From Pride, a Monster.

As your pack approaches the circle of stones, you find that all the packs have gathered and are resting peacefully, the low murmur of coversation between different groups and roaring fire make you feel at home. Several of them greet you as you take a spot, further away from the fire than the elders, but close enough to stay warm on an otherwise chilly night. "Silver-Jaws-Which-Tear-At-The-Heart-of-The-Wyrm-Itself" eyes you as he speaks to his pack mate, the beautiful Noleen, "Kelpie's Beauty", the fiery redhead Galliard of the Fianna. He speaks to her, to which she nods vigorously, before standing up and moving closer towards the center of the stones.

"Alright all ye' fine lads, lasses, and wolfen types. Our wee cubs here are comin' alon' quite nicely, earnin' themselves a fair bit of renown" She speaks, her Irish accent thick, her voice almost lyrical. "The spirits, they speak o' some of th' things they've been doin, provin' themselves to be both wise an' honorable, and the Wyrm, well he be takin' notice of ye' battle prowess. But now that I've praised ye', it's time I knock ye' down a peg, an' tell ye' about what gowls ye' are, wha' blasted idiots ye' are. Don' look at me like that cub, ye' cann'ot 'elp it. You are descended from a long line of idiots, it's in ye' blood as much as it is mine, and even more so for that handsome bloke right 'ere." she says, signaling to Jordan Westwood. "Ye' see, for all the blessin's the Great Green Mother Gaia avin' given' us, we, the Garou, 'ave a terrible time with o'ur pride. Time an' time again, throughout our history, our pride as' gotten tha' better of us. I could tell stories all night, about The War of Age, wherein' we slaughter'd others shapechangers, an' the fall of the White Howlers wherein we lost a tribe, or the War of Tears, wherein' we killed, we bloody MURDERED one of our own tribe, down to the last. All of this we did out'n'of pride. But I will tell those stories a'nother day, for they are so big in their story tellin', that I think it might lose it's impact on one's as young as yerselves. What I want ye' to understan' is that sometimes, we Garou make our own wors' enemies.

Tonight, I tell a more personal story. One about a very specific person, a monster, really. A monster born from' Garou pride, and nursed by cruelty based on tha' same pride. As Garou, we don' fear much perhaps a pathetic death. But yes, even the killing machine's of Great Mother Gaia have their boogeymen. An' my story is of the most feared of them all. Open your ears, cubs an' honored elder's alike, hear the story of Samuel "The Skinner" Haight.

(OOC: Going to stop typing in a manner that reflects Noleen's Irish accent. Would take way to long to do so. Use your imaginations.)

"The story begins with the Children of Gaia. Two of them, to be specific, a kinfolk male, and his Ahroun wife. Doing as Gaia would have them do, they mated, and she bore a healthy male child by all physical accounts, his hair was the color of golden straw, curious brown eyes. Samuel, they named him. Samuel Haight. The child was brought up as best as he could by his father, and his mother nurtured him as much as the struggle for Gaia could allow her. Our kinfolk, as cherished as they are, never have it easy. Too often, we treat them as a resource, taking what we will from them, and then leaving them to re-join our packs and fight. At the worst of times, they become the unfortunate victims of our rage. All too many of them suffer at the hands of their family. And so, when it was learned at the onset of puberty that young Samuel had not inherited the wolf spirit, it gave his mother great sadness. After giving birth to Samuel, in her years of battle, she had suffered a grievous wound that left her unable to produce any more children. She would never bear a Garou child, never would she pass on all her fighting knowledge to a mighty warrior of Gaia. The best she had ever done was Samuel, a supporting force at best, and all she could hope for now was a glorious death.

Young Samuel became the victim of his mother, as she slowly sank into Harano. He must have sensed her sense of failure and shame. Try as he might to console his mother, he only served as an outlet for her pain, and he suffered horribly at her physical and emotional abuse. Samuel's father must have done what he could to protect his only son, knowing the burden the child felt. Try as he might, it was only a matter of time before he fell victim to the burning rage of his wife, and young Samuel witnessed the grizzly murder one parent, at the claws of another.

Samuel Haight fled. There was no one who pursued him, or if they did, they must not have tried for long. What went through the young man's mind we can only guess at. Hatred? Terror? His own brand of rage? For years he was on the run, avoiding the dark wilderness he knew our kind to lurk in. His story picked back up in Chicago. By this time, Samuel Haight had already been caressed by a tendril of the Wyrm. Samuel knew what his purpose was in life, even if he had not yet developed the means; to take revenge on the Garou nation.

Armed with enough knowledge of the occult, Samuel sought out what he thought he needed-POWER. He courted a group of vampires at a well-known vampire breeding pit, known as the Succubus Club. Amused at the kinfolk's willingness to sell out information on his own kind, a vampire by the name of Lodin eagerly took him up on his offer. Lodin had been involved in a viscous war with Garou, and the knowledge that Samuel traded to him proved invaluable. Lodin though was not to be trusted, as leeches never should be. Rather then bestowing the curse of blood on Samuel, he turned him into a ghoul, a quasi-vampire, a mortal human with exceptional physical potency, but a thirst for vampire blood in order to stay alive.

The war between Lodin and the Garou escalated to such a degree that the Veil in Chicago was nearly torn beyond repair. The Garou, despite being at a terrible disadvantage of having to fight in the city, decimated the vampires. In the confusion, Samuel Haight was able to make off with vast amounts of treasures belonging to the now-fleeing leeches. It is believed that he took up residence with one of the vampires who decided to lay low, as he began to study ancient texts that once belonged to Lodin.

