With Leks having turned a corner in his journey into the Bracia Wilków brotherhood, it’s a good time to roll up some of the story and mechanical considerations that have gone into this arc (and that have informed the on-screen appearances of Filip and his pack throughout the campaign).
First things first: I don’t know if the Venn diagram of Steelshod fandom and this campaign encompasses anyone but me. Even if no one else is positioned to catch this, though, I’d be remiss and unethical if I didn’t acknowledge the massive influence of /u/MostlyReadRarelyPost’s epic campaign log and, more specifically, his setting’s Ulfskennar. My vision for the Bracia Wilków has always hinged on that work. Not incidentally, if any of my three loyal readers are looking for a deep, sweeping fantasy campaign log into which to delve, just… go to /r/MostlyWrites and start chewing. I hope your chair is comfortable.
For the majority of readers who aren’t familiar with Steelshod and, for some reason, are disinclined to sift through 400+ posts, let me begin with this: the Bracia Wilków are not werewolves. At least, not in the sense to which we’ve been conditioned by Lon Chaney Jr., Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and CGI. In Kaserne on the Borderlands’ setting, westerners who become aware of their abilities may certainly consider them werewolves, but that’s not their internal mythology.
Filip and Krzysztof, the leaders of the Bracia Wilków, believe they are the inheritors of a spiritual pact centuries, if not millennia, old. Whether that’s objectively true or an artifact of the forces active in the setting is immaterial. From their perspective, and that of Leks, it’s internally consistent and has verifiable, reproducible manifestations. Through a ritual hunt and subsequent preparation of a wolfskin, an adherent to the pact takes on aspects of lupine physiology and some of the mythic attributes of wolves.
In most cases, the external manifestations are weird and creepy but not obvious on close visual inspection. There’s no shapeshifting, no extra hair, no retractile claws. In gamer parlance, and with another nod to our group’s World of Darkness roots, almost everything the Bracia Wilków gain is coincidental magick. Having said that, close medical examination (by, say, a trauma surgeon PC and a radiologist NPC with access to a halfway-functional lab) might show some minor physical changes with major effects.
In mechanical terms, Leks now has this Weight 1, Reliability 3 item in his equipment list:
More importantly, he’s unlocked a new set of specialties, which he can purchase for 9 XP each. The first is:
Wolf-Brother
You gain a +1 modifier to all perception-related Recon rolls, which does not stack with modifiers from gear. You gain night vision out to four hexes (40 meters).
You can vocalize as a wolf, which enables you to communicate at up to one hex (10 kilometers) with any other character who has this specialty. Your vocabulary with this communication mode is limited to basic predator concepts, though you can pre-establish specific codes for more complex concepts. Anyone else with this specialty can understand you.
All animals perceive you to be a wolf and react accordingly.
You immediately and automatically know when another character has this specialty.There’s more, but I think we’ll save that for future reveals.