Should You Play The Black Spiral Dancers in Werewolf: The Apocalypse?

[@BasileosAlexios]

Everybody talks about the Black Spiral Dancers but nobody talks about the Black Spiral Musicians and the Black Spiral DJs, not to mention the Black Spiral Roadies and all the rest of the Black Spiral Production Crew that makes the Black Spiral Show a thing. So much hate.

[@LoreByNightVtM]

Pinned, congrats for making my day LMFAO

[@wcgcapone]

Black Spiral Graffiti Writers complete the origin of hip hop trio.

[@bria243]

Sorry for a second reply, but I was in a Black Spiral dancer campaign. We went with the idea that the Weaver was the biggest threat, and all the 'atrocities' were ways of breaking the bindings on the worm. After all, what is in the physical realm has a spiritual reflection. Of course, the players did have to bear the Veil in mind; mindless brutality would just get them gunned down by the Technocracy, Pentex, etc.

[@AkbarZeb-p6f]

In a WESTERN setting... There are plenty of places around the world today where that mentality of power by any means necessary is the norm, especially in islamic countries. As the west slips further into atheist shariah, it's also becoming more degenerate to the point of cultural suicide as well as outright genocide as many things are regressing in Europe over the last 20 years (60 years or so with the influx of the Hindu population into Britain as they turned a blind eye to honor killings & infanticide of their daughters).

[@house.of.tremere]

I think the only way it work for players to play would be as an infiltrators situation. A pack of bsd’s masking/hiding their taint shows up to a territory and try to integrate into the community.. but even that is a huge stretch at least as how the BSDs are usually presented. I played a BSD ronin once who had pure breed 5 and was a genetic throwback to the White Howlers. I don’t recall the game lasting long but it was just something different to play.. Beyond that I wanted to run a game where the Glass Walkers “fall” to the Weaver and the Ref Talons “fall” to the Wyld. All of them plus the BSDs being a cautionary tale of leaning too far or too hard into any of the trait.

[@jackstefan8639]

You may have a hard time playing normal bsd but because there so evil they elevate one of the best groups in wod in my opinion the black spiral ronin because tainted though they are no one is born evil including the bsd at least until they dance the spiral and weather it be though getting a glimpse of the outside being raised by the better of their kinfolk or maybe their own consciousness they break away and forge a path to the light and I think it’s one of the coolest interactions possible to have these neo white howlers try and prove themselves to the Gaian Garou or be on the run from them or their former kin.

[@jackstefan8639]

Also as and added note bsd ronin are somewhat rare given the bsd numbers if even 1% of bsd cubs or extremely rarely full blown dancers go ronin given they are the largest tribe with around 3000 or more members there are a minimum of 30 bsd ronin around if not more considering they don’t pay particular attention to their bloodlines which is more Garou than certain tribes individual camps also final note it’s a crime we never got that video game where you play as a pure breed bsd ronin.

[@ohyeahmrkrab9495]

I played a pretty short game where I had a black spiral npc and my player had a kinfolk. It was a goofy game (nothing outright despicable happened aside from poisoning a lot of people), but it ended with the garou being killed by a horde of ratkin and the kinfolk being killed by the elders of the pit

[@mmmproductions1247]

My ST ran a side story for our werewolf game where we took the role of Wyrm aligned beings, so Famori and BSDs, as a dark reflection of the chronicle. It was a a lot of fun. I think in short burst "villain" games can be a nice change of pace.

[@RileyYones]

as a black spiral dancer play i love dancing the spiral and all the shenanigans that come with it

[@ShadeprowlerTheFox]

