The Tribal Options...

[GrandMajora]

Are not looking good, if I'm being honest. I mean, we get to pick from:


Children of Gaia = Tree hugging, pacifist hippies, who don't seem to understand the very reason for why the Garou exist in the first place.


Bone Gnawers = Disgusting, filth encrusted hobos, who rummage around in people's garbage, and maintain their population by crossbreeding with wild dogs.


Silver Fangs = Incompetent aristocrats, who maintain the purity of their sacred bloodline through multiple generations of incest.


Glass Walkers = Fools who have abandoned the Wyld, and opened themselves up to corruption by the Weaver.


Shadow Lords = The Werewolf Illuminati, who in the event that they were to usurp their position, would objectively be more qualified leaders than the Silver Fangs.


Honestly, with a lineup like that, it seems like Shadow Lords are the best option to go with out of the bunch, because the rest of them are a total disgrace.

[jmvbento]

In a more practical sense, there's also absolutely zero chance of the Garou being able to exterminate humanity. The minute they try, humans are going to start fighting back, and humans are VERY GOOD at murdering things, even without taking into account that:

- nearly all of the Garou support systems are going to jump ship, and bring the downlow on Garou to humanity;
- people are actually going to start BELIEVING Hunters;
- Kindred are going to start feeding info to humans as well;
- the Black Spiral Dancers, once they manage to stop rolling around on the floor cackling like hyenas until their ribs hurt, are going to have the time of their lives, and the rest of the Garou are going to have the time of their deaths;
- even if you got the rest of the Garou to agree on this (and good luck on getting the Children of Gaia to go for the throat on an entire species, to say nothing of the Glass Walkers), there just aren't enough Garou around to make a dent on the human population before the humans outright erase them from existence.

Like, if you think what's left of the Garou Nation is having a hard time NOW, just wait until you create a situation that has them being actively hunted down.

[GrandMajora]

jmvbento a écrit :

In a more practical sense, there's also absolutely zero chance of the Garou being able to exterminate humanity. The minute they try, humans are going to start fighting back, and humans are VERY GOOD at murdering things, even without taking into account that:

Yes, that may very well be the case.

And, if it is, then it begs the question of why the Garou don't simply all succumb to whatever that condition is that makes them lose their fighting spirit (forgot what W5 calls it, because of the stupidly esoteric language)?

They were created to serve a purpose, which they have definitively proven to be an exercise in futility. They killed pretty much everybody who could have alleviated their burden, and now they've passed the point of no return.

Why keep fighting for a lost cause? Why not just lay down your arms, renounce Gaia and let the world collapse? As it stands now, the Garou are effectively just flailing around in the water, struggling not to drown.

[GrandMajora]

jmvbento a écrit :

- nearly all of the Garou support systems are going to jump ship, and bring the downlow on Garou to humanity;
- people are actually going to start BELIEVING Hunters;

The Technocracy would never allow it to reach that point. They have spent centuries trying to convince people the supernatural doesn't exist. If Werewolves (or any of the other splats) decided to go loud and reveal themselves openly, people would start to believe in magic again, and that would disrupt their plans for humanity's future.

The reason why the Garou implemented the Veil in the first place, is because they saw what the Order of Reason did to the Fey, and were afraid of something similar happening to them if they pushed the mages too far.

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Also, you overestimate humanity, if you believe the Garou would not have sympathizers among them. Just look at the protesters who chain themselves to trees to act as human shields against deforestation, , then there are people who break into fashion shows to dump buckets of fresh blood on the models for wearing animal parts.

Or those idiots who super glued their hands to the side of the road and had to be chiseled free.

Every activist group has their share of fanatics, and nature activists are no exception.

[DamnMeAgain]

jmvbento a écrit :

In a more practical sense, there's also absolutely zero chance of the Garou being able to exterminate humanity.

Yes, that is what I meant in my last comment when I said they would never be able to exterminate humanity without killing Gaia. I should have maybe expanded on that myself.

GrandMajora a écrit :

Why keep fighting for a lost cause? Why not just lay down your arms, renounce Gaia and let the world collapse? As it stands now, the Garou are effectively just flailing around in the water, struggling not to drown.

And now you are just making the Black Spiral Dancer's arguments. For someone previously insisting on how only the Red Talons and Cult of Fenris make sense, the exact opposite of that position, you sure changed boats fast.

