Tell us about your Totem

[TerraBen]

I'm curious what other people have done for their packs' Totems.
My pack is still in discussion over ours, but here are the preliminaries.

Type: Spirit of Unity
How we found it: One of our Wolf-Blooded had their trailer park home torched. In the aftermath, we rallied the community is support of the various people that had lost their homes, creating an inflated sense of unity within the town. Our totem was drawn to the glut of Essence this event was creating and grew fat on the spoils.
Rank: 3 - (we have a handful of Wolf-Blooded in the pack contributing a point each and about 10 points between our 4 Uratha)
Stats: 15 dots spread around somehow (we haven't gotten to this bit yet)
Boon: Pack Dynamics (5)
Ban: We must gather around our fire-locus at least once a week for a semi-ritualistic moot


What's your Totem like?

[YeOfLittleFaith]

In our current Werewolf chronicle, the totem of our Louisville pack is Dhuunum-Aya, Father Fortress. Father Fort, for short, is an ancestral wolf spirit tied to our extended family line and the resonance of family.

He is a protective and awe inducing beast with both strength and toughness, but little finesse - so his blessings provide the pack stealth and speed, that they may be the hammer to his anvil.

[Full Time GM]

Little Red, the spirit of a California Redwood. He has virtually non-existant Finesse and little Power but Resistance to be envied. He seldom moves from his home in the forest, guarding the pack's secret meeting ground inside of a massive redwood. When given the proper password Little Red will open the portal into the tree, allowing the pack to shelter from the outside world.

Those who ally with Little Red will find that the woods hold few horrors for them and that surviving the dangers of the forest is significantly easier. His brothers and sisters may dwell in the grand forests of California for months at a time, should they need to do so, guided by Little Red's ancient knowledge.

[cathalramone]

The Bleeding Horse is a legend and a horrific part of Dublin's folklore. In the 18th century, a horse drawn carriage was driven off Portobello bridge into the Grand Canal and the horse drowned to death bleeding and suffering, it is said on some nights when there is nothing on the bridge that you can still hear the horse's screams. This story eventually led to the Bleeding Horse becoming a boundary spirit of the canal, our young pack encountered this famous spirit and proved our worth to the tough guardian with tooth and claw. The Bleeding Horse is now our totem and we are the Bleeding Hunters, no suffering can end our hunt but death.

[Korogra]

In our werewolf chronicle that was primarily set in Hawaii, the pack earned the Patronage of Stunning Dolphin, a rather self-indulgent spirit who nonetheless had quite a soft spot for the pack, especially towards the beta of the pack, a Hunter-In-Darkness named Ellie Runningbear. Like any dolphin, he has Finesse for days and a rather good Power score, making him a rather skilled and pretty artistic spirit when it comes to Numina use. He was also the sort to actively take part in battle, and has more than once provided quite a big help to the pack when they were in a scrap. Sadly the pack has since disbanded due to completing the long task they set off to accomplish almost two years ago, so Stunning has returned to the Shadow to be with his own kind once more... though it's likely he'll come back again if they ever go looking for his patronage once more. All in all, the pack had a pretty close relationship with the spirit.

[Lyrics Of War]

Question on totems for forsaken (here seemed a good spot), if a majority of the pack dies, does the totem weaken with the lack of totem dots (mechanics) or does it stay at the same power?

[Veddhartha]

I know the name is a throwback, but I couldn't help but to use it. This is the current totem for my pack on a MUSH.

Name: Eater of Souls
Type: Totem
Concept: Death in the Deserts
Rank: Hursah,Two

Power: 4
Finesse: 4
Resistance: 3

Rank: 2
Essence: 11
Corpus: 7
Willpower:
Initiative:7
Defense: 4
Speed: 13 (Species Factor 10)
Size: 4

Ban: When presented with the bones of a creature, or creatures, of her size Eater of Souls must complete a task that is not put itself in life-threatening danger.

Bane: The blood of a newborn (minimum 1 year or younger) human.

Aspiration: For Eater of Souls to grow at least one step in power, and to find a Locus for it to have a constant source of essence.

Manifestations: Reaching, Twilight Form

Numina: Entropic Decay, Drain, Seek

Influences: Death 2

Total Totem Dots: 11 (Adia 1, Rae 5, Shayne 5)

Totem Benefits: Occult +1, Occult.Death

Appearance: Eater of Souls looks similarly enough to a turkey vulture save those features that mark it as spirit. Her head lacks flesh, and a dim, bright light rests in the holes where her eyes belong. Her talons are covered in dried blood, and she often keeps scraps of ephemera in her beak even when speaking. The tenebrous feathers that cover much of her translucent form seemingly catch no light, and make the creature that much more difficult to see at night; her favorite time to hunt.

[nofather]

With a name like Eater of Souls I was really expecting something nastier.

[Thorbes]

My player's Totem is a spirit of Fortune with some conection to cats. It was originally the spirit of the shinto shrine one of the pack's members (a Miko) "worked" at.

Name: Fickle Fate (Thuadifala-Nihdunugamm) First Tongue name courtesy of Sikla.

