Ananasi

The Basics:

Western Ananasi come in three basic types, each of which follow one aspect of the original triad.

• Tenere: Weaver Spiders
• Kumoti: Wyld Spiders
• Hatar: Destroyer Wyrm Spiders

In each triad type are three purposes (auspices, in Garou terms).

• Warriors (Positive Energies): Myrmidon
• Wizards (Balancers): Viskr
• Negative aspects (Questioners): Wyrsta

Specific Names for Auspices, Under the Triad Types: This makes for the nine types of Ananasi.

• Tenere: Weaver Secean (Tenere Myrmidon), War by Pattern Analysis Plicare (Tenere Viskr), Bring Precise Order to the World around you Gaderin (Tenere Wyrsta), Challenge Order – Collector of Specimens that break the rules.
• Hatar: Destroyer Wyrm Agere (Hatar Myrmidon), Move from target to target - assassin Anomia (Hatar Viskr), Manipulate mortals into destroying for you. Malum (Hatar Wyrsta), Fight corruption, but revel in pure entropy
• Kumoti: Wyld Kar (Kumoti Myrmidon), Small changes lead to big environmental change Amari Alquid (Kumoti Viskr), Act for constant action and motion Chymos (Kumoti Wyrsta), Fight all minions of the triad to encourage pure change.

All Eastern Ananasi are called “Kumo” and all but the corruptor wyrm have been exterminated. None follow Queen Ananasa in the east; they are truly anathema to the true Ananasi.

Ananasi “Gnosis, Umbra, Purpose” and other spiritual terms are referred to as “Sylie” – The Will of Ananasa

The Laws of the Queen

(and some notes)

Obey the Queen Mother in all things

She has different purposes for all of us. Sometimes her purposes for us are not apparent right away, so we should trust in her unique knowledge of the grand design.

Defend your brethren from all who would do them harm

Any justice should be controlled by your own kind, by will of the Queen. This should be interpreted by each Ananasi by basic understanding of justice and harm, but anyone but one of our own killing an Ananasi is truly inviolate. (Side note: The Kumo are no longer our brethren)

Follow the Aspect and Faction that Ananasa chooses for you

Your path was chosen for a greater purpose.

Understand the Ways of the Triad, Both as they are, and how they were. Know the Difference!

Do not be tempted by the modern triad – know the triumvirate. Protect the true purposes, as we are the last hope for this world.

Know your Enemies (Everyone)

While some have uses, assume that they will all eventually be against you.

Know the Great Web for what it is

Do not take any sudden actions – plan and see the big picture. If you act quickly, then you risk everything. Always reflect on what happened and what echoes it brings to your overall weaving.

Know Your Place

Don’t be like the Garou who do not know what their duty is. We respect the Mokole, because they have never fallen from their purpose. We admire the Rokea, for they have never turned from their sacred duty to survive at all costs. This is one key reason that we do not have emotional baggage, as they do not stray us from our place, like the Garou.

Keep your mouth shut

Our purpose, our true aspects, the triumvirate, are none of anyone’s business. The only law we should share is this one, as it is self explanatory and all shifters but the damn Corax have their own version. We keep our laws, as should they. If the others truly understood us, we would lose all of our power.

Worship none but Ananasa

You do not follow your aspect, the triad, nor any spirit but Ananasa. (Though feel free to fake out the other shifters if it serves your purpose!) If one of us falls to worship any other patron, their life is forfeit, even kinfolk.

Role-Playing Notes For SA

Keeping secrets vs. game mechanics

In the SA format, much of the canon Ananasi habits and personalities simply cannot be viable for the long term SA character. For example, gift learning and feeding practices encourage the Ananasi to bargain with the other shifters for the innate ability “Cloak”. It is simply too powerful for the other shifters to declare war on the Ananasi and hope for access to that gift, and far too important to the SA game balance. I have found that over SA/MT history, the Ananasi can, and should, ask for major payments for this gift, and that most Ananasi teach it once every 5-8 game sessions on average.

While it is quite possible to stay below the radar of the other type of characters to one degree or another, the SA system really makes the Ananasi the “worst kept secret” in the town.

Many of the Ananasi played either claim a small, specifically chosen number of allies to act through, or have “revealed” themselves to one or more factions, in the way that they chose to for their own purposes. I added more about the mindset of playing a spider further down, again using SA mechanics as a basis for how I, and some others, have chosen to balance the necessity of SA mechanics against being honest to the core of being a spider.

Later in this section, I have also made some recommendations for the “big” secrets and “poorly kept” secrets in the context of this particular game setting. This seems like a key list to be vaguely agreed upon by players to know the tools they have for their own machinations.

