W20 - Changing Breeds.pdf

who dwelled there. Only a few other shapeshifters daredremain on the continent, carefully hidden from the pryingsenses of outsiders: the nomadic Pumonca, the isolatedQualmi, and the Rokea who could retreat to the safetyof Sea if the Garou came too near.Centuries passed, with the Fera steadfastly avoidingcontact with the Garou in the lands the Wolves heldclaim to. The werewolves assumed that those parts of theworld without wolf populations were the same, but theywere entirely wrong. The Mokolé, Balam, and Camazotzcontrolled the jungles of Central and South America,where the harsh terrain and verdant flora hid them fromthe Garou. On the Dark Continent, the Ajaba, Mokolé,EAST AND WESTOn the Eurasian landmass, the combinationof physical distance and increasingly disparatecultures drove the shapeshifters of Europeand East Asia apart to the point that entiregenerations in each did not know of the other’sexistence.While this separation kept the Garou Nationfrom razing the Middle Kingdom when it declaredwar on the rest of the Fera, the Beast Courts ofAsia suffered their own version of the War ofRage, known to those who endured it as the Warof Shame. It was not the Garou who were thevillains in this endeavor, however, but the WanXian — supernaturally empowered humans whohad been entrusted with the guardianship of therest of humanity. Through greed and treachery,the Wan Xian (who eventually became vampiricmonsters called Kuei-jin) set the Beast Courtsagainst each other, resulting in a tragedy asdevastating as that which the Garou inflictedon the western Changing Breeds.In time, however, the Beast Courtsdiscovered that the War of Shame was the resultof external manipulation. Their collective ragehelped to keep them from fragmenting, thoughnot before the War claimed the Okuma, theAsian Gurahl.Today, with the exception of the Kumo —the hengeyokai werespiders who turned to theservice of the Wyrm — eastern shapeshifterswork together in a synergy that their westerncousins have, sadly, failed to duplicate.and several breeds of Bastet likewise found sanctuary inthe lush savannah, buffered from Garou intrusion by thenorthern desert wastelands.For thousands of years after the War of Rage, differentgroups and Breeds of shapeshifters each had their ownlands and only the occasional brave (or foolish) travelerhad contact with shapeshifters in more than one region.Under the Garou’s shepherding, any human technologiesthat enabled people to travel further and faster had beensuppressed, so as to allow the werewolves tighter reinover their “wards”. But as the scales tipped in humanity’sfavor, the werewolves’ control faltered, and finally failed.During the Age of Exploration, human expansionfrom the Garou’s stronghold in Europe spread out to therest of the world. As humans migrated, some Garou soughtto make a home on other shores, far from the crampedpopulations of their homelands. Soon European shipsventured out to India, China, and the Americas, and afew Garou accompanied the human sailors.The Age of Exploration, and the following era ofcolonialism, brought new disaster for the ChangingBreeds. European werewolves fought those native toNorth America, but these battles were nothing comparedto the violence wreaked on the shapeshifters of SouthAmerica.Garou were often horrified when they uncovered Ferathey had long thought safely extinct. Many ChangingBreeds were part of cultures that the hide-bound andinsular European Garou found to be strange and terrible.After centuries of battling banes and Fomor in Europe,the Garou conquerors were quick to assume that anyshapeshifters they didn't understand must be allied withthe Wyrm. This attitude, and the brutal violence thatstemmed from it, launched the Garou into a new Warof Rage.Just as the native human populations of Centraland South America were devastated by early Europeanexpansion, so the Balam, Mokolé, and Camazotz paida harsh price when the werewolves discovered theirpresence there. The werejaguars and weresaurians sufferedunder the Garou’s onslaught, but were able to survive bywithdrawing deeper into the jungles and harsh terrainof the land they’d long made their home; the werebatswere not so fortunate. Spurred by the assumption thatthe Camazotz’ webbed wings and batlike features meantthey served the Wyrm, the Shadow Lords who travelledwith the Spanish Conquistadors took it upon themselvesto hunt down and slaughter the entire Breed.A century later, western Garou turned theirattentions to the Dark Continent, travelling withcolonists, explorers, and traders. They saw the ChangingBreeds they met there as primitive and were quick toCHAPTER ONE: THE CHANGING WORLD 25