| “Hmmm.
Someone appears to have fired a bullet through
this one… or maybe, more reasonably,
they drilled it before shipping”
- Anyone who has seen the book.
Pretty weird, huh? The first thing that I
noticed about this book was the weird ‘bullet’
hole through it, and it’s worn out wooden
look. So, what is it? Werewolf: The Apocalypse
in the Wild West? Vampires get the Dark Ages
and Werewolves get Spaghetti Western? Well
in a word, yes. But there’s a little
more to it than that.
Werewolf: The Wild West is another setting
for Werewolf: The Apocalypse, a game in which
werewolves are not the monsters of legend
and film, but a race of shape changers committed
to saving the Earth from the ravages of a
spiritual force called the Wyrm. This Wyrm
has zillions of servitors and lesser spirits
fighting on its side. Gaia, the Earth-Mother,
has only the werewolves, or as they call themselves
- Garou.
Think of the Wild Wild West movie with a
Werewolf twist. You get all the excitement
you saw in the movie and if you thought that
was good (or a good idea anyway), then you’ll
think this is great! Imagine a greedy Shadow
Lord cattle baron. Imagine a sturdy Fianna
Cowboy. Imagine a demented Bone Gnawer gold-digger.
Or a tribe of Indians aided by a pack of fearsome
Wendigo, who could literally blow San Francisco
out of existence in a night of Rage.
And… of course, the Iron Riders. The
first thing I had to check when I bought the
book was if my favourite tribe (the Glass
Walkers) from the original Werewolf game actually
existed. And they sure did, only under a different
name. The Iron Riders brought the dubious
progress into the west, the railroads and
telegraphs, the Pony Express and the stagecoaches.
Then you have the other supernatural elements.
The satanic Sabbat (a.k.a. the Black Sabbath
and possibly a tribute by White Wolf to the
great British metal-band) roams the southern
states and infests Mexico like flies and worms
on a rotten corpse. The early technomancers
play their games of utopian machines (again,
remember Wild Wild West, and imagine it had
been done well). Also, the Dreamspeaker shamans
aid the Indian resistance, in the face of
the cyclopean opposition. The enigmatic Nunnehi
Faeries roam the still glamorous parts of
the west. And the ghosts… don’t
get me started…
As with all ‘creature: the evocative
noun’ White Wolf games, Werewolf is
set in the World of Darkness, a world that
resembles our own and its history very closely,
yet is darker, and tainted by the presence
of supernatural creatures that consider humans
mere cattle or mating folk. This game in particular
deals with a darker history of America, and
how the West was lost.
Garou, who are supposed to be brethren, spill
the blood of each other, instead of slaying
the viscous Wyrmspawn. The Fera or Bête
(different shape-changers; were-felines for
example) also stood their ground against the
Wyrm, but were powerless, against the fierce
werewolves and their manic blood-spilling
Rage.
Now, the Garou Werewolves fight a losing
war, where they have killed their only allies,
and turned the remaining into unforgiving
enemies. Gaia’s chosen also fight among
themselves. At leas two of the tribes support
the Native American cause, while two of the
other tribes support the ‘white-man’.
Then you have the Wyrm, and its servitor.
One of them is the Storm-Eater, a powerful
Wyrm spirit released by the arrival of the
Europeans to the ‘pure lands’.
This spirit is the Garou’s major enemy
in this setting, and it’s never mentioned
later because the tribes want to forget the
shameful past and what they did at the time.
Another foe the Garou face in the “Wyld
West” is the Enlightened Society of
the Weeping Moon, a philanthropically minded
group that resembles a Free-Masonic Lodge
but is backed by the Wyrm. This group does
a lot of good for humanity, but they also
do everything they can to further the Wyrm’s
cause, they also mysteriously disappear after
the period.
So, what should your character do? He’s
got plenty of enemies and very few allies.
Well for a start, he has heaps of lead to
use in the form of tiny metal slugs on the
bodies of his enemies. Then, there are some
cool new gifts and Rites, some of which were
lost forever after the period. And, as always,
there is Rage (raw werewolf anger to drive
them on). As in the present, the Garou of
the West have a difficult battle ahead of
them, and they are at risk of losing their
lives at any moment.
So, if you want to brave the moonless nights
of the west, armed with a six-gun and a claw
that can rip through a locomotive, if you
want to toss your coin against destiny and
fate, recklessly jumping into deadly fire-fights,
and kill larger-than-life enemies, who seem
to be just piling up at an exponential rate,
then this is your kind of game. Good luck
and be sure to take a lot of Wyrmspawn with
you before they make you bite the Mojave Desert
dust…
Reviewed by Matías Timm
|
