Pentex: New Subsidiaries
Hello!
Partly, I want to focus on the Wellness industry because there are instances where it already seems a bit... weird, but also because health is one of humanity's underlying interests and it would be more surprising if Pentex wasn't involved in that area of life. In addition, it seems to me that there's been a big push towards alternative health remedies in recent decades as fears of "Big Pharma" and "Big Farmer" have grown to almost rival the traditional paranoia around the military-industrial complex. In 2025, it feels almost as if the conspiracy theorists have won, and that the rest of us have entered Bizarro World.
The other inspiration for this piece came from watching a video on the Grumpy Old Crone channel of YouTube where Annie, the presenter, talked about spell box subscription services. It struck me that there was no way to know the provenance of the items that the subscriber might receive in such a box. Again, this seemed like the sort of thing that fitted Werewolf, with its focus on spiritual life as well as environmental matters.
With that in mind, I started thinking about how these themes might appear in a game of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. I'll format this as a public image followed by some "dirt" - i.e. what's really going on, and then throw in a couple of plot hooks. These subsidiaries embrace the world of alternative health, wellness, and spirituality.
Brigid's Pantry
On the surface Brigid's Pantry is a chain of health food shops, selling everything needed to live a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. The stores exude a natural aesthetic, with earth tones and abundant natural materials. There’s no plastic packaging—only paper bags and glass containers. Shoppers fill their own bags, and staff weigh the purchases before checkout. The shops even smell earthy and organic.
Brigid's Pantry's first shops was on the King's Road in London, but they swiftly spread across the UK and Europe, selling environmentally friendly, sustainably resourced food and branching out into aromatherapy. This trend continued through the 1980s, but it was in the early 1990s that the brand really took off. It's also at this point, that things began to change. The company gained a truly global reach thanks to venture capitalism - but the brokerage firm that helped with this happened to be connected to Pentex, and Brigid's Pantry soon attracted Pentex's attention and received offers of friendly assistance.
For the rest of the 1990s the company grew exponentially, and with various forms of 'help' from their new friends, Brigid's Pantry began to dominate its market. At the same time they were encouraged to start sourcing their products from the Global South, and then to start using chemicals to ensure bad harvests didn't affect their profits. By now, only O'Brien remained of the founders, and her influence had been severely curtailed. It's still not clear why she hasn't stepped down, or why Pentex hasn't simply got rid of her, but it appears her involvement in the company has become almost entirely cosmetic and she has very little influence over her company.
The real power rests with Liam Fitzpatrick, an aggressive and ambitious man who's only interested in how much money the company makes. Under Fitzpatrick's influence Brigid's Pantry has become a true global brand, complete with celebrity endorsements. He has surrounded himself with yes-men referred to as 'the Pack' who do whatever he says, but is far more focused on where he might go next. Fully aware of Pentex's true nature, he aspires to climb the ranks by fulfilling all aspects of his role at Brigid's Pantry, both financial and spiritual.
His cadre of yes-men is uniformly male, and Fitzpatrick is often openly sexist towards female employees. Worse, he encourages his closest allies to adopt the same attitudes and the current board's meetings are often dominated by 'locker room talk', even when Maeve is present and its common for O'Tolley's food to be provided for working lunches. Since the formation of his 'Pack' few women have been employed in senior positions at the company.
Nobody is entirely sure how Fitzpatrick has come to shape the company so quickly, as he's only been in post for eighteen months. Many people believe that he's being groomed by someone for another role and Brigid's Pantry is a place for him to prove himself, while others think he must have blackmail material on other senior figures that makes them acquiesce to his wishes. In truth, he was Wyrm-tainted from early exposure as a child and though it's subtle, he's used his Fomor abilities to get his own way.
Company literature coming out of the corporation's headquarters in London stresses how natural its products are, lavishly using buzzwords like 'organic,' 'pure,' and 'ethically sourced' while offering specialized diet plans for every need. The relationship between Brigid's Pantry and farmers, many of whom are from the Global South, and how shopping at the Pantry pays for wells, schools, and other improvements. Glossy photos show celebrities from all over the world with indigenous people, celebrating the opening of new developments apparently paid for by Brigid's Pantry's philanthropy.
