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waylyngdraws · 29 days ago

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Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition and the Anti-Indigeneity in the Gaming Industry

reosted with permission from J.F. Sambrano

Dagot’ee!

Shii J.F. Sambrano gonsēē. My nations are Chiricahua Apache (Ndeh) through my maternal grandmother and Cora Indian (Náayarite) through my maternal grandfather. I am a mixed race Indigenous person, and through my father my heritage is English and Scottish. I am currently residing and doing work in my community on the lands of Lummi Nation. I use both gender non-binary and masculine pronouns, but prefer the former. I have several published works in the TTRPG industry, and am probably most known for my contributions to Mage: the Ascension 20th Edition, Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Edition, and the Transformers Roleplaying Game, as well as being part of the Essence 20 development team. Further, I also work in higher education at an Indian college, both advising and teaching Indigenous students across the United States. My passion is education, and I believe that we all learn through play, and that TTRPGs are a valuable source of learning, especially on personal, cultural, and social levels. This has always been what has drawn me to TTRPGs since I started playing M.E.R.P. with my brother in 1996 (and before that HeroQuest), through to my “graduation” into more story-driven games such as those presented in the Storyteller System, until now, where I author and produce my own roleplaying games.

I was also part of the First Team (in-joke intentional) hired by White Wolf Studios/Paradox Interactive via Hunters Entertainment to develop and author Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition. After several months of work, Paradox Interactive chose to go in another direction in early 2021 (I believe it was either March or April) and in fall of that year, it was announced that Werewolf would instead be taken in house, with Justin Achilli as the Brand Creative Lead and primary author of the book. Going forward I will be describing my experience while I worked with Paradox Interactive, primarily through Karim Muammar, White Wolf’s Brand Editor, as well as the developmental editor for Werewolf. Although I worked in a team, both with hired authors and in-house representatives at Hunters Entertainment, I will not be speaking for the experience of others, except when specifically noting unanimous consensuses, and specific interactions (which will go unnamed) that are particularly relevant. My hope is that by highlighting some of the anti-Indigenous attitudes that are central to the foundational members and leaders of the White Wolf brand, that I can provide opportunities for growth and healing within the World of Darkness TTRPG community, but also in the broader gaming community, where these behaviors and attitudes are rampant. I also want the community to have a better understanding of what this experience is like internally, and the challenges that Indigenous creators, as well as other marginalized creators, are met with when they try to make positive change within nerd and geek communities clinging to inherited white supremacist values, even if they don’t realize they are doing so.

What I do not want to be doing in this article is creating fuel for edition wars. I believe that both legacy and Werewolf 5th are rife with anti-Indigenous attitudes, and appalling amounts of appropriation. Both versions deserve criticism, I am not defending one over the other, I am only sharing what my experience was like working on the 5th edition of the book. Further, please understand that I was originally going to wait until I had read the final copy of the book, because I wanted to know how much of my work was used (based on previews I already know some was, just not the extent) and whether or not they decided to credit me for that work, and how I was going to be credited. My belief is that I likely will not be, but I am genuinely uncertain. Knowing how they handled that would have reframed how I addressed this. But more importantly, I want it to be very clear that even before Paradox ultimately pulled the plug on the Hunters team, I was preparing to exit working on the project based on the experience I will describe below. Not only did I find it frustrating, and personally disparaging, but I ultimately decided I was uncomfortable with my name being attached to the product based on the direction they wanted to go. So while I wanted to know whether or not I would be credited, because it would teach me something about their internal practices, I do not want or need the credit.

Finally, the reason that I decided to speak about this now instead of after having a chance to inspect the final product, was because my personal experience dealing with anti-Indigeneity coming from Paradox was just that: personal. But since then I have witnessed a throughline of hateful and xenophobic attitudes wielded against Indigenous people across the globe, and we do not deserve this treatment. I was outraged over the events that led to the segregation of the Latin American fanbase, which culminated from bottom-up criticism about how poorly their people and countries were being defined through World of Darkness products, and ended up with the firing of their Latin American Brand Ambassador, Alessa Torres, because she chose to stand with her community in those criticisms. I was further appalled when the likeness of Tāme Wairere Iti was shoehorned into the Werewolf book, a blatant example of cultural theft: not only in stealing the literal physical identity of an Indigenous person, but also his sacred tā moko. When Paradox Interactive issued an apology for this, it felt incredibly hollow to me in the wake of these events, the hateful attitudes I had personally witnessed coming from the top.

Whether from North America, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, or Peru, or across the globe in New Zealand, not only do Indigenous people deserve better treatment from such a major company, but their Indigenous and Latino fanbases, who have twisted and worked themselves through difficult representation for decades at this point, deserve better. Apologies are not enough, especially when they come with next to no real change.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse in Context

