Wereraven Social Merits

Pack (• - •••••, Style)

Prerequisites: Primal Urge • Effect: You are part of a pack. Your Rookery has bonded with the Feral Wolves of the werewolves in that pack, and can find some measure of peace from their presence. Your bond is spiritual and emotional with the others, and may grow over time.
Alphas: If your pack has an alpha, she has a pool of extra dice that she can use to augment any action equal to the total number of dots her packmates have invested in this Merit. Alphas become stronger with a strong pack. This pool is exhausted as dice are used, but the dice pool is refreshed at the next sunset.
Leaving the Pack: The bonds of the pack aren't easily severed. A wereraven must remain away from his pack for at least a full week, never entering their territory or physically encountering packmates within that time. Anytime he succumbs to his Rookery, it will attempt to return to his pack. If the wereraven ends a full moon night without having contacted his old pack, his rating in this Merit decreases by one point, and will drop another point each full moon thereafter until it is gone. These reductions give the werewolf 1 Experience for each such dot eroded. A wereraven may burn a dot of Willpower to also decrease the rating, as well, once a month during the dark of the moon, but this point does not grant an Experience.

• Newly Accepted (•): You're new to the pack. You gain the Packbound Condition with those packmates you have some kind of existing emotional connection with, and are likely to develop it with regards to the others in short order.
• Pack Dynamics (••): You begin to resonate very strongly with your pack. You have the Packbound Condition with all other packmates, regardless of your emotional closeness to them. You also work very well with them, gaining a +1 bonus to any coordinated action with your pack; this bonus also adds to rolls involving Resistance Attributes (Resolve, Stamina, Composure) when defending your pack.
  • Drawback: You are unnerved when you don't know where a member of your pack is, when they are further than fifty miles away or when you haven't seen them in three days or more. Your Pack Dynamics bonus acts as a penalty to all rolls when that member of the pack is in one of those situations.
• Pack Resonance (•••): Your pack resonance increases dramatically. You are usually aware of their rough emotional state, can almost always identify any Mental Conditions they are experiencing, and can hear howls from them at double normal distance. The bonus from Pack Dynamics increases to +2.
• Pack Veteran (••••): Only packs that have been in existence for five or more years can have members with this rating of the Pack Merit, and even then, only those werewolves who've been part of the pack for several years can take it. The bonus from Pack Dynamics increases to +3. The distance at which the wereraven can hear the howls of his packmates extends out to triple normal distance.
• Pack Elder (•••••): Very rare is the wereraven with this level of connection to the pack. Situations where the werewolf would benefit from the Pack Dynamics bonus also gain 9-Agains to those rolls, and a packmate's howl can be heard out to twenty miles. In addition to all of this, however, the wereraven's connection to his packmates becomes a literal spiritual phenomenon - bands of ephemera connect him to his packmates, bands which may be followed via spirits or those with Spirit Sight. The presence of a packmate is spiritually renewing, as well - a pack elder who has zero points of either Willpower or Essence need only come into prolonged physical connection with a packmate for a minute or so in order to regain a single point of either (or both if needed). This phenomenon attracts the attention of spirits to the pack elder. This can be bad, when those spirits are predatory, but it can also be a good thing, as this level of the Pack Merit qualifies the wereraven to purchase the Totem Merit for his pack.

Pack Territory (• to •••••)

Prerequisites: Pack •
Effect: Your pack has a range of territory that it has claimed as its own. Although it may include settled areas, the heart of this territory must always be an area of wilderness that the pack can run in. All members of the pack may pool their points in this Merit to purchase ratings in the pack's territory area, defensibility, the presence of Loci in the territory and the pack's attunement to the land. Pack members within their pack territory may always hear the howl of another pack member within that territory, even outside the normal howling limits. The first dot in Pack Territory grants a single point in Territory Area.

• Territory Area: For each dot in Area, the pack's territory is larger.
  • Tiny (•): An area no more than five square miles. Maximum of two Territory Loci.
  • Small (••): An area of up to fifteen square miles. Maximum of four Territory Loci.
  • Moderate (•••): An area of up to fifty square miles.
  • Sizeable (••••): An area of up to one hundred fifty square miles.
  • Large (•••••): An area of up to three hundred square miles.
  • Immense (••••• •+): For each dot beyond the fifth, increase the territory size by another 150 square miles.
• Territory Defensibility: For each dot in Defensibility, pack members gain a +1 bonus to rolls to discover and intercept intruders, and intruders have a penalty equal to the same number to avoid being detected.
• Territory Loci: Dots in Loci can be invested in individual loci. These points may be divided among multiple loci, but a territory may not have more individual loci than it has dots in Area. These loci are available for the sole use of the pack, and have guardian spirits who will come to warn the nearest packmember of intruders, be they werewolves or spirits.
• Territory Attunement: For each dot put into Attunement, one member of the pack may have the Territorial Condition. These points of Attunement may be removed from one pack member and invested in another by decision of the alpha or consensus of the pack in beta packs.
• Territory Gifts: Dots do not have to be invested in this trait - it is freely available to any packmate that has invested dots in this Merit. Spirits of the territory itself can teach Territory Gifts. These Gifts cease to function if a pack loses its Territory, but once they gains another, packmates need only perform a Vision Quest or Sacred Hunt for that Territory to reawaken those Gifts.

Scent of the City (••)

Prerequisites: Primal Urge ••, Streetwise ••
Effect: You are sensitive to the scents and other tiny signs that linger on people in their interactions. Being canny in the ways of human culture, you can identify Social Merits a target may possess with a Wits + Socialize test, made as a scent-based Perception roll. Each success gives you knowledge of a single such Merit possessed by the target. This is considered an olfactory-based perception.

Weakest Link (••)

Prerequisites: Primal Urge ••, Socialize ••
Effect: You are sensitive to weaknesses in your foes in any social dynamic you find yourself in. With a turn spent scrutinizing any group of two people or more, you can determine who the weaker of the two is in the context in which they are interacting. You can sense the better fighter in a conflict, the least socially adept person at a social gathering, the weakest programmer at a computer conference. This is considered an olfactory-based perception.