Sorry, this will be a little long, but would want to give my two cent in this quesation! Every Fera aside the Garou treat Gaia as the spirit of Earth, nature, life, etc, the planet Earth, something... local, and frankly something comprehensible, and the triat are universal forces, Chaos, Order, and Balance between the two via Entropy The Garou treat them the other way around, thus in their mind the Wyrm is something "small", below Gaia, their Creator And this is important! Because if you follow it/their logic, since Gaia created both of them, they are on the same level, so to speak, so logically, they could fight with it in a huge battle, something they could sink their claws and fangs and claive, something they could hurt and even defeat Actually the Rokea are spot on in this question, I belive In their eyes Sea is the source of all, there is no cosmic evil, Qyrl is what she is. Daughter of the Sea who tries to close the "Wound" - the Sun - and wants things back they way they were, dark, cold, something they call the Unmaking, Unsea , the dry land is what the other changer's Gaia is in their eyes. - Qyrl and her sisters exist, she is a Totem even, a very active force in her own right, not somethign enigmatic and unfathomable enemy "Unsea realized that Sea's decision to create us - the race that would survive the Unmaking - meant that few or none of her children would. With growing horror, she grasped that when the Unmaking occurred, she would be destroyed along with everything except Sea, since Sea was the progenitor of all else. She therefore decided to create races of her own, to prevent the Unmaking. One race, the most (famous among your kind) race of Changers, she created to be her army against the Unmaking. They would fight against the Unmaking as long as they all lived, and they would turn back the tides of destruction. Naive. Foolish. Arrogant. Impossible. The Unmaking can no more be turned back with an army than can a tsunami. But her army was there, nonetheless, and they needed something to fight. And in the absence of some great creature that would bring on the end of all things, they fought the other Changers." And to be fair this is not that far from the truth if you think about it or what happened. Except in a few occasions, there wasn't any great enemy they could marched against (and when they tried, they died en masse , just for irony) Influence, yes, monsters, local problems, powerfull incarna spirits, without a question, but never managed to fight agains the Big Bad itself, the Wyrm You can't fight with cosmic, fundamental forces of the Universe Not to mention, the Bastet are possibly right and the "Wyrm" destructive and corrupting aspect and the Balanced Purifier are two seperate entities The Bastet say that Cahlash, the original balanced Purifier of the Triat, is still out there, serving his purpose and courting wild Nala (Wyld). The whole mess with Banes and other nasty things that plague Gaia comes from the Asura, a being that is the incarnated form of Cahlash's hate against his brother Rajah (Weaver) and his despair from his loneliness. When Cahlash ripped the Asura from himself, he hoped that the Asura would destroy the things of Rajah and to fulfill its creator desire, the Asura turned into a multitude of serpents that infested the world, leading to the creation of Banes, fomori, vampires, and other rotten things. All these things may seem to be different, but they all are the Asura in his many faces. Everything is "bad" or "wyrmish" is an Asura, part of the Asura, who became many. There is no singular Asura entity. Once there was, for a breef time untill it decided to fulfill Cahlash's order to destroy Rajah's creations and became many, cased to be a singular entity. This actually a bit align with the Garou believes, tho' they wouldn't admit it; Rorg, the Many-Taloned Hunter, is the Incarna of Turog, a destroyed planet that forms the Asteroid Belt, Turog was was destroyed by a Wyrm creature. Not the Wyrm. A Wyrm creature! No immagine something that is capable to destroy a planet... and not the big bad itself It was a big Asura if you will Since the universe is working at the monent and not on the brink of destruction, the Wyrm is a cosmic force, not insane and doing its job indeed have some merit Then it begs the question: what the hell is what the Weaver trapped in the Pattern Web 360 millon years ago? If even the Garou belive there are Wyrm creatures that are capable of destroying planets, powerfull and huge enough to do so, it is not really out of the realm of possibility, "there is always a bigger fish" could be applied in this question. Maybe it is the bigest Asura the universe saw, even maybe the original that is indeed for all tense and propuses is the the Wyrm Now this leads us to the Black Spirals - in the first book of the Wyrm and chornicles of the Black Labyrinth there it was reveled the Black Spirals wanted to kill Gaia becasue she is sick and dying and as a Spirit she could Reborn, stronger than ever. Sure they are fucked up to the core, wrong on many level, but you could find that little spark that potentially could make them playable, dark, sinister, murderous and tons of other labels and require a mature player and a helluve a good Storteller (like you are Lore) but it is possible! And dont forget Erebus have a few Spirals ready to be redeemed... ;)

[@kimberlywolfenheart4275]

The Chronicle of the Black Labyrinth is an excellent source of Wyrmy inspiration. It's written by a human occultist gathering Wyrm lore, much of it from the perspective of other humans (including a Black Spiral Dancer kinfolk) who willingly or unwillingly got caught up in the Wyrm's coils. It would be interesting to have characters who are not Garou who are exposed to occult Wyrm knowledge and either become corrupted by it or eventually see it for the trap it is and try to escape it.