At the time that White Wolf Publishing began to produce its World of Darkness line, the TTRPG industry was dominated by white men, both as producers, developers, and authors, as well as the main characters in their settings. White Wolf's World of Darkness made an impact at the time, by defying these Eurocentric, patriarchal presentations, first by defaulting to feminine pronouns throughout Vampire: the Masquerade, and then by focusing on Indigenous representation and values in Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and as a young Indigenous nerd, it had a positive impact on me, as I know it has on some other Indigenous people who became fans of the World of Darkness at the time. This was because before opening the pages of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, I had never seen heroes that I could play who looked like me and my culture. It was off, and often offensive, but it was my first experience in which I could directly play a hero who shared my heritage--and I also had more than one option through two different Tribes to do so. This might sound a little like I was cheering for table scraps, but again, at the time, table scraps was more than I had ever seen before.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse 1st Edition was originally published in 1992 via then White Wolf Publishing (not to be confused with Paradox Interactive's White Wolf). From its inception, the premise was interwoven with what its then-authors believed to be Indigenous praxis and representation. Like many pop-culture presentations of Indigeneity from this time period (see Fern Gully, Dances With Wolves, Disney’s Pocahontas, or in TTRPGs, the NAN from Shadowrun) it was rife with problematic and even offensive stereotyping. The most obvious examples thereof are within the two "Pure Tribes" Uktena, and W****** who I will henceforth refer to as Older and Younger Brother. However, Indigenous inspiration was at the core of the game's spiritual premise as well, where animism and "Totems" are central to the setting and gameplay. The way these concepts are presented is trivializing and dehumanizing, but it is important to acknowledge that the appropriation present in Werewolf: the Apocalypse goes a lot deeper than the two Brother Tribes (even the term "Tribe" was meant to invoke a vision of Indigeneity compared to the previous setting in the line's use of "Clan"). Additionally, there is art throughout every generation of these gaming books that represents humans, wolves, and human-wolf hybrid forms wearing Indigenous regalia, including sacred items such as headdresses, or engaged in sacred rituals such as the Sun Dance. The list of problematic representations goes deep, and my examples only scratch the surface, but it is also important for me to note the positive impact that this had, particularly in the 90's.

Even though the primary contributors to these narratives were non-Indigenous authors, or in one case, a Pretendian, and another, a culturally disconnected author, by the time the Revised (or Third Edition) era of the books came around, White Wolf Publishing was actively engaged in cultural consultation. While I do not believe cultural consultation makes a big difference on its own, it matters that the attempt was made, to a degree: while these efforts fall short of what needs to be seen in cultural representation, this was still ahead of most other gaming companies at this time.

Hired by Hunters Entertainment

In February of 2020 I was approached by one of the co-owners of Hunters Entertainment to be one of the primary authors for Werewolf: 5th Edition due to my work on other World of Darkness projects, and let's be honest, because I was capable of bringing a much needed Indigenous perspective to a gameline that was rooted in Indigeneity and rotting with appropriation and racist stereotypes. I was overall receptive to the invitation, largely because I was very passionate about the World of Darkness setting overall, and Werewolf in particular, due to the impact that 90's representation had on me when I was a younger gamer. I also felt hopeful that with a really hard rewrite of Indigenous aspects of the game that I could shift a lot of really painful aspects of the game into something that was a net positive for Indigenous representation. I will tell you now, more than anything, I was excited to rewrite the Younger Brother Tribe, because when separated from racist authors, their message is very empowering and real to my lived experience.

That said, I did not agree to join the project without first asking for reassurances. I said that I was not willing to write negative Native stereotypes. I would not use appropriative language, or generally engage in appropriative writing (which meant at minimum that the names of the Pure Tribes would need to change), and most importantly, that I would not not engage in writing that contributed to erasure. While the person who recruited me to work on the project was eager to work with me, he acknowledged that he was not sure he could get everything I wanted to see approved, but also promised to fight for everything I suggested as hard as he could. Additionally, he shared with me that the original setting pitch for W5 involved all of Younger Brother being slaughtered en masse in a massacre. I made it clear that this was exactly the kind of thing that I would not write. I cannot remember if this was something he suggested to be changed before or after I was invited onto the project, but with some pushback it was changed. However, I point this out because I want you, the reader, to understand how eager Paradox Interactive was to start with mass genocide and erasure as a foundation to the setting. All that said, I cannot stress enough that I have had nothing but positive experiences with Hunters Entertainment, and none of the following concerns fall upon them.

The Sword of Heimdall

The first encounter the Hunters Entertainment team as a whole had with problematic guidelines for the W5 draft was the direction that Paradox Interactive wanted to go with the Sword of Heimdall. At the time, the suggestions from Paradox and Karim Muammar were that the Sword of Heimdall was going to represent the new major villain of the Werewolf setting, and that they were to also represent the far-right, fascist direction that Werewolf society so often turned toward. They were meant to be representative of how far the new concept of Hauglosk could take entire communities. However, the Sword of Heimdall was discussed interchangeably with the Get of Fenris as a whole, and more than once Muammar seemed to suggest that every member of this Tribe was guilty of the same attitudes espoused in previous editions from the Sword of Heimdall. Now let's not beat around the bush: the Sword of Heimdall are literal Nazis. They believe directly in white supremacy and don't shy from it. They wanted to cleanse impure elements from the Get of Fenris, including BIPOC people, other non-white ethnicities, women, neurodivergent Garou, and other disabled Garou.

