The creation of boundary stones, or gudurru in the First Tongue, is often one of the first steps taken in claiming and reshaping a territory, usually before more elaborate rites, such as the Chosen Ground Rite. Uratha use this rite to mark their territory from the spirit world. Unlike the Chosen Ground Rite, it does not directly influence the resonance of the Shadow Realm, it merely acts as a spiritual signpost — hopefully warning off interlopers. Of course, announcing the pack’s presence often has unintended circumstances — only tribes secure in their abilities perform the Rite of the Boundary Stone.
This rite must be performed on the spiritual reflection of an object in the Shadow. Traditionally, this was done on large stones, tumuli or even the reflections of human boundary stones. Nowadays, the inscriptions may be done on trees, street signs, abandoned cars, etc.
To be completely effective, the rite must be performed four times — once for each cardinal direction. Distance and absolute location have little meaning in the Shadow, so it is quite possible that two separate Uratha traveling into a pack’s territory from the North would see the same northern gudurru at the same time, even though they cannot see one another.
While created with Uratha in mind, a boundary marker may be seen by any creature with an Essence trait traveling in the spirit world. A creature without knowledge of the First Tongue has little chance of interpreting it as much more than “some kind of mystic warning” (standard action to identify, Intelligence + Occult, -4 difficulty).
Performing the Rite
The ritemaster travels in the Shadow Realm to one of the cardinal directions along the boundary of the pack’s territory and finds a suitable object to inscribe — one with a strong reflection, but one without an awakened spirit. The ritemaster then performs a long series of howls announcing the tribe’s claim on the territory, and the direction identified by the gudurru. At the culmination of the ritual, the ritemaster inscribes the tribe’s claim in sigils on the object with pigments made from a mixture of all the pack members’ blood and urine.
