GarouMUSH: The Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame is a collection of some of the successful applications to come the way of the GarouMUSH wizards. A successful first-time GarouMUSH application will be for a human or Garou, which explains the character's history, personality, and motivations, and demonstrates the ability of the would-be player to write clearly and interestingly, and with attention to the mechanics of the language, such as spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. The intent of the Hall of Fame is to provide examples of what's expected of an application for a character on GarouMUSH. These aren't the only way to write a successful application but are examples of some ways.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Ragabash Black Fury
Hecate, Nicole Saropoulos
Lilith Montessori
Robin Lost-Road

Mary Wollstonecraft, Ragabash Black Fury

Pre-change
Mary was born into a family of middle-class kinfolk. Her parents were very conservative. Voted for Reagan, would have loved Rush Limbaugh, went to their Southern Baptist church regularly. Of course, they expected their daughter to grow up into a respectable lady. Needless to say, their plans didn't come about. As Mary got older, she developed, much to her parents horror, her own ideas and beliefs. She strongly supported pretty much everything they were against: Animal Rights, Pro-choice, Feminism, Communism, Gay Rights, whatever. Whether she was doing this out of pure rebellion or actual belief is debatable, but regardless, many of the stances she took she came to care about. This did not make for a peaceful childhood. Her parents tried everything they could to straighten her out, but she didn't respect them, or their rules. Eventually, her father followed her when she snuck out one evening and discovered her relationship with another woman. That was the last straw, and Mary was thrown out, until she was willing to repent of her horrible sins. Mary was 15 at the time. Not long after she had left her parents, she was kidnapped by the Black Fury, and her life really got interesting.
Garou Life
After getting over the shock of things, she found herself in a new position. She still had her views on everything, but she wasn't a rebel anymore. They agreed with her, for the most part, about the Environment, Feminism, and all that. So, Mary was left searching for new things to Rebel against, and she managed to find plenty of things that were Conservative and Stale in her elders - The litany, Glory, Honor, Respect. The first few years were a real challenge. She embraced much of the ideology, and her elders knew that she really loved the wilderness and Gaia, and she was an excellent scout. Her Rite of Passage was made intentionally harsh, even by Fury standards, to try and force her to depend on her packmates in the Ritual, and learn loyalty. And it worked, to an extent, or at least started the process. Once she became close to a few of her pack sisters, she finally realized that authority wasn't necessarily the enemy.
Now, she's in her late twenties. She's not quite the rebel, but she's still hardly the traditionalist either. She questions authority still, although now she does it not just for the sake of questioning, but to honestly make her own decisions. She believes in following the intent, not the letter, of the litany. She tries to get past the games that are played, with rank pulling and challenging and all that, and see what the real issues are, and what is best for Gaia. She's at heart a compassionate person, although she cares more about animals often than Humans. The city is not a place she feels at home in. She spent some time at Shasta working for Search and Rescue teams to find outdoorsman who strayed from their paths. She has learned, however, the value of the litany and tradition, and now believes that it is the starting point of wisdom. One can stray from it legitimately perhaps, but if you do, you better have a damned good argument. And she is loyal to the Black Fury. They tend to have the best interests of Gaia at heart, and are far more worthy of trust than anyone else she's ever met. As far as men go, she doesn't have any real problem with them, although too many of them are prejudiced against women. Best to keep your guard up around them, don't be surprised if they can't be trusted.

