That’s just playing as Elton. Spoiler: it doesn’t end well for him.
Did you try to go “Get his ass Nin” and side with her against Elton when he chastises her in the group chat for investigating Esther’s on her own? Her response is SAVAGE.
Oh-ho, so you missed the Nin date, where you learn that Nin has a REPUTATION when it comes to dealing with fascists, which is when she basically demonstrates that, though violence is the last resort for a Child of Gaia, it is still very much an option on the list.
See? See, Marquis, I’m not the only one! (seriously, I handed the man a long list of bug reports and otherwise suspicious behaviour on the part of the game, and ended it with general feedback, and half of my “Stuff I Don’t Think Was Great” points was “let us explore more of these people dialogue trees”)
If you mean “romancing a vampire” and not “romancing AS a vampire”, I recommend Out for Blood (the only V:tM game I can genuinely say worked for me; sorry, Night Road, SoS, and PoK), because Monroe is great. A pity there isn’t much of her.
Can confirm.
You realise this isn’t love, right? Or romance? It’s daterape drugging them.
Either way, I never got the fascination with vampires, who’re just abnormally-shaped leeches who learned to wear clothes.
Seems like a no-brainer to me. Spending the limited spiritual energy of a thoroughly defiled land that’s just beginning to heal vs allowing one barn to burn down.
The obvious counterpoint, of course, is that Elton is wrong. According to both Nin and how everything spirit-related works, rituals STRENGTHEN the spiritual energy of the land, not weaken it. That’s the very principle of chiminage.
Additional points:
you’re letting Nazis doing something they want
a non-irrisory chunk of the spiritual energy generated is harnessed by Fenris and Dedekind, the patron spirit of Nazis and a Nazi witch
you’re shredding the Veil like a mofo, by making a Garou Change in front of a lot of humans
you’re strengthening the position of the Cult, by a large margin, in both spiritual and physical matters
returning the Wolf to Nin is akin to a First Change, meaning she’s going to try to go on a murder spree. Nin has been through enough at this point that she doesn’t need to be forced to try to murder a bunch of her friends
the spiritual energy of the land stays so incredibly fine without the fire, that later on you can use it to beat the ever-loving shit out of Fenris himself
Stopping the fire costs you nothing and, in fact, not only let’s you set the beard of one of the Fenris on fire, it actively weakens the Cult’s position in all fronts. It’s all gain.
One of Elton’s big problems is that he’s so focused on the ruthless, direct route as a Shadow Lord that he always fails to see what can be gained if you shunt things a bit off-course. Katherine has the same problem, which is why her move of choice is to murder Elton to fight the Answering Tiger, instead of doing it the harder way for a MUCH larger gain.
Honestly, I’m beginning to think it’s not a coincidence that the Shadow Lords are the ones that fall for the Answering Tiger’s trickery so incredibly hard.
Your obvious counterpoint is mistaken. There are a great many number of rituals in Werewolf: The Apocalypse and while some do indeed strengthen the spiritual energy of a Caern; the most obvious one being the Opening Howl of a Moot where the gathered Garou give of their Gnosis in order to replenish the Caern’s own Gnosis (aka Spiritual Energy); not all of them do that. In fact, Garou can open the Caern and partake of its Gnosis in order to gain dice which does deplete the land’s spiritual energy. Presumably, that’s what the ritual to awaken Nin’s Wolf does. In which case, yeah, you are depleting your land’s Gnosis.
In fact, if you do it, you can see the results. Lighting strikes trees and burns them down as well as your house
Two points:
Unless I am forgetting some specific line where it is stated the Fenrir harnessed any energy, the impression I got was that their plan to burn down the barn was about physical matters, not spiritual ones. Nin Changed because she was pissed, not because it was a ritual.
Second, Fenris is an Incarna. He doesn’t care about whatever meager spiritual energy you might get from burning a bawn. That’s like feeding a T-Rex a baby mice, it’s nothing to the T-Rex.
That is a good point.
My reply to this point is to turn your very argument against you. Later on, you say that you can beat the Fenrir without the barn fire. Well, I can use that same argument by pointing out that you can kill every single Fenrir despite “strengthening their position by a large margin”.
