion and began to concentrate on accomplishing its alien agenda. Yet despite their every effort, none of the
surviving Uratha who had fled their territories were able to retake what they had lost. Those who tried the hardest all died; those who failed and survived all despaired.
To make matters worse, the deaths of Forsaken elders elsewhere across the country was leading to the so-called “Brethren War, ” in which up-and-coming werewolves fought one another for territory and dominance. Local werewolves in the territories surrounding Denver found themselves fighting battles in this war on two fronts, as displaced werewolves from beyond the Rockies closed in just as those who had been run out of Denver fled outward. Territory in the Rockies changed hands with alarming frequency, and more than one fell untended as weariness and infighting took their toll on Forsaken who had nothing left to give.
As if things weren’t already bad enough, well-coordinated Pure Tribe packs rushed into
the locals’ territory to capitalize on their hated enemies’ time of weakness. The Forsaken were caught off guard by the ferocity and organization of the assault, and several packs were slain, forfeiting even more valuable territory. The turmoil eventually stabilized into a stalemate, as it did all across the country as the Brethren War died down, but it wasn’t a status quo that everyone was willing to live with.
The werewolves had never seen its like before, and try as they might, they couldn’t eradicate it by simple force of arms. Gurdilag spread things that were either its agents orsloughed-off aspects of itself into the community from the vibrant locus that it had claimed as a phylactery. Whenever a pack of werewolves destroyed one of these agents, more (and stronger ones at that) replaced the fallen one immediately — sometimes while the survivors were still healing the wounds the fallen one had given them.
Gurdilag itself was rarely seen in more than a few horrifying glimpses of its un-form, but its agents quickly spread throughout the city, overtaking loci with a hivelike single-mindedness. Werewolves who stood against them were either cut down and devoured or, worse, overtaken spiritually and made fearsome agents of the idigam themselves. Eventually, the surviving werewolves were forced to flee Denver altogether, lest they be incorporated into Gurdilag’s bizarre, incomprehensible design.
the boundaries of the city fell before Gurdilag stopped its expansion and began to concentrate on accomplishing its alien agenda. Yet despite their every effort, none of the
surviving Uratha who had fled their territories were able to retake what they had lost. Those who tried the hardest all died; those who failed and survived all despaired.
To make matters worse, the deaths of Forsaken elders elsewhere across the country was leading to the so-called “Brethren War, ” in which up-and-coming werewolves fought one another for territory and dominance. Local werewolves in the territories surrounding Denver found themselves fighting battles in this war on two fronts, as displaced werewolves from beyond the Rockies closed in just as those who had been run out of Denver fled outward. Territory in the Rockies changed hands with alarming frequency, and more than one fell untended as weariness and infighting took their toll on Forsaken who had nothing left to give.
As if things weren’t already bad enough, well-coordinated Pure Tribe packs rushed into
the locals’ territory to capitalize on their hated enemies’ time of weakness. The Forsaken were caught off guard by the ferocity and organization of the assault, and several packs were slain, forfeiting even more valuable territory. The turmoil eventually stabilized into a stalemate, as it did all across the country as the Brethren War died down, but it wasn’t a status quo that everyone was willing to live with.
THE USURPATION OF GURDILAG
One local Iron Master named Max Roman had grown sick of Gurdilag’s horrific effects on his city’s spiritscape, as well as that of the violence between migrant Uratha displaced from the East as a result of the Brethren War and the opportunistic assaults of the Pure Tribes. With half of his pack dead and his confidence shattered by conflicts with Gurdilag’s agents, and the rest of his pack slaughtered by his own kind, Roman took to the road to regain his focus and find his calling in life. His wandering eventually led him to Chicago where he experienced an epiphany that rekindled his fighting spirit. Gathering a new pack around him, he journeyed down strange and secret roads that, to this day, he will not discuss.
