On this page I hope to address questions and concerns that have been presented to me regarding this plotline. This will be updated as these concerns are brought forward and addressed. If you have any thoughts on this plot or are seeking further clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me at the address below.

Concern:   Fourteen Elders are a lot for one caern. There are only about 40 active Elders globally currently. This would greatly increase the number. Why so many?

First, I would like to put the statistics into perspective. Canada is a huge country and is sizably larger than the United States. In fact, it takes up 3.5% more land mass than the US. Canada also has a much larger area of untamed wilderness. The area of Canada is 9,970,610 sq km. Of this, the territory of Nunavut (where the northern caern is located) is 1,994,000 sq km. If there are currently 40 elders active in the world, it seems unreasonable that Canada, the largest country affiliated with the Camarilla, has no elders.

But of course, as out chronicle grows, elders will come into play and eventually will help with this imbalance. At the beginning of this plotline, of the fourteen elders, two will be dead. While short bios will be offered to ST's on who they were and how they died, they will not have a place in the chronicle any longer. Of the remaining twelve, one will be an Ice Stalker Gurahl elder, leaving only eleven NPC elders remaining.

The reason that there are eleven NPCs is this allows the ANST to offer a wide variety of concepts, personalities, and tribes to the canadian games. Hence there will be enough concepts for all games to participate in this plotline, despite their local flavour, themes, and style of play.

Concern:  Where are these Elders coming from and why don't the other Elders know about them? 

These characters would have certainly been known among the garou in Canada, but many years ago.  The last elder to join the caern joined over 20 years ago.  That is why the impending threat of the aging Elders with few possible candidates to replace them will make for an interesting, long-term plotline.  However, elders from neighboring countries may have heard of this caern of Elders.

Once these NPCs are completed, I will be forwarding this information on to players on a need-to-know basis. All of this information will be sent to appropriate Settings staff (the GRA Shifters and appropriate GSA's) and ANSTs of other affiliated countries. It will also be added to the national garou site and all updates will be posted to the Garou ST list. These character's names and renown will also be passed on to all garou who have the appropriate lore or rank.

Canadian ST's will be encouraged to let the legend leak into their current plots, through pretty much any means they'd like. I would appreciate prior notification of how they are planning on bringing the knowledge of the northern caern into their venue, but this part of the setting is left "carte blanche".

Keep in mind that these characters are not appearing just "out of the blue".  They have been there for a very long time, they are rarely heard from and it really wouldn't be worth other elders' time to go visit them (although I would happy to run the scene should anyone want to). The visiting elders should have more important things to do that interrupt an important ritual... and I know that the NPC elders have are simply too preoccupied with the task at hand to get involved in the on the elders email list.

Like I said, I will make sure that anyone who has the appropriate lore or rank will have heard vague stories about this caern and they are welcome to contact me if they would like to pursue anything with this piece of setting.

Concern:  These will be the only Elder Wendigo in play at all.  Why aren't they providing leadership for the tribe at all?

The real question here is, "Why aren't they providing leadership?", and in order to properly understand the answer to this question it is essential that you have read the background material provided on this site. The Wendigo spirit that is held prisoner in the caern is an enormously powerful incarnation of Wendigo. In the legend, it was powerful enough to kill most of the food in northern North America, and the garou and their kin began to starve. So these elders, many generations ago, bound together and formed this caern. They sacrificed themselves, any freedom that they might have, and their place in the garou nation, to save their people from the icy rage of Kaaktuq Ukiuq.

The reason that they are being built is so that Canadian players are able to interact with elders without needing to proxy to another nation. Of course they are still welcome to talk to the US elders, and US elder players are more than welcome to proxy up here to interact with these elders.

But, as it explains, they spend 5 out of 7 seven days in meditation. Because of this responsibility, they are not able to travel any real distance because if they did not return, the spirit might escape. During the 2 days of the week that they aren't in meditation, they are available to talk and give guidance to any visitor, but only for very brief amounts of time. Most of their time is spent eating, hunting, sleeping, and relaxing.

Frankly, Canada is simply not ready for the "elder game", and it is going to be a while before any number of elders come into play. But it is unfair to shortchange players and ST's who want to interact with elders or have advanced rituals performed. This gives an ST a very controlled way of interacting with a wide variety of NPCs and adding depth to their game. It also gives a "retiring home" for any PC elder who has caused an imbalance to their local game. Most of the garou players in Canada play ranks 1-2, and elder in a game can be a huge disruption to a game, so this gives a glorious and satisfying retirement to a PC.

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