Only a spirit can grant a Gift. That’s one of the rules of the world, one of the inviolate laws laid down by Father Wolf before the Sundering. This rite exploits a tiny loophole in that law, allowing the ritemaster to transfer a Gift between werewolves. The ritual is not a pleasant experience for either party. The ritemaster rips the Gift’s Essence-mark from the other werewolf and grafts it to his own Essence. This process is extremely painful for both participants. The ritualist may also give Gifts she knows to another werewolf in a similar fashion. In either case, both werewolves are left dazed. The recipient is flooded with knowledge and feelings that she was unprepared for, and must learn how to use her new Gift the hard way. The werewolf who loses a Gift has a hole ripped in his Essence, and must come to terms with having lost the blessing of a spirit.
No one knows the origin of this rite; the People and the Pure Tribes both consider it going against the way of the world. A few werewolves know the rite at any one time, but none of them advertises the fact and they will only teach it to others whom they are sure they can trust. All too often, a werewolf who knows the rite grows careless, and any Uratha who hear of him join in the hunt.
Performing the Rite
The rite must take place during the new moon, when Mother Luna’s face is most hidden from the world and the Shadow Realm is infected with her madness. The ritemaster must complete the rite in the open air before the sun rises, as any sunlight touching the ritual site will cause it to fail. In a deep valley or big city the effective horizons are higher, lengthening the amount of time that the werewolves have to complete the rite.
Before starting, the ritualist must take fifteen minutes to align her Essence with that of the other participant. The two align themselves through a series of joint howls, mad dances or sexual intercourse (the last of which may call for a separate degeneration check). The ritual itself takes place around a fire, built within a circle marked with chalk and saltwater. The rite leads off with an exhausting series of dances around the fire, while offerings are burned to bribe the local spirits with Essence under the guise of them understanding and allowing the transfer. The manic action dissolves into both Uratha howling nonsense to the sky and spirits. Both werewolves take a natural hallucinogen like peyote, ayahuasca or psilocybin during this part of the rite, exhausting their bodies and minds alike until they can feel nothing but the wind whipping at their skin and the flows of Essence between them. As the fire burns out, the ritemaster slashes the palms of both participants and thrusts them into the embers of the fire. The ritemaster can give or receive a Gift, or can enact the rite for two werewolves willing to undergo the process.
