Red Talons Revision

In the core material presented for the Red Talons, many of this lupus exclusive tribe have an outright hatred for humans, and humanity in general. From a narrative perspective, were Werewolf simply a novel or a world setting with which to tell stories with no player interaction, this characterization of the tribe serves a purpose just fine. However, in the practical interest of making a Red Talon player character in an interactive game setting, this makes them almost unplayable unless the rest of the player characters are Lupus, or even Red Talons themselves. To alleviate this near impossibility of playing a Red Talon as presented in the core book, we have taken the approach of giving the Red Talons a "re-brand," for lack of a better term. I hope that with these flavor re-writes, this encourages players to give an honest look at playing a Red Talon, rather than dismissing them out of hand as an invalid character concept.

None as of yet. We will be keeping the Lupus and Metis restriction of the Red Talons. While the outright genocidal hatred for humanity will be reduced and revised for this Tribe, the overall direction we are going with them still restricts Homid Garou from being able to integrate into the Red Talons.

Much of the flavor of the Red Talons is preserved. However, we will be shifting the focus of the Red Talons' ire upon the Weaver itself, rather than humanity. Our Red Talons will serve as a stark contrast to the Glass Walkers; where the Walkers embrace technology and its adaptation to the fight against the Wyrm, the Red Talons still staunchly believe in the Old Ways of the Garou, preferring to fight the Wyrm as the true predators that they are. To this end, the Red Talons are fanatics in their fight against the Weaver and its constant encroachment upon the few wild, untamed lands that still exist in modern society. While some could say that this echoes the Black Furies' protection and stewardship of the Wyld, this would be a flawed understanding. The Wyld is a force of pure change, and while it is more abundantly found in the deep wilderness more than in the choked streets of a large city, the Red Talons make no particular efforts to champion the Wyld's chaotic energies. These primal Garou instead find themselves the warriors fighting in the places that the homid Garou have either forgotten, or care not to reside due to the difficult lives it presents for their kinfolk. Before humanity became the dominant life force on Earth, in the times of the Impergium and Primal history, the Wyrm's corruption could still be felt in a spiritual and physical way. The Red Talons continue to fight these creatures in the deep wilderness, in places of nature that have been corrupted not by man, but simply from the Wyrm's malfeasance. The Revised Red Talons Tribebook notes that there are actually many places in the wilderness that aren't so pure even though no human ever came to them. Red Talons are the only ones that live deep enough in said wilderness to bump into them and who have to deal with them. After all, it's not as if there was industrialization to spawn monsters back in the days where they came out of caves.

The Tribe's Lupine focus also serves to make them one of the only tribes that has a true stewardship and understanding of maintaining the packs and numbers of their Lupus kinfolk. As the tribes of the Nation grew more entwined with their homid kinfolk and the society that supports them, it is a tragic failure on many of these other tribes that their lupus kinfolk have not been taken care of in the way that they should be. The Red Talons refuse to share in the mistake of their brethren, and instead take a fiercely protective role of guarding their wolfkin. When viewed in the light of their campaign against the Weaver's expansion, their dedication to fighting the Wyrm in their chosen protectorates, and their fierce protectiveness of the wolf packs they call kin, the fact that Red Talons tend to kill humans becomes an acceptable, secondary casualty rather than the entire focus of the Tribe. The Talons do not go out of their way to slay them; humans just happen to be the ones hunting down wolf packs because of a perceived threat to livestock, logging deeper into the forest where they have never been before, or starting the construction groundwork for that new subdivision out in the back country.

In a larger change to the Red Talons, the tribe does not have a loose lip service to the Tenet "Ye Shall Not Eat the Flesh of Humans." They obey this tenet as fervently as any other Tribe. As predators and providers for their packs, the Red Talons realize that to prey upon the humans for sustenance not only courts the Wyrm's corruption spiritually, but in a direct physical manner. Perhaps in the early days of history, human flesh was just as healthy to eat as any other prey animal, but in modern nights, humans regularly fill themselves with chemicals, whether on purpose or in the foods they eat.

Where the Get of Fenris pride themselves on being the ultimate warriors, the Red Talons are fierce in their own regard, because they are the ultimate predators. By the very nature of rejecting homid born Garou into their Tribe, and maintaining their close ties with their wolf kinfolk, the Red Talons are cunning, savage, and dangerous. They are the "Big Bad Wolf" that keeps people up at night. They know how to use stealth, pack tactics, advantageous terrain, harrying of prey, and even fear at an instinctual level that many homid-born Garou must train to replicate. The Red Talons treat their enemies with the savagery that is to be expected of such a predator; efficient, emotionless destruction. Very few Red Talons display some of the sadistic tendencies that the Shadow Lords might take in a slow death of a particularly troublesome enemy; a true predator knows that the best kill is one done quickly, with no hesitation, and no room for their prey to escape the inevitable jaws of death.