Sins of the Past

A history

Before the Fall

His name was Sees-No-Fear, and he hated it.  It was a good name, a proud name - but only if you could see anything at all.

He couldn't.

He was born blind.  He had two eyes, blue eyes, beautiful eyes, perfect eyes by anyone's standards.  They just didn't work.  Which wasn't a surprise, one supposes - he had been born to two Silver Fangs, both purebred, and he too was purebred.  That much shifter blood in one individual was enough to blind anyone.  He was lucky that was his only deformity, he supposed, but it didn't change the fact that he was Metis, a shame to his clan and parents, and a pariah.

For years he existed on the fringes of society, afraid to go into the cities for his monstrous shape, afraid to go near his people for their harsh words and their violence.  His parents tried to pretend he didn't exist and the rest of the Sept...well, they were no more supportive.  Most of the time he was alone, and that was preferable to the treatment he received when he wasn't.

Slowly, he learned to move the right muscles and turn his eyes in the direction of those who spoke, and to move them around often and blink the way seeing people did.  He learned to squint when he felt heat on his skin, and blink when he was startled.  Using cues from his other senses, he learned to act as though his seemingly perfect eyes were, indeed, perfect.

And when his long-awaited First Change came, he ran from his Sept in the Pacific Northwest, gave himself new names that echoed his father's, but not too closely.  And in a small rural Caern in Oklahoma occupied mostly by Fianna, Fenrir and Gnawers, he passed himself off as the Homid bastard of his father and a purebred Kinfolk of his home Sept.

After all, better a bastard than a Metis.

The years passed quietly.  He wasn't exceptional, but nor was he a failure.  He climbed ranks slowly, cub to Cliath, Cliath to Fostern.  No one knew of his truth, and for the first time in his life, he began to feel secure.

But fate is never so kind.  One not-so-remarkable day, a moonbridge opened and a Garou from his home Sept came to visit.

Before the end of the day, the secret was out.  It was a near-cardinal sin to hide one's one breed, and discipline was harsh.  He found himself a starting Cliath again, disgraced and driven from his Caern while rumors of his deception spread throughout the world.  He was an outcast now, and he would be an outcast forever.

And, unconsciously or perhaps all-too-consciously, he withdrew from Garou society.  He began to search for the Wyrm, and not a year later, the Wyrm found him.

After the Fall

They say the first time Kaj'sha danced the Spiral, he danced to the threshold of the Third Circle before he collapsed.

They say the first words he spoke were not his own Wyrm name, but the name of the Father.

Whatever else they said, one thing was undeniably true: when he emerged, he could see, and he never aged another day since.  What's more, he is inflicted - again and again - with dark, ecstatic, revelatory visions of which he can remember very little.  No one knows what pacts he made with the Dark Father that night in the Spiral.  Not even Kaj'sha himself, for he has forgotten, and though he suspects his visions holds the answer, he cannot seem to decipher them.  No one knows for sure...but such were the gifts bestowed upon him in return.

He changed his names then, human and Garou, and took upon him the new name spoken by the Father into his mind.  Vaschel Beaufort.  Archangel.  Kaj'sha.  Slowly, these names have begun to circulate among the underworld of the Black Spiral Dancers.  The purebred Silver Fang who embraced the Father.  The living miracle of the Wyrm.

There is another rumor that goes around.  There is a rumor of a prophecy.  Of the fallen Silver Fang who would lead the Wyrm's forces against the Weaver, against the Garou who called themselves Gaians.  Kaj'sha has recently heard of these rumors, and they have burrowed deep within his mind.  He has always been practical - reasonable - but some things are too large to ignore.

Kaj'sha is beginning to wonder.

About himself.  About the Wyrm.
About his destiny.