So, guess it’s not that important.
Sucks. But you’re a Garou, the mission comes first.
Yes, this being a game, of course a choice you make in the first half of it couln’t mean you’d automatically lose. But the characters don’t know that. From their viewpoint, you’re still spending the land’s Gnosis for the sake of a barn.
It would be better if there were bigger consequences for both stopping the fire and letting it happen, that’s true.
If you stop it, all you mechanically lose is one point from each Renown (Glory, Honor, Wisdom). It’d be better if, perhaps, it’d take you much more effort to heal the land.
And, to be fair, letting the fire happen should also have consequences. The Fenrir should feel stronger.
If this were true, then no energy is involved, but Elton specifically tells you there is.
But not beating the Fenris Spirit wouldn’t mean you lost. It’d just cost you access to the woods (or, presumably, to whatever of the three zones you didn’t personally defend during the three-pronged attack).
If you go along with Katherine’s plan at the end, once Eater-of-Names is defeated (mine came down with an acute case of levinboltitis, courtesy of Elton), the shade of Katherine freezes time, hands you a knife, and goes “now shank Elton because he’s dead in the Tiger’s version of reality, and that’ll let us merge the two realities and then we can fight the Tiger, for real, on our own terms.” The Stormcat tells you this will, in fact, work, so I presume it does if you go for it.
Gnosis is spiritual energy. Tough it doesn’t appear in the mechanics of BoHN, lore-wise, that’s how it works. A Caern is a wellspring of Gnosis, spirits feed on it and spirits are necessary in order for the land to be healthy. The Garou contribute to the Gnosis within the Caern by taking part in monthly rituals but they also can extract Gnosis in order to help their fight.
Presumably, what’s going on in the ritual to awaken Nin’s Wolf, is that both the Garou and the land’s Gnosis is going into Nin in order to heal her, not the land. Hence, it wouldn’t strengthen the spirits.
Yes but also no. The act is a focus, a lens through which the energy moves but not the actual source of it. Like how during the Opening Howl, the energy doesn’t come from the act of Howling but from the gathered werewolves.
The energy during Nin’s ritual comes from you, Elton and the land.
In fact, you loose Renown doing it which pretty much corroborate what both or you are saying,
I think it was -1 wisdom and -1 to other one but I don’t remember if it was glory or honor, one is for the sacrifice and the other for using the Caern to fuel it.
The original rite don’t work like this at all, but is understable that the author changed it to do it more engaging (the fact that he made it work mechanically as it should is amazing too) or that he used a previous draft that wasn’t final or didn’t even exist when he was writting that part, as he said on the WoD twitch channel, he started writting the game he got only one page of setting building(later came more)
This is the original Rite as RAW in the book (rules as written)
Rite of the Wolf Reborn
Losing the Wolf can be catastrophic for a Garou in the
middle of a dangerous undertaking, especially if the
werewolf is unable to regain it from the moon. This Rite
allows a pack to channel their Rage into a packmate who
has Lost the Wolf (see p. 133), rousing it as if in the light
of Luna. Some young Garou irreverently refer to this
Rite as “Jumpstarting.”
Pool: Renown (Highest of target) + Leadership
System: This Rite must target a member of a pack who
has Lost the Wolf. Only members of the target’s pack
can participate, and the Difficulty is 3. The participants
must sacrifice a total of 3 Rage among them; if the Rite is
successful the target gains a single point of Rage, return-
ing their Wolf to them. On a regular failure, the Rage
returns to the participants, but a Brutal failure sacrifices
it, even though the Rite fails.
W5 corebook page 186
So before the recent updated i managed to score a date with Nin after i had met podge, melodie and her. The update reset my progress to before meeting them. After meeting everyone again, i didnt manage to get a invite to a date with Nin. Will i have to restart my progress to romance Nin?
There is spiritual energy whenever humans gather in larger numbers. But the Fenrir don’t seem to be using it for anything. Their reason for being there is to scares business owners.