The writing team found this approach problematic for several reasons. The first, and most obvious, was that the direction seemed to want to turn one of the most popular Tribes into a horrific stereotype of its most abhorrent faction. Whether or not Muammar’s goal was to turn them into villains, we could not imagine a world where fans of previous editions would get their hands on this book, and not look for a way to play one of their previous favorite groups, thus creating the issue of making a guide to playing Nazi. Even beyond that, it’s not as if historically there were not players who used the tools of the setting to play Black Spiral Dancers, why wouldn’t this draw people who actually wanted to role-play through these toxic, harmful politics? Further, and while this is less important, it left a bad taste in my mouth, the justification for this major shift in Werewolf lore seemed to change over each pass. At first, Muammar suggested that all Fenrir were Nazis/SoH. Then, when he was provided with evidence that it was a small faction that was eliminated in the early 2000’s, he started to shift toward the idea that we should not follow the lore. Finally, when every single member of the writer’s team flatly refused to provide what would essentially be “a player’s guide to being a Nazi werewolf” the writing was on the wall about the end of our involvement with this product. More than once, he suggested that we were cowardly social justice warriors for being unwilling to work with this concept, even though there were several attempts to write a heroic version of the Fenrir that were focused on undoing these ills of the past.

Indigenous Erasure in Werewolf: 5th Edition

While the entire Hunters Entertainment writing team was handling the major, glaring issue of Paradox’s fervor to include a major Nazi element in Werewolf, I was personally dealing with the problematic approach to the Indigenous issues in the setting. The largest problem, for me, was in addressing Younger Brother’s issues, the history of non-Indigenous writers creating horrifically racist stereotypes, and what was valuable in the Tribal identity that should be saved and recentered. However, my attempts to do so were thwarted with every approach. I rewrote this Tribe four times, and offered three different versions of it to try to earn approval for a final write-up, but each time there was a lot of negativity directed towards my attempts and all them boiled down to this: Muammar felt that having two Tribes (both Younger and Older Brother) representing the “Indigenous population” was too many, and wanted them to only be focused on Older Brother, and that Younger Brother’s connection to a central, Indigenous identity, was undesirable because “other sources wrote them as having Siberian and European connections” and that future writing on this Tribe would require a lot of sensitivity…suggesting that one, Muammar wasn’t interested in doing the work to handle that level of sensitivity, and further, that he wasn’t interested in including me in future work, since I was involved with doing that at the time.

I want to take a moment to remind you that the work that was put into recovering Younger Brother started with “Let’s Kill Them Off” and at this point, through a combination of convincing and pleading, had been walked back to “They can live, but now they’re not connected to being Indigenous anymore” which is just representative genocide of a different variety. “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” It was also explicitly something I said I would not write about going into this project. Ultimately, my efforts did not get much further than this, with some specific exceptions I will cite below.

Karim Muammar’s Anti-Indigenous Positions

Muammar consistently and repeatedly communicated to the team in ways that were condescending and dismissive of our collective accomplishments and capabilities, but from my perspective, no one suffered as much significant derision as I did while discussing the changes I wanted to make to Younger and Older Brother in order to make their representation empowering and exciting.

In the pulled quote from the previous paragraph, I want to point out to you that Muammar, who had the title of Lead Editor on this project, refused to capitalize Native American. Further, he would often redline my work with edits to decapitalize my own uses of Native American, as well as the word Indigenous when referring to Indigenous peoples. While there are plenty of people who might want to argue about this, I will point out that both the AP style guide as well as the Chicago style guide (the one which I am most familiar with in my academic historical work) both call for Indigenous to be capitalized when referring to a people. Further, I challenge anyone to defend the consistent decapitalization of Native American. More importantly, the reason that these are standards in respected style guides, is because the English language has been used historically to oppress and erase ethnic identities, including Indigenous identities. By transforming adjectives into proper nouns, we are declaring that Indigenous and Native aren’t descriptors that can be applied to animals, plants, and soil, but real lived identities and culture groups.

When I was explaining to the Paradox team (which was mostly just Muammar) why it was important to change the names of these two Tribes from the appropriative (and offensive) ones used in the past, Muammar pushed back by defending the previously used Younger Brother name, even after reading my extensive research and explanation about how this would harm Indigenous communities and fans.

While doing so, he also decided that it was appropriate to refer to this entirely Native American tribe by the word “savages” a slur that has been specifically used to dehumanize Native Americans, and then mocked my rewrite that focused on presenting them as stewards of the land using Indigenous methodologies and praxes, instead of the “savage” racist stereotypes they were presented as in previous editions. Further, as in the above quote, even after it was communicated that the use of this term was problematic, he kept doubling-down to use it to refer to the Tribe.

Even though I worked hard to redefine Younger Brother through Indigenous theory, such as place-based theory, relational theory, and communal theory, Muammar either refused to recognize this work, dismissing it as simple, or else simply could not understand the importance of these changes. Either way, the choice is that he didn’t want them to change, or couldn’t comprehend why the change was important because of how entrenched in white supremacist thinking he is. Further, after the massive effort that I put forward to attempt to educate him and the rest of the Paradox team on these issues, the insistence on using offensive terms and belittling my work felt intentional. So let’s talk about the work I did that was above and beyond my job description: free cultural consulting work.

“Sensitivity” and Consultation

I have seen several misunderstandings of my role working on this project going around, so I want to make something very clear. I was hired to work on this project as an author, and nothing else. I was not ever hired to be a cultural consultant. I do not do cultural consulting work. While I feel that there are many creators and companies who hire cultural consultants with the best intentions in mind, their responses often fall short of what is needed, as no one is ever obligated to actually follow the advice of cultural consultants. Further, I think there are also many companies who choose to hire cultural consultants only to say “we did this minimal step, and that is enough” in order to ward off naysayers.