In his studies, Samuel began two forms of corrupt magic, one being the magic of the leeches, steeped in the use of blood and flesh, and a path developed by mortals who would clumsily try to manipulate to spirit world. In mastering these forms, Samuel was beginning to collect the tools he would need to take revenge on the Garou.

Samuel, by now well on his way to insanity, still faced a problem. Although he could manipulate flesh and blood, and could briefly reach into the spirit world, he still had no true access to the Umbra, which he realized he needed. Pulling together all that he could, including more than a little help from the vampires who had been sheltering him while he studied, Samuel put forth a tremendous amount of effort into summoning a bane spirit of Mahsstrac, the Urge Wyrm of Power. In a struggle that must have seemed epic in his eyes, Samuel managed to cow the spirit, and bind it to his already fracturing soul, effectively turning himself into Fomori. Of the dark gifts bestowed to him by this forced union, Samuel gained the ability to transverse into the umbra as we do.

Using all of combined power, Samuel became a formidable foe indeed. Finally convinced he was ready to begin to last stage of his ultimate revenge, he began to hunt Garou. Samuel understood his limits, and was more than patient. He scrounged together whatever enemies of the Garou he could muster, and worked with them to bring down lone werewolves. The first kill was a newly changed cub, which he and his vampire allies easily brought down in the streets of Chicago. After his leech allies drained the last drop of blood from the poor cubs homid body, Samuel drew out his trademark silver knife, and expertly skinned the entire body. Samuel worked briefly with the Black Spiral Dancers, and tricked an insane Dancer into launching itself into battle with a metis on patrol duty in up-state Maine. Samuel dispatched the victor, and gained two more skins for himself. The fourth skin it is believed that he acquired from a hero who fell bravely in battle, and was buried in a Caern's hallowed grave. The fifth skin came from Samuel's own mother, who had left the safety of her sept to die a peaceful death on the coasts of North Carolina. Samuel is believed to had lead a pack of mortal hunters to her location in order to ensure she was wounded enough to be an easy kill. At this point, the evidence was too widespread for any Garou to put together the pieces. We still had no idea that one of the one's we were suppose to protect had gone so terribly bad.

And so, years after witnessing the death of his own father and suffering from his mother's abuse, Samuel Haight had beaten the odds, and gathered the last components he needed. Combining the magics he had mastered and with the access to the spirit world granted to him by the bane of power, he forged together a new ritual, of which we do not dare speak the name of out loud.

This ritual was used with the garou pelts he had collected, and bound them to Samuel's body, allowing to take all the forms of the Garou, and giving him a measure of Wyrm-tained gnosis, and filling him with the rage of Beast-of-War.

Reveling in his success and new found might, Samuel Haight contacted a number of other kinfolk who felt they too had been wronged by their Garou-blooded family. Teaching the ritual to any willing to learn, it quickly spread among the sub-circles of kinfolk. Samuel Haight worked with the kinfolk over the next six years to bring down dozens and dozens of Garou. He cared nothing from which tribe they culled, as long as pelts remained plentiful. It was around this time that the nation began to piece together all the clues of the skinned Garou bodies. We began hearing rumors of strange-coated werewolves, of whom had no identifying features, and whom were un-accounted for in local septs. At some point, Samuel Haight entrusted the knowledge of the rite to the wrong kin, who quickly brougt the information to the nation, making them aware that one of their own family had turned against them and hunted them with vigor.

By this time, it was too late. Samuel, dubbed "The Skinner", had a sizeable pack of his own, and other packs had already formed and left to other parts of the country. We hunted them as best we could, but they were knowledgeable at how to avoid us, and how to harm us, and they had more than enough of their own power to do so. As they managed to avoid us, they also began developing their own relations with spirits, learning gifts from them, making them all the more deadly.

Samuel by now was our own personal, living boogeyman. He struck with impunity, and without warning or mercy. He dubbed his fellow kinfolk their own tribe, naming them the Skin Dancers. To this day, we still occasionally catch word of the Skin Dancers, unusual sightings here or there, a Garou who may have gone off on his own turns up dead and skinned, undoubtedly their work. This was the price we paid for one Garou's neglect of her own child, The price of pride.

As for The Skinner, it pains me greatly to say that he was never brought to Garou justice, never made to  pay for the crimes he committed. His story grows shrouded in confusion. The best rumors have it that once he was satisified that the Skin Dancers would carry out his will, he began trying to collect more power, to what ends I can only imagine that it had to do with inflicting more suffering on our people.

He is rumored to have stolen a powerful artifact of the human mages' by all accounts it was the branch of a magical pumpkin that he fashioned into a powerful staff, turning him into a true master of their strange magik. He is said to have met his end when he attempted to slay one of the most ancient of vampires down in Mexico in an attempt to become a full-fledged leech himself. Who can say? What we do know is that Samuel Haight is dead, but his legacy lives on.

Now cubs, if you're thick in the head and need it explained to you, understand that pride got the better of the Child of Gaia mother. Her son might have been a great kinfolk leader for all we know, had he been nurtured properly. Instead, his mother felt nothing but shame for him, and the monster created from that haunts us to this day.

Take care of your kin, if you are fortunate enough to have any. They are more than just breeding stock, or sources of cash and shelter. They are warriors for Gaia too, in their own way. Be patient with them, nuture their wounds, do what you can to ensure they remain healthy, and most of all, love them. After Gaia, they are the most important reasons we fight the Wyrm.