Hecate, Nicole Saropoulos

Breed: Homid
Auspice: Ahroun
Tribe: Black Furies
History:
Beacon Hill, Boston, nineteen years ago: a daughter is born to Denise and Paul Saropoulos, wealthy members of Boston's high society. The couple name their baby girl Nicole, in memory of her mother's mother. Since Nicole's birth is a month early, it is some time before she and her mother are allowed to leave the hospital; during the ride home, the car is struck, head-on, by a truck moving at high speed. Denise is killed instantly; Paul suffers nerve damage in his legs that force him to walk with a cane. Nicole, in her carseat, is unhurt except for some cuts from flying glass: these leave scars across her face and neck.
Paul is devastated by his loss and throws himself into his work as a banker, all but ignoring his baby girl. He hires a string of nannies to be respon- sible for Nicole's upbringing, none of whom stay long: Paul turns to drinking in his grief and makes advances on the women.
Four years pass; Paul's drinking has only grown worse, and the string of nannies has all but driied up. Lucid enough to enroll his daughter in an expensive private school, Paul begins to take out his anger and grief on Nicole. At first, the abuse is simply physical and mostly beating. As time goes on, though, Paul begins a downward spiral into far more inventive tortures and, ultimately, violent sexual abuse as well. Nicole's teachers and peers make no mention of the outward signs of the abuse: Paul Saropoulos, disturbed as he is, is a wealthy, powerful man.
Nicole does poorly in school and spends as much time away from her father as possible, yet there are very few people her age who want anything to do with her. The state of the Saropoulos' home life is none of their concern, and Nicole is left to her own devices. At the tender age of ten, she begins to take long walks through the city, even at night: what passes for evil in the city simply cannot compare with the horror that lurks in her home and in the dark corners of her mind.
Three more years pass. Nicole, finally seeing with clear eyes what her father is and what he has done to her, runs away. She leaves Boston far behind: she travels to the West Coast, to Seattle, a country away from her sick father. On the streets of Seattle, Nicole falls victim to drug abuse and turns to prostitution to support herself. She has reached rock-bottom, and has all but lost the will and the means to climb back out. A year of this lifestyle, and Nicole finds herself in a hospital after having been shot and left to die by a less-than-satisfied john.
In the hospital, the fourteen-year-old is noticed by a day nurse in the women's clinic, one Eleanor Mist-Watcher, a crescent moon of the Black Furies. Eleanor sees Nicole's heritage, sees how perilously close she is to her Firsting, and determines to Kidnap her. A week in the hospital, and Eleanor and Nicole become fast friends; nobody had ever truly cared for Nicole like Eleanor seemed to. The young woman leaves Seattle with Eleanor, headed to the Sept of Gaia's Bones, near Mount Shasta.
In a two-week ordeal, Nicole undergoes her Firsting and is introduced to a family that she never knew she had: a family that cares about her, a family that wants her, a family that doesn't take advantage of her or hurt her need- lessly. A family that loves her. And Nicole returns that love: the men she has known all her life have been evil and had hurt her; these women, the Furies, need her as much as she needs them.
Nicole stays at the Caern rather than return to the city. Her lupine nature fascinates her, as she can now put a reason to the darkness that has always lingered inside her. Sent on a Rite of Passage with a number of Silver Fang and Children of Gaia cubs, Nicole wins leadership of the Rite pack and finds herself as an adult among her sisters. Disgusted with and scornful of the company of the men in her Rite pack, she elects not to stay among them and to run, instead, with her sisters.
Three more years pass; Nicole earns the epithet 'Hecate', after the Greek goddess of magic and darkness: magical in that she has come through the trauma of her past so well, and darkness in that there remains a side of her that not even her sisters can hope to control. A dark, unrelenting hatred of men; a bitter, cynical need to hurt, embarrass, and humiliate men at all opportun- ities; a fountain of destructive anger that makes her deadly in a fight but difficult to deal with; an impassioned need to protect and care for her sisters as they protected and cared for her. Nicole's deeds as a Warrior of the Furies, among them dealing brutally with several human attempts at in- cursion into the wilderness around Gaia's Bones, earn her elevation to the First Circle, though she remains thirsty to progress further. She now sees herself as a soldier in a great war: it is her responsibility to protect those whom she cares for and those who cannot fight for themselves. It is her responsibility to follow the orders of her superiors, or people die. It is her responsibility to fight with everything she has in order to assure vic- tory for her side.
At length, Nicole's sisters manage to persuade her to pursue some less des- tructive goals. The seventeen-year-old allows herself to be educated beyond her poor junior-high-school level, her sisters doing the instructing. Yet, no matter how hard her sisters protest, this type of thing (along with the softer pursuits they encourage, such as art) does not hold Hecate's interest. She longs for battle, and, when the call for warriors to descend upon Chicago arrives, Nicole is one of the first to answer. During the week-long war in the Windy City, Nicole acquits herself admirably, amassing a lengthy list of kills of both Leeches and Black Spiral Dancers.
For a few months, Nicole's sisters again try to refocus her energies, but to no avail: when Adrian Nightrunner sends her call from the Sept of the Wheel Renewed, Nicole all but demands to go along. Though her sisters know that she would remain at Gaia's Bones if they ordered her, they choose not to, knowing that Nicole is a valuable asset to them and hoping that, perhaps, the more diverse Tribal structure of the Sept of the Wheel Renewed may help to take the need out of her ever-present battle against herself to progress faster and faster.
Nicole remains adamantly determined to protect her sisters, those who travel with her to the Wheel Renewed. She looks forward to humiliating the men who run the Caern with such laxity, and to helping Adrian acquire control of the place. She will fight with tooth, claw, and all her heart and soul for these goals, hoping, all the while, that she can continue to grow and learn the ways of war, soldier to Gaia that she is.
Description:
Hmm. Well, I don't want to cast anything in stone yet, but here's some basic outlines.
She's not very attractive: thin, wiry, with sharp features. Long, course, black hair, and almost lusterless black eyes. A sort of waxy complexion. Has those scars on her face and neck from the ride home from the hospital. Tends to be comfortable in just about any sort of clothes (she's worn it all, from upper- crusty Neiman-Marcus stuff to trashy streetwalker clothes), though she gener- ally wears stuff that's comfortable to move around in (like woodsy, hiking stuff). The only time she really ever smiles is when she's fighting or utterly humiliating a man; protecting her sisters is just something she *does*, and doesn't fire her passions like the other stuff.