Rank: 2

Power: 4, Finesse:7, Resistance: 4

Essence: 15
Corpus: 9
Willpower: 10
Size: 5 (appears as a woman with a golden cat mask in a very elaborate kimono)
Initiative: 11
Defense: 4

Manifestations: Twilight Form, Image, Reaching

Numina: Omen Trance, Sign

Influences: Luck 2, Cats 2

Totem Benefits: +1 Dexterity, Safe Place 1

[TerraBen]

@Thorbes: With 15 Essence and Attributes and a boon like that, I think you've got a Rank 3 Totem on your hands.

@Lyrics of War: That's a good question. The text about the Totem Merit on page 108, specifically the Drawback section, says that when Totem dots are lost "This may require the pack to re-negotiate their totem advantage." That says to me that, yes a Totem Spirit in particular has it's power directly tied to the vitality of the pack. As the pack grows, so it grows; that's a main reason spirits would consent to being a totem in the first place.
That said, most totem spirits (even those listed above) existed as reasonably strong entities before they tied themselves to the pack. If the pack is dying off, the totem revert to gathering it's strength by more "normal" spirit MOs.
It my pack's chronicle, they ran into a totem spirit of an entirely dead pack. It's last order before the pack had gone off to war was "stay here and suck this locus dry". So it was in a weird place of being well fed and thus vital, but completely unsupported by its underlings. It was basically an essence bubble that we had to ritually pop.
This goes into a longer spiel about the nature of spirits that I'll post elsewhere. Someday. Probably

@Nofather and Veddhartha: The Eater of Souls' description reminds me of the creepy kid from the Geist one-shot. Geist always reminded me of the Soul Reaver games, which was my initial reason for liking it. So that name really works for me, even though it doesn't really eat souls. Neither to Sin-Eaters. Well, sometimes they do, sorta, if ghosts are souls... I really hope that pack is full of Bone Shadows and that they meet and make friends with a krewe of Sin-Eaters and get into a big conflict with a pack of Storm Lords. That'd be awesome.

@EveryoneElse: Thanks for the examples! Keep 'em coming!

[Acrozatarim]

The Bronze Smith, totem of the Bronze Guard in my Paris game:
Zabarsimuhthari the Enduring Smith of Bronze
Foundry Spirit
Aspiration: Produce metal crafted goods
Ban: Cannot destroy objects of crafted metal except by their intentional design
Bane: Copper chloride
Rank 1 Power 2 Finesse 1 Resistance 2
Influence Metal 1
Manifestations: Twilight Form, Materialise
Numina: Entropic Decay, Left-Handed Spanner

Essence 10
Size 4
Corpus 6
Willpower 3
Initiative 3
Defence 2
Speed 7

[Thorbes]

@Thorbes: With 15 Essence and Attributes and a boon like that, I think you've got a Rank 3 Totem on your hands.

And yet, acording to the Totem creation rules it (she?) is Rank 2, because their (her?) highest Attribute is the Finesse of 7. It is on the very verge of being Rank 3, I give you that. It very well may cross it if another Uratha gets induced in the pack.

[TerraBen]

And yet, acording to the Totem creation rules it (she?) is Rank 2, because their (her?) highest Attribute is the Finesse of 7. It is on the very verge of being Rank 3, I give you that. It very well may cross it if another Uratha gets induced in the pack.

I assume you're looking at the chart on page 183 that says the Max Attribute of a Rank 2 spirit is 7. The thing you need to look at to determine the Rank of your Totem is the next column over. It says Rank 2 spirits have between 9 and 14 total Attribute dots. Yours has 15, which is in the Rank 3 range.
What the Max Attribute column means is that, if you had a Totem (or any spirit) of Rank 2 with 14 points of Attributes, none of their attributes could be higher than 7. So you couldn't have one with 12 Power, 1 Finesse, and 1 Resistence. You could, however, have one with 7 Power, 7 Finesse, and 0 Resistance. A spirit with 7 Power, 7 Finesse, and 7 Resistance would have 21 total, and thus be Rank 3.
So rejoice! In all those places where Rank matters for your Totem, it is already Rank 3! And as such, the next dot of Totem Merit in your pack could go to more Finesse (8). So could the one after that (9). But not the one after that (10 is over the max for Rank 3).

[Charlaquin]

I assume you're looking at the chart on page 183 that says the Max Attribute of a Rank 2 spirit is 7. The thing you need to look at to determine the Rank of your Totem is the next column over. It says Rank 2 spirits have between 9 and 14 total Attribute dots. Yours has 15, which is in the Rank 3 range.
What the Max Attribute column means is that, if you had a Totem (or any spirit) of Rank 2 with 14 points of Attributes, none of their attributes could be higher than 7. So you couldn't have one with 12 Power, 1 Finesse, and 1 Resistence. You could, however, have one with 7 Power, 7 Finesse, and 0 Resistance. A spirit with 7 Power, 7 Finesse, and 7 Resistance would have 21 total, and thus be Rank 3.
So rejoice! In all those places where Rank matters for your Totem, it is already Rank 3! And as such, the next dot of Totem Merit in your pack could go to more Finesse (8). So could the one after that (9). But not the one after that (10 is over the max for Rank 3).

The totem creation rules actually say your totem has to have at least 1 for in each attribute. So you'd have to go 7/6/1.

[TerraBen]

The totem creation rules actually say your totem has to have at least 1 for in each attribute. So you'd have to go 7/6/1.

That's good to note. 7/6/1 would be Rank 2 still. 7/6/2 or 7/7/1 or 5/5/5 would all be Rank 3.