Training and Guidance

Also, with the Ananasi being unrestricted as concepts, there will always be some need for a social structure for the spiders, which is a bit of a stretch for the lore equivalents. With no large trainings of the newly changed in the SA game universe, that leaves much of the training responsibility to the ranked Ananasi. It also means that the rank system should likely be discussed by the Ananasi players as an out of game chat, since the characters would rank up at the will of the Queen and not via any renown system.

While the Queen can come into game and is wonderfully portrayed, we cannot have her whispering to us at every moment, and the game is more fun to play if the PCs train the lower ranks/newly changed, leading to a series of lessons that might seem like a twisted version of Corax training lore, but can lead to a remarkable opportunity for roleplay normally unseen in the canon lore.

Feeding

In canon, Ananasi cannot feed from other Ananasi, the blood makes them violently ill. While this is not required in game mechanics, I have seen no Ananasi players so far deviate from this aspect of canon. I would heavily encourage all Ananasi players to do the same, as it seems to be a subtle but important aspect of our natures and roleplay.

Most types of feeding are technically a breach of the Laws, but are required in the SA game to be a viable character. As it is, many shifters on all sides use it as a way to prove that they are “above” the prejudices of the (second) War of Rage and mammalian biases. I see no reason to take away that aspect of the RP, as it seems to be a key method of social relations in the “mechanics vs. social canon” dance of Ushaw Moor. It also seems to be a commonly fun scene for many of the shifter players, for emotional and social reasons of their own characters.

Secrets

Every single Ananasi will play these differently, but I have a general outline of what to expect to hear from the other non-Ananasi player can be useful so you can judge between what should be glared at, and when someone immediately becomes an enemy, within the context of this game. In canon, all of these would be “killable” offenses, but that is simply not practical in this game system.

The “poorly kept” secrets are typically due to the nature of the SA game.

• We exist. Identities of individuals as Ananasi.
• We are spiders and weave, somehow.
• Shifters know about Queen Ananasa being our patron (People see her when she visits)
• Cloak, Venom Blood being Ananasi innate gifts.
• Blood feeding, like vampires.
• Ananasi are both very unified and very disjoint.
• Shifters know that Ananasi work towards “balance” in some way.
• Our “Crinos” form. (Seen in SA, if quite rarely)
• The unemotional nature of the Ananasi.

Medium level “known, but misunderstood” secrets in SA over time.

• Meld – (often referred to in game in a variety of terms, depending on the lies of the particular Ananasi, from trapping oneself halfway in the gauntlet to skittering form to actual melding. )
• Shifters know that we work to preserve the laws of the triad, pre-wyrm fall.
• The existence of the Kumo and that we are exceedingly unforgiving of corrupted spider-kin.
• How old we are (though they tend to not know how we stay alive and most think we are lying anyway.)

Secrets that should be never, ever shared in SA and are typically kill-on-sight if someone reveals that they know these.

• The first war of rage, before these mammals
• None of these mammalian (or avian) shifters matter to us whatsoever.
• The Queen’s gemmed prison
• The Padrone (Especially their origins as Ananasi metis)
• The Wyrm aspect (though many suspect it exists. We should NEVER confirm it)
• Triumverate vs. Triad.
• “Rest” time periods, the truth of our potential long life.

RP Hints

Some hints for how to portray the alien nature of the Ananasi specifically in SA:

• Interact with the outskirts of the societies whenever possible, as they will appreciate the “forever outside” idea of the Ananasi. We are not Gaian shifters, so will never be accepted by other shifters, but are also very much not vampires, despite drinking blood.

• In the end: If any character is truly *accepted* in all ways by a faction, they are far more likely to betray you, so act more carefully.
• Low clan vampires, Fera, Metis, and other “fringe” characters are often well balanced to interact well with Ananasi roleplay.

• My best piece of advice is the think in as many layers as possible. In other words, know the true purpose of an action, the purpose told to other characters, and the purpose told to the other Ananasi.

• Your *character* is acting, not just you the player.
• One useful three layer structure is determining what emotions you are faking, which ones you want to be seen faking (to give other characters a point of), and also the layer of “None of you matter to me beyond my purpose” emotional void.
• Another layer structure is determining what each scene is doing to your greater design. Remember, Ananasi have no need of games and silly challenges, unless they serve a specific purpose.

• A couple of mantras have worked well for me to get back into the mindset when it slides (Because, after all, as players, we are only simple mammals.)

• Does this interaction fit any higher goal?
• Is anyone here truly important in the scheme of things, or are they all pawns?
• These people are all your prey, and your eventual predator. Be wary.

• Physical mannerisms can often get you and those around you into your alien nature.

• If you can do it, don’t show sudden emotional changes.
• Stare.
• Blink on purpose, so it is slightly slower.
• Uncomfortable gaps in conversation.
• Stand and sit without extra movement.

Training

Because training needs to happen in game, this is a basic overview of our lore for new Ananasi:

First Change / Basic Perception

Speed: Other Shifters change quickly and violently. We are gifted with a slow change, giving us time to find our new place, and the major changes between the forms.