Lilith Montessori

That which has marked the Garou for ages on ages is the Litany Law, the rules by which they live, or try to. All living beings will at some time break some rule, and so the rules must have enforcers... and such enforcers, among the Garou, oft come from among the Black Furies. It is best not to anger these fighting women... especially not Lilith Montessori.
Lilith was born to the name Cassie Felder, an ordinary child of New York parents, one who never quite found a proper resting place anywhere in the city. Her parents were wholly incapable of understanding their child, who refused to fit their ideas of an appropriate life or profession. When she left to attend college three years early out west, they breathed a sigh of relief; the Felders, both born hippies, were not too thrilled with the idea of their daughter becoming a laywer, but at least she was attending Berkeley.
Cassie found that even the prelaw curriculum was not enough to satisfy her. The structures of the law were too arbitrary, too cast in stone without rhyme or reason, and yet something in the order did, on rare occasion, show signs of justice. THAT was her goal- to set right what had gone wrong, to break down the evildoer and raise up the truth of the law. And the more she learned, the more she realized there was no truth in law as she knew it. The faint glimmerings of justice were hopeless, and could not be made to work.
Cassie found too many lies and too much oppression in the law as she knew it, and too much corruption and untruth in society as it was based on that law. Too much attention was given to the tiny detail, and not enough to the spirit or the practice. She left school early in disgust one morning after a particularly asinine lecture on the legal status of women in the state of California, and never returned. Before she got to her car, a tall Black woman stepped out of fog in front of her and brought something heavy down on her head. Such was her kidnapping by the Black Furies.
When Cassie came to, she was possessed of such anger at her rough treatment that she felt near to explosion. She waited, however, until her captor passed near her, and lunged at her feet in an attempt to topple her to the ground. The ensuing wrestling match took Cassie thoroughly by surprise- as she squirmed to get out of her captor's hold, she found herself twisting and changing form, and leapt away in the Lupus shape. She froze. The strange woman laughed, and told her of the Garou and of her heritage as a Black Fury.
Cassie made her Rite of Passage with only minimal scarring, and found to her joy that she had been born one of the lawkeepers of the Garou, born under the half as it almost began to wax towards fullness. The Litany, to her, felt infinitely easier to accept than any human law, and the roles of the Furies as defenders of women and of the Wyld made more sense than any EPA regulation or anti-stalking court order could ever do. She set about learning her role as keeper of the ways of the Garou, and soon became known as one who struck ruthlessly at any breaker of the law. Lilith, the so-called 'first feminist', may have been the name she chose, but an Italian Fury gave her the name Montessori as well... Lilith always, always explained what the offender had done, and insisted on teaching every new cub to come into the tribe to the fullest of the cub's abilities. Her teaching ability was invaluable to any sept that wanted to be sure its new members kept the ways and customs of the Garou as they ought to, and soon she found a proper role... a wandering teacher, from sept to sept, carrying the Litany and the other customs with her wherever she went. She refused ever to judge unless specifically called upon to do so, and when this call was made, she always acted on precedent and on custom, putting her own prejudices utterly aside. The Renown she won for this, coupled with her skill at combat and ability to find and root out the Wyrm and tear down the unnecessary aspects of the Weaver, enabled her to rise swiftly in rank, eventually coming to the Sept of Gaia's Bones as a young second-ranked Philodox.
Lilith Montessori, by now, is known for her skill at teaching (close to Instruction 4), which had been determined at the time of her Rite was influenced by the planet of Mercury standing midsky. She has a degree of contact with her ancestors (Past Life 3), which enables her to call on their knowledge of the customs and methods of administering justice in the past. She has full knowledge that the Garou are a dying breed, and has done her duty to the tribe in the past, producing both a single human Kinfolk child and a litter or two of wolf pups, two of which later turned out to be Garou. She is concerned with the keeping of right ways, of preserving the world and healing Gaia through the ways that once maintained order on Her face, and with the destruction of that which would ruin that order. Nothing earns her ire faster than blatant injustice- though, as always, she sees fit to inform the offender of their crime before striking them down.