The reality is somewhat different. Far from growing its food organically, the company sources most of its products from the cheapest supplier possible, buys off officials to get them to ignore small infractions and is involved in lobbying to loosen labour laws in many countries. Many of the communities it 'sponsors' remain locked in poverty because Brigid’s Pantry’s negotiators drive prices to starvation levels. To be 'Brigid’s Pantry Approved,' farmers must use company-mandated chemicals—many of which are quietly banned in Western nations. This leads their products to be uniformly attractive, but also deeply Wyrm tainted.
What ingredients and products it doesn't source this way, often come from other Wyrm-tainted sites, both spiritually and physically. These may come from battlefields, polluted sites, or places of quiet, but deeply intense horror. Often the company makes a show of 'cleansing' such sites to rehabilitate them, but the process actually makes things far worse. Consequently, there's something addictive about these ingredients and consumers often find themselves coming back to them even as they struggle to understand why. Consumers also report feeling worse after consuming these goods, but the company always puts the blame back on them, asking if they followed the recipes and diets correctly or suggesting that some other moral failing might be responsible. If pressed company representatives fall back on it being 'natural' or 'healing' to justify the side effects of their products.
Plot Seeds
Wyrm-Infused Products: A series of strange occurrences begin happening to people who use Brigid’s Pantry’s products—a rash of unexplained illnesses, vivid nightmares, or violent behaviour. The PCs could investigate whether the company’s offerings are somehow altering the minds or spirits of its users, and how to stop it before it spreads further.
The Dying Farmers: A group of farmers in the Global South who supply Brigid’s Pantry products have begun mysteriously dying or falling ill at alarming rates. The PCs might be alerted by an NGO or investigative journalist to uncover the cause, only to find that Brigid’s Pantry is secretly poisoning the land with Wyrm-tainted chemicals.
Strange Cargo: The PCs could stumble upon a shipment of rare herbs or spices used by Brigid’s Pantry, discovering that the source is a caern or sacred ground that’s been desecrated. A team might be sent to cleanse it before the taint spreads further.
Tincture and Ore
Founded in 1894 by two brothers, Sam and Daniel Schmidt, Tincture and Ore specialises in mineral salts, selling its products all over the world. The company grew swiftly, selling their products with claims of improving circulation, detoxify the body and increase longevity. This led to healthy products and an expansion into cosmetics and spa treatments in the early 20th Century, as well as contracts with luxury bathhouses and sanitoriums. It wasn't all plain sailing, however, as experimental concoctions with radium and other ingredients not known to be toxic at the time, led to a number of quiet scandals which Tincture and Ore settled out of court.
During the World Wars, the company diversified, providing minerals for industry in the form of salts for metal treatment, water purification, and even military applications. In the period between the wars, the company cut back on the industrial aspect, seeking to maintain its focus on health, but was forced back into the industrial arena after the 1929 Stock Market crash. During the 1930s the company struggled to survive, but working internationally - particularly in Germany and Italy - allowed it to re-establish a stable financial footing. Surviving the Second World War - having helped both sides - Tincture and Ore continued to grow through the 1950s and 60s, as a middle of the road corporation that did very little to attract attention. They came to the attention of Pentex because of their supply chains, consumer trust and the deeper potential of chemically active salts in pharmaceuticals, wellness trends, and environmental manipulation in the early 1970s and by 1973, had been purchased in an extremely hostile takeover.
As far as the majority of people know, this is what Tincture and Ore is. They see the health focused business as the entirety of what the corporation does, while the rest of its operations largely fly under the radar. The company prefers to keep things this way and employs influencers to keep the wellness elements of their brand firmly in the public eye. The company's Marketing department prefers to focus on real people instead of employing famous people or even models to show how the products provide an instant 'glow up' - even if the vast majority of their influencers happen to be young, pretty, white women.