Giving up is a possibility, but it doesn't make sense for most Garou. Garou are still people who want to live and the fact that they are connected so strongly to the Wyld cannot disappear in the same way that their connection to humanity will not disappear. Obviously they will fight against the suffering of who they care about, whether it be spirits, nature or humans.

GrandMajora a écrit :

Every activist group has their share of fanatics, and nature activists are no exception.

What is even your point? Do you think this minority of sympathizers will make any difference against all the world's militaries, the mages, the sorcerers, the vampires (who very much have a stake in the continued existence of human civilization) and everyone else who doesn't want to get genocided? A united Garou front would certainly do absurd damage to humanity, but could never defeat it.

This is why I said that the only way to eradicate humanity would also killl Gaia.... nuclear war. The horror the Garou fear the most would be their only method of actually achieving this.

[GrandMajora]

DamnMeAgain a écrit :

What is even your point? Do you think this minority of sympathizers will make any difference against all the world's militaries, the mages, the sorcerers, the vampires (who very much have a stake in the continued existence of human civilization) and everyone else who doesn't want to get genocided? A united Garou front would certainly do absurd damage to humanity, but could never defeat it.

This is why I said that the only way to eradicate humanity would also killl Gaia.... nuclear war. The horror the Garou fear the most would be their only method of actually achieving this.

My point is that the Modern Nights are not the same world that existed centuries ago during the time of the First Inquisition.

People don't run in terror from monsters anymore, they romanticize them. We have countless books, movies, comics, games and TV shows featuring vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, demons, and even ZOMBIES falling in love with humans.

Children who once cowered under the bed covers now dress up as the things who used to scare them, and even fantasize about becoming such creatures.

Ironically, the Technocracy's efforts to steer the world to secular rationalism may have jeopardized their efforts, because now humanity can not accept the idea that a thinking, intelligent creature can be inherently evil and beyond hope of redemption.

In short, Humanity is no longer united in its hatred of the supernatural, and there would be many among them who would come to their defense if word got out that the governments and religious organizations were trying to commit genocide against them.

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Then, of course, there's the fact that exposing the supernatural would not lead to Humanity needing to wage war against one supernatural entity, but ALL supernatural entities.

This is actually the premise behind one of the potential End Times scenarios from previous editions. Humanity tried to wage a war against all things that went bump in the night, and got their ♥♥♥♥ wrecked in the process.

[jmvbento]

GrandMajora a écrit :

In short, Humanity is no longer united in its hatred of the supernatural, and there would be many among them who would come to their defense if word got out that the governments and religious organizations were trying to commit genocide against them.

And that all absolutely changes the exact moment somebody uploads a Garou crinos frenzy'ing a bunch of innocent human bystanders dead to YouTube.

I give it 2 years before a government-funded bioweapons lab engineers a bioplague specifically targeting Garou, either killing them or making them lose the Wolf.

The Garou have no chance of winning against humanity. This is not a possibility in the table. There's only two realistic courses of action for the Garou:

1) they decide that Gaia is dead, turn into Black Spiral Dancers, and end everything;

or

2) they cling to hope that Gaia is alive, just withdrawn deep into the Umbra, facepalm over the War of Rage and take upon themselves the roles of all the Fera, and do what Nin and Podge have been doing the past three years: you gather the good humans that you can, and you work together to do what good you can, bit by bit, victory by victory, and hope it's enough.

[GrandMajora]

jmvbento a écrit :

And that all absolutely changes the exact moment somebody uploads a Garou crinos frenzy'ing a bunch of innocent human bystanders dead to YouTube.

I give it 2 years before a government-funded bioweapons lab engineers a bioplague specifically targeting Garou, either killing them or making them lose the Wolf.

Yeah, and then you have a Glasswalker counter that footage by showing them hacked records of the Second Inquisition performing vivisection and other inhumane experimentation, in an effort to figure out the most efficient way of exterminating them.

People remember what happened the last time the church was entrusted to 'protect' humanity from the forces of evil... and their opinion of it is quite negative, to say the least.

One of the biggest defenses these monsters have going for them, is that most of them originally started out human. They had human lives, human friends, human families. If those people found out that their loved ones were suddenly declared 'non-persons' just because some unfortunate accident or spiritual event turned them into a mythical creature, I imagine it would cause a stir.

[jmvbento]

GrandMajora a écrit :

jmvbento a écrit :

And that all absolutely changes the exact moment somebody uploads a Garou crinos frenzy'ing a bunch of innocent human bystanders dead to YouTube.

