***WARNING! Werewolf: The Apocalypse Neepery Incoming!****
A while back, I saw a post where someone mentioned their first encounter with White Wolf RPGs, specifically Vampire: The Masquerade and it’s LARP adaptation. The person (and if it’s you and you read this, let me know!) saw a friend with a bandage over their neck and a bad bruise. When she asked, her friend said “We were playing Vampire and got a little too into it.”
Now, I’m a dead-center GenX kid. Born in the 70’s, raised in the 80’s, came of age in the 90’s. White Wolf books were my RPG jam. The whole idea that they emphasized the setting, the atmosphere, and the characters over accounting hit me in my writerly feels. I cut my teeth in the 80’s on Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu RPG. But that just made me hungry for more like the WoD books.
My vampire clans? Honestly, Malkavian and Setites. Did I mention I was a huge Ancient Egypt fan as a kid? Also, Malkavian is the only Clan where “We will duel with chainsaws, as our ancient ancestors did” is not a joke.
And my response to the vampire player? Would have been, “Yeah, I understand. My friends and I got together and destroyed an oil pipeline under construction last weekend. Way overdid it in the game.” After the stares, I’d say, “We were playing Werewolf.”
Werewolf was my game. I loved that it believed in something. I loved it was cosmic – wolves against Cthulhu. I loved it was spiritual. And I loved that it let me howl to my heart’s content. My tribes? Silent Striders (again with the Ancient Egypt!) and GlassWalkers.
Yeah. GlassWalkers. No, I know. When most folks think about GlassWalkers, they think about this from first ed:
“You bring joy to this old Italian stereotype’s heart!” That or folks who wanted to be running downtown in Crinos carrying mini-guns. GlassWalkers was the ‘default easy mode’ for folks who couldn’t handle other clans. They wanted to play themselves but with powers and teeth.
Me, I thought of GlassWalkers like this:
Note: She is sensibly shedding her heels before tearing some “l33t” douchenozzel a new one. Those are expensive shoes and deserve better than unwashed creep blood. Also, it’s amazing Ron Spencer art. There’s an aesthetic in the old B&W that’s still hard to beat. But it’s a good summary of the Tribe to me. “We haven’t lost our Rage. We’ve adapted it. We’re trying to be precise and effective when we strike.”
Now, most folks didn’t play them that way. And I understand. But for me, best examples of GlassWalkers at work lived in two places. First, Burn Notice, which inspired my favorite GlassWalker Ragabash, Cyrus. He wasn’t a funny Ragabash. He was a spy. And an assassin. His Litany included the Moscow rules. With his pack, Section 9, he was dangerous. My favorite Cyrus memory involves his pack retrieving an Uktena artifact from a Toreador collector. Thanks to actual intelligence gathering, and a little spiritual hacking via Gifts, we learned where the object was held – and where the Toreador was staying.
High noon. My pack posed as gardeners, went up to the nice house, and knocked on the door. When the Ghoul was surprised the landscapers had shown up on the wrong day, Cyrus put two bullets into his skull with his favorite suppressed gun. He and his pack proceeded to horrify the GM by sweeping and clearing the house, killing everyone there, retrieving the artifact, then stealing everyone’s identity papers and credit cards before having our Theurge summon spiritual cleaners to remove the evidence.
GM: “Some of those people were just humans! They weren’t all Ghouls! The Toreador’s going to lose Humanity when she finds out.”
Cyrus: “They stopped being civilians when they started sleeping with vampires. Now, we’ve culled his heard, we can drain their bank accounts, use their ID’s for our operatives and get the artifact back. Don’t get in the war if you’re afraid of casualties.”
He was a professional. This was a war. He was willing to do whatever it takes to fight the real enemy, up to and including using other supernatural races as fodder. “We’re saving the world. Show some professionalism.”
But – for me – the definitive model for a modern GlassWalker was this show:
If there was ever a GlassWalker pack, it was this cast. Finch was a Waxing Crescent GW Theurge if there ever was one. Root – Waining Crescent. Reese was an Ahroun. Shaw was a Ragabash who wanted to be an Ahroun. Joss was a straight-up Philodox. And Fusco? Galliard. Seriously! He gave everyone nicknames and had stories for everything. Best liar of the bunch. I dare you to watch the show and not see a GlassWalker pack at work.
Do I miss Werewolf? Yes. I don’t miss the frustration of dealing with folks (at LARPs or otherwise) who took all the wrong lessons or believed the historical aspects (cringeworthy even today) were gospel. But that’s the way it is. Still, I have good memories. And I will always have the look of worry when the phrase “Section 9 will deal with it.”
Why Section 9? Hit the Google, cub. If you can’t research, you’re gonna have a rough time in the city.
Biomechanoid Blues 