When he and his packmates returned to the Rockies, he arranged a moot at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge. He explained who he was and what he’d been through for the benefit of those who didn’t know. He then offered a kernel of hope that Denver and its surrounding territories could be retaken before the next full moon if the assembled werewolves were willing to put aside their differences and work together. His first and most outspoken opponent to this seemingly untenable idea was a Storm Lord named Rachel Snow, but even she chose to go along with him when Roman revealed what it was that his
arduous journey had earned him — namely, the secret of Gurdilag’s bane. The other werewolves quickly fell in line, and some were even able to convince stubborn Forsaken
who hadn’t deigned to show up for the moot that what Roman had in mind was worthwhile.
One local Iron Master named Max Roman had grown sick of Gurdilag’s horrific effects on his city’s spiritscape, as well as that of the violence between migrant Uratha displaced from the East as a result of the Brethren War and the opportunistic assaults of the Pure Tribes. With half of his pack dead and his confidence shattered by conflicts with Gurdilag’s agents, and the rest of his pack slaughtered by his own kind, Roman took to the road to regain his focus and find his calling in life. His wandering eventually led him to Chicago where he experienced an epiphany that rekindled his fighting spirit. Gathering a new pack around him, he journeyed down strange and secret roads that, to this day, he will not discuss.
arduous journey had earned him — namely, the secret of Gurdilag’s bane. The other werewolves quickly fell in line, and some were even able to convince stubborn Forsaken
who hadn’t deigned to show up for the moot that what Roman had in mind was worthwhile.
The fact that Roman was able to find a Ban that still worked after untold centuries on the Idigam strongly suggests that Gurdilag was an Earthbound and not a Formless Idigam when it became active again. However, if Roman's method devised or divined the Ban Gurdilag gained when it coalesced on Earth after its return it could still be a Moon-Banished Idigam.
Before the next full moon, Roman and Snow led as many werewolves as would follow on a veritable crusade to purge the idigam’s taint from the territory it had usurped. Armed with the secret of Gurdilag’s ancient and long-forgotten ban, they made short work of the alien entity’s agents all throughout Denver. They liberated loci more easily than those places had originally been won,and they freed local spirits whom Gurdilag’s agents had imprisoned.
Eventually, they tracked the diminishing idigam to its secret lair, choked down the horror of what they found going on there, and destroyed it. The cost in lives and sanity was steep, but in the end, Gurdilag was no more and Denver was free of its malignant influence. With Denver firmly in their grasp, the survivors took stock and assessed the damage that had been done. The Shadow was a disaster area, much of it populated by hateful, bitter spirits that wanted nothing to do with their liberators. Many younger Forsaken were overwhelmed by it all, and some more recent arrivals were even prepared to write the city off as a lost cause. Yet wiser, or perhaps more stubborn, werewolves buckled down in the face of this adversity and took their packs into the worst parts of the city. They sought out those areas most upset by the idigam’s activities and committed themselves to restoring them, if not improving upon them.
FORSAKEN LORE: The Warden Against the Void
This story is true.
They might have had a name in Pangaea, before their exile, before their time in cold nowhere made them even stranger and more powerful. But if they had a name, no one remembers it, not even the spirits. We know that Father Wolf saw them and saw the chaos they could wreak upon the world. And so he hunted them down, as was his sacred task. He chased them down, and when they grew wings to escape, he leapt high in the air and caught them. They turned to water around his teeth, and he took them into his stomach to prevent their escape. They turned to worms to burrow their way out, but he ate the grasses and the herbs, and vomited them back up. And then they changed to birds again and tried to fly away, and Father Wolf realized that nowhere in Pangaea could these things be contained.
Before the next full moon, Roman and Snow led as many werewolves as would follow on a veritable crusade to purge the idigam’s taint from the territory it had usurped. Armed with the secret of Gurdilag’s ancient and long-forgotten ban, they made short work of the alien entity’s agents all throughout Denver. They liberated loci more easily than those places had originally been won,and they freed local spirits whom Gurdilag’s agents had imprisoned.