I give it 2 years before a government-funded bioweapons lab engineers a bioplague specifically targeting Garou, either killing them or making them lose the Wolf.

Yeah, and then you have a Glasswalker counter that footage by showing them hacked records of the Second Inquisition performing vivisection and other inhumane experimentation, in an effort to figure out the most efficient way of exterminating them.

Except you don't, because the Glass Walkers are the Spider's creatures, and they ABSOLUTELY can't manage without humanity's advances. What Glass Walkers are going to do is alter digital records so that nobody ever finds THEY'RE Garou. GW will, effectively side with humanity while keeping the Garou who oppose Impergium 2: Just as Dumb as the First One safe.

[DamnMeAgain]

GrandMajora a écrit :

My point is that the Modern Nights are not the same world that existed centuries ago during the time of the First Inquisition.

In short, Humanity is no longer united in its hatred of the supernatural, and there would be many among them who would come to their defense if word got out that the governments and religious organizations were trying to commit genocide against them.

This point falls flat in an actual, active, genocidal war. We are not talking about throwing the rug over a skirmish. You want the Garou to exterminate the entire 8 billion human population. There is no way that any massive chunk of said population is going to see Garou massacre their kind and side with them.

Yes, there are many who will sympathize and say it is righteous and nature is just fighting back... people who have either nothing to lose or don't care about their lives. Those are the absolute minority. Just how right now acitvists risking their lives against a non-genocidal polluting human government are the minority.

To throw your own argument back at you... humans are not afraid of the horrors of the past the same way they used to be. Scientific minds will see werewolves are real and immediately see them as something that can be slain, in more and more efficient ways.

Book of Hungry Names actually illustrates this quite well. A security firm hiring trained soldiers with silver weapons was able to wipe out entire Garou packs. These are just normal (if very well trained and informed) humans who would still be affected by the Delirium and they still managed to do it. That's soldiers going into direct combat. What are werewolves going to do about long distance missiles? About bioweapons and nuclear bombs?

Humanity has grown way too scary to be scared of monsters.

GrandMajora a écrit :

Then, of course, there's the fact that exposing the supernatural would not lead to Humanity needing to wage war against one supernatural entity, but ALL supernatural entities.

This is actually the premise behind one of the potential End Times scenarios from previous editions. Humanity tried to wage a war against all things that went bump in the night, and got their ♥♥♥♥ wrecked in the process.

This is nonsense. It's the exact opposite. Garou would have to exterminate basically everything supernatural that relies on humanity's continued existence, which is the most powerful chunk of the supernatural in WOD. They would not just unite humanity against them, they would also force the Technocracy to take drastic measures, they would unite the vampire clans to actually work together for their own survival, they would force every magically gifted human out of hiding and into this war against them.

The scenario you mentioned is the one where humanity is proactively warring everything like fools. That's the position you are now trying to put the Garou into, except 10 times worse.

[jmvbento]

DamnMeAgain a écrit :

To throw your own argument back at you... humans are not afraid of the horrors of the past the same way they used to be. Scientific minds will see werewolves are real and immediately see them as something that can be slain, in more and more efficient ways.

We're already silver seeding clouds for rain, I give it six months of a Garou-human war before someone finds out how to weaponise THAT and the next storm season kills every Garou who shifts into a non-natural form without having Hjuki's Armour Gift.

[GrandMajora]

jmvbento a écrit :

Except you don't, because the Glass Walkers are the Spider's creatures, and they ABSOLUTELY can't manage without humanity's advances. What Glass Walkers are going to do is alter digital records so that nobody ever finds THEY'RE Garou. GW will, effectively side with humanity while keeping the Garou who oppose Impergium 2: Just as Dumb as the First One safe.

If the Glasswalkers have the capability to save the Garou using their knowledge, and yet refrain from doing so, then they are just as bad as the Stargazers.

We know what happened to them, now don't we? They became a bunch of hermits that never did a damn thing to help in the war against the Wyrm, and when they finally came down from their mountains to petition for aid, the Garou Nation told them to piss off.

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DamnMeAgain a écrit :

This is nonsense. It's the exact opposite. Garou would have to exterminate basically everything supernatural that relies on humanity's continued existence, which is the most powerful chunk of the supernatural in WOD. They would not just unite humanity against them, they would also force the Technocracy to take drastic measures, they would unite the vampire clans to actually work together for their own survival, they would force every magically gifted human out of hiding and into this war against them.

The scenario you mentioned is the one where humanity is proactively warring everything like fools. That's the position you are now trying to put the Garou into, except 10 times worse.

