Jean Sehene, Bone Shadow Cahalith Founder of the Lodge of the Hundred Days
The Lodge of the Hundred Days is a Lodge of the Bone Shadows.
The spirit patron of the Lodge of the Hundred Days is the Thin Shadow, "Sal Hissu".
Overview[]
In April of 1994, Rwandese president Juvénal Habyarimana was assassinated, his plane shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda. The killing began almost immediately. Rwandese werewolves at the time noticed that in the weeks leading up to the massacre, the Shadow became more dangerous than usual. Murder-spirits, grief-spirits and pain-spirits seemed to breed more easily, and Cahalith in the country dreamed of roads drenched in blood and hands holding machetes. But violence is hardly unknown in Africa, and while the werewolves might have expected a military coup or a civil war, they did not anticipate what was about to happen. They were caught just as unaware as the humans of Rwanda, with the exception of one werewolf, a Bone Shadow named Jean Sehene. A Gibbous Moon, Sehene had violent dreams that left him drenched in his own sweat for weeks leading up to the massacre. He was in Kigali and witnessed the plane crash that served as the catalyst, and he wandered the countryside after the killing began. Sehene never claimed to have intervened at any stage of the genocide, but stories still circulate throughout parts of Rwanda about a "demon from the dark" that "tore the Hutu murderers to pieces, taking their machetes and right hands with it."
As for why Sehene didn't interfere, he felt that it wasn't his place to do so. The killing wasn't born of any supernatural cause, not that he could see. It was humans killing each other for what were, at base, spurious reasons, and that had been the way of things for hundreds of years. Still, no matter how much historical perspective he had, Sehene was deeply spiritually damaged by what he saw during those 100 days. He refused to enter the Shadow (and continues to do so) after he saw what the massacre had done to the spirit wilds of the country, and his previous cheerful, loud demeanor has changed to a quiet, bitter manner. If he suffered any physical wound during the genocide, it doesn't show... but then, it probably wouldn't.
After the massacre ended, Sehene, who had not previously been a member of a pack, announced to the Uratha of Rwanda that he was founding a lodge. The totem for the lodge was a spirit of mourning called Sal Hissu, the Thin Shadow. This spirit was invisible, and left only bloody footprints to mark its passing. The Lodge of the Hundred Dats, Sehene said, was open to Bone Shadows only, for it involved clearing away the spiritual detritus of the genocide. That included putting ghosts to rest, tracking down murderers and dealing with spirits and other supernatural entities that were growing fat off the results of the massacre, cleansing the many Wounds made during the 100 days and even reuniting families torn apart. Sehene himself takes on the role of recruiter and motivational force for the lodge, but he refuses to set foot in the Shadow. While his lodge has gained momentum and notoriety among the Uratha of Africa since the lodge's inception, the name of Jean Sehene has been all but forgotten.
Membership[]
The Lodge of the Hundred Days accepts only Bone Shadows into its ranks, though members of other tribes often work alongside the lodge members. The members must live in Rwanda, and many of them Changed during or shortly before the genocide. Everything that the lodge does is directly or indirectly related to healing the country, and while the country's development has continued in the years since the massacre, the spirit wilds are still in chaos. The fearsome swiftness of the killing allowed ambitious murder-spirits to become Greater Jagglings in mere days, and some of these spirits began cults or possessed (or Claimed) Rwandese citizens during the genocide. The lingering effects on the Hisil of Rwanda have kept the lodge busy for more than a decade, and the lodge members have much more work to do. They have, however, made some progress, and nowadays just as much of their work deals with tracking down fled war criminals or helping families find each other as it does closing spiritual Wounds or driving off hithim.
Thin Shadow doesn't ask for much in the way of initiation, especially for werewolves who witnessed the genocide. Foreign Bone Shadows wishing to join must travel into the Shadow and visit the spirit wilds of Kigali, where the massacre began. This dangerous wasteland, dotted with the smoldering wreckage of the plane crash, shows the werewolf exactly what he is in for if he joins the lodge. If he still wants to help, then Thin Shadow welcomes him. The spirit does demand, though, that members of the Lodge of the Hundred Days don't accept rewards or seek acclaim for their deeds. In fact, they must avoid notice as much as possible.
Game Mechanics[]
The following are an overview of the game mechanics.
Prerequisites[]
Honor ••, Wisdom •• and Stealth ••. Members are expected to maintain Harmony 7 or more.
Benefits[]
Members of the Lodge of the Hundred Days must pass unnoticed by both man and spirit to do their work. All members receive a free Specialty in this Skill (player's choice). Also, all members of the lodge, regardless of auspice, receive the Gift: Gauntlet Cloak (provided that they can learn three-dot Gifts). Finally, Stealth Gifts can be purchased as though they were tribal Gifts.
Second Edition[]
From April to mid-July of 1994, the Rwandan Genocide killed some 800,000 people. For a hundred days, the forces of the Hutu-majority government slaughtered almost 20% of the nation's population, and nearly 70% of the Tutsi minority. The killings were highly organized and planned by the country's political elite. Many of the dead were noncombatants, women, and children.
Actions in the physical world ripple into the Shadow, and the Rwandan Genocide produced evils enough to poison the Hisil a thousand times over. The Lodge of the Hundred Days works tirelessly to draw that poison from the wound. Its members bind and destroy the spirits of pain and death and terror that grew far on the Essence of atrocity, lay to rest the ghosts of victims and perpetrators alike, and hunt down stranger, darker things that crawled out of the shadows in the wake of the genocide. They cleanse the Wounds that formed during the hundred days and reunite families torn apart by the chaos. Twenty years on, the lodge is making progress, but much remains to be done.
References[]
- WTF: Tribes of the Moon, p. 64-66
- WTF: Werewolf: The Forsaken Second Edition, p. 51
