An Alternative Cosmology
for Werewolf: the Apocalypse

White Wolf's Book of the Wyrm describes a world in which the Weaver has gone mad and the Wyrm has become evil. In previous remarks, I have made it clear that I am unhappy with the Werewolf gaming system for its promotion of a completely unsympathetic "enemy". The following cosmology is an attempt to rectify that situation while, at the same time, providing a playable framework for conflict.

The strongest contribution that White Wolf has made in its Storyteller system of games is to break down the barrier between "us and the monsters". The depiction of the Black Spiral Dancers in Book of the Wyrm has bothered me as a deviation from this gaming world view. Where Vampire goes to great lengths to include nearly all of the Vampiric experience, Werewolf leaves the "us vs. them" mentality unquestioned and, I think, ends up being just another "hack and slay" roleplaying game despite earnest efforts to incorporate and show respect for cultural, sexual, and other differences.

The one thing that I learned from my three-month long sojourn in former Yugoslavia last summer at the height of the ethnic cleansing was that everybody you talk to has traceable reasons for doing some pretty horrible things. The Serbs are not, for example, simply wild-eyed killers -- they have a culture, set of values, and interests which have led them to behave in sometimes just, sometimes unjust ways. This is true of all peoples.

It occurred to me that what WW:tA could stand was an appreciation of this kind of reality. The Black Spiral Dancers, I thought to myself, are not just helpless pawns of the Wyrm (though the Garou may understandably see them so.). They may have minds and feelings which bear examination and our understanding.

In my new cosmology, I see the three corners of the existential triad remaining intact with some changes in focus. The interests of the Garou would, in this cosmology, remain largely the same. They seek to protect the Wyld. The Weaver opposes this position as it builds still more cities and factories. The critical difference is that the Wyrm is still functioning to keep the balance. But something has happened which both the Wyld and the Weaver find stressful.

The Weaver has succeeded in upsetting the balance. Cities grow out of control. Their peripheries become polluted. The Wyld retreats. The Wyrm has sought to compensate for this. It has seen that the polluted areas are unreclaimable and so it has reasoned that to reestablish the balance, it must create a new Wyld, one which can survive in the barren patches of land and sea which are the byproducts of the Weaver's activities. The Black Shadow Dancers and Formori are the avatars of this new Nature. Where toxic wastes kill creatures of the Wyld and the Weaver alike, these new creatures of the Wyrm thrive in the chemical waste dumps.

Meanwhile, the Weaver is still busy chopping down rainforests and introducing order into the Wyld. As my wife and I have thought about this, we realized that a third order of lycanthropes might exist. These are servants of the Weaver. These species are represented by were-creatures which interbreed with domestic animals such as dogs. Their willpower is low and they are easily dominated. They do not rage as readily as the Garou and Black Spiral Dancers. They are more like the humans than their cousins of the Wyld and the Wyrm.

This tripartite conflict, I think, satisfies two objectives: first, it creates a roleplaying system in which there's not just "good guys and bad guys". Each group has its own objectives which are understandable in the context of their creation and their need for survival. The Garou need the Wyld. The Black Spirals and Formori need toxic waste dumps. The children of the Weaver need the comforts of organized city life. (Who will make their dogfood if they don't have them?) Second, these divergent interests lead to inevitable conflict. Toxic waste poses a threat to both the Wyld and the Weaver because it makes certain parts of the environment uninhabitable. Both wolves and domestic dogs die in the toxic wastes. Humans perish, too. The Weaver is always trying to push the toxic waste sites into the Wyld, away from its servant populations, and the Wyld, with servants of its own, resists. The Black Spirals and Fomori struggle to survive. Like Mary Shelley's Creature, they find themselves torn between a desire for reprieve from their loneliness and their anger towards a world which rejects them for what they are. There will be no easy answers in this conflict.

What this gives us, among other things, are playable Black Spirals and Formori. Suddenly, they are not just "evil" (though you may still dislike what they are and what they do): they have reasons and ethics of their own. I believe that at the heart of the White Wolf Storyteller system is an attemt to incorporate the lessons of cultural relativism. As WWt:A presently stands, it fails to live up to this standard. The Black Spirals are just too alien, too evil, to take seriously in any way other than as targets for murder. Black Spirals who are torn between their own desires for preservation and their fury at the spirits of the Wyld and the Weaver make, I think, more interesting opponents than the straw men presented in the Book of the Wyrm. As it stands now, WW:tA amounts to little more than a comic book: I believe that with a cosmology like the one I have proposed, it can rise to the level of great, great roleplaying experience.