However, anyone who hires me gets some level of cultural consulting for free, because it comes out in my writing–in both what I won’t write and what I choose to center my writing around. In the case of Werewolf 5th Edition, however, it was far more involved than this. I came with a plethora of “I will not write X” because I knew the setting was so problematic. A short list of my demands besides not being willing to write Indigenous erasure, was that we needed to change the names of the Pure Tribes (and the term Pure Tribe itself), we needed to change the word Totem to Patron, and also the Patrons of the Pure Tribes. We needed to move away from the term Metis for obvious reasons, and we needed to move away from the term Skin Dancers. I also specifically noted that there was a lot of cultural theft happening from the beginning of Werewolf until now that I wanted to address. The only way these issues were going to be addressed was to convince Paradox they were actual issues on the level of PR concerns, because nothing else was likely going to be considered. So in order to achieve this, I put in weeks worth of research, writing, and meetings with top level administrators with Hunters Entertainment so that they could bring this information to Paradox. I never documented my hours, but I would guess that I did approximately 80-100 hours of what I could only describe as cultural consultation work for free that was outside the contract work I was hired for. Let’s be clear: I did this willingly because I was passionate about the positive changes I wanted to see in this product, because I believed that Werewolf’s historic ills could be turned toward non-toxic representation.

Besides my actual words, such as naming the Ghost Council, and arguably the name Gale Stalkers came from a combination of names I pitched to Paradox after Winter’s Teeth was denied, and several sentences and paragraphs that I have seen so far that appear so close to what I originally wrote that you could imagine they were just edited versions, my largest contribution toward the final version of Werewolf: 5th Edition was this work. The only reason the offensive, appropriated names were changed were because of hours of my work to convince them it needed to happen. The reason that the Gale Stalkers aren’t just dead and gone: again, I pushed against this. The reason that Skin Dancers, Totem, and Metis will not appear as canonical titles? I pushed against their unwillingness to alter these things (see Karim’s defense of Wen**** Tribe name above).

Further, and this is the biggest reason I decided to write this article before seeing the final version of the book, I want to mention that I was also included in discussions with Hunters Entertainment to potentially be part of the art direction team, especially to oversee depictions of Indigenous characters, regalia, and art, to ensure that it would be represented either respectfully or not at all. I decided I needed to speak as soon as possible after the artistic portrayal of Tāme Iti appeared in the Glass Walkers preview without his permission. There are many arguments surrounding this issue and I am not going to address everything, but ultimately, I can tell you that had I remained as part of the art direction team, and saw that, I would have questioned it immediately. Even if I didn’t recognize Tāme Iti immediately, I would have asked what the source was on the depiction of moko in that piece, because I am aware that this is a sacred form of art–and I had already discussed wanting to make sure things like Crinos in headdresses didn’t appear in the book (as had often happened in previous editions, particularly on a certain white-skinned character whose name rhymes with Steals-the-Past).

As time working on this project went on, and I went through rounds and rounds of trying to convince Muammar and Paradox that it was important to not steal Indigenous identities, art, and stories, and that a greater effort needed to be put in powerful and empowering Indigenous representation, and I constantly ran into refusals and criticisms that were clearly hateful toward Indigenous identities and peoples, not to mention the push to represent Nazism as a major part of the game setting, I grew increasingly frustrated and restless with feeling like I was trying to work on a challenging project while also defending my right to exist as the person I am at every turn. Eventually I turned to another Indigenous TTRPG and game creator to ask for advice, and after a long and difficult discussion, I came to the conclusion that I was going to talk to the Hunters administration team and tell them that if Muammar kept using slurs and other anti-Indigenous language and attitudes, I was going to need to step off of this project, because it was harmful to me on a personal level. In furtherance of this point, I have been avoiding doing any contract work at all where I can tell that I am wanted for my specific cultural perspective ever since, because this situation was so harrowing for me.

Unfortunately, before I could have this conversation, after one final draft of Younger Brother and Bone Gnawers (which had its own issues, but that is not the point of this discussion), before we received any other specific feedback, the Hunters Entertainment administrators announced to the writing team that Paradox had decided to take the book in-house, and would no longer need our services.

The main point I would like to leave you with, besides these few specific quotes (out of dozens and dozens) that Muammar made that were anti-Indigenous, is that there is often a big call to have more BIPOC voices in various entertainment industries, so that both our stories, perspectives, and unique views on how the universe and life works, can be included; so that an industry that is historically, harmfully Eurocentric, might turn toward new, healthier, and inclusive directions. And I agree with this call for change, but I implore you to consider the conditions that BIPOC creators often have to work under: doing cultural/identity work and consultation for free as part of being present, being subject to vicious refusals of our experiences and perspectives, and straight-up having slurs lodged against our work. I want to see these changes in the industries we love, including the gaming industry, but currently the people who are in charge, who have the most power, are severely hostile to our work and our perspectives. This is why, for example, works like Coyote & Crow were done with an almost entirely Indigenous group of creators, and led by Indigenous creators, because trying to work for and with this ugly, hateful, and xenophobic group of people is so often exhausting, both mentally and spiritually, and because no good changes end up being made.

