Lodge of Carrion member
The Lodge of Carrion is a Lodge of the Hunters in Darkness.
The spirit patron of the Lodge of Carrion is Hungry Buzzard.
Overview[]
The Lodge of Carrion is composed of Meninna who believe that nothing and no one are sacred. That doesn't mean that they forsake their tribal vow, simply that they are much more conservative in naming a site "sacred" than their tribemates. The Scavengers, as the lodge members are usually called, feel that naming a place, person or object "sacred" is dangerous, as it allows that thing to outlive its usefulness. Holy sites, Scavengers note, often have significance as trade routes or sites of miracles, but those applications aren't really valid anymore, so why does the place remain sacred? Likewise, among the Uratha, a particular locale might be "sacred" if it contains an important locus, or the den of a pack or the resting place of a dangerous creature. But if the locus is destroyed, if the pack finds a better home or the creature awakened, why should the site still be scared? It has died - strip its carcass and move on.
Hungry Buzzard acts as totem to the Lodge of Carrion, and he is not a demanding master. He merely asks for honesty and a certain degree of callousness from his followers. Detractors of the lodge (and it has many, both within the tribe and without) say that the Scavengers would eat their own packmates rather than bury them if they didn't risk Harmony from the act. The Scavengers agree, but point out that the risk of Harmony is no small matter. Human beings eat each other if the need is great enough, and only their omnivorous ways and cultural taboos let them see the corpses of their kind as anything but meat.
Scavengers are opportunists. It would be unheard of for a Scavenger to bury a powerful fetish with its owner or let a suitable structure go uninhabited simply because of propriety. Lodge members have little respect for useless rules of society (human or Uratha), but they do realize that if everyone around them follows a useless rule, they should at least pay lip service. Also, Buzzard doesn't ask Scavengers to violate the Oath of the Moon or the tribal oath to Black Wolf, simply that they don't ignore viable resources solely because of tender feelings.
Membership[]
The Lodge of Carrion is nominally a Meninna lodge, but it's not unthinkable that an Iron Master or even a Blood Talon might join. Storm Lords are probably too proud, and Hungry Buzzard feels that Bone Shadows have a strange, fetishistic relationship with death, one that he wants no part of.
Joining the lodge is simple enough, Buzzard doesn't have time for fanfare and he's easily bored, so he doesn't like long apprenticeships. A prospective Scavenger locates a current member of the lodge and makes an entreaty. The Scavenger assesses the prospect, paying special attention to his taboos or mores, looking at what that werewolf is likely to have trouble leaving behind. The Scavenger then identifies something in the prospect's life that she sees as dead weight, and demands that the prospect gets rid of it. If the prospect truly feels that the object (or person, or place) is of real and ongoing value, he can make the case to the Scavenger (if she accepts the explanation, she'll choose something else). Otherwise, the prospect must strip whatever he can find of value from the "dead weight" and then leave it behind. Scavengers normally target favored objects and places rather than people for this initiation; since people are dynamic and ever-changing, it's hard to say when a person contributes nothing to a werewolf's life. In any event, a good Scavenger never indicates that the prospect should leave his pack, and Buzzard might well intervene if she tries.
Game Mechanics[]
The following are an overview of the game mechanics.
Prerequisites[]
Cunning •, Survival ••, Stamina ••
Benefits[]
Scavengers gain the Merit: Iron Stomach at no cost. They can eat anything organic, no matter how foul or rotten, without ill effects, and their gustatory and olfactory senses change (but do not deaden) to accommodate this ability. They also receive a +2 modifier to any rolls made to glean information or resources from an area or source that had already ben visited once. That is, if another character searches a room for clues to a murder, the Scavenger can do so again with a +2 to find any remaining pieces of information. Foraging rolls also receive this benefit.
References[]
- WTF: Tribes of the Moon, p. 102-104