Alongside this Tincture and Ore runs two other divisions. First, the Industrial and Pharmaceutical Division focuses on salts for fertilisers, industrial processing, and even medical procedures. Much of its business is done with other Pentex subsidiaries, though it's unclear how much Tincture and Ore is aware of this, even at the highest levels.
The final Division, referred to simply as Research, Development, and Acquisition or RDA, is perhaps the most sinister. While on the surface it does exactly what the name suggests with agents looking for new sites to exploit and laboratories working on new uses for the mineral salts, underneath it's far more sinister. The true purpose of the Division is to experiment with chemical mixes that distil Wrym tainted minerals into powerful mutagens, mind-altering compounds, and potentially even Fomor breeding salts.
The corporation's products are all subtly tainted, however. Long-term use of their wellness and beauty lines leads to physical fatigue, paranoia, and increased emotional volatility, making customers more susceptible to Pentex-aligned influences. Its wellness centres often double as recruitment centres for Pentex, and its not uncommon for the centres to run company wellness retreats for executives to make headhunting new executives easier, and to spread the Wyrm's influence to other parts of the corporate world.
The industrial side of the company is horrifying. Tincture and Ore pays for good PR to cover up how much it destroys to access its mineral salts; displacing people, ignoring endangered species (if not outright exterminating them before mining begins), and poisoning both water and ground. Each mining operation has a strict target and failing to meet that results in rounds of inspections and censure from higher up in the corporation. Workers are expected to live in small company towns close to their work, where the only available food and shelter is provided by Tincture and Ore. These workers are provided Wyrm-tainted food, toiletries, and entertainment, and mental health problems are common among them. Long term exposure transforms the workers into something less than human, and the company works to keep them out of sight.
As if this wasn't bad enough, when a new site is found, or one becomes too costly to maintain, Tincture and Ore simply packs up and leaves - abandoning the company towns it's built. It's not uncommon for packs investigating the company to find empty towns marked by signs of struggle but no bodies. The workers from these sites are simply never seen again, however, and their fate remains unknown. In the past the company has shown a strong preference for finding and exploiting lost caern sites, intending to deny them to the Garou by polluting the ground so much the caern cannot be saved.
Story Seeds
Bitter Waters: A natural spring sacred to the Black Furies has been diverted by a Tincture and Ore mining operation, poisoning the local environment. The Garou must stop them before it becomes a full-scale ecological disaster.
Consumer Horror: A wellness influencer has been pushing Tincture and Ore’s detox products. Recently, her followers have started reporting hallucinations, increased aggression, and vivid nightmares. Could they be unwittingly summoning something?
Forbidden Alchemy: A rogue scientist from Tincture and Ore has fled with a notebook full of formulas—some of which might be useful to the Garou, but others are horrific. Both Pentex and supernatural entities are after them.
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| Photo by NASA on Unsplash |
Star Gnosis Books
Based out of Salem, Massachusetts, Star Gnosis Books was founded in the early 1990s by a figure known only as Phoenix, a witch and feminist who wished to publish books specifically to support women's spiritual growth through a lens of Paganism, Witchcraft and the New Age. They provide spell books - which range from 'Mini-Mantras' to fit into the handbag, through normal size books, all the way to immense tomes which the company claims are authentic books of witchcraft and wisdom from the Medieval period. In 2020, as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Moon Wisdom moved into spell boxes, providing a subscription service for people all over the world. At the same time they started offering items like athames, crystals, and other products such as pagan meditation MP3s via their online store. Now in her 60s, but appearing much younger, Phoenix started running online conferences and 'cyber-covens', giving her own spiritual guidance for a moderate fee.
Through her public appearance, Phoenix has inspired many women to fully embrace her teachings, many of them leaving their jobs and families in order to study with her. They gather in 'Sister Houses' across the country, and many become contributors to Star Gnosis' business, running retreats, attending book fairs, and pagan events in order recruit more devotees.
