Metal scraps bang on fire escapes and empty trashcans, beating out a rhythm that pulses with the beat of a werewolf’s heart. Trash fires burn, casting the city in living, yellow light. For many humans, their walls and buildings are their refuge, a place that they retreat to for safety. But to an Uratha who knows these Gifts, the spirit of the City is an ally in the hunt. Building- and road-spirits teach these Gifts, as do the spirits of urban animals.
Gift Levels
• City Eyes
Windows are the eyes of a city, everything recorded by the spirits in the panes of glass. For an urban hunter, this extra perspective can help her track prey or be aware of danger. The Uratha using this Gift places her hand to one window of the building and communes with the building’s spirit to see everything its eyes can with perfect clarity.
•• Word on the Street
People may come and go, but a city street never forgets. From the moment people fixed the idea of the road into place, the spirit of the road has remembered everything that transpires upon it. Great speeches, uprisings, murders — the street knows it all until the day people tear it up, and nobody remembers it any more. The werewolf using this Gift touches the blacktop lightly and allows his Essence to flow through to the spirit of the road. The werewolf may delve into the road’s “memory” in such a fashion.
••• Gridlock
Uratha are the master hunters of the city as well as the wilderness, and this Gift helps demonstrate that fact to their prey. The werewolf reaches out into the spirit of his city and breaks the lines of escape around his prey. Busses never arrive. Traffic is jammed solid. Subway trains do not stop at any platform the target waits at. Rubble and trash snare the prey’s feet, if a crowd doesn’t form to block his way through. The werewolf must know roughly where his prey is and must be in the same city for this Gift to work. This Gift can be used only in an urban environment.
•••• City Running
The city arranges things between the werewolf and his destination to ensure a direct path that is much faster than walking. Fire escapes drop at just the right time for the werewolf to grab, buildings seem to lean closer to catch him when he may fall short and balconies are just where he needs them to be for a perfect landing. A werewolf with this Gift is the fastest predator in any city, capable of outpacing cars and trains, but must run over roofs and leap between buildings.
••••• Urban Chaos
Humans may have built the first cities, but all have spiritual reflections apart from their creators. The spirit of a city can exist without the people crammed into it, and sometimes it is actively displeased with the humans who cram its streets and foul its alleyways. This Gift allows an Uratha to direct the anger of a suddenly very active city against its population. Fire hydrants explode like cannon shells, streetlights over-charge and ground out through people and windows shatter, raining razor shards of glass as the city seeks to reclaim its streets.