[@1005corvuscorax]

You are absolutely correct, 100% My thoughts are SO long on this subject that I'm gonna make a separate thread about it

[@CT_Phipps]

It's the Technocracy paradox of, "WHICH Technocracy?" Which is to say the books have very different portrayals of them. If the Black Spiral Dancers are a bunch of baby eating, raping, psycho killer lunatics devoted to destroying the world - I mean, whatever floats your boat but that's a very high watermark for a group to tolerate. If the Black Spiral Dancers are just "evil" and you want to play a villain then World of Darkness was based on playing villains. Hell, you can be the Drizzt who escaped the Dark Elves even if it makes little sense.

[@eyeofthoth2003]

I think the dancers could work if they were born into it and left (whole sins of the father story) or if they were an oddity like the spirit Bat (associated with the wyrm but the original balanced wyrm and wanting to heal its sanity rather than letting it loose)

[@timwatters4008]

Ahh the Black Spiral dancers. When the furry player wants to play a Baali. But without the self control.

[@yellowbelt]

Indeed

[@Thainin]

So, I am currently in a game where we are playing vampires from the 1500s in south America. One of the players have a mark on their back that has seemingly caught the attention of the black spiral dancers and they were meant to be an antagonist moving forward as they pursued that character.... well, that all went out the window when I asked my storyteller if I could use conflageration (because I was playing a Balli) on the spiral symbol to see what would happen. Long story short, I ended up in the Labyrinth, and now I seem to be being recruited by the spirals to join the wyrm

[@Kholan95]

😮 That's a hell of a progression. First time I read this I thought y'all were playing DURING the 1500s and got more excited than I could have been.

[@derkrischa3720]

I have only once had a BSD thrown at me, as a player. Supprisingly in a VtM game. A Kinfolk had her first change in Highschool, which was messy. But because of some frenzy accidents before, we had to deal with it, on order of the Baron. While investigating we met a sleazy dude, that offered us help, to get the girl and he would just make her disappear. We didn't learn that he was a Garou until the end, because we all had bad luck with dice.[He smelled like a burning oil rig, when my Gangrel tried to sniff him out with Auspex, to see if he was living or dead, which made him think that guy was a Ravnos, who trolled him] We sold him out to local Garou, trying to doublecross our Baron and get the Garou to deal with him, but thats a different story. In the end a Toreador, a Settite and my Gangrel fought the BSD, together with a Glass Walker. We got the Dancer down, snatched a trophy, and skiddadeled before the very hurt Glass Walker could also turn us into mince meat... Aside from that I have never had contact with the BSDs in gaming, but I have never played Werewolf, just not really my cup of tea. But hey, a comment is engangement, glory to the algorythm-overlord

[@1996jgm]

I did, i did play a black spiral dancer campaing. It was a strange experience for sure, and the crucial point was that we played a very decaff version of them, we used the campaing to explore that weird part of Werewold for sure, with the gore and cherrys on top but at least we didnt cross most of the lines that BSD cross as their way of being bc at the the end of day, we were people playing a game, not cowriting the most psyco wolves novel ever. But i have to say that i dont see myself playing another BSD campaing in neither near of far future.

[@bria243]

I'm of two minds about Fifth Edition Werewolf. I can understand the desire to get away from the 'this tribe is represented by this ethnic group' or 'this stereotype behavior' and even agree to some extent. I've seen a Get of Fenris player try to justify being sexist because that is how most tribes view females (one of the books even said many Fenris didn't believe females could be Ahroun). By the same token, the setting just feels neutered. Some of this is admittedly having gone through having bought first edition werewolf (as well as other titles) when initially released, so I'm used to all the old lore. By the way, love the mention of the Apocalypse book. I did like how each tribe might fall...

[@eddybrock7818]

I have always wanted to play a Ronin kinfolk of the black spiral dancers turned caitiff. I always imagined it as a reluctant anti hero who went out of the frying pan and into the fryer kind of situation.😅

[@ryttu3k]

With the caveat that I'm very unfamiliar with Werewolf as a whole (I'm much more a VtM person), I could see a potential Black Spiral Dancer seeking to escape, basically? It'd almost be a kind of cult deprogramming sort of narrative. There are a couple of good examples in Baldur's Gate 3, where at least a few characters have done absolutely horrific things in the past (one in particular very much is The Main Character, but just among the other companions, at least one has done a lot of terrible stuff for the sake of her goddess). The characters, over the course of the game, can either embrace the terrible things they've done, or they can actively work against them, and I can see a Dancer who's starting to doubt what they're doing. They could meet the other PCs via attempting to infiltrate a group and slowly coming to realise that everything they were raised with was wrong, or they could have that realisation beforehand and be desperately trying to hide their past, stuff like that. Again, really not sure if that's possible in the game, but just from what I do know, it sounds like that could be one way to go about playing one, as someone actively trying to move away from the toxic crap they were raised with.