Eventually, they tracked the diminishing idigam to its secret lair, choked down the horror of what they found going on there, and destroyed it. The cost in lives and sanity was steep, but in the end, Gurdilag was no more and Denver was free of its malignant influence. With Denver firmly in their grasp, the survivors took stock and assessed the damage that had been done. The Shadow was a disaster area, much of it populated by hateful, bitter spirits that wanted nothing to do with their liberators. Many younger Forsaken were overwhelmed by it all, and some more recent arrivals were even prepared to write the city off as a lost cause. Yet wiser, or perhaps more stubborn, werewolves buckled down in the face of this adversity and took their packs into the worst parts of the city. They sought out those areas most upset by the idigam’s activities and committed themselves to restoring them, if not improving upon them.
This story is true.
They might have had a name in Pangaea, before their exile, before their time in cold nowhere made them even stranger and more powerful. But if they had a name, no one remembers it, not even the spirits. We know that Father Wolf saw them and saw the chaos they could wreak upon the world. And so he hunted them down, as was his sacred task. He chased them down, and when they grew wings to escape, he leapt high in the air and caught them. They turned to water around his teeth, and he took them into his stomach to prevent their escape. They turned to worms to burrow their way out, but he ate the grasses and the herbs, and vomited them back up. And then they changed to birds again and tried to fly away, and Father Wolf realized that nowhere in Pangaea could these things be contained.
And so when he caught them, he flung them upwards, and he called to Mother Luna to catch them. And she did, and she placed them in a dark prison, a soundless and barren wasteland that never saw nor felt sunlight. And there they sat, unable to change themselves, for nothing around them changed. And so it was for some time.
Human beings looked to the moon over the years, and they saw Mother Luna looking down. And they looked to wolves howling at the moon, and they wondered at their songs. They never knew that they were merely doing what Father Wolf had taught their ancestors. Their howls remind Mother Luna of what lay in the darkest recesses of her domain, and that she must keep the gates securely locked. They knew Mother Luna might forget, if she couldn’t see. The creatures were locked in an oubliette, forgotten by Helios, Luna, Gaia, but never by the Uratha. Human beings, of course, were the ones who freed them.
THE OUBLIETTE IS BREACHED
On July 20, 1969, two men set foot on the moon. This achievement had far-reaching effects for the inhabitants of Earth, not least of which was a newfound appreciation for how small and fragile the planet truly was. But Armstrong and Aldrin (and their compatriot, Collins, orbiting above) brought something else back with them: the idigam.
According to the lore of the People (Pure and Forsaken), these spirits originated from Earth. Father Wolf caught them and flung them into space, where Mother Luna caught and imprisoned them. She was able to do so because of the nature of these creatures. The idigam are spirits without clear analogs in the physical world. While a cat-spirit is emblematic of a cat, and a hate-spirit cannot be other than hateful, these spirits did not have natures. This should mean death for a spirit, and yet the idigam have been able to thrive. Moreover, they were able to take other spirits (or living creatures) and assume their traits, which made them impossible to contain or kill. The only way to rid Pangaea of them was to imprison them on the moon, in a place devoid of raw material. The idigam therefore entered stasis, unable to mimic anything around them.
And they waited. Their time in exile wasn’t entirely uneventful. Objects from other worlds struck the moon’s surface, and the idigam used these objects to change themselves. But they still could not cross the blackness of space, empty spiritually as well as physically, to get back to their homeland. Not until men arrived and brought them a chariot.
The manned moon landings of the late 1960s and early 1970s presented the idigam with a comparative smorgasbord of spiritual raw materials. The astronauts brought spirits of technology, food, fuel, light and heat, in addition to conceptual spirits of joy, accomplishment, fear, faith (Buzz Aldrin, in fact, quietly took Communion on the moon’s surface) and courage. The idigam fought among themselves for the privilege of riding the vehicle back to Earth. At least four of them did, letting go of the Columbia before or as it splashed down in the North Pacific. One of them is believed to have been Gurdilag, the idigam that would go on to inhabit Denver, Colorado, and led to Max Roman’s organization of the werewolves of that area.
