The Fight Isn't Over

[heinrich]

Okay, you brought up a lot of smaller communities that survived within a different host culture. And that garou sept's managed something similar is certainly possible. I might have been to dismissive of the idea. And I still would argue that these septs would have diverged, possibly beyond recognition, from the culture of the tribe or proto-tribe they were originally comprised of.

Because an animal is still just an animal, and a plant is still the same plant. Animals, plants, minerals, etc. are always the same regardless of human culture. The essence of being a deer is always the same. It doesn't matter if the humans who live near them are Americans, Swedes, Russians, Indians, Chinese, or anyone else. Sure, maybe one area has white-tailed deer versus red deer versus sika deer or whatever. But those differences are still the differences between animals and not because of the human culture around them.

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Human culture is irrelevant to these kind of spirits. Do people really think a deer spirit in Bohemia changed because at one point the people living there were Old Europe pre-IE peoples, then inhabited by Celtic peoples, then by Germanic peoples, and later by Slavic peoples? Or is it still just a deer spirit doing the things all deer do?

Well, a deer spirit is most likely a member of Stags brood and there are attributes given to the spirit by humans, garou and other sentient beings that are represented in the spirit - going beyond the nature of the animal. Gaffelings possibly show these attributes less, than Jacklings. I'm thinking of attributes like virility, masculine power of nature, life, appearing to lost Garou, leading them out of danger or aiding them in a crisis. I mean an animal deer wouldn't ask a Galliard via Beast Speech to aid faeries, would it? A spirit deer in the service of Stag would.

In areas where there are not stags/deer naturally live the attribute of helper to the lost and representing live might be attributed to other animals and therefore be present in animal spirits. So, I think there is a local factor to the attributes nature and animal spirits have.

Thank you for the discussion.

[Black Fox]

Well, a deer spirit is most likely a member of Stags brood and there are attributes given to the spirit by humans, garou and other sentient beings that are represented in the spirit - going beyond the nature of the animal. Gaffelings possibly show these attributes less, than Jacklings. I'm thinking of attributes like virility, masculine power of nature, life, appearing to lost Garou, leading them out of danger or aiding them in a crisis. I mean an animal deer wouldn't ask a Galliard via Beast Speech to aid faeries, would it? A spirit deer in the service of Stag would.

I'll comment on this since it is a side discussion on the nature of spirits. I would argue that a lot of these associations with spirits, while arising from human culture in the real world, is because of more objective criteria in the World of Darkness setting.

Stag doesn't have an association with the fey because a certain human culture made it so. It is because Stag made an ancient pact with the fey. And that is why none of his Garou children or spirit brood won't harm the fey. It is a direct command from the Incarna. It isn't clear why or how Stag made this pact, or with whom. This is an area where the ST needs to fill in the gaps assuming it is important at all to her. (In my mind it is because Gaia asked Stag to do so, and Stag made the pact with the most powerful of the Tuatha de Danaan who had the power and authority to do so.) Similarly we are told that Stag made an alliance with Oak in the elder days, so the Oak spirit treats the Fianna more favorably than other Garou. Likewise, it is entirely feasible that Stag possesses certain virile masculine qualities because that is what Gaia wanted when she created the Stag spirit. I am not saying there is not any room for human cultural ideas to be incorporated in the spirit world, but I don't think it is decisive. These animal spirits (and other kinds) were doing their things before humanity ever existed so there is a lot of objective qualities to them.

If were going to incorporate spirits into a brood that were more human culture dependent, I wouldn't do so by taking a general deer spirit and having it be different in different areas (and thereby if it wanders from one geographic region to another, suddenly change its attributes and personality). Instead I'd create new special/different spirits where each one incorporates a different aspect, give them different names, and run them as separate spirits if needed. To again use Stag as an example, we have generic deer gafflings, we have other specific spirits that fall under the "deer" category but would be the individual red deer/white tailed deer/roe deer/elk/etc spirits (although perhaps I might use the same mechanics as the deer gaffling), and we have Hind, Yale, Black Stags, Kelpies, White Harts. All of these are "deer spirits", but cover a lot of concepts. If the Japanese for example have a very different concept associated with sika deer that isn't usually represented in Stag's brood and I wanted to use that in game, I'd probably just create a new spirit to reflect that in the same way we have Hind, Yale, etc. rather than saying an existing spirit changes simply because it enters the Penumbra of Japan.

