Arcane's Paris-What's Going On?

[ArcaneArts]

...I know that type of friend all too well

Anyways, considering how big a Harmony Sin it is to betray your pack, that sounds like more than a stereotype. Also, if them leaving sent the Bulwark crashing down, probably getting more than a few Changelings killed or recaptured, how is it that the split was amiable at all?

It didn't crash the Bulwark, per se. What the Forest of Teeth practiced in the war wasn't just a Siskur-Dah that also acted as a Bulwark*, but a strange synthesis of the two. While a lot of people got minor template changes that helps support the weird little hybrid on their own, ending the mass agreement that is the mutation of a protectorate rite and societal pledge that emerged from the stew primordial symbolism** that a lot of the rest of that weirdness hung on made the continual practice of the Mesnée d'Hellequin***(the French name for Wild Hunt, or so Wikipedia tells me) unreliable-but not in the way where it's Bulwark properties always failed.

On that note, the protectorate-pledge was resolved amiably-the "institution" of the Uratha was allowed by the agreement of both parties to leave the institution of the Lost, out of a recognition by the administration that those quotations are around for a reason. Smaller marquis (pack/motleys)**** had their own issues, although the nature of arrangement gave the Uratha some leeway as regards their Harmony with departing. This isn't to suggest all of them just up and left once the deal was done, but those who kept more mixed marquis after the fact ran into the problems of being drawn into the failing Forest and the rising Rosiere, further and further away from where they really deeply belong. Some packs exerted pressures that drew changelings in, but the subsumption of the Resistance and the Freehold was a bigger problem for werewolves than the other way around. Some of them handled that in ways that kept their Harmony. Others, not so much.

It ended amiably enough that it's not a still standing conflict. The time as allies beats out the year where everything was shaky, particularly as each side started having their own unique problems come in.

*Yes, I know the current descriptions are just roughly terms from each game put together with a break between them. The end result is going to be....weirder.
**If the era had a third splat with it, it'd be Beasts. As is, while Beasts were involved in the forming of the Forest of Teeth and some of the resulting weirdness of directly plugging Uratha's animism into the warp of the Wyrd, they weren't quite involved enough with the Forest of Teeth itself directly. French Beasts were too busy trying to coordinate the other parties in directions-the Forest of Teeth was just an ease of compartmentalizing.
***and yes, the translation is 'house of the hellequin', not Wild Hunt, don't get snagged on linguistic weirdnesses.
****Not set.