I think you misunderstand. Without humans around, vampires can not reproduce, which therefor solves the blood sucker problem. Once the kine dry up, they'll descend into cannibalism just to sustain themselves. And when I consult the power scaling between the splats, I am often told that 1 Werewolf is equal to 5 Vampires.

Considering that Werewolves hunt in packs, while Vampires are traitorous by nature, I don't think they have much to worry about. Especially since all of their heavy hitters got called away for The Beckoning.


Awakened Mages are effectively reality warpers, and therefor might be a genuine solution to the dying Gaia problem. If they can pool their resources together and rewrite Consensus in a way that manages to stop the Apocalypse.


Werewolves and Fey were allies in ancient times, and could be again, if they are not already. Also, with the drastically reduced number of 'Autumn People' in the world, the Long Winter may be pushed back, allowing the Fey to regain some of their former glory.

[jmvbento]

Why WOULD Glasswalkers save Garou that are actively acting to destroy the source of power of their main Spirits?

Exactly because "no humans around means vampires can't reproduce" is why the minute Garou declare Impergium 2, the Kindred are going to mobilise all their resources on boosting humanity to get rid of the Garou. If they did it now, then they'd run into the problem that humans were a whole lot more likely to stake a vampire (who feeds off them) than to go burn silver to kill some wolf-people that are already in the dumps. But you give them a reason to prioritise killing Garou over Kindred? I can hear the Camarilla lol'ing already.

Kindred ARE traitorous by nature, but the Camarilla hasn't lasted this long by letting existential threats remain threats (and you might just have found the only move in the UNIVERSE that'll make Anarchs and the Camarilla fight on the same side).

And humans are going to be fed information by the Black Spiral Dancers so fast it'd make your head spin. The BSDs are already winning the war, you don't have to help them by giving them solid footing to get an alliance with Kindred and humans.

Also joining the fight on the human side: every non-Garou Fera that managed to survive the War of Rage, because "getting g**ocided" is not something you just let go of.

You're giving everyone a common enemy and you're not even an united front, because there are several Garou and Spirits who are ABSOLUTELY not going to go for this (Unicorn and the Children of Gaia and Glass Walkers and every tech-based Spirit immediately come to mind).

Like, there's 7 billion humans on the planet. You're not killing them fast, and Garou lack the numbers, the resources, and the adaptability (saving for GW and Bone Gnawers, two Tribes who have a high likelihood of looking at this idea and going "uh, no?") to wage an extended war. What you suggest is wholesale Garou s**cide. It isn't even kamikaze, because kamikaze'ing presumes you're gonna cause appreciable damage to the target, and this just won't. If Gaia isn't dead (and if she is, your move is useless anyway), this would kill her.

What you have isn't an idea, it's what Black Spiral Dancers say when they tell each other their hopes and dreams.

[GrandMajora]

jmvbento a écrit :

Why WOULD Glasswalkers save Garou that are actively acting to destroy the source of power of their main Spirits?

The Garou are doing that, because the things powering the Glass Walker spirits are endangering the spirits that power the rest of the tribes.

How am I having trouble explaining to you that the Glass Walkers have adopted a "♥♥♥♥ you, got mine" attitude when it comes to their way of doing things.

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I'm not saying that going loud would cause every monster to join hand in hand to take down Humanity. I'm saying that Humanity woefully underestimates what is lurking out there in the World of Darkness, and would not be prepared for a full scale war if one were to break out.

Surprisingly enough, it turns out Vampires are actually closer to the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to power scaling. I think only the Changelings rank lower than them?

As stated previously, 1 Werewolf is equivalent to 5 Vampires, and they travel in packs. Even a pack consisting of only 5 members, that's equivalent to taking on 25 vampires in combat.

And 1 Mage is said to be equivalent to 10 Werewolves.

Then you've got Mummies, who are practically demigods when they first awaken from their tombs, and are truly immortal so long as the Judges decide they have need of their services.


I know little about Promethean, save that you can apparently build one strong enough to hurl commercial airliners through buildings.

And that's not even mentioning what a fully unmasked Demon is capable of.

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What I'm trying to say, is that not all monsters are created equal. The power gap between each of the playable splats varies dramatically. If Humans raised their banners and tried to take them all on at once, just because they have tanks, planes and nuclear powered subs, they're going to be in for a very rude awakening.


