Werewolf: A Lonely Place Connected To Everywhere

 Welcome or welcome back to the blog. It's Sunday, which means we're talking about Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Today we're specifically going to discuss street level horror. 

The streets are where many World of Darkness games hold their own and there's a strong attraction to keeping games down on that level, where things feel raw and visceral. For Werewolf, this puts your characters at the metaphorical coal face of horror, with gangs, crime, deprivation, and squalor. It's something the noir atmosphere the game evokes fits really strongly and points to the small things in life being significant. The dirty streets, the corruption and the grind permeate the setting. In the same way that classic noir often focuses on the division between the boardroom and the streets, there's a systemic element to this horror, neglect and callousness that flows from the top of the skyscraper down onto the streets. Corruption, physical and spiritual, follows that, infecting the streets even more. 

This corruption is living, breathing horror, tapping into actions that feed into Werewolf's themes really well.  It can also manifest in many ways, including violence against women, the homeless, animals, and minorities. It can appear as drugs, the sex trade, and as gang violence backed by young people with nothing else to do. We can see it in the faces of street kids abandoned by their parents or driven out because they weren't accepted by their families. The streets are where everything unwanted ends up, flushed out of the false security to end up in the gutter. The street is a place of danger, corruption, and rage—where the Wyrm festers, and where the Garou must decide if they are warriors, protectors, or simply part of the cycle of violence. 

Violence is easy, of course and werewolves are good at it. There’s always a danger that violence can be seen as the only solution to problems. The truth is, violence may solve things in the short term, but it rarely offers long-term solutions. This leaves the Garou in a difficult position—one where they can’t simply defeat an immediate threat and walk away with a clear conscience. Of course, many packs probably do, because that’s how people often think—deal with the problem right in front of them and ignore the deeper issues feeding it. But the deeper questions linger: Can the pack even see those unseen forces pulling the strings? And even if they do, will they have the courage to confront them? In the middle of violence, the Garou's senses are assaulted with a torrent of sensory input—each scream, each gunshot, each crackle of static from a nearby radio feels magnified. The city's decay seeps into their minds as much as their bodies, pushing them closer to the edge of losing control.

Appealing To The Senses

Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash

How do we, as Storytellers, bring this to life? I think the key is the environment itself, focusing on the urban decay, the constant noise, the perpetual presence of other beings and how they affect the Garou. Even the way the air smells and tastes of petrol, food, perfume and people - which must surely nag at the senses, particularly in Hispo or Lupus form. The grinding grey and muted greens, unnatural shades of colour and patchy neon play havoc on a werewolf's senses too, with nothing natural or beautiful in sight (for extra fun you can have the neon signs flashing or do it so some of the letters are broken, perhaps even creating a coded message, like the bingo signs in China Mieville's short story Looking for Jake). The perpetual murmur of voices, either from actual humans or from machines like radios, nags at the senses too. 

It's only as I write this that I realise how overwhelming cities must be for the Garou. No wonder Rage runs so high among them - the experience must be torture (it's bad enough for the mundane animals we have living alongside us in the real world). 

Focusing on these sense based elements grounds the street as an environment, making it real for your players. We haven't all experienced what a Lovecraftian style creature from beyond the imagination of humanity is like, but we've all had horrible experiences walking down streets. We've all found them overwhelming or disgusting, and we've all been scared by what we've encountered. That feeling of someone following you puts you on edge, the way people look at you as you pass, or try to interact in a way that just feels "off". It's part of the human experience, unfortunately. 

Faces On The Street

Once you've established the scene this way, you can start to fill in the rest of the details, populating your streets with characters, perhaps making them denizens of an unofficial grotesquery. Poor, unloved, bereft of hope, their faces have become prematurely aged and they look worn out by life. You could even consider how Banes and Fomori might slot into this aspect of the world. It feels as if the dehumanising conditions might persuade people to accept bargains they come to regret later on, something that may apply to their work as well - the fry cook at your local O'Tolley's doesn't want to be there and it never pays enough, that's why she has a side hustle selling Eden's Blessing Essential Oils after work. She drinks cheap King Breweries beer because its all she can afford, while her brother tries to drown out his nihilistic feelings by pretending to be a shape changer in Black Dog Game Factories' roleplaying games. 

Photo by SwapnIl Dwivedi on Unsplash

One of her neighbours works as a security guard at Tincture and Ore and is considering taking a new job at one of their facilities even though it's eight hours away and he'd have to live on site. He has a wife and baby and the money he's bringing in just isn't enough to make ends meet. They live pay cheque to pay cheque, scraping by as best they can, but he knows the family will fall apart if he can't start bringing in more money. If this promotion doesn't come through, he'll have to take a second job or start looking for other opportunities. 

Another neighbour thought she found a community in Bright Radiance's forums, but she's having second thoughts. The practices aren't working, she doesn't feel any better about herself and despite her gains in health, doubts nag at her mind. When she tries to express her fears in the company's online chats it all gets turned around, and she becomes the problem. She's shamed into silence, but even when she's reduced to tears she's too scared to break links. That would be weakness, that would be admitting she can't cut it and she's not worthy of the spiritual gifts Bright Radiance promises. And as hard as she is on herself, her peers are harder. 

This is a lonely world, made terrifying through how helpless its inhabitants are. The gulf between them and the people who live in penthouse apartments is as big, and as significant, as the one between them and the Garou themselves. It's also more insurmountable. That fry cook might be a Lost Cub, or Kinfolk, but she'll never be rich. I feel that this inhumanity is the true source of street level horror. 

Forever Strangers

How do the Garou fit into this world? For many of them, it's an alien world—divorced from the Septs they dwell in. The Bone Gnawers, Children of Gaia, and Black Furies might have strong presences here, but everyone else is just passing through. They may see the people living on the streets as more of a problem than as victims of inhumane systems, something to be fixed or ignored. Even the Garou who try to help may struggle with their roles—do they fight against the Wyrm or against the systems that create these conditions in the first place?

Perhaps the pack encounters a street kid begging for help. A Black Fury might look on with a sense of kinship, but also a cold recognition that this child will probably never be able to truly leave the cycle of abuse and neglect. A Children of Gaia might feel sorrow, a deep empathy for the young victim, but also frustration—wondering how to combat the deep-seated apathy of the world around them. Meanwhile, a Silver Fang might only see a failure of the family unit, dismissing the child with barely a glance. The tension of these brief moments—whether it's pity, disgust, or indifference—reminds them of the impossible gap between their world and the world of the streets, the one they were never meant to fully inhabit.

In the end, the Garou must decide: How much do they commit to truly fighting the Wyrm "wherever it dwells and whenever it breeds" as the Litany teaches, and how much are they willing to accept that the very system they fight against is the one that keeps people like this child—like so many others—ensnared? It’s not just about smashing monsters. It’s about questioning the roots of that monster, the ones that thrive in the dark corners of the world.

 Next week, we'll be back on the streets and I'll try to create some horrible monsters for PCs to battle.