Point is, when the characters make that choice, they can’t know the consequences either way. So, do you use your land’s scarce Resources for the sake of a barn and some humans?
Yes. You definitely should. You wanna know why? This might end up going long, but it basically boils down to “the Shadow Lords’ way hands the Answering Tiger half the win right off the bat”. Spoilers, obviously.
Me Probably Putting More Thought Into It Than I Should
So, after I destroyed the theuf- thof- tun- Not-Actually-a-Moth-Bane, Eater-of-Names goes to that barrow and gets something from there. And I literally went “sigh Garou can never score a full win, can they?”. And now I’m starting to wonder if that’s not the point. The Garou are trying to restore Gaia, and that’s not easy, nor cheap, nor fast, and you can’t shortcut your way to doing it, and “shortcutting your way to doing it” is the Shadow Lords’ MO.
Make others pay the price, say the Shadow Lords. And if you’re not the one paying the price, why should you care what it is, says the Answering Tiger.
The ends justify the means, so who cares about the means.
Only the destination matters, not the path, so why bother remembering the path.
Victory is what counts, so don’t bother remembering the war.
We’re here now, so who cares how we got here?
The goal is the only thing of import, and the goal is gained, bask in your victory and celebrate… forever.
The Broad Brook Caern leadership was half Silver Fangs and half Shadow Lords, and it was one of the Shadow Lords that almost handed the Tiger the full victory at the Battle of Graves. So you DON’T go the Shadow Lord way.
You put your back into it, not someone else’s. And so your back remembers, and if the back doesn’t remember carrying the weight all the way here, then maybe here is inside the Tiger.
And you learn what your back can carry, so if it seems that it carried far more than it should be able to, well, then, maybe the Tiger was doing some of that carrying and it didn’t carry you to where you thought it did.
You endure the Stormcat beaming her thoughts straight into your mind and learn to parse them from your own (and let me tell you, the first couple of encounters were a mindfuck), so when she opens her mouth and makes actual words, well, maybe it’s the OTHER feline talking.
YOU fight the battles so you remember them, and if you can’t quite remember them, well, maybe you didn’t fight them at all. We can’t always rely on Podge still having grenades as a a reminder.
If this is true, then letting the fire start and getting people potentially killed is an even WORSE move. You’re saving a bit of energy now at the expense of an energy source that you can use to make more energy, FOREVER, and most of the people at Hog Throne are already on your side to begin with.
The Hog Throne situation is something more akin to a short time gain vs a long time gain, let it burn give you a inmediete advantage, save it and it would be more beneficial in the future as it give you more than if you let it burn.
Is a fine choice, I lost it in the demo and save it in my finished playthrough and I would say, in my opinion, loosing it isn’t worth it, but to each their own.
I choosed the third option and was a really weird ending, I though it would be a bad ending or something and it wasn’t and that ending have very weird and specifics options for succeding, but you only need to read and being attentive at what you are told, there was nothing more to it.
It a hard to interpret ending, it succeded? I suppose it was, it’s a very glorious ending… kinda…for a Legacy fan as myself it’s really a dream come true lol.
I’m wondering about the other two or even if there are a four in the form of a bad ending in which the bad guys wins.
I got the ending with a fully rejuvenated, better-than-before caern, where the spirits of every Garou of the place going back thousand of years spread across the world, and help guide up-and-coming Garou and people whose goals align with the Garous’. Chains-the-Lie puts a Kindred on trial, which is a nice (not for the Kindred, it wasn’t) way of showing that he’s learnt from the mistake that was summarily executing Banicki. The list of crimes was long, but according to CtL himself, “we have plenty of time.”
Then I went for the book ending, which IIRC is the [Wisdom] one. I don’t know how much of the Eater-of-Names knowledge got out, and I can’t be everywhere to stop every Black Spiral douche (though you do get to murder another 11), so I’m putting out “and here’s how to stop this bad guy tactic” out there, expansively.
You went for “Riding the Tiger” too? sweet! this is an amazing ending, I though you’ve choosed one of the other two, This is such a weird ending, I though it would be the bad/worst ending and nope, happy to not be alone in this choosing.