I am glad the harmful, appropriative terms were removed from the setting. I am glad I was part of the fight to make that real. I am not so glad that I was treated with hostility and racism by Muammar for the effort and love I put into this work, and I am not so glad that I will certainly be reviled by one of the two communities I did this work for–the gaming community, and certainly the people in power in this industry–and I am also not so glad that I didn’t have the opportunity to properly acknowledge how much of Werewolf’s base themes and setting are twisted and tied-up in Indigenous appropriation without giving the proper acknowledgments.

More than anything, I hope that this story will help you, the fans, realize that there is a lot of darkness in these communities, and they won’t change unless you hold their feet to the fire.

Ánaagodzįįhł

J.F. Sambrano

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waylyngdraws · 3 months ago

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my wonderful partner in crime

Came As Strangers, Left As Family - WoD Meet Cute

Author's Note: My entry for the World of Darkness OC Meet Cute Event! I was paired with the awesome @waylyngdraws who drew a really cool art piece of how our VTM OCs vibed. They own Orazio/Ofelia and Wynter belongs to me.

This is the story of how two like-minded souls wrecked a Giovanni dinner party and gave them a taste of their own medicine.

Content Warnings: Blood, violence, implied/referenced abuse, wraith, post-canon, Giovanni racism and sexism, the Circulatory System.

They caught a glimpse of each other from afar. Wasn’t this how love stories started? Fate, as some would call it. But it wasn’t hard to single them out at a dinner party full of aspiring despots dressed in elegant mourning wear. They were the only ones sulking instead of mingling, nursing half-forgotten ichor in cordial glasses doled out by unassuming ghouls. Perhaps the top one percent of them would make it as future family of theirs.

Family. The two strangers shuddered at the term. What did it really mean in the end? A family who controls with an iron hand, who threatens, hates, and betrays at every waking second, sharpening their best knives behind your back. But it was all for The Family.

Wynter sized up her quiet, distant companion. Despite his cherubic face and luscious caramel locks, he had a stitched together look about him, as if his body had been shattered like a porcelain doll and put back in haste. Not only that, his clothes were at least a century old. A pair of suspenders lined his starched dress shirt with sleeve garters to boot. Woollen knee-high socks were tucked neatly under his buckskin breeches. His palm rested on the knob of an ornate steel cane and she wondered if it was large enough to conceal a weapon. He must be an Ancilla or older, she determined. All of that power housed in such a small fragile being. Looks could be deceiving.

In the meantime, Orazio had been appraising the woman as well. Her wavy jet black bob, the fullness of her Cupid’s bow, a lit cigarette wedged within her deep set scowl. The lush fur coat she wore over her leggy silk dress clearly indicated that she was backed by money. But while other Giovannis were either pallid, bookish corpses or the epitome of brute force, she carried herself like a solitary black jaguar, eyes shifting from one guest to the other, observing, finding her marks. Orazio realized that her side slit dress wasn’t just for show, it allowed for unrestricted movement should she need it.

With a languid coyness they gravitated toward a midway point like cryptic, nocturnal animals, sniffing the air, wondering if they had read the room wrongly. Throughout, they were met with taciturn, dismal stares from the Anziani and the occasional contemptuous laughter from their “cousins.”

Wynter heard it all, the hushed whispers of her impure “Kuei-Jin blood,” the mock of her slanted eyes, her mother’s name dragged through the mud. Lettow’s absence meant she was without protection, but since when couldn’t she hold her own? “The Della Passaglias and their taste for the exotic,” one of the younger ladies of the clique raised a glass to her which she promptly ignored. Not now. It wasn’t time yet. Like a true hunter, Wynter knew how to savor the rewards of a good wait.

Orazio, on the other hand, felt the stern gaze of the Don boring holes into his back. That terrible night where this rotten man had abused and reduced him into a pathetic plaything still permeated his mind. “A fucking disappointment.” His ears pricked up. “Should have stayed an intern with Anziani Manuel like a good little housewife.” It was raspy and snivelly, peppered with a heavy Venetian accent that was so unmistakably Cousin Lorenzo, a previous rival. Housewife? Orazio scoffed. Either Lorenzo was an idiot who didn’t understand the inner mechanisms of gender or an even greater idiot for thinking that emasculating him would suffice as an insult.

“Enjoying the party?” A featherlight yet husky voice with a slight twang interrupted his reverie. He wasn’t sure if he was dealing with a precocious little girl or a seductive Southern belle altogether.

“Ah, buona sera, signora,” he greeted. Tapping the tip of his cane on the ground, he bowed politely as the curls of his hair brushed past his shoulders. “Pardon me for not seeing you there and I am afraid my manners escapes me.” A flourish of an extended hand. “I am the one known as Orazio.” He paused for a moment, pursing his lips apprehensively while calculating the woman’s reaction in front of him.

“Orazio…” A flash of her hazel irises reflecting his green.

“... or Ofelia Rossellini if you prefer,” he quickly added. “Pick your poison.”

“Why would I need to pick at all?”

His startled eyes met her lopsided smile. She slipped her hand into his and he placed a customary kiss on a particularly beguiling antique ring on her finger. The onyx seemed to suck him in like a void.

“You can call me Wynter.”

