4 Auspices & a Lodge

[Krat05]

We're going to start with the Lodge mentioned in the title. It is called the Lodge of Myths.

The Lodge of Myths
A small, young Lodge that has managed to get itself onto every single continent in the world.
It aspires to become a Tribe.
It accepts Forsaken, Pure, & Ghost Wolves as members.
It is focused on bringing down mighty foes like the Idigam & the Geryo.
The members aim to become kin to the great, epic heroes of olden times. To be told of in stories to future generations of Uratha.

[Krat05]

The Daylight Moon Auspice
When the moon shines at daytime. The glow of their fur lights up the Shadow. They possess the enviable ability to walk around in the Shadow at daytime without Helios pressing down on them, at least not automatically, it takes him a while to notice them. The helions are still a problem undiminished however.

[Krat05]

The Muted Moon Auspice
Happens sometimes when the moon shines in the night sky & there are clouds or something else covering it. You just rolled the die & came up "muted" instead of whatever Auspice you should have gotten.

• Hunter's Aspect: you're being followed, but you can't pin the person following you. Oh God, why can't they leave you alone?!
• Moon Gifts: uses the list of whichever moon phase its in currently.
• Blessing: unnoticeable, people's eyes just slide right off you.

[Krat05]

A blue moon is nothing more than the second full moon in a month, right?
Wrong. Most wolves who change under this moon become ordinary rahu, but every so often things align just right that you get a wolf of the Blue Moon Auspice.
Blue Moon wolves are always Forsaken (or almost always), they can't avoid it. It is said that even those that become zi'ir still follow the Forsaken agenda.
They can push & pull at Harmony, bringing it to balance. Some have learned to apply this to the morality's of humans, mages, vampires & other creatures with enough of a moral compass.
There are rumours of Blue Moon Rites that can heal a zi'ir, one of the Distorted, A Bale Hound, or reaquaint one of the Pure with their auspice.
They can also "hear madness", picking up on psychological issues people have.
These wolves are therapists, counsellors, priests, healers of the mind & soul (maybe body as well).
They can be identified by a faint blue tinge to their hair/fur.

• Hunter's Aspect: select a target. Anyone that can be said to be victim of the target experiences a feeling of safety come over them.

[Krat05]

The Shattered Moon Auspice
One night, without warning, the moon spontaneously shattered into a million pieces. A couple of seconds later it was back where it was supposed to be, not a single fragment was still drifting around by itself, but the whole world had noticed. It's not known exactly what caused this event & the way things are going it's unlikely anyone will ever uncover the truth of what happened.
Connected to this, right across the world a number of uratha experienced a simultaneously first change, starting at the same exact moment that the moon shattered. These wolves found themselves attached to an auspice no one had ever heard of before. It came to be called the "Shattered Moon Auspice" acknowledging the event that birthed these wolves.
Uratha of this auspice can instinctively find strange lunes of the corresponding moon phase.
This auspice focuses on destabilizing societal structures.
These wolves are anarchists, terrorists & freedom fighters.

• Hunter's Aspect: people find it hard to trust in authority figures & sometimes even society itself.
• Very good at identifying weak points in a social structure.

[GibberingEloquence]

That Lodge sounds promising! Here's a new Auspice of my own.

The Corrupted Moon

Something went horribly wrong. Luna had no influence over your First Change, one of the Maeljin did. This can happen to anyone at any time, usually in the form of an unspeakably excruciating and vivid nightmare which seems to last forever. Choose any of the lunar phases associated with the standard Auspices; you use that phase for all the usual mechanical benefits and you appear to be a member of said Auspice to mundane and supernatural investigation. However, this is merely a lie: those who have trained extensively (Occult Skill 4 and a Specialty for the Inferno) or otherwise been significantly exposed to Infernal phenomena will notice that your Renown Brands are pure, non-reflective black. You suffer a variant of the Persistent Mystery Commands Condition from Mage: The Awakening 2ed, but linked to one of the Maeljin rather than an Exarch.

Furthermore, when dreaming, you do not roam through the Anima Mundi: you appear inside the Inferno itself, a hideous mockery of Luna staring at you from a sky of pure filth. However, the corrupted spirits in there show a perverse reverence toward you and sometimes give something resembling advice, depending on how devoted you are to your Maeljin. This is represented as your Honorary Rank being one higher for Infernal Spirits related to the Sin your Maeljin embodies. If this would take you to effective Honorary Rank of 6, you instead become a favored champion: you achieve Exceptional Success with 3 Successes on all activation rolls for Gift Facets, as long as you are using them to follow the Mystery Commands. If the Facet has no associated roll, you instead waive all Essence costs.

Your Hunter's Aspect is Diabolical: those you are hunting do not just succumb to evil, they revel in it.

Silver still counts as your Bane, but the underlying symbolism is different: said metal is associated with purification, and thus is anathema to those branded by the Gods Of Corruption.

It is possible that a Werewolf can change their Maeljin, but this is virtually unheard of, and likely requires an elaborate and depraved ritual which has Resonance for the new Maeljin.

A few Werewolves of this Auspice develop blasphemous and malignant Gifts, but this is far from common knowledge, even among the experts. One example is the Gift Of Desolation, which works like Gift Of The Elementals but gives Influence over the Sin embodied by the Maeljin in both its concrete and abstract forms. Those Werewolves with 5 dots in one or more types of Renown can use the Gift Of Desolation to transform the world around them into a small glimpse of what Hell is like.

The ST determines if and how a Werewolf can cleanse themselves of this Auspice, but it should be a long-term quest spanning an entire Chronicle.