Over the next three years, more manned missions to the lunar surface brought back more of the Moon-Banished. Some idigam attacked the Forsaken out of anger for the spiritual children of their jailor. Many werewolves had no recollection of the ancient story of Father Wolf’s battles with the idigam. They assumed these spirits were merely Hithim, and though they were more powerful than most, they could still be bound and even destroyed. These weaker idigam were still deadly foes, but nothing like the sheer spiritual power of Gurdilag and its ilk.
Not all of the Moon-Banished were so impatient. They spread themselves over the world, and began to remake the spirit wilds according to their own whims. The subsumed powerful loci, many of which were deep beneath the earth’s surface, in the depths of the ocean, or otherwise unreachable to packs of Uratha. There, they became comfortable with the present state of the world and its Shadow. They reached into the depths of the spirit wilds and found servants. They called out to the stars, to the voices they had heard during their long imprisonment, and sometimes the stars responded. A meteor shower might contain a thousand spirits from alien worlds, and only a handful would survive the fall to Earth. Of those, only one might live long enough for an idigam to find and nourish it. But that one could grow powerful enough to challenge a pack of Uratha.
PURE LORE: LIES WRITTEN BY THE VICTORS
This story is true.
They’ve been here all along. We called them by their right name — idigam — but humanity
called them Ladon, Chimera, Leviathan, Geryon, Samebito. They’ve taken forms as they’ve seen fit, and when heroes have risen up to kill them, they’ve dutifully died.
The moon landing, though, was when everything changed. That much is true. That was
when the humans left their boundaries, and so boundaries ceased to mean anything. The idigam stopped respecting the bargains they made with Urfarah. They abandoned their forms, and they abandoned their agreement to die when human heroes rose to kill them.
We can still kill them, yes, but it’s not the same. It was right and proper for humans to kill
them, to make humanity think it could kill monsters. The truth is, the idigam were nothing more than distractions for humanity, so that we, the true predators, could hunt unnoticed.
But the humans fouled that up, and the Forsaken have bought into humanity’s lies, just as
they always do. And the idigam, now, are as great a threat to us as to the Forsaken.
As always, it falls to us to remain Pure. Let humanity handle their monsters. Let the
Forsaken fight and die alongside them, if they wish. Only when the idigam threaten us directly should we take action.
Su’ur:
The Empty Wolves
Su’ur: The Empty Wolves
All idigam are capable of shaping and manipulating Essence to one degree or another, but Gurdilag was a prodigy. It maintained the formless chaos of its pre-banishment, but over
its years in the lunar prison developed a horrible and exacting sense of curiosity. It wanted to know how other spirits and “spirit derivatives” (such as souls) worked, and the best way to
do that was to observe them without all that meat in the way. So Gurdilag learned to remove spirit from flesh. And then it learned to reattach them, and this permitted the idigam to swap out a human’s soul for a spirit.
This created duguthim (Claimed), and they were not too dissimilar from the Claimed that Uratha had seen for years. Perhaps less of the human host remained than usual, and perhaps the bonding looked different to the trained eyes of the Ithaeur, but by this time, the Brethren War was beginning and the Uratha had more important matters to worry about. It wasn’t long after this, though, that Gurdilag learned werewolves had souls, too. They were half spirit, and their Essence could be removed from their flesh. This would normally kill the werewolf in question, but Gurdilag had learned enough about the functions of living creatures that it could keep the unfortunate werewolf alive, like a fly drowned in a glass of water, until it could replace its stolen soul with something else. Thus began the idigam’s greatest experiment — the Su’ur, or Empty Wolves. Gurdilag made an unknown number of these creatures during its reign of terror, and not all of them were found and killed.
If any other idigam ever learned to create these walking abominations, it never gained the notoriety that Gurdilag did and never before it found the method of doing so. Did it share with its fellows? But all of the Idigam possess an affinity for manipulating Essence, and all of them channel that affinity in different ways. As such, when the Uratha ran afoul of an idigam, they faced a foe that could attack not just their flesh, but their souls as well.