You say that Humanity outnumbers the monsters by the billions? That massive population would actually prove to be detrimental, because it makes their most powerful weapons impractical.

Who the hell is going to nuke a city to kill off... what, 30 vampires? At the expense of 300,000 human lives?


Monsters don't live beyond the light of the campfire anymore. They've infiltrated human society. They live among us, and have integrated themselves with our systems. That makes open conflict rather difficult.

[jmvbento]

GrandMajora a écrit :

What I'm trying to say, is that not all monsters are created equal. The power gap between each of the playable splats varies dramatically. If Humans raised their banners and tried to take them all on at once, just because they have tanks, planes and nuclear powered subs, they're going to be in for a very rude awakening.

But if the Garou go on a second Impergium, this is not what happens. What happens is that most of THOSE monsters are going to side with the humans, and the humans are totally going to take that offer because they'd be fighting someone who wants them extinct.

You know what bombs and missiles and drones are actually great that? Erasing Garou sources of power and wilderness from existence once the Black Spiral Dancers point them in the right direction, and the Black Spiral Dancers totally will, and they don't even have to show their hands as non-human.

You know what would've happened to the Broad Brook Caern if, instead of screwing around like he did, Eater-of-Names could've just have had a chat with the US military and go, 'hey, I happen to know the location of four of super-important power sources of these dogthings that are trying to kill every human on the planet'? The woods, barrows, slums, and caern would be turned into glass so fast that you wouldn't even be able to finish the sentence, "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, they're gonna bomb us".

Like, the Black Spiral Dancers don't CARE about the Veil, so you should ask yourself, "why haven't they torn it apart yet?". And the answer is, "because if the Veil gets lifted, then everyone who's friendly with the Garou is going to get a popularity and support boost, and a bunch of people who AREN'T friendly with the Garou are suddenly going to be."

But if you get the Garou on the omnicidal war path, then suddenly all that support and faction-switching goes to the people who want to STOP the Garou, and the BSD can just go, "heeeeyyyy, buddies" to the entirety of the human race. And you can holler "but they want to end all of life" all that you want and it won't matter, because the BSDs are gonna deny it, and who are people going to believe in? Certainly not the dudes very clearly trying to make them go extinct.

And the super-fun bit? If, by some incredible impossibility, the Garou come anywhere close to winning this thing you cooked up, they still lose, because that's when humans cut their losses and just deploy the nukes. Gaia dead, game over, Black Spiral Dancers toast to end of the world.

[GrandMajora]

jmvbento a écrit :

Like, the Black Spiral Dancers don't CARE about the Veil, so you should ask yourself, "why haven't they torn it apart yet?". And the answer is, "because if the Veil gets lifted, then everyone who's friendly with the Garou is going to get a popularity and support boost, and a bunch of people who AREN'T friendly with the Garou are suddenly going to be."

But if you get the Garou on the omnicidal war path, then suddenly all that support and faction-switching goes to the people who want to STOP the Garou, and the BSD can just go, "heeeeyyyy, buddies" to the entirety of the human race. And you can holler "but they want to end all of life" all that you want and it won't matter, because the BSDs are gonna deny it, and who are people going to believe in? Certainly not the dudes very clearly trying to make them go extinct.

And the super-fun bit? If, by some incredible impossibility, the Garou come anywhere close to winning this thing you cooked up, they still lose, because that's when humans cut their losses and just deploy the nukes. Gaia dead, game over, Black Spiral Dancers toast to end of the world.

BSD do care about the Veil, because like I said before, they remember what happened to the Fey. The Fey tried to wipe out the non-dreamers, and the Order of Reason rewrote consensus to claim that fairies didn't exist, which caused Banality to crash down on them and force them to adopt the Changeling Way.

The Wyrm owns half of Humanity's collective soul. It does not need to worry about Gaia's creations garnering support from the masses. It commands roughly 3 billion or so people at its disposal.

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As for your claims that state humans and monsters would team up for their mutual interests, I wish to reiterate that this was NOT the case in one of the previous editions of the End Times scenarios. The End Times was a multiple choice scenario where you have different options for how the world ends.

In one of those endings, Humanity declared war upon all the monsters, and it lead to the mutual destruction of both mortals and supernaturals alike. Humanity's scientific knowledge and technological marvels did not account for the existence of creatures who fundamentally defy their preconceptions of how the world is supposed to work.

Numbers don't mean much, when the enemy you're fighting is worth an equal number of you on the battlefield. At that point, your only advantage is being able to strike in more places than they can.