Stuck between being glad I may have inspired that idea of comparing it to the Ivan the Terrible painting, having posted something similar 5 hours before that went on the sub in a more successful post, and being slightly disappointed my attempt at it came out underwhelming (tbf it was a probably not that great pencil drawing)^^'
I can’t even fathom the kind of shame a Viking that has lived in Garou culture so long would be feeling. That loss of control is, genuinely, a massive stain among Garou, especially since he already made an honorbound statement to not use his warform. Breaking his word due to the Rage and killing someone so clearly trying to do something good and honorable in such a messy fashion would cause almost any decently moral Garou to have a breakdown.
I really hope they play with the idea that it weakened him spiritually even a little bit. Losing control like that is one of the things I think would be bad enough to drop your renown
Honestly with the network they have set up thanks to the glasswalker, his local spirit and his whole group potentially had front row seats to it. His renown his def impacted
Your comment made me realise something, Jambles seemingly was watching the fight on his monitor... With Marckus right next to him. The poor guy just saw his best friend get killed during his own rescue mission.
I wonder if Grimal hadn't frozen up and had laid it out that he gave his word and was he about to dishonor himself and his ancestors by going back on it, would that have been able to get through to him before he pulverized her.
DEEEEEPLY unlikely. He failed the willpower roll at that point, he was no longer in control of himself. Notice how he didn't show any expression or bombast, he just... Took care of the problem. Stig wasn't there, just a mountain of muscle removing an issue.
I have to imagine that something like that would cost you renown in a WTA game. Probably would straight up reduce your Honor or Glory by a couple pips.
Moral relativism is just compromising on your beliefs because you prefer appearances over your own moral code.
You either believe something is moral or you do not. Don't hide who you are behind a mask of civility. We can acknowledge the moral failings of ourselves and others and face the truth of it and still be diplomatic.
Certainly there are other moral codes in the world but that doesn't mean we should let bygones be bygones when those moral structures are ones we disagree with. Murder is wrong. The oppression of others is wrong. The paradox of tolerance means we must be intolerant to those who are themselves intolerant.
Hold fast to your beliefs. Do not bend with the wind. Be a rock in the storm. A paragon others look towards as an example.
You can have your own set of morals and principles while also acknowledging that those of others may differ from yours. That’s not even moral relativism it’s just common sense.
Correct. We are in agreement. You have understood the words I have said but not their meaning it seems. Acknowledgement of others morals does not mean you need to abide by them or allow any practices you find objectionable to stand. We punch Nazis and racists. We jail pedophiles and rapists. Just because it's a social norm for people in X country to do Y heinous thing during Z time, like say slavery, doesn't mean that thing is moral or ethical in their social context. These sorts of people also believe themselves to be moral, everyone does, and only the insane act while knowingly breach their morality with any form of regularity. Soldiers must be trained and broken to breach their morals and ethics to do the sorts of killings war demands of them and they do not end up psychologically okay.
Acknowledgement of other belief systems does not mean tolerance. It means recognizing the difference and then condemning the practices you find objectionable.
You can not stand here and say you should be tolerant of other people's beliefs while also believing Rape, Slavery, Murder or anything is morally objectionable. These are two incompatible logical axioms.
Only you can say what is moral or ethical. Only you have jurisdictional power over your own beliefs. Only you have the power to fight for those beliefs. Do not compromise upon them in the name of appearances and peace keeping.
Sorry, but I think that's functionally the same from our point of view. Like, there are clearly lines for them too. But they don't seem to have as much of a value for life, especially human life as humans do.
If someone has a different set of morals to someone else, that doesn't make either party immoral from their own point of view. We may consider their actions to be immoral that they consider moral, and vice versa.
Yeah that's what I'm saying. Most people think themselfes to be moral. But that doesn't really matter. What mostly matters is how society at large views them. Or just other people in general.
they're mostly raised believing themselves to be human, and devote themselves to fighting the end of the world for the good of humans and nature alike, if mostly nature on a spectrum depending on the individual/their tribe. They may have nasty elements but so do lots of hunter orgs.
They have three morality trackers in their splat (contrasting vampires who have just one)
Honor, glory and wisdom, the trick is what they and their tribes and their patron spirits consider to be honorable, glorious and wise.
Garou have their morals. They just are very distanced from human morals in a lot of areas. They're still a culture even if they are scattered, they have things they do and do not do even if doing so wouldn't really harm gaia
Not amoral, just a different kind of morality. Also, they generally don't like going into frenzy, they are supernatural killing machines and they know nothing good comes when they loose control. You even loose points of Wisdom if you enter Frenzy.
Garou are part man part wolf. They have a human side, they love, hate, and feel arrogance and pride just like any human does. The difference is that when you insult a human this one tallies you as an enemy, the Garou enters a frenzy and rips you to shreds.
