Wyrmbaiter

Wyrmbaiter was an Australian Red Talon who was tricked by Mara the Scream into starting the War of Tears that exterminated the Bunyip.

Overview

Regarded as a hero and conqueror by some and a dupe and villain by others, Wyrmbaiter was the Red Talon Ahroun credited with beginning (and ultimately winning) the War of Tears. The stories go that he was a massive wolf, nearly the size of a pony even in Lupus form. He came to Australia for reasons unclear - some versions of the story state that he had destroyed all of the Wyrm-creatures within miles of his home sept in Europe. Other legends state that he, like many of the other colonists who came to Australia, was in exile for crimes ranging from slaying a Silver Fang emissary in a blind rage to violating the first tenet of the Litany with his sister, Greyflank. What is known to be true is that Greyflank, also a Red Talon, accompanied him to Australia, and that the two of them assumed command of the Red Talons in the new country.

The decision to begin breeding with dingoes might very well have been Wyrmbaiter's, but no one is sure on that point. All Galliards agree on at least one fact, however: he hated the Bunyip. The native Garou were, to him, not Garou at all, but some blasphemous mockery of all that werewolves should be. As he often asked any Garou that spoke in defense of the Bunyip, "What is a Garou that doesn't howl?"

Wyrmbaiter ran with a huge pack of Red Talons for years, but did not make open war on the Bunyip for fear of reprisal by other tribes. When Greyflank was murdered, found headless near Bunyip lands with the scent and tracks of the thylacines surrounding her, Wyrmbaiter had all the justification he needed to call a hunt.

He gathered the Garou of Australia and demanded blood. Why exactly the other tribes went along with his demands is a point of contention in modern days: some say that the Silver Fangs believed that Wyrmbaiter would be sated with only a few Bunyip, that he would never be able to wipe them out. Some believe that the Uktena went along with the war because the Bunyip kept secrets from them. The Children of Gaia and the Glass Walkers abstained from the war, and the cases even tried to save the native Garou, but to no avail. In the 1930s, Wyrmbaiter led the War of Tears and murdered every single Bunyip in the world.

He himself tracked the last surviving Bunyip to a cave and slew him. It was then that Mara the Scream, an elder Black Spiral Dancer, revealed herself and gave Wyrmbaiter his sister's head - it was the Black Spirals, not the Bunyip. who had slain her. Wyrmbaiter would have proven a most effective warrior against the Black Spiral Dancers, she said, had he directed his rage at them. Fortunately, he had found other victims.

Wyrmbaiter allegedly fled back to is people and told them the truth, and then retreated to the caves and the dark places beneath the mountains. He was never seen again. No Red Talon reports contacting him as an Ancestor, and his body was never found.

Wyrmbaiter sired at least two litters of pups before disappearing, however, and perhaps others. Red Talon prophecy speaks of "the last son of Wyrmbaiter" howling down the heavens in rage at being rejected by the Garou. Australian Garou note that Rage-in-the-Streets has supplanted Mamu as the Red Talon leader, but that Mamu - himself an immense dingo, nearly the size of a pony - is not dead.

References

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