In areas where there are not stags/deer naturally live the attribute of helper to the lost and representing live might be attributed to other animals and therefore be present in animal spirits. So, I think there is a local factor to the attributes nature and animal spirits have.

True, but again I don't think this is as strong as you think it is. Impala is supposed to be part of Stag's brood, even though that creature is not a deer and is not present in areas where deer are. The local Changing Breeds in southern Africa would still have a representative of Stag there. They might have their own name for Stag since a stag is technically a term for an adult red deer although it is loosely used for any big male deer, but it would still be "Stag" (and called that OOC to make it easier for player understanding even if they use a different term that makes better sense for them). As an Incarna, Stag is much more than just an adult red deer in a scientific sense, but has all sorts of spiritual connotations. I just think many of those spiritual connotations are not imposed on it by human belief, but is part of a more objective spiritual reality and the effects of events in time as other spirits join Stag's brood to be under its protection, additional pacts or alliances that are made by Stag, actions by the Incarna in the greater spirit world and so on.

An indigenous Bastet living in southern Africa probably has a different understanding of "Stag" and Stag's spirit brood than Garou in northern Eurasia, but still knows that there is a such a brood even if her understanding of the Stag Incarna is more like an enormous male impala ram rather than a red deer. Maybe this conception is wrong, and if that Bastet should ever somehow come across the Incarna she might view him in his more traditional appearance, but the brood is still represented. The Impala spirit is still an impala spirit, not some disguised deer spirit.

Also, not all concepts that are embodied in spirits are necessarily the exclusive province of one spirit or Incarna. Fenris is a totem of war, but there are plenty of other spirits of war some of whom are their own Incarna. We know spirits like Boar, Bear, Rat, Griffin, Wendigo plus many others found in many other sourcebooks are all some kind of war spirit, even though each individual spirit represents their own aspect of that concept. You're not forced to say in order for there to be Fenris, that Fenris is actually a fearsome Lion spirit in Africa. Or that all war spirits must be part of Fenris' brood. Instead, the local Changing Breeds there would appeal to a more native spirit associated with war like Crocodile, Rhino, or Panther. It doesn't require you to transform spirits according to the local human culture. You can keep local flavor.

Furthermore, there is even diversity within each spirit brood. Unicorn might be associated with peace and has various animal spirts associated with it because of that, but it also has Black Unicorn which is a war totem. There can be a lot of variety within the various spirits of a brood.

I personally prefer for a more objective depiction of spirits and their roles in the setting, even if there is a certain amount of overlap, duplication, and rivalries. It would be nice if the game gave this area more thought and provided more Incarna that had large broods, and organized many of the existing published spirits among them. But nobody thought that was important, and for most STs and players it is not necessary. But the spirit brood concept helps me a lot as an ST so ultimately I did a lot of work to come up with something in my own chronicles.

There certainly our spirits more dependent on human culture. I have no problem that a spirit like Aray, which seems more like a human concept of battle than a feature of the natural world, might appear as Ares, Mars, Hachiman, Anur, Huitzilopochtli, Guan Yu or whatever is appropriate to the local Garou summoning it. But most Gaian spirits are not like that. I think that is more appropriate for spirits natural to the Astral Plane than the Middle Umbra since that is the realm of human thought. But I would eschew using that for any spirit based on an objective fact like animals, plants, minerals, etc. that all existed before humanity or human culture.

[MrNatas]

This is just completely off the wall (so it's head cannon) but, I always assumed the reason Stag has a relationship with Fae is because Stag is the Fera aspect of Oberon. I don't think it was talked about anywhere its just stuck in my mind as 'correct'. I know that Danu is also a totem spirit associated with the Fianna, so I guess it just snagged in my mind.