IMPORTANT EDIT:

This probably works better as some sort of End Stage Bale Hound Evolution, akin to the Prelacy of Seers Of The Throne. Luna is meant to be more powerful than an individual Maeljin. Not only that, serving the Gods Of Corruption is meant to be something you do of your own free will and thus a moral failing, rather than something forced upon you without any chance to refuse.

[Krat05]

Shit. I hadn't thought of anyone adding more Auspices to this thread & now the name is non-indicative.
With that in mind, this is awesome! Please someone continue growing this thread.

[Krat05]

I just had a question about the Corrupted Moon Auspice.
Is it possible for an uratha to be of this Auspice, yet still be an essentially decent person? Like, can they refuse to follow the Maeljin agenda?

[Krat05]

A second question regarding the Corrupted Moon Auspice.
Would the Pure's Auspice killing ritual remove the Maeljin taint, seeing as how it's come with Auspice here?

[GibberingEloquence]

I just had a question about the Corrupted Moon Auspice. Is it possible for an uratha to be of this Auspice, yet still be an essentially decent person? Like, can they refuse to follow the Maeljin agenda?

Kiiiiiinda. You are not under supernatural compulsion to do anything, but this type of First Change fucks you up something fierce on a spiritual level. And the Mystery Commands Condition gives Beats, which is always tempting.

A second question regarding the Corrupted Moon Auspice. Would the Pure's Auspice killing ritual remove the Maeljin taint, seeing as how it's come with Auspice here.

You act AS IF you were a member of that Auspice. Besides, if removing Corruption Auspice only required joining the Pure and doing that ritual, this entire homebrew becomes a tad illogical. It's meant to be an epic thing to cure, not just something you can get rid of in one scene.

[Krat05]

I asked that second question about the Corrupted Moon because I had this image of a Pure who had joined the Pure just to get rid of the Maeljin influence. I am very glad it's not that straightforward.

Now I have this image of a Pure who had joined the Pure just to get rid of the Maeljin influence & believes that it's worked, all the while their heart falls further & further into the darkness of the Bale Hounds...

[Krat05]

Since my last post I came up with the start of some more potential, variant Auspices.
Plus, I remembered that a 1e sourcebook for Werewolf: The Forsaken had 4-5 potential Auspices.
So, I'm gonna dig out the 1e variant Auspices & see what needs to be done to change them from 1e to 2e.

[Krat05]

I reckon the Corrupted Moon Auspice could work without being an End Stage Bale Hound Evolution, you'd just need to come up with a suitable situation.

● The future Uratha has long been a fan of dark forces, & dedicated their soul to a Maeljin at roughly the same time as they started going through the First Change.
● The Uratha grew up in an area that sat in a Wound.
● The Maeljin spent several centuries (or more) building an imitation of Luna just this purpose (& they would've gotten it finished sooner if they weren't so shit at working together).
● Some sort of Maeljin-tainted artefact.

That said, I agree that the Maeljin shouldn't just be able to do this. Any scenario should have external or internal extenuating circumstances justifying the appearance of the Corrupted Moon Auspice.

[Krat05]

So I hunted down the 1e variant Auspices that I briefly mentioned in a previous post. If anyone's wondering, they come from the sourcebook "Signs of the Moon".
The only thing that stood out, was a lack of Hunter's Aspects in 1e.

Possible Selenelion Hunter's Aspect: Glorious - You are overwhelmed by the gloriousness that hunts you. How can you win here, it's just not possible. This Hunter's Aspect convinces the target that they creature hunting them is some kind of larger-than-life, godlike figure that cannot possibly be overcome.
• The name for this Hunter's Aspect was easy to come up, less easy was the effect it had. Also, whilst I like the idea of what it does, I'm not completely happy with how it's explained. It feels like to could do with some more coherency.

The selenelion Auspice feels like it's got a huge amount of overlap with my invented Daylight Moon Auspice (they've more or less got the same "moon phase"), so in my head I'm just going to imagine their basically the same one.

[Krat05]

More 1e to 2e variant Auspice "conversions" (because they're going to need way more work than what I'm providing).
Note: most of the information about these variant Auspices can be found in the sourcebook "Signs of the Moon". I am not going to just basically copy the information over.

Solar Eclipse, Hiriraka, the Chaotic Stalkers

Lunar Eclipse, Suharrahu, the Trickster Warriors

Blood Moon, Gishtahu, the Feasting Killer

Stellar Eclipse, Namm-Dar, the Adaptive

I initially was thinking that I could find a suitable Hunter's Aspect for the Gishtahu Auspice among the anshega Hunter's Aspects that were featured in Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon. Unfortunately it was not to be.
Turning to the basic nature of the Auspice itself, I have concluded that any Hunter's Aspect should give the impression of a carnivorous predator, like, when you're being hunted by this thing you should feel with absolute certainty in your heart, that you will be eaten if caught.
With the Namm-Dar, I think that they should have the Hunter's Aspect of the Auspice they would have, if it weren't for being Namm-Dar. A Namm-Dar that turned during the full moon should have the Rahu Hunter's Aspect. A Namm-Dar that turned during the new moon should have the Irraka Hunter's Aspect. Etc.
Now about the Hiriraka & Suharrahu Auspices. The Suharrahu is a variation of the Rahu Auspice. The Hiriraka is a variation of the Irraka Auspice. With this in mind I think that each should have a variation on the more common, base Auspice. Whether this is even possible for one or both, I don't know. But that's the conclusion I've come to.

One last point for this post.
About the Namm-Dar's Auspice Gift, I think that it's very mechanical, too mechanical, & I can't see how it can work on a story level. Given how Chronicles of Darkness runs on story as much as mechanics, & the nature of Auspice Gifts, I think this is a flaw & would need to be changed to properly update it to 2e.

And that is my notes/ideas/advice for updating the 1e variant Auspices to 2e.