Packs of Uratha, bonded by totems and living in accordance with the Oath of the Moon (and thus maintaining their Harmony), could stand against the idigam long enough to escape. Lone wolves, Ghost Wolves, Zi’ir and Bale Hounds, however, stood little chance. The Pure, who were just as outraged as any werewolf by the Su’ur, rarely saw the Moon-Banished. Some philosophers among the Pure believe these horrors were created by Bitch Luna to bedevil the world, but that they were unable to approach the righteous children of Father Wolf. More realistic werewolves assert that because the Forsaken have a direct tie to Luna, the idigam bear a grudge from their imprisonment. Gurdilag, however, was just as happy to make Su’ur out of the Pure as any werewolf.
FIGHTING GURDILAG
In Denver, any belief that Gurdilag would spare a given pack, tribe or faction of werewolves was quickly put to rest. Once the idigam discovered how to create Su’ur, it wasted no time in experimenting with as many different combinations as it could. Predator-spirits, conceptual spirits, human ghosts, even the strange spiritual Essence of the Hosts became fodder for the creation of Empty Wolves. The Pure and the Forsaken were working on the problem separately, though rumors from the time suggest that some packs crossed borders to pool knowledge. Even if this is true, the combined might and knowledge of the Uratha wasn’t enough. Gurdilag was simply too powerful to combat in the Shadow.
Max Roman changed everything. He had discovered Gurdilag’s ban, and what’s more, that ban extended to all of the idigam’s servants. Little by little, his massive coalition of werewolves was able to destroy Gurdilag’s influence, and then the Moon-Banished spirit itself. The War for Denver, of course, was just one incident of werewolves battling an idigam, though probably the best known, at least among the Uratha of North America. But it revealed something important: it was possible to battle and defeat even the most powerful of the Moon-Banished.
Max Roman changed everything. He had discovered Gurdilag’s ban, and what’s more, that ban extended to all of the idigam’s servants. Little by little, his massive coalition of werewolves was able to destroy Gurdilag’s influence, and then the Moon-Banished spirit itself. The War for Denver, of course, was just one incident of werewolves battling an idigam, though probably the best known, at least among the Uratha of North America. But it revealed something important: it was possible to battle and defeat even the most powerful of the Moon-Banished.
Idigam, like all spirits, have bans and banes. The weaknesses of the Moon-Banished, though, are as impermanent as everything else about these creatures and constantly shift. A given idigam’s weaknesses only becomes permanent if the spirit takes on a concrete form in a process called coalescence. Gurdilag did so, and this was what allowed Max Roman and his followers to destroy it (and even then, many Uratha died that day). Some of the other idigam have learned from that mistake, while others had already accepted coalescence by the time Gurdilag perished. The Coalesced do derive some benefits from taking on a set ban and bane, granted, but in general, the Uratha find battling one without a ban, in its Formless state, almost futile. An idigam does not select its own weaknesses. Rather, when it coalesces, rooting itself in the Shadow, its bane solidifies and is related to whatever is physically (or metaphysically) nearby when this happened. It's ban usually relates to its own form of madness surrounding why it coalesced and how it interacts with the world.
Consider, though, that this means an idigam’s bane isn’t necessarily related to its methodology, its motivations, its powers or its form. Gurdilag chose to coalesce in the world deep beneath the surface of the earth, near a pure, calm subterranean lake. The water in that lake thus became its bane. Max Roman, years later, would talk of the calming and purifying properties of this lake, and how it was this spiritual cleansing that defeated Gurdilag, and perhaps that’s true, to a point. But the fact is that the idigam are creatures from before time, spirits that never quite caught up to the way that the Shadow and physical world divided. When an idigam chooses to become part of the world, it gains great power, but it must also accept the weaknesses that come with that power.
In Gurdilag’s case, it was the water of this lake.
