Walked Away from the Weaver

Player:  Kelly Coppins

    "I would trade every experience I have had in the scabs, all of the Glory I have gained, for one quiet run in the woods or a chance to speak with the smallest nature spirit.  I have found no peace in the human lands, and I would gladly remain here as a caern guardian the rest of my days than ever chase Khans through airports again.  But Gaia has not given me that choice.  I accept my task and all that it entails."

Gifts:  Heightened Senses, Camouflage, Call the Breeze, Spirit Speech, Axis Mundi, Sense the Unnatural, Sense Weaver, Mother's Touch, Sight from Beyond, Cutting Wind, Name the Spirit, Scent of Sight, Pulse of the Invisible, Grasp the Beyond, Gnaw, Seek the Heart's Fire, Flames of the Wind Rider, Kiss of Helios, Shards of Icy Rage, Strike Sideways, Voice of Man, The Glass Curtain

Rites:  Opened Caern, Binding, Summoning, Questing Stone, Spirit Awakening, Cleansing, Open Moon Bridge, Hunting Prayer, Prayer of the Pray, Greet the Sun, Sweat Lodge (Wendigo), Winter Solstice (Wendigo version)

Voice of Man:  Walks convinced a Myna Bird Spirit to teach her how to speak as a homid regardless of form.  She did it in part out of laziness--she was getting tired of having to change form whenever she met people of a supernatural persuasion.  Unfortunately, she has trouble with abstract thought outside of homid form, so her instincts tend to show more.  Others find this Gift disconcerting, Derrick in particular, but many are impressed that she managed to invent a gift on her own (there is a similar Gift known to the Pumonca but Walks doesn't know that).  In game terms, a successful Manipulation+Linguistics roll at diff. 6 allows Walks to speak English in any form for one scene.  For purposes of our group, this is a Rank 1 Lupus gift.
    When I pitched this Gift to the Storyteller, I included the following little "play" as part of my justification for inventing it.  It got a laugh out of Bill.

Scene:  Two muggers waiting for their victim at the edge of a dark alley.

(enter Walks, stage left)

Walks:  "Bark."
Mugger 1:  "Did you hear that?"
Mugger 2:  "Hear what?"
Mugger 1:  "That dog just said 'bark.'"
Mugger 2:  "So the dog barked, so what?  Dogs bark all the time."
Mugger 1:  "No, it said 'bark.'  It talked!"

(busy arguing, the muggers fail to notice Kyla entering from stage right in Crinos form, spear in hand)

Walks:  "It could have been worse, you know.  I could have said 'miaow.'"

(and then the screaming starts...)
 

The Glass Curtain:  Having been charged by Great Wendigo to find and defeat her enemy (the Weaver), Walks has started looking for ways to remove herself from the web.  This is the first, another new Gift which allows her to see through the Gauntlet to the real world without the bother of "peaking."  Walks had to travel deep into the AEtherial Realm to learn this Gift from Lu Bat, the spirit Guardian of Saturn.  The Pack rather likes this "Perma-peak" talent, which works like Pulse of the Invisible.  Walks's Merit and Flaw, along with her high Gnosis, combine to let her look through a Gauntlet of 8 anytime she wants.

Walks:  "Apparently the Path of Ultimate Wisdom passes directly through the Swamp of Permanent
            Confusion."
Lu Bat:  "Exactly!"

   Once, in the backwoods of North America, a wolf was illegally trapped and tranquilized by a pair of profit hunters.  The young bitch awoke inside a cage in the back of a van, and eventually ended up in a pet store filled with exotic and rare animals for sale.  A family bought her, and their children watched in horror as she ran down a locally bully as if he were just another deer.
    The court ordered that the dangerous animal be put down immediately, but a DNR officer intervened and she ended up in the local zoo as part of their wolf exhibit.  The conditions there were perfect from a human point of view--food every day, medical care, and safety.  For the wolf, the cage was crowded, the food unfit for dogs, and the other wolves showed signs of mental breakdown.  She tried to escape several times, but never managed to get across the moat surrounding the enclosure.
    One night, after a long thunderstorm, the wolf again approached the moat.  As she met her own reflection in the moonlit water, she felt a strange sensation of falling and found herself in a new world--a world with no bars.  She ran away from the zoo, away from the bars and the buildings, away from the cobweb-coated city.  She ran until she found a forest and a strange, wolf-headed creature who gave her a name and took her to the Sept of Gaia's Strength.
    Walked Away from the Weaver (Walks) is a lupus of the Wendigo tribe.  At 4'6" tall, most humans assume she is only eight or nine years old.  Even her Crinos form is unimpressive, it barely reaches Jarryd's homid shoulder.  She is most often seen in her lupus form--a ball of grey fluff about the size of a Border Collie.   The tip of one ear is broken and bent, the result of her earliest dealings with humans, giving her a lopsided, innocent appearance.  Being so small, she can usually pass for a dog, so she stays in lupus form even when the Pack is out and about.  Manny designed a break-away collar so that, if necessary, she can slip the leash she grudgingly wears.  As a theurge, Walks is pretty impressive.  In less than a year she has learned more about spirits than most learn in a lifetime.  Of course, her unusually close connection to the spirit realm certainly helps.
    Walks reacts poorly to cages--she's never going back in "the box," as she calls it.  She has a similar intolerance of larger guns, mostly shotguns and rifles.  Her curiosity about other supernaturals has led to a a good relationship with Catherine and a poor one with Manny's girlfriend, Stephanie.

    The Rank 2 Theurge gift Sight from Beyond occasionally blesses (or curses) Walks with
premonitions about the future.  These dreams are welcomed by Walks, though not necessarily by the rest of her pack.  Manny's activities were the subject of one such dream, and led to a rough-and-tumble fight between the two.  Walks made his head spin with interpretations before settling down to summon an Uktena avatar for some advice.  I've included a couple of her dreams for those who are interested.

"My Tribe-sister tempers the homids in her pack and faces the human throng in a way that makes me quake.  If she can teach them of their inner wolf, they will grow into a fearsome force.  If, however, they quiet hers, she will be another broken Wendigo, and the blame will be mine."

 "How do you help someone find something in herself that you threw away years ago?  I don't know who was more surprised:  Walks, when she found out she has always had a human nature within her, or I, when I found out I still had one within me after all I've been through.  It's amazing how much we've taught each other."