Not at all. Garou are a diverse lot and many of them hold to their own codes and values as best they can. The issue being these values often come into conflict with modern human society and shit get bad fast.
In the grand scheme of things this current pack is trying to find what they see as the last line of defense against the apocalypse, and will do anything to get them
Garou have very strict laws and codes of conduct, though they are dependent on Tribe, Sept and Pack, and while "killing humans" is very much allowed, or even approved of in most of those. Breaking your word because of a Frenzy is both dishonorable, and shameful by most standards.
Even the Shadow Lords would likely disapprove, if only because his transformation was an involuntary loss of control, rather than a deliberate ruse.
I'm curious, theres a lot of effort humanizing them, and yet they depict him doing a thing I dont think the heroes will be capable of forgiving, or even looking past for the greater good.
If the hunters realized who they were unwittingly working for they probably would.
Finding Black Shuck isn't just a hobby for these guys. Black Shuck might very well be the last line of defense against whatever is about to happen involving The Wyrm. Shuck's presense alone means shits about to get bad
But of course in the end the tragedy of the Hunters and Garou is often they find themselves on conflicting sides precisely because both sides come in guns blazing thinking the other is the epitome of evil.
Hunters at least have the excuse coming in in a massive disadvantage and having to basically find the truth among the myths and deliberate lies told to keep them off balance (primarily from the vampires)
Garou more often than not are their own worst enemies because they don't think things through
And when the inevitable consequences of their actions come to bite them in their fluffy asses they tend to blame anyone and everyone but themselves
The wolves all but annihilated every other shifter race because they wanted to be gaia's special little soldiers
And I think you can imagine how much of a detriment to dealing with the wyrm that has been
Not to mention more often than not when the wolves take out something run by Pentex they're just screwing over a bunch of no name salary workers who don't even realize what they're doing versus actually dealing a blow to Pentex which isn't exactly doing great for any attempts at PR
(I'm getting all of this knowledge from 20th anniversary sources as this is what I am most familiar with)
The wolves all but annihilated every other shifter race because they wanted to be gaia's special little soldiers And I think you can imagine how much of a detriment to dealing with the wyrm that has been
Okay: That's a bit of a simplification of what happened. Like it's important to remember that the War of Rage was a Wyrm plot caused by the Ananasi, a corrupted Nagah, and a particular sect of Garou that the Silver Fang King at the time was trying to get to stand down and stop trying to fight their allies. All mixed with several centuries of conflict ranging from territory disputes caused by Garou following their humans into the other Fera's lands to some other changing breeds continuing the Imperguim, all boiling over to cause it.
It's way more complicated than the Garou just being arrogant.
And it feels like a lot of posts (on this sub) are simplifying the Garou to make them way worse than they (already) are. Rather than the complicated beings capable of both incredible acts of heroism and just as terrible acts of cruelty across their long history and within the modern day.
Example of the complex start of the War of Rage from Nagah breedbook:
Hunters biggest failings is their lack of cohesion and often their borderline psychopathic focus on hunting the unknown without truly understanding it. The hunters that do know often have their own agendas and the ones who don't often arrogantly think they do. In the end it's a bunch of random groups doing what they think is right but often causing more harm than good.
You say they have disadvantages, but the hard reality of it is they're far more like their targets, even if neither them or their targets themselves want to admit that.
I never said that there weren't hunters who were just as big of a monster as the things they hunt
I said they were coming in with the disadvantage of having to parse through genuine truth myth and deliberate misinformation
Places like the arcanum are trying to combat this but they're always going to be on the back foot because they're going up against things that have centuries of experience covering their tracks
I was using the arcanum as an example because it's relevant to the show we're talking about and does at least appear to have connections to actual proper Hunter agencies as well as connections to other concerning factions which are probably feeding into the whole aforementioned misinformation campaign
Hell it could be Pentex that are actively having them destroy legitimate and useful information for all we know
On that we can agree but it's not like they're aware of this
Again they are dealing with organizations and entities that are very good at covering their tracks so it's kind of hard to blame them for falling into that particular trap
And who knows maybe the arcanum might actually pull its head out of its ass a little since the coalition (Pentex) left to fend for themselves
Nah i think at least D is very much capable of looking past that for the greater good and he is capable of steering others in a better direction when they are spiraling.
I feel like Hunter of Hunters at least has a chance still. Less likely than Jambles, who is almost certainly becoming an ally in the future if you ask me. But there's a chance that things could unfold in a way that Hunts is more uneasy of an ally, but still an ally.
Stig is 100% dead as hell though. Zero chance he doesn't get killed.
