Werewolf Paris/Montreuil
At the beginning of the Chronicle, the pack's territory is however much of the banlieue of Montreuil that they want to try and claim. Montreuil is a poor banlieue, and has major problems with drug-related crime. Nearly a tenth of it is simply deserted - an urban playground of crumbling blocks of flats, dilapidated industrial warehouses and rusting factories. The entire place is an utter patchwork of different eras of construction, old buildings and new concrete horrors jostling with one another. There are even old, 19th Century mansions. The bones of Montreuil's past push up through its fabric.
Although decrepit and run-down, there is an atmosphere of hope in Montreuil. Many young workers are being attracted to the area due to the very low rents, and some have even taken to calling it the '21st arrondissement' in a fit of excessive optimism. Some Uratha have noticed there now seem to be very few old people in Montreuil at all - oddly few. Since the 80s there has been a steady influx of artists and intellectuals, a thriving creative community with a halo of drug dealers, mad spirits and surprising inspiration nestled amongst artists' squats. Old film-making studios, some of the first to ever be established, still tie Montreuil with strong symbolic links to the concepts of illusion and the unreal.
Local government is controlling and bureaucratic. They wrap local organisations in red tape if they don't play ball, and have little tolerance for beggars, Roma and other 'undesirables'. There is also a strong push in the administration for the suppression of cults, and considerable antipathy towards Islamic practices. Ethnic tensions are a problem, exacerbated by poverty. Montreuil has a particularly large immigrant community from Mali, but it doesn't seem to currently include any Uratha.
Past Uratha of Montreuil[edit]
The history of Montreuil's former packs, at least in as much as the pack have been given bits and pieces of it, falls roughly thus.
Montreuil has had its Uratha guardians over the centuries. Back in the late 17th Century, when Montreuil was mostly groves of peach trees, one Bishop Guillaume (called 'the Wolf' by his human ecclesiastical contemporaries for his predatory aspect and intimidating manner) levered his influence to great effect against the growing influence of the Ivory Claws that accompanied the construction of the Versailles palace-complex. Still remembered by modern Uratha, the Iron Master is considered a paragon of both Cunning and Honour.
At some point in the early 20th Century, Montreuil became the territory of a pack called the White Masques who held it over subsequent generations. This ended in the 60s during what the older Uratha have variously called the Turning of the Circle, the Swirling War or the Dance of the Lights. Widespread spiritual disruption accompanied the movement or disruption of the city's foci of spiritual power, resulting in packs desperately struggling over a suddenly shifting landscape of resources. The White Masques collapsed during the strife, with many dying and others moving on to new territory and new packs.
The territory was then unclaimed for about a decade or so, until in the late 70s a predominantly Ghost Wolf pack moved into the area and attempted to hold it. This pack, the Mirrors, clung on until the 90s when internal struggles and conflict with the Pure caused them to disband and move on. Since then, singular Ghost Wolves have sometimes tried to claim turf in the banlieue but have never stayed for long.
This changed a few years ago. A Ghost Wolf called the Changeling, going by the name of Louis Moreau, established a cult in the banlieue. Hidden from the gaze of Blood Talon and Iron Master witch-hunters, the Changeling created the New Association of Illuminated Thought, a supposed self-help/New Age spiritual group known to the inner circles as the Transmutative Path. The Path's philosophy was one of self-change at a powerful, spiritual level - cult members believed that they would be fundamentally changed as they were immersed in the mysteries, gaining enlightenment and a release from the needs of the material world. This was literally true - the Changeling selected promising candidates for Claiming to be promoted to the innermost ranks of the Path, offering the flesh-shells to the spirits of hope, despair and madness that thronged around him. Other cultists 'disappeared' to far-off training courses or 'left the faith' - in fact consumed by the Changeling and his Claimed for the bounty of Essence in their meat. By harnessing the cultists as his pack, the Changeling was also able to work strange rites over them, further strengthening his influence. When the local government flagged the NAIT as a cult, finally bringing the attention of watchful Iron Masters and Storm Lords to bear, Written-in-Blood's former life was already entangled in the cult, resulting in the explosive showdown that began the Changeling's defeat. While the cult was torn down by the combined efforts of the newly formed pack, the Changeling itself escaped to destinations unknown.
The Base of Operations[edit]
The pack holds as their base the former junkyard, now sculptor's trove, that Howling Phantom's family money acquired. Within the junkyard is a relaltively potent Locus of Metal, born from years of iron and steel being crushed and smashed and left to rust, and from older traces of fire and bronze. The junkyard has several buildings and sheds within it, relatively high walls with barbed wire at their height, and grounds that are well concealed from neighbouring buildings.
Across the road from the junkyard are the last crumbling ruins of a very old bronze foundry. Part of the foundry actually ran under where the junkyard now stands, but the skeleton of the rest of the building remains a haunting reminder of the region's industrial past. This foundry is the home of the totem spirit, the last vestiges of its own former reflection; the Enduring Smith has only survived this long through drinking from the Locus of Metal to sustain itself, and it is now a clattering thing of verdigris, rust and dying embers rather than its former glories of gleaