Recorded History (all these have been roleplayed):

The Darkwind Chronicles
The Darkwind Sept, a host of Uktena led by the elder Nightwolf and his mate, Aykita, are the first known claimants to the bawn of the Ghostwoods. These Garou constructed their Caern atop the ruins of a former holy place in the depths of a vast and ancient wood. Peacekeepers by vocation, their Caern became a sanctuary for people of all kinds, a practice heavily criticized by the majority of other Garou. Verbena, life mages, were among the most frequent visitors to the Caern, finding comfort in the protected and tranquil atmosphere of the bawn.

The Sentries
After the gradual and mysterious dissolution of the Darkwind, a mortal family with some affinity for magick installed themselves in a manor somewhere away from the Caern. Here, they dwell still, overlooking the forests from the gabled windows of their demesne.

Salem Darkchylde's Node
Approximately simultaneous to the establishment of the Sentries in the Ghostwoods, Salem Darkchylde, a gifted Verbena, laid claim to the Nodal properties of the Caern in the name of the chantry who followed him. He maintained the condition of the Caern for a silent interim period when the Garou had forgotten of its existence.

Argent's Return
One of Salem's experimental exploits was to resurrect the remains he discovered of the fallen Guardian and Den Father of the Darkwind, Argent Mordax (Uktena Lupus Philodox). But Argent was driven mad by his bitterness caused by the realization that his elders had left him to die. "The Lieutenant," as he called himself, accompanied by the Kalus that masterminded the werewolf's corruption, proceeded to vindictively terrorize the Den, while also harvesting power from secrets and lore which he tracked down feverishly. His hunt for power would have eventually led him straight into the clutches of the Wyrm.

The Chronicles of the White Equinox:
Malice's Caern
Malice "Mourns-Ghosts", the elder Wendigo, led two forages into the bawn of the Ghostwoods to restore the Caern in the name of the White Equinox, the fledgling sept he had raised. After an initial three-way clash among Argent's Banes, Malice's party, and the magickal Guardian of the Node, the White Equinox came a second time with better preparation for war. At this time, the mages allied with the Garou, and the mad Uktena's ambush was crushed. Once the Wyrm's influence was driven back, the two powers agreed to a truce in sharing the land, even if they were suspicious of each other.

The Vhujunka Crisis
This is the story that began when Malice, Tasha Silverblood, and Janeke first voyaged across the lake to the Heart of the Caern, the island set in the waters' centre. They discovered here a vault meant to seal a cave entrance, the doors to which had been broken down. Learning from the cryptic lore set in stone, and from their own petrifying adventure, the septmates discovered the Vhujunka, a race of Wyrm-minions so alien in intelligence and so powerfully evil that it was decided the cave must be forever resealed.
The sept's efforts were thwarted when the Vhujunka made a preemptive offensive to jam open their gateway to the surface, driving a Wyrmhole through the Heart of the Caern. For weeks, the septmates exchanged roles guarding over the gateway, watching to be sure that no stray Banes escaped into the bawn. Meanwhile, Janeke and Malice sought out the wisdom of the Uktena in learning to manufacture and empower a Bane Lock to seal the cave.
On the night of winter solstice, Malice led a warparty to the island to reclaim the heart of the Caern. The battle was a fierce one against the Vhujunka's own emissaries, nearly at once dashing apart the Garou's attempt. Nevertheless, through the combined efforts of the heroes, and assistance from an unknown power, the evil was driven back. But at the battle's end, Malice disappeared and only his sword, Orenda, remained. The nature of his death is not understood, but it is doubtless that the weapon of a certain last Vhujunka had some role in it.

The Aftermath
Tasha Silverblood and Janeke Runs-with-Wolves found themselves unexpectedly serving roles they were never trained to play. With Malice's will in hand, Tasha prepared to reorganize the sept and fulfill her late friend's dream. But the sept lacked any Ahroun of rank, and the White Equinox desperately needed fresh blood if they are going to structure themselves.
In response to the vacuum created by the Wendigo's disappearance, Steps-Through-Storms, bound his soul to the Caern's bawn, constructing his Den-Realm on the Ghostwoods soil. The Garou were leery of this show of independent power, but without enough raw muscle of their own, reluctantly bit their tongues and kept silent.
Meanwhile, Joie reported having a mysterious dream in which she encountered an enigmatic spectre of Malice Ardens. Strange though it was, the haunting image was forgotten until, some time later, she discovered herself heavy with child, and none to father it.

The Haunting
Sightings of the enigmatic stranger who rises out of the fog or emerges from the lake have increased. He has earned the nickname, "the Ghost of the Ghostwoods" for his unearthly powers and eerie presence. But the "Ghost," perhaps better called a guardian angel, displays a withdrawn intellectual attraction to the Caern and shows a mild interest in its denizens' well-being. The force who secretly guided the Garou to victory against the Vhujunka, he is the only one who still speaks to Malice.

Destiny's Child
Little Teela, homid babe, is born to Joie in the green of May. Rumour spreads that Malice, through some spiritual intervention, rose from the dead to father this girl, but the fact will forever remain a mystery. A homid child, Teela's miraculous birth has the same enigmatic flavour as the Immaculate Conception. Blessed by the warrior's moon, the little Wendigo seems graced with auspicious beginnings-- an infant legend.
Since, then the child's blessed birth turned to a curse, tragedy followed. While it would have been within Joie's rights to keep Teela and teach her as she saw fit, Tasha Silverblood has very scathingly criticized the Siberakh as a weakling and a fainéant-- a poor role model for Malice's heir. As both a Ragabash and a friend of the warChief, Tasha had tried all her tricks to help Joie, whether through criticism, threat, or offers of mentorship. Nevertheless, it seemed Joie was beyond her help, and she chose the cruelty separating mother and daughter. The Siberakh left to Northeast Asia not long after for reasons not well understood. Only a couple of months later, a letter came telling of her death.

The Fighter and the Fool
It was in the cold of winter that Battles-with-Honour, a Ya'apahe Wendigo, first visited the Ghostwoods and took a liking to them. He frequented Owl's bawn and felt a connection to the land of that wise and fierce "Herald of Death." He aspired to join the sept, but since the Council now consisted only of a Fianna and a Silver Fang, the Pure One was uneasy in offering the elders his respect. His feud with Tasha Silverblood began soon after his arrivaly. Battles chose to honour only Joie, a fellow Pure One, with his respects. The animosity between the fighter and the Fool only worsened with time. When Battles at last declared his intentions to try for a place in the sept, Tasha was amused and sarcastic, but personally uninterested in his offers. Perhaps the Wendigo was expecting to receive hosannas of thanks. Perhaps he hoped to take the robes and sword of the last Wendigo to defend the sept. If those were his hopes, they were dashed at once by the scathing Ragabash. That night, Battles finally lost his temper with Silverblood, and he frenzied, determined to tear her hide from her back. Tasha, a deceptively skilled fighter herself, chose to evade him, but her entourage was not so forgiving. They murderously slaughtered the Wendigo for his crime, which was perhaps a crime much greater, but it was Tasha who received the blame for the incident.
Janeke chose to capitalize on the opportunity through punishment and reward. It was not entirely the Fool's fault , to be sure, but the Fianna strove to teach the Fang a lesson in humility. Silverblood was sentenced to a fortnight without the honours of her rank, and upon the last day of that penalty, she learned that the Elder Ritemaster had given her the title of the fifth rank.
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The Caern Building
(Click here for a complete synopsis.)

The Black Gold
This story began when Rowan Cloudwalker, partly out of spite and partly to prove his self-worth, planned an act of vandalism against Endron Oil International. The "warrior's" prank began simply enough. He and Rei the Kitsune would land themselves on a passing rail shipment of petroleum, and then taint the tankers' contents. The object was to thus contaminate a string of Endron-dependent gasoline stations and frustrate the company's appeal to consumers at least in that region. These plans were suddenly exploded when the pair found themselves in a vicious fight for survival against Technocratic HIT Marks. Little did they realize that they had brushed with the formidable Alexandre Montcalm, a Union representative who was spearheading a campaign to buy up sources of recently-discovered petroleum-based Tass supplies. This was Rowan's first encounter with the infamous Technocracy, but it promised to be only the first of more to come.

Two weeks later, a UFO sighting triggered a second string of suprising events. Rowan, Arc Angel, and Brandy found themselves, one starry night, in a scenario typical of X-Files intrigue.

This chapter described the arrival of the Pisces, a specially built Etherite spyship, chasing away through the Umbra with two Void Engineer fightercraft on her tail. It was piloted by Lieut. Natasha Riker, a Son of Ether with critical intelligence regarding the Union's activities and plans in the oil industry. She had been pursued, and she was forced to drop out of the Umbrascape somewhere over the bawn in order to limit her opponents' superior firepower. In a brilliant manoeuvre, she used her ship's communications array to transfer a surge of Prime that brought down the enemy ships, although her own was already crippled. With her ship grounded, Natasha looked to the Garou for help. Knowing that she was a hunted fugitive though, she was forced to flee with Rowan's help before any real organized plan could be formed. But after two fruitless months on the run, the mages have returned to the Caern to renew their appeal. Riker knows she must communicatre her information to Horizon Chantry before the Union finds and "silences" her for good. She hopes that the information she carries will be enough to persuade the werewolves-- there are many Garou Caerns feeding off the Quintessence in various oil fields, and this fact makes them prime targets of Project Black Gold. Soon, the Union may acquire vast supplies of Tass that could decide the outcome of the Ascension War.

The Hunter Hunted
The scourge of the bawn, as the sept has loathingly said of him, has plagued (blessed?) the Ghostwoods with terrifying stories of serial killers, cannibals, and monsters among the townspeople. A Red Talon Ahroun by the name of Darkside-of-the-Wolf has led his pack unchecked in and out of White Equinox territory, slaying every human hunter or hiker they have come across. Not everyone has seen him, so his reputation has reached ghost-story proportions, but the sept is determined to end the atrocities. Janeke Runs-with-Wolves decreed a Hunt against the Red Talon, and the wolf has been forced into subtlety. The fall of Darkside came not until the leadership had already been given over to Tasha Silverblood. Although there was something of a contest among hunters who sought the Talon's hide, it was an old friend, Breaks-the-Ice, who insisted on ending the menace himself. It was a death without poetry or song to weep for the dead. But history remembers Darkside's parting as a reminder of silent war between wolves and humans.

The First Moot
After building the Caern, the sept prepared to enter a new age with a glorious moot. This promised to be a time of change as the sept would be forced to accept the next generation of wolves to replace those who had fallen or those lone wanderers who had disappeared since Malice's time. Janeke resigned her leadership, letting it fall into the hands of the reigning court jester, Tasha Silverblood.
Holding the moot in a fashion she felt would honour Malice, her old friend, Tasha carved new traditions for the sept. The first of these was the authority of carrying Orenda, which allowed one to speak, and demanded silence from all others. A long night of business followed, seeing many new septmates inducted into the sept, replacing the lost and the fallen.

The Rivalry
All knew that Tasha would not keep her power for long. She was a Fool by vocation, and her stay as Alpha was only tentative until a new Council of Elders could be chosen. The poor women carried the heavy responsibility of having to steer and teach a whole sept full of Cliaths and Fostern. At this stage, the White Equinox was probably at its weakest, militarily, in all of its history.
Before long, it would become evident that the contest for the leadership of the sept revolved around two key figures-- Claws-of-Endless-Winter and Smoking-Justice Montcalm. In their separate cliques, the two were respected, and despite their shortcomings, they each possessed some leadership virtues. The trouble was that they remained quite incompatible, even when forced to work together. They could function as a team when focused on a goal, but when idle... they became the Devil's workshop.
Thus Queen Silverblood appealed to higher powers for assistance, and they answered in the form of Malice's ghost. The latter Ancestor-spirit served as an emissary from Owl, and delivered the will of the manitou from above. There is no doubt in the minds of many that in death, Malice has been equally, if not even moreso, influential galvanizing his people. In his mysterious, brief appearances, he has brought a new level of spiritual zeal and moral strength to the White Equinox in tests and lessons of example. It was like so that he sought to bring enlightenment to the rivals.

The Second Moot
This climactic moot decided a radical change in the balance of power in the sept. The conflicts seen then were dramatic and seemingly threatened to tear the Garou members apart, but what did not break the White Equinox ended by leaving it stronger. Tasha Silverblood, the Fool and interim Alpha of the White Equinox resigned her leadership in front of a sept of jealous and silently plotting followers. Smoking-Justice Montcalm and Claws-of-Endless-Winter, the much-anticipated rivals for the succession to the Alphaship, each came forward, representing the divided loyalties of the audience. In one hand Tasha held the staunch, war-minded Wendigo traditionalists who supported Claws and his lieutenant, Breaks-the-Ice; in the other, she balanced the Silver Fang royalists. But in her speech of resignation, the queen did her best to placate each by a division of authority that gave Orenda and the title of Warder to Claws, and the title of king and Truthcatcher to Montcalm.

That same night, the young gentleman Montcalm bit the hand that fed him. Under the revealing night of the moon, the Truthcatcher exposed corruption, both fresh and old among the Silver Fangs, and in particular, in Tasha Silverblood. Bright Eyes-of-Pain was forced to Renounce, Silverblood accepted an honourable death sentence, Vida-Fights-the-Wyrm was banished until the commission of a good deed, and the remaining Silver Fangs were cast away. In his sorrow, Montcalm admitted his own bitter guilt in hiding his Metis-hood. It was a nasty purge that brought the Rage of the Garou too near the exploding-point, but it was necessary if they were going to move on.

Excerpts:

Claws in the Rus Rowan's Dreamquest Tasha's Dreamquest Thierry's Prelude

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