Emotions: Senses, Detail over color. Important details over the pointless emotional context. Lessons during the change – observe. Observe. Then choose your actions. Observe. Then act.

Feeding: Your own blood and that of other of your kind does not taste right. Know where easy sources of blood are at all times. (Including sentient sources) Make a short list of who is useful to your tasks and your existence. Create a plan on how to most easily feed from everyone you meet.

Physical: You will not panic. Your body will slowly show changes and they can be controlled through concentration. You will be relaxed. While it may seem to be a scary thing, it will not be. Your body becomes like all other things – a tool to be used (and replaced if need be... more on that later…)

The Triad

The Wyrm came first and lived alone. By necessity, the Wyld came from that place, and the two fought. To balance between the two and as the keeper of the balance, the Weaver came to being. This balance is shown in the cycles of life, creation, change, destruction.

The only thing that the Weaver was able to create, not by modifying the creations of Wyld, is the queen herself, and that is because the Weaver used the substance of her own body.

Though, while weaver wanted a companion to help defeat the other aspects, Ananasa was wise enough to see the purpose of all parts of the triad as equally important. The triad fights because they each cannot see the entirety of creation, only their own part and how the other two work to change that part.

We do NOT serve the triad, as they have all become unable to do their tasks. We do the tasks that Gaia needs to happen, and keep the world together. We have renamed the tasks as the triumvirate. It keeps our tasks focused.

Experiences

• What are worthwhile experiences?
• What purpose do they serve?
• Why must they be ethereal in texture – either destroyed and rebuilt - or constantly changing?

Each experience should be weighed in the balance of your tasks for the Queen. Only you can determine their value. You need answer to nobody in these choices, as long as you follow the rules and path given by the Queen. Asking questions is encouraged to be what you are.

Insects

The insect races were the changing breeds of the Weaver. They rampaged through the ancient world and they attempt to create sterile perfection, as emulated by the lifeless world of Luna, which has lost the life that once dwelled upon her.

The numbers of insect growth are exponential. The only thing weaver ever destroyed was the spirits of the moths, and the insects are a constant reminder that the Weaver has lost her purpose, since she destroyed.

We must keep that destruction from overwhelming Gaia, and hence in the first War of Rage, we fought our own war to protect Gaia, and we won completely. We came third. The oldest of the changing (Rokea, Mokole) not defend the earth against the insects due to being too large and too slow.

The other shifters must never know that we destroyed the insect races, or even that they existed. Only the Mokole can be trusted with this knowledge that they already know. We re-weaved the spirits of the insects and made them our own, so they can never exist again to betray us, as the spirits of so many of the shifter races the Garou destroyed.

Cold blooded / styles of warfare

We are cold to make us the perfect predator. We are hunters, weavers, builders, and destroy not at any whim but to a greater purpose. When our own fangs are insufficient – we can coldly create and weave a plan of destruction. Hunts can take as long as they need to take.

We have shown the power of our cold predation when we used the Corax and Garou to free our Queen in her prison from the clutches of the Wyrm, and to create the flaw that allows her to speak to us. We took upon ourselves the hatred of the Garou in order to save the Corax. (Luckily, Garou have short memories)

What are the benefits of the spider form?

Humans

Humans are our deadliest enemy on this planet. Humans can create vast civilizations, cities, and structures. In our past, we used them as food and made them fear us, yet this has proven to be a current danger as they grow in power and their ancestral memory hates us. As with any enemy that you cannot defeat, we took on their form and keep them close. Watch them from within their ranks.

The Lessons in Each Aspect

Myrmidon – Defend your aspect in a pure form. Act without question. Create. Destroy. Preserve.

Viskr – Study your aspect, find the hidden paths that your form might have missed. Use indirect action.

Wyrsta – Find the exception to your aspect and act to fix those flaws.

The Other Shifters

Tools.

Be aware of how they can harm us, through action or instinct.

• The most dangerous - The Corax. Always watch them and manipulate carefully.
• The youngest and most ego-driven - Garou. Split, confused in purpose, and ultimately doomed.
• The most worthy of respect - Gurahl. Though it is sad that nobody fears them any longer.
• The ones that Gaia will miss when they are gone - Mokole
• The ones to watch as they are most likely to conflict with our tasks – Ratkin. Numerous as us, and without the guidance of the Queen.
• To avoid as they serve no use as tools or as threats? Rokea

Feel free to lie as you see fit. They are all tools, and your final design is yours and yours alone. Our numbers. We are rare. Any other answer would be to sacrifice us all. If you need to speak of force, speak of allies and hyperbole.

Sleeping and Immortality

Crawlerling Form – Can also include going back to simple until called upon. Takes us to the far from complex purpose to cull the insects. Both a gift and an important task. Immortality – The greatest gift from the Queen, when you claim a new human form.