DISCOVERING THE BANE
For a pack of werewolves to fight one of the Coalesced, then, requires learning its bane, but that isn’t as simple as using a Gift and asking a Lune. The werewolves must discover the
circumstances under which the idigam coalesced. That means they need to learn as much about it as possible. Below are three methods for how they might go about this:
1. A Gift that studies spirits can be of some use. In addition to learning about the idigam’s capabilities, the Gift user can learn about the idigam’s history. By retracing its movements, the werewolf can eventually find the place in the Shadow where the idigam accepted a ban. The spirits in that area are usually inclined to be helpful to anyone attempting to destroy the Moon-Banished. Other Gifts, rites and techniques that can be used to gain information about spirits (including recruiting help from human sorcerers — not a tack that the Uratha would usually take, but idigam often make for exceptions to such rules) might lead to the same conclusion.
2. Werewolves are hunters and trackers. Once they learn target’s modus operandi, they can follow a trail backwards. Tracking an idigam by scent is usually impossible, but tracking the spirit’s creations and servants by scent is no more difficult than tracking any other quarry. Either by detective work or instinctual hunting, the pack can find the idigam’s bane site. The danger here is that it requires close contact with the Idigam, and some idigam are smart enough to set up false trails leading to traps or nests of servants.
3. Since an idigam’s servants share its bane (in most cases), to a point, it’s possible to dissect (or, better, vivisect) such a servant to learn about the master. Gifts can be used on ephemeral servants, but for physical servants such as Su’ur, a more direct approach is necessary. The servant must be hunted down and torn apart, and at least some of its flesh consumed (with the usual Harmony risk). Following this act, werewolves involved sometimes receive a prophetic dream, similar to the Cahalith auspice but does not expend that power.
Once an idigam’s bane has been uncovered, the werewolves need to be able to employ it in battle. Fortunately, this is usually a simple matter, as the bane tends to be a substance or circumstance that hurts the Moon-Banished and its servants. Often weapons (claws included) can be somehow treated with a material or blessed in such a way that they inflict the same effects.
Sometimes, though, the bane is more complicated than that. Sometimes the idigam needs to be returned to its bane-site, and only there can it be defeated. Some idigam gain bans that require a certain type of spirit to enact, or at least a Gift taught by that spirit. Some bans take a simple, plentiful substance (water) and place complicated requirements upon it (water changed to steam, then back to water, then frozen — almost impossible to employ in a combat situation).
As described above, an idigam’s bane and ban only becomes permanent after coalescence. A Formless idigam has a ban, but it changes every scene. Werewolf spirit scholars have tried to decipher a pattern in the shifts in a Moon-Banished spirit’s bane, but it appears to be truly random.
During one encounter, the idigam must flee if confronted with fresh garlic. The next time the pack meets it, garlic in hand, it suffers no ill effect from the herb but assumes corporeal form if splashed with the blood of a frightened man. In a third battle with the same idigam, in which the pack harries a terrified bystander close to it in order to sacrifice him to save their territory, the Moon-Banished doesn’t care about blood, but is compelled to investigate anything whispered within earshot. The Formless have different weaknesses every time they are encountered, and studying them (to the extent that is even possible) doesn’t help, because the banes have no common thread.
The banes of coalesced idigam, however, are much more stable. As mentioned above, though, they don’t reflect much about the idigam itself, but rather its surroundings during the coalescence. In general, consider the following two points:
1. What is physically present?
1. What is physically present?
During coalescence, the idigam becomes imprinted with whatever is nearby. Gurdilag coalesced near an underground lake, and that lake’s water became its bane. Another idigam might coalesce hundreds of feet in the air in the midst of a thunderstorm, meaning that thunder, lightning or rain might be able to harm it. If the Moon-Banished coalesces near a flock of birds, the calls or feathers of those birds might comprise its bane. Note that the object or substance that becomes the idigam’s bane doesn’t necessarily attract the spirit’s attention. Idigam do not always know their own banes.
2. What is metaphysically present?
Max Roman always assumed that the spiritual purity of the underground lake water was what made it inimical to Gurdilag, and maybe he was right, but not for the reasons he thought. The water was spiritually pure, yes, but it was simply because that purity was in proximity to Gurdilag when it coalesced, not because the idigam was somehow impure, that the water became the spirit’s bane. Put another way, if the idigam coalesces near a strong source of emotion or conceptual resonance (loci, especially), then resonance of a similar kind might be able to harm it.
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