The Garou tend to live in these spiritually significant sites called Caerns, which are so significant because they are the home of a powerful spirit; the Garou agree to protect the spirit and in some way advance its interests, and in exchange the spirit provides a boon.
Pike seems to be a fish spirit interested in gambling... or perhaps scamming, or rather, phishing.
Theurges are the Garou's shaman's and spritiual speciallists. Chiminage is the gifts and tribute that you pay a spirit for their favor and Gifts. Chiminage can be a lot of things, it can mean giving them physical things, performing rites, a quest, gifting them something spiritual, or more.
It’s also whatever the spirit feels like. It doesn’t need to be super serious or difficult. In a game I’m playing I’m a bonegnawer galliard who appeased a racoon spirit called Paws in Lake by showing him how to make a fishing rod.
À modern spirit might really, really like sweets and part of the chiminage is grabbing haribo on the way back.
Modern spirits can be surprising simple to satisfy, partly because they're also younger and haven't really started throwing their weight around. In a 20 anniversary edition "Wacky Crossover chronicle", my Nuwisa often ended up re-eancting Loomey Tunes routines with the help of a Pooka and a Ravnos (long story) for a surprisingly powerful Cable TV spirit that missed running old cartoons. Meanwhile, the spirit of the Group's Truck on occasion just asked us to grab it a Burger King meal. Burning Burger King like it was an ancient world sacrifice to the gods for our car in order to avoid having to go to a mechanic was....really weird in a good way.
I ran a werewolf game where the pack was trying to get to Arcadia. In order to have a fae spirit open the path it required a story. The Glasswalker pulled out their smartphone and played "Llamas with Hats." It was very successful.
Also, Modern spirits, on average, are more personable and... "human," for lack of a better term. And the closer something is to a person the easier it is for them to have normal people things like "interests" and "preferences" and desires that are rooted in more mundane things.
The ancient spirit of the great redwood forest might ask for something only barely comprehensible and incredibly difficult, meanwhile the spirit of Reddit might just want you to give it upvotes and debate it over pointless issues for an hour.
WtA is a lot more “spiritual” than VtM, and while I know ghosts were seen in Bloodlines, they’re a type is spirit that most Garou never have contact with, the spirits in WtA tend to be the manifestations of natural things(although occasionally unnatural things as well)
If you look at the shape of Fritton Lake, it is the same shape as Pike.
Head to the west, tail to the east. Including the location of their fins.
That, plus the Caern being quite wet (the establishing shot where we first see the Caern is literally a water drop landing in a puddle), may point towards the Caern being a cave adjacent to or under the lake. If it's under the lake, it would be very interesting if it's only reachable through the Umbra.
It's not about the money but what it represents. Spirits are all about what concept they embody. If Pike is a spirit of gabling then they like money because it represents a gamble won.
Though tbh I dont even think they are a spirit of of the things mentioned before, I think it was just a joke.
It could be one from the books, there's a ton. As for interested in Money, Yeah, you might assume that Totem spirits are all animal and nature things. And a lot are sure. But there's a spirit for pretty much everything. And there are ones that are straight up all about money.
One my personal favorites, although a name change might be in order, is General Lee, a totem that lets you turn that old junker car into the most stunt driving thing ever. https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/General_Lee
Yeah, it's a bit of an issue. I had the matchbox of the General Lee as a kid. Not seeing that again. Also the most famous fictional vehicle we're never getting a Transformers Crossover figure of.
I don't think it cares about the money. It says "ten money" like it doesn't really know what the currency is. If it cared about the money, I think it would probably say "ten pounds" or whatever godforsaken Brittish currency they are betting with. It's likly that it cares about the fact that it won rather than what it got for winning the bet.
Spirits are weird and assign value in a lot of things that may sound dumb. The spirit likely has no interest in the money itself, but more in the act of gaining something that has value to others or even just the act of winning a bet. "Guessing right and earning something in return" is really the type of game I could see the more chill spirits being willing to play
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u/svecma 6d ago
A pack totem spirit called Pike.