[@AngelCakes1997]

It would be awesome if there was a way to play a recovering Black Spiral, but they’re too far gone. Same with Nephandi, they gave into nihilism and despair and they have willingly given up on redemption of any kind. They’re just there to kill the world, spread misery and break everything good and hopeful. Would love a line riding tribe that can use some of the weird and creepy Gifts.

[@clairestark9024]

As someone whose played sabbat and da path of bones a lot. Imo the issue with spirals isnt the depravity such as one of autonomy. The spirals like the nephandi dont really have free will. Unlike say a tzmisce they dont 'choose' evil its baked into them. This makes writting for them hard especially when combined with their lack of any virtues-a tzmisce may have honour an lasombra may be internally conflicted about what she is but a spiral.... The only one ive seen at the table which worked was a spiral sub group who served the balance wyrm. This groups aghenda overlayed with gaian concerns enough that they'd secretly integrate into packs as ronin or camoflage as other tribes usually coming across as uktena, fianna or lords. That worked quite well, bassically werewolf euthanatos.

[@jaruwan.cchuenjit6147]

Beast the Primodial have nothing on thesw guy.

[@williamfeliciano8980]

How do I use the creatures of the Wyrm? Well in my current W5 game the Player took a garou cub back to her human family to get emancipated since she's only 16. She goes into the room to get in touch with her little 12 year old brother whom she loves very much after the player is has a separate discussion with her parents, she comes out and shows The PC three drawings her brother had made. One of the drawing was of her brother taking a test at school while a shadow figure with bright red eyes stared through the window attentively at him under a sky that was alight blood red from a single star. The other drawing was of him in his house sitting at the dining table and once again being stared at by the shadow figure out the window and once the sky was bright blood red. The final drawing was of him in his room being looked at through a keyhole. The whole drawing colored in shades of red and black and shadow hands on either side of the keyhole at the center of the drawing. What the PC accurately deduced was that this kid was being targeted for possession by a Wyrm spirit. What he didn't know but found out through the game was that his family had joined a cult called the 'Sovereign Mind Institute'. This cult, that was led by a fomori, taught their followers about the spirits and how binding with them can enhance an individuals intelligence, charisma, health, basically how it would grant their children a life of status, power, wealth and success beyond anything they could normally hope to get and what parent wouldn't want that for their kid. Of course he forgot to mention that the process would turn the kid into a Wyrm monster that's compelled to destroy ALL life on earth. But hey! Little Timothy could barely pass a grade in school and now he was easily accepted into the nuclear engineering program at Princeton sooo.

[@MajorDeckard]

Brother you're becoming Alan Moore.

[@louisgarcia2415]

Good stuff.

[@charlesrainey1076]

The black spiral dance is the electric slide

[@mmmproductions1247]

A lesson Paradox and WoTC seem to fail to grasp is when you tell your fanbase they can't do something, especially in a game medium known for freedom of choice, they are going to lash back even if purely out of spite.

[@ConspiracyOpossum]

I always say no maybe a one shot

[@yellowbelt]

To me you can't reasonably play a Black Spiral no different then you can play a Baali. Now of course people want to a debaucheries game have at it. But to me you would have to rewrite how the servants of the wyrm organize and worship the wyrm. I would say all obvious wyrm beings work together. Doesnt mean they no all each other plans, etc. But they do know they have their roles to play. Then each group should describe some type of reasonable pros to be apart of the wyrm.

[@Legionfox1]

Wait, the Get Of Fenris are antagonists?

[@LoreByNightVtM]

In 5th edition yes. Now they are a fascist cult

[@Legionfox1]

@LoreByNightVtM Well darn, I liked the Get Of Fenris. The idea of Viking werewolves sounded so badass. Is there any chance that any of them could be good guys?

[@LoreByNightVtM]

@Legionfox1 Not in 5th edition, they very much cannot be. Go and look at the storm that created, I think I left a link to some of it in the description

[@Legionfox1]

@@LoreByNightVtM Damn, well, alright then.

[@RileyYones]

@@Legionfox1 you can, you can always do the morally right thing and ignore 5th edition lore. its you game after all, just ask your storyteller or run a game with it

[@Miron_Marnic]

I... don't think so?