Robin Lost-Road

My name is Robin Lost-Road. I'm thinking about changing it to Long-Road, but I haven't made up my mind. I think my father was joking when he named me Robin, but I can't be sure. He was killed before I was weaned, and I was given a little piece of his rib on a necklace to remember him by. The name sort of fits, though, and maybe foreshadows what my life will be like. Outcast, or outlaw.
Mother-Mary-Weeping-Blood says my curse is a mark of favor from Pegasus. She says my destiny is twined with the Furies and has granted me safe haven among them. She expects me to join her tribe, I think, but the wild-woman's life is not mine to lead. But she is old, and theurge, and so I respect her words even as I choose differently.
Secrets-Revealed, my own mother, says the wings are a mark of honor upon me. She believes that Owl has given me this gift that I may be freed from the shackles of the earth. She is a Skywalker, and considers my full-moon birth a sign that I will follow her into the Deep. She will not decide my future, though. She has decided too much in my life already. It is from her sin that I am Metis.
I really hate these wings. They aren't big enough to be useful, but they're always big enough to get in the way. When I go into the homid cities, I have to strap them down and pretend to be a hunchback. That's no way to live, and it's no way to find love or happiness. When I was younger, when I first learned to Change, I tried flying in my homid form from the top of a very tall tree. I weighed too much, could not catch enough wind, and tangled in the tree as I fell. Owl's gift was a broken leg. Sometimes I dream that I chop them off, but they come alive and smother me until I am almost dead, and then I awaken.
Standing-Naked-Without-Wind hates me as he hates none other but the Wyrm itself. He claims I am not fit to be Uktena, that I am a disgrace upon the Pure Ones, and predicts I will shame all the Garou with my incompetence. He pushed for sterner Rites of Passage for me, and so I hold him accountable for my two failures. One day, I will see him humiliated before the Great Council. I will hold up my spear, and I will pierce his side, and I will name him "Standing-Naked-Losing-Face".
They sent me hunting in the woods, playing Dog-and-Foxes with the other cubs. Each of them held a bright feather in his mouth, mocking me. I could smell them all around me, and I could run as quickly as they could, but every time I drew near to one, he would slip through some tight space under a log, or between two trees, and my wings would catch and trap me. When the moon set, and I had collected only a single feather from a cub who stumbled, Standing-Naked-Without-Wind announced that I had failed the Rite of Passage, and would remain a cub for another year.
Old-Summer-Sun has been kind to me. Like the women, he suspects my wings will bring me to some higher purpose, but is closed-lipped about what it might be. He is my vision of what Uktena are, and were I born under the half-moon, I would strive to emulate him. I was given my name by him when I was born. Secrets-Revealed held up my screaming, winged shape, and Old-Summer-Sun said, ~Ah. This little one will follow one of the Lost Roads.~ But the old coot won't tell me what that actually means.
My brother Moon-Under-Mountain does not understand. He was born Lupus, and so is given proper respect. He is only six years old, but is already full-grown and an accomplished hunter. I am a black spot on his honor, and he has said I endanger his chance of rising to leadership. He isn't the only reason I am leaving the Sept of Broken Water, though.
The next year, when summer came and the Old Ones named my Rite of Passage, the test they gave me was shameful. I was to recite the greater laws of the Litany while fighting Standing-Naked-Without-Wind. As I began the first line, he struck me across the mouth, and I bit my tongue and yelped. I had introduced a new word into the precise language used by the Sept, and I was declared a failure for the second time.
I don't like the expectations they put upon Ahroun. It frustrates me that I cannot get my claws past another Garou's defense. I hate being knocked to the ground and having these huge feathery things spread out for the No-Moons to jump on. I don't like the taste of blood in my mouth, and I'm irritated that I am supposed to clamp down on a foe's neck until his hide breaks and the blood runs down my throat. I wish I was born under any moon but this one.
It is almost summertime, again, and I cannot stand to be humiliated a third time by my Rite of Passage. Broken Water will never give me a fair trial, and so I must go to someplace that will, or remain a cub forever. To the north, at the Wendigo's Wheel Renewed, there are Uktena who are greatly respected by Old-Summer-Sun. I have sat with him and marvelled as the spirits brought news of the Stormcrow's deeds. My heart says that he will lead a just Rite of Passage.
It breaks my heart to leave Broken Water, for I know I will never return. I have given farewells to Old-Summer-Sun and to Mother-Mary-Weeping-Blood. I have told Moon-Under-Mountain that I am no longer his sister, no longer a stain upon the family line. And when none could see, I shit on Standing-Naked-Without-Wind's most recent kill. This place in my life I leave behind forever, and I choose not to take any path leading from it. I will find my own road to follow, and I pray it will bring me to peace.

The MUSH is based on the game system created by White Wolf Game Studio. In particular, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Mage: The Ascension, are all Copyright 1993 by White Wolf. We thank them for their assistance in getting this game on the air.