Hey all, sorry for the disappearing act; I had a family emergency that basically took me out for the last week and a half.
So now I'm playing catch up. So, I'll do my best...
1) Re: Rage and non-garou. For what it's worth, another set of mechanics are on page 145 of the W20 book:
quote:
Beast Within: Occasionally, a Garou is more a snarling monster
than man or beast, and she must pay the price for it. For every point
of Rage a character has above her Willpower rating, she loses one
die on all social-interaction rolls. People, even other werewolves,
can sense the killer hiding just under her skin, and they don’t want
to be anywhere near it.
From my reading, it's not clear if they mean current rage or permanent rage, but I can definitely see an argument for it being current rage based on the context and wording. The way my old TT group played it was you use the higher of the two; you can never be "less of a killer" than your permanent rage, but if your temporary rage was higher, you're just that much more scary.
The trick is to try and keep your willpower higher, which strikes me as something totally in character for a Child of Gaia. And while not strictly connected to this discussion, I'd recommend checking out the Calm Heart merit if you haven't yet. I think it's a perfect merit for a Child of Gaia ahroun.
2) Totem? Did we decide, are we still keeping the points we put into the Totem background to use once we finally form a pack, or not? I currently have 2 points dedicated to Totem, so would like to know if I could use those points elsewhere.
3) Pure Breed & Rage: Certain aspects of garou have a spiritually definable aspect that other garou would generally be able to pick up on. One very specific example is Pure Breed. If you have it, other garou instinctively know it, and will likely react differently to you. Similarly, Rage (as we've seen from the other discussion) is something that can be sensed, and I think garou would be able to suss out the relative "permanent" rage of those around them.
So, I'd like to request that everyone put their Pure Breed and Permanent Rage in their bio lines (like I have) so we can know how to have our characters react towards and with them.
4) Stuff about Valgard everyone would know...
Valgard showed up at the sept/pack recently (maybe within the last 2-5 months) with his father, Stalks-the-Wyrm, a lupus (yep) Fenrir Adren Ahroun. Stalks-the-Wyrm had been a part of the pack in Austin for a couple of years but had abruptly left about 5 years ago to take his recently changed son to Norway for "proper Fenrir training and Rite of Passage". While hard on Valgard, Stalks does serve as a
Mentor to him.
His mother does still live in East Austin, but he doesn't ever talk about her, and rarely visits her in order to keep her safe (no backgrounds, merits, or flaws spent).
His massive scar is in fact a scar fetish, with a Surtur spirit bound to it. It allows him to sense strong wyrm taint nearby (and possibly some other things once I finish spending freebie points).
He is not a "speak in riddles" type of theurge; he is actually quite intimidating, being
Physically Impressive and uses that to deal with most spirits.
While being a homid, he seems quite comfortable and spends a lot of time in his lupus form. When the lupus go out for hunts, he generally accompanies them, so that might make for some good connection with Ghost.
Valgard sees himself as Fenrir first, theurge second. He looks like an ahroun, and fights as well as most ahroun, favoring claw and fang over weapons.