Fetishes

Fetishes are permanent magical items with a spirit bound within. They can only be constructed with the Rite Of The Fetish, an extremely arduous process that almost always requires an expenditure of permanent Gnosis to have any chance of success. (More specifically, for our ruleset, they take a permanent Gnosis per level of the fetish.)

Because of this, and because Garou take very seriously the responsibility of bearing an item into which a spirit is permanently bound, fetishes, particularly powerful ones, are relatively rare and are only infrequently found in the possession of younger, less experienced Garou. (Players are, however, certainly encouraged to attempt to apply for them in the application process.)

In order to activate a fetish and make use of its powers, Garou must focus their Gnosis; Garou with low Gnosis scores or extremely powerful fetishes may find it difficult to make use of the item. Examples of fetishes are Bane Skins (which, when used, causes Wyrm spirits to react to the user as if he was one of them) and klaives of all sorts.

Garou who wish to create a fetish must either know the Rite of the Fetish or find someone willing to perform it on their behalf. They must find and prepare the object into which the spirit will be bound (usually this involves hand-crafting the binding object, but the Glass Walkers have been known to use high-quality manufactured items as binding objects for their fetishes). The binding object must be appropriate to the purpose of the fetish. The Garou must also find a spirit to power the fetish. The spirit's nature must be appropriate to the desired powers. The Garou must either convince the spirit to willingly accept the permanent binding, or can battle the spirit into Slumber and then bind it against its will; this latter method, however, always results in the fetish being cursed in some way.

Players of Garou who wish to make fetishes should bear in mind that our goal is to tell good story, and must therefore roleplay through the various steps of the fetish-crafting process. (The general guideline is that it takes six months per level of the fetish to craft & create & propitiate the spirit.) Preparation of the binding object should be worked into everyday roleplay. Locating and either negotiating or battling an appropriate spirit must be done through a GM. Finally, the actual performance of the Rite of the Fetish must be a roleplayed event. The wizards responsible for Spirit should be consulted beforehand as a general sanity check, and then again at each successive phase of the project. They may ask to see logs of roleplay to ensure that no corners are being cut. Players should try not to feel cheated if their attempt to create a fetish does not succeed; if the steps have been followed, then the project should have generated a good deal of interesting and entertaining roleplay, and that, in and of itself, is a success for everyone.