Much of their content - and their social media - focuses on 'Love and Light', embracing the positive, and projects an aesthetic of ethereal beauty. Their marketing shows perfectly organised altars, beautiful collections of crystals and other items - all of which adherents can buy through the online shop. This is balanced by breath-taking images of the planet usually accompanied by inspiring catchphrases about how wonderful 'the Goddess' is and how lucky humans are to have 'a big sister' or 'mother' who cares for them. In the same way there's no mention of Shadow Work in Star Gnosis materials, there's also no mention of the way capitalism and consumerism impact the physical planet.
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| Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash |
Behind the scenes, Star Gnosis is a toxic environment. Phoenix—real name Martha Dobbs—may believe her own dogma, but she rules through emotional manipulation and veiled cruelty. She believes women are superior to men and that the world will only be saved when matriarchy takes the place of the current system. Her work acts to promote this, usually under the umbrella of 'empowerment'. The men she employs are browbeaten and bullied into submission, even as they work to produce products for the company and the idea that they might be harmed by such treatment is laughed off. Many of the staff at the Salem office are interns, unpaid but labouring for 'spiritual exposure', only going onto earn actual wages if they prove themselves 'worthy'.
In addition, the contents of the spell boxes are Wyrm tainted, the crystals blasted out of the ground by dynamite, the incense mixes grown in hot houses and diluted with chemicals and artificial scents. These spell box ingredients slowly eat away at their user's psyches, laying the ground for Bane possession when their owner is ready to "embrace their angel". Other products are similarly sourced from unethical businesses. Most of the spells in her products are designed to either sabotage the caster, or simply don't work. The appeals to Medieval authenticity are universally fake, as is the supposed 'Golden Age' of Womyn's Wisdom to which Phoenix regularly appeals.
Phoenix lives north of the city, in a luxury eco-home even as she urges her followers and customers to live a life of simplicity for spiritual clarity. This home is centred upon her worship of Ishtar, though in reality her spiritual guide is a Bane spirit that's been manipulating her to stir up hate since the time she founded Star Gnosis.
Plot Seeds
The Spell Box Plague: Several Star Gnosis spell boxes have ended up in the hands of teen witches across the country. The result? A rash of sudden possessions, mental breaks, and eerie hauntings. The pack is tasked with tracking down these cursed objects and dealing with the fallout. One teenage girl, Ava Monroe, has become a beacon for Banes, her soul slowly unravelling as she uses the “sisterhood’s gifts.”
The Fake Goddess Rises: Star Gnosis has announced a once-in-a-lifetime event: a global ritual to awaken the “Great Mother”, their supposed Celestial Guide. Thousands of women—many of them witches, pagans, and new-age seekers—are gathering for an in-person and online ceremony.
Black Fury Hook – Sisterhood or Slavery? A young Black Fury Kinfolk named Leah Cross has been lured into Star Gnosis’ inner circle, drawn by their message of female empowerment. She was always a fierce feminist, but since joining, her behavior has changed—she’s more aggressive, more cutthroat, and disturbingly loyal to Phoenix. The real problem? Leah has recently undergone the First Change... but instead of seeking a pack, she now believes she is destined to be the Matriarch of a New World.
As we’ve seen with Brigid’s Pantry and its subsidiaries, even the most well-meaning enterprises can be slowly twisted by the shadow of the Wyrm. What begins as an attempt to help, heal, or provide can become something far darker when tainted by greed, exploitation, and the desire for power. The companies we trust to provide us with ‘pure’ and ‘natural’ products are often far from the wholesome image they promote. In the world of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, the real horror lies not just in the battles against the Wyrm itself, but in how it finds its way into the everyday aspects of life—whether it’s in the products we consume, the businesses we support, or the systems we rely on.
As players and Storytellers, it’s important to remember that the most dangerous forces don’t always come in the form of monstrous creatures or horrific curses—they often wear the guise of success and prosperity, convincing us to turn a blind eye to the cost. In your games, look for the subtle ways the Wyrm might have infiltrated the companies, the systems, and even the ideals that your characters hold dear. Because when the ‘good’ guys are tainted, that’s when the real fight begins.
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