Orazio gave a slight nod. “Well, Wynter, to answer your earlier question, we are, after all, indebted and loyal to The Family.” A tinge of irony laced his voice as he rattled on like a finely-tuned ad. “What could be more delightful than to celebrate the new year and new beginnings with our Giovanni brethren?

Wynter snorted in response, but Orazio wasn’t quite done yet. “Oh, and… qual è la parola? What the Don says, goes. Am I correct?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Don Fanton?”

“Sì.”

“He give you that?” Wynter jutted her chin at the prominent scars that crept along Orazio’s face and neck.

Orazio shook his head. “No, signoria, this was...” He touched the side of his cheek gingerly, feeling the welts and grooves under his skin. “This was what I wanted.”

A fleeting sense of fear struck him. Perhaps he had revealed too much and it was time to even the tables. “And what about you, Wynter? Did you come here on your own accord as well?”

She smirked sardonically. His mistrust was warranted, especially when they had barely spoken to each other in a room full of sharks, loosely connected by their grievances and inability to conform. Both had experienced their fair share of Anziani nonsense and understood that this wasn’t just some fancy party. It was a way for their elders to check up on them like Big Brother.

“I owed my sire, Chiara, a boon,” Wynter explained. “Appearances are important, since we’ve been brought back into the fold.”

“I regret that we are not better company, my friend.” Orazio’s apology seemed heartfelt and sincere enough that it didn’t take long for Wynter’s eyes to light up in mischief.

“Well, how shall we change that, Orazio?”

Tear them apart.

“I might have some ideas,” he offered.

Watch it burn.

It was almost as if they were communicating telepathically through a shared primal urge.

A disembodied hand with bright red talons scuttered out of Orazio’s trouser pocket, nestling itself onto his shoulder, tapping its fingers impatiently. “Piccolino too,” he acknowledged, while Wynter looked on amused.

“The walls have ears, friend,” she warned. “Come with me.”

━━━━━━━━━━━

Away from the crowds, unseen servants, and prying eyes, Orazio and Wynter took stock of the taunts and slights they had been dealt, ultimately boiling it down to two spoiled and obnoxious Kindred: Cousins Jessica Milliner and Lorenzo Giovanni. Their resulting arrogance and complacency made them easy pickings for those who knew what it was like to be hungry. Orazio and Wynter planned to make a fool of the opening ritual, and they wanted Jessica and Lorenzo to take the blame for it. Eventually, it became a challenge of who could pull the greatest prank of the evening without getting caught.

“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Wynter teased, wagging her finger.

Lorenzo had apparently been shouting from the rooftops about a highly coveted fetter that he was safekeeping for none other than the Don. His pride left him blissfully unaware that Wynter had eavesdropped from the shadows, uncovering details about the item and its rough location.

Orazio waved his hand, dismissing her concerns. “If you would allow me to speak freely, with that kind of information, I could do far worse on that… qual è la parola?” As he grasped for the right words, Wynter focused on her surroundings again, relieved that there had not been any homuncular spies in sight.

“Ah hah!” Orazio exclaimed victoriously and Piccolino twirled around his arm in excitement. “Yes, that cumrag!”

Cumrag? Wynter was puzzled. Did he mean scumbag?

But Orazio was already onto the next step. “We must make haste, my friend. Fret not, Piccolino and I will take care of the trinket and I trust that you will acquire the fetter?”

They agreed to return to a discreet rendezvous that Orazio had known during his time with the upper echelons of The Family. He reassured her that it would be a safe place to conduct the ceremony.

Back at the dinner reception, Orazio situated himself among throngs of guests drunk on a plethora of fresh, warm blood. It was bustling and the low ceilings amplified clinks of glasses and lively chatter. If there was one thing Piccolino was good at, it was blending in with the masses as it dipped and slinked past legs and feet, nimbly hopping into Anziani Giulia’s coat pocket without raising her suspicion. A second later, it emerged with the intricate silver coin in hand, once again avoiding the limbs of the other Kindred as it delicately planted the trinket in Jessica’s handbag. If that wasn’t a job well done, Orazio didn’t know what was. He petted Piccolino approvingly as it disappeared up the sleeve of his shirt into the comforting dark.

Wynter had always been one to fulfill her end of the bargain as efficiently as possible. When Lettow left Tucson, she became his second-in-command, going where Dove would not follow. Camarilla elitists often derisively referred to her as his “foot soldier.” Never accepted, always shunned, but her loyalty to the Eagle Prince never wavered. Perhaps Orazio would soon earn hers. Aided by her heightened senses of the mundane and unseen, she darted in and out of the blind spots, bypassing the worst of the watchmen who were disguised as casual guests.

When she finally reached Lorenzo’s private chambers, she tapped in through the keyhole with Auspex, feeling the vibrations of various objects, their residual energies appearing to her like wisps of smoke. A hidden cache called out to her, obscured by a veil of negative space—hollow, barren, and cold. Even from afar, the weight and power of the fetter drew her in, but a flicker of movement suddenly captured her interest. She peered directly at it, wondering how on earth she could have missed the lonesome ghost guarding the stash, but it was an elusive figure, appearing and disappearing from view.

Carefully, Wynter unpicked the door lock, taking the odd deep breath as each pin was lifted and set in place. She could wrap this up quickly as long as she timed it right. Slipping in, she recalled what the brazen Brujah, Pattermuster, had taught her back in Phoenix. Every fiber of her undead nerves fired up with the force of life and speed. Swiftly, she knocked over a bunch of books to act as a distraction before turning toward the cache. In the blink of an eye, she was there, nabbing the prized item before dashing out undetected. The poor ghost never saw it coming. “Thank fuck for Celerity,” she muttered, sauntering down the hallway.

Reconvening at their meeting spot, Orazio reported about his and Piccolino’s success with panache and gusto while Wynter triumphantly placed the fetter into his awaiting hands. It was a slender and modest bangle, caked in dirt and grime that was difficult to remove, sized to fit a child’s wrist. Orazio studied it intently, tracing the curve of the metal, testing its strength and malleability as he recited an Old Latin phrase. Spilling his vitae on the ornament, he whispered the name, “Scaevola…”

The room chilled to a freezing point and Wynter encountered that prickly feeling of dread like a thick, Stygian sludge crawling through her esophagus, flooding her entire body with nausea. How many years had she learnt the necromantic arts of her clan, but never gotten used to it? Orazio, however, seemed quite the opposite. He was in his element, brimming with an eagerness and passion to speak to the entity. A long, quavering shadow cast over the tiles and a distorted voice bellowed in a mixture of Latin and Old Italian. It was perplexed, angry, and skeptical at having been summoned by someone it didn’t recognize.

“What do you mean ‘let me go in return?’ Your kind have assaulted and exploited me for—”

“Lorenzo and Fanton are sadistic brutes, I agree, Signorə,” Orazio interrupted, still clinging onto the bangle, subtly inching it toward an open flame should the wraith prove unruly. “I, too, have suffered under them and with utmost sincerity, I believe we share common goals.”

“Which is?” Scaevola spat.

Orazio gestured to Scaevola. “Your freedom from tyranny.” Then, pointing at himself and Wynter, he added, “And our chance to put these absolute tankers in their rightful place.”

Wankers. Absolute wankers, Wynter groaned internally, but bit her tongue to stop herself from correcting him.

Scaevola deliberated on the offer. “Is this not simply exchanging one master for another?”

“We will deliver your fetter to wherever you desire it to be,” Orazio promised.

“Perhaps you have some unfinished business?” Wynter chimed in with Orazio as their unofficial translator.

The shadow fluttered, but remained silent. Finally, it replied, its tone uncompromising, “Swear it to me in blood. Both of you!”

A Kindred’s vitae was potent and what contained their very essence shouldn’t be given away lightly. But then again, so was the possession of the wraith’s fetter, one that had experienced years of defilement and threats, which it was desperate to escape from. Regardless, Orazio never sealed a deal with a spirit without some sort of ace up his sleeve. He turned to Wynter and nodded. She unsheathed a knife from her camouflaged leg holster and slashed her hand. The sanguine fluid dripped into a bowl that Piccolino had produced, mixing in with Orazio’s as he chanted an oath that satisfied Scaevola.

It allowed itself to be compelled with a sprinkling of blood, solemnly declaring, “Mayhem and thy will be done,” before vanishing into thin air.

━━━━━━━━━━━

At the dining room, they settled into their seats inconspicuously, lost in the sea of faces. Better to be nobodies than to stand out with the plan they had set into motion. A tense and begrudging reverence swept across the guests as Anzianis Giulia and Edoardo waltzed in, taking their place at the head of the table. Appeased, Giulia and Edoardo spoke in turns for the opening speech, finishing each other’s sentences, as though their very thoughts were melded together as one.

“The beginning is the end.”

“And the end is the beginning.”

“You have all been gathered here as part of The Family…”

“Part of our flesh and blood…”

“To lay witness to this momentous celebration.”

“For we are Giovanni; let it be known.”

“Let it be known.”

Their words resounded off the walls before a pregnant pause took over. Wynter fidgeted in her seat and Orazio stifled a yawn, finding such “pleasantry rituals” trifling and tiresome. The Don cast Orazio an admonishing look and reluctantly, the Ancilla straightened himself up to pacify him.

Giulia rang a small vintage hand bell by her side and a number of masked servants stood by the doors at her command. “Before the tasting, we shall pay our respects to our dark ancestors,” she began.

“And let their hand guide us to the right choice,” Edoardo ended, producing a nearly identical silver coin to the one that Giulia was supposed to be holding. The only difference was the date etched on them—Giulia’s 1444 to Edoardo’s 1528.

The next thing that happened was certainly a sight to remember. Much like a horror movie in slow motion, Giulia reached into her coat pocket, but pulled out nothing. Digging in once more, her brows knitted together, pale lips stretching into a frown, as though she had touched something unpleasant inside. Removing her hand, she patted the exterior of the pocket a few times before searching the area frantically. The crowd broke out in a cacophony of murmurs until Edoardo implored, “Silence!”

Wild-eyed and in a fit of derangement, Giulia pointed accusingly at the group before her. “You!” Everyone turned to look at each other, but her finger was aimed at a blank space. “Which of you foul childer has done this?”

Immediately, the servants lunged forward. Drinks were knocked aside, pockets were emptied, and purses were flung open unceremoniously… until the fated silver coin fell out of Jessica’s bag, clattering noisily on the table. Shock and incredulity dawned on her face as she was met with daggered looks. “I-It wasn’t me! I-I swear!” she stammered.

In a flash, Giulia had closed the distance, smacking Jessica so hard with the back of her hand that a rush of blood sprayed out in a wide arc, decorating the tablecloth like pressed rose petals.

“Vile brat!” Giulia cursed.

When Jessica tried to plead her case, an opaque black mass engulfed her mouth as she choked and clawed at her throat. Giulia glowered unsympathetically and with a prompt wave of her hand, her lackeys pinned Jessica down and carted her off.

Orazio and Wynter exchanged looks as he gave her a sly wink, but the evening was far from over. This was just the appetizer and they were starving for the main course.

Giulia had reverted to her usual stoic self. “Well, now that has been taken care of, let us continue.”

At the second ringing of the bell, a selection of what Giulia coined as her “lambs”—comatose or mute vessels provided by courtesy of the Circulatory System—were wheeled in. The latter were restrained on stainless steel serving trolleys, barely conscious but still struggling against the leather straps that bound them. Poor creatures, Orazio grimaced. There were indeed outcomes worse than death. Wynter fixated on the bluish-green of their veins, protruding from their jugular and clenched the armrests of her chair. This night had made her dizzy with hunger, but she swallowed it down, controlling the Beast for now.

The purpose behind the tasting ritual was to reinforce the hierarchical relationship in The Family. Naturally, Giulia would be first in the pecking order, followed by Edoardo, and so on. If one could not control their drinking beyond a sip, they would be ousted from the entire event altogether. Orazio glanced at Wynter expectantly. It was almost as if he knew what was coming next, or maybe he—

“EEURGH!” An unearthly, ear-splitting shriek filled the air. Giulia’s face scrunched up in disgust as she spat a thick glob with the color of black bile onto the floor. Blood spurted from the mute vessel and their eyes were wide open in shock.

Before anyone could react, large gaping wounds appeared on Edoardo’s forehead, side, and hands as he bled profusely from them like a perverse Jesus on a crucifix. On the other end of the table, Lorenzo doubled over violently, vomiting slimy maggots onto the hapless companions seated beside him. The whole scene erupted in chaos where plates and glasses were thrown and smashed. As a grand finale, the opulent chandelier that hung ominously above tore from its bracket and fell. Orazio and Wynter ducked out of the way as it crashed to the ground. Some were less fortunate, but the elders were wisening up to the wraith’s antics.

“Scaevola!” The Don hissed, his eyes glazed over like egg whites.

Immediately, an amorphous shape appeared, called to attention by its previous master. Yet, as soon as it came, it went, dissipating into fine mist. Something was interfering with the Don’s hold over it.

The Don whipped his head fiercely in Lorenzo’s direction, paying little to no heed at his wretched state. “The fetter! Where is it?” he barked.

Lorenzo scrambled to his feet, running towards his chambers like a dog playing fetch, only to return empty-handed, cowering in shame.

“You imbecile!” The Don roared, wringing Lorenzo’s neck as he was hurled across the room, landing against the wall with a sickening crack. “You’ll not get an ounce of rest until you find it, you hear me?”

At this point, Edoardo declared that the dinner party was over and Giulia would deal with the culprits as she saw fit. The guests were ushered out to their awaiting vehicles, accompanied by the sound of car doors slamming and engines rearing as they departed in haste. In the cool evening breeze, Orazio found Wynter leaning against the hood of her baby blue 1973 Chevy Malibu, taking the longest drag of a cigarette he’d ever seen.

“Want one?”

An opened pack. The smell of warm tobacco. An offering.

“Um, err…”

She blew a smoke ring in his face. “Hey, live a little.”

“Right.” Orazio fiddled with the carton and drew out a paperwhite stick. He turned around, noticing the Don watching disapprovingly from the porch window. Where do you think you’re going? he almost seemed to say.

The click of a lighter. A flickering amber flame.

“Trust me, okay?”

Orazio looked between the Don and Wynter until he finally made a decision. “I shall be snitching a ride!” he yelled to the elder, waving his cane as a form of goodbye before taking a puff from the cigarette. He coughed and sputtered, unused to and taken by surprise by the stinging bitter taste.

Wynter had already gotten into the driver’s seat, extending the passenger door like an invitation. It was now or never. Orazio climbed in and Piccolino pulled the handle shut behind him, making itself comfortable on the dashboard.

“So, how’re you feeling?”

Incredible? Perfectly dandy? Most wonderful? No, those weren’t the words. He didn’t know how to explain it, not in a way that would make sense, not in a way that she would understand. Or would she?

“I’m… please…” He paused, recollecting himself. “I think— I think this is what Ofelia would do.”

Without batting an eyelid, Wynter met her reticent gaze and smirked, “Well, Ofelia, are you ready to help resolve a fetter?” She rapped against the secret compartment behind the glove box and the bangle in it quivered with a content hum.

Whatever insecurities Ofelia had harbored dissolved and the corners of her mouth ticked into a grin. “Allora, ready and at your service, my friend.”

Wynter stepped on the gas pedal and the car took off into the night, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust in its wake. As it turned out, this hadn’t been a love story at all, but something even better—the beginnings of an unlikely friendship and a partner-in-crime for unlife.

Dividers by @diableriedoll

#wodmeetcute #oc: wynter #vtm night road #vtm oc #oc orazio #wod meet cute 2025 #wod meet cute

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