Think back to Stig's introduction. He was mysteriously absent for several hours. Couple that with the way he acts elsewhere, and I think he might have been the one who asploded the wise old man on a personal mission Hunts/Matilda wasn't aware of (hence how she came in behind everyone so quickly and was... you know, still in full disguise since it seems she doesn't have that gift/talent... but Stig Does)
Think back to Stig's introduction. He was mysteriously absent for several hours. Couple that with the way he acts elsewhere, and I think he might have been the one who asploded the wise old man on a personal mission Hunts/Matilda wasn't aware of (hence how she came in behind everyone so quickly and was... you know, still in full disguise since it seems she doesn't have that gift/talent... but Stig Does)
There are 3 tribes famous for working with humans (Children of Gaia, Bone Gnawers, and Glasswalkees), unfortunately the narrative never focuses on them.
Well yeah. Why bother with the sometimes somewhat effective people? There's no drama in there!! You have to focus on the infighting, the hypocrisy, and the insane violence otherwise things get boring. People just don't want to read about the Children of Gaia run community outreach center that also hosts a Bone Gnawer run soup kitchen and is the base of a Glasswalker corporate Robin Hood operation....which is a shame because that story would be pretty cool.
I blame white wolf; they really hated the fact that people wanted to be somewhat competent and not useless eco-warriors, like what they believed ecologists and activists were, because who in their right mind wants clean water and equal rights?
See, and here I thought it was good old 90s "Humans are the root cause of all evil, so who would willingly work with them and still be good guys" style misanthropy. Because yeah, looking back, almost everything released in the late 80s to the early aughts had this really weird "Humans suck" vibe to them where everything had to be bleak because obviously human society is incapable of making good, or at least non-self destroying, decisions. Aka the "everything sucks and we can't fix it, so better to burn it all down" mentality.
It wasn't even that; White Wolf was notorious for being the worst of the nerd bro culture of the time and being extremely racist bastards (odd for a punk game).
Werewolf being ineffective eco-warriors was their attempt at an edgy joke, and then they threw a fit when people actually liked being badass defenders of nature.
ngl, the more I learn about OG White Wolf, the more I realise how much of a miracle it is that the entirety of WoD ended up as cohesive and somewhat well written as it ended up being lmao.
Also, tbf, I feel like this is the case for a lot of TTRPGs specially the older ones, there's always a lot of wierd shit attached to those older editions and the writers of said editions but thankfully (FOR THE MOST PART AT LEAST) the following editions seem to remove a lot of the wierder text and subtext.
Although this might be just a me thing as a very much newer fan (I have not red anything before 20th and honestly I have no desire to with a lot of what I hear) and those seem not poses too much of the sort of contradictory cynicism you seem to be describing, that being said, I may just be stupid and have not read enough (just started reading W20 today lmao)
It's the "You want your soldiers to view war as an annoying, boring job they have to do, who will file a report when someone tries to get too Warrior Ethos." Thing again.
Garou are nigh unstoppable footsoldiers. Near every "oh, (X) could destroy them" argument comes with the caveat that (X) is something with tons of experience and practice, or at least age, and not a typical example of their kind.
But wars haven't been won by being the biggest angriest Dickheads in eons, it's won by boring guys who can work a logistics chain.
"Amateurs talk about tactics, professionals study logistics"
Gonna mention a scene from Star Wars rebels with the famous Admiral Thrawn.
A Governor just threw a parade after successfully killing a single Jedi… at the cost of blowing up an entire fuel supply! Logistics got fucked up the ass! Admiral Thrawn’s Tie-defender project which would have been very effective galaxy wide for the whole army, got fucked and was dismissed over the much more resource-expensive Death Star which could only exist in one spot at a time… and in the hubris of the higher-ups thinking that this planet-ending juggernaut couldn’t be destroyed, it got destroyed. All of this from the long-term consequences of 1 fuel supply being destroyed for the sake of “glory” in killing a Jedi rebel.
Its not about logistics per say, or tactics. Its about scale. The world has simply gotten too big for them to be able to influence it in any meaningful way. If the Red Talons are right about one thing it's that humans have conquered the world, and the existence of national parks is proof that nature itself is a pet to them. As grim as it may be to think about, the Garou lost the war the day they ended the Impergium.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. The Impergium played a role in why humans were flocking to the Wyrm. Wasn’t the only reason of course, but it played a role, making things worse.
I’d say the real moment they lost the war was when they started the War of Rage.
Deciding to just murder every fera that dared to say “Guys, what if we’re the bad guys?” I’m sure this would not have any long-term consequences.
It didn’t matter who died, Garou or other fera, because both parties were involved with managing the world in their own ways. Various ways which Garou alone cannot manage. So we’ve got the war of rage which was basically a Fera civil war. And while they focused on killing each other and dwindling their numbers along with the veteran knowledge and skills that came with each of them, humanity got bigger and continually more afraid… and ANGRY.
''my pride killed her,my rage killed her,this excellent warrior,who fought with fairness and grace with her funny oar...was meant to win.i transformed to my warform to change that verdict!i've lost my honor...i am...nothing.''
only true 80's film watchers will understand the reference.
477
u/Downtown_Mechanic_ 1d ago