Storm Lord Rites

New Rites

• Rite of the Ruined Tongue: The Lodge of Shadow's Storm thrives through the keeping of secrets. This ritual is just one of the many ways in which the werewolves revel in their secrecy, and is a mystic rite many other lodges would kill to learn.
• The rite allows a werewolf to silence another being, be it Uratha, human or spirit. By performing the ritual, the ritemaster turns the target's tongue thick in his mouth, rendering him unable to speak of a single subject. Any attempts to speak of the forbidden topic result in breathless silence, which turns into choking, which in turn quickly becomes asphyxiation if the speaker doesn't give up his attempts.
• Rite of the Sleeping Seer: This ritual allows the Lodge of the Final Winter to dream what the lodge members believe is the coming end of the world. Once the ritual is complete, those involved fall into a mystic slumber and meet in a shared dream of the End Times.
• or To the Cannon's Mouth: Different Storm Lord packs perform this rite for different reasons: some use it as part and parcel of initiation. Some use it as a test, others as proof of a werewolf's obvious authority. Finally, packs may use this rite as punishment, a watermark of one's worth... or his worthlessness.
• In this rite, a pack tests a werewolf's mettle by running him through a barrage of physical damage and pain. They might beat him with bats. They perhaps harry him like wolves do play, nipping at his heels, slamming him into walls and knocking him down steps. In the city, the pack might bind him to a fire escape and blast him with the spray from a fire hose (if that doesn't sound bad, then you've never been hit in the chest with the water from a fire hose). The test is, can the werewolf suffer the barrage of attacks without an utterance of pain, without a strangled cry or a peep through gritted teeth?
• The name of the rite comes from an old Storm Lord tradition forged at sea with the pirates and shipmen of the tribe. The tradition was to march the werewolf up to the mouth of the cannon and then... fire it at his torso. The werewolf would take the brunt. The stories say that some could tighten up their prodigious chests so tightly that that the cannonball would bounce off, whereas others dropped to the deck with a shattered breastbone. Whether this story is even true ignores the point of the ritual: not to test how a werewolf can shrug off damage, but how well he can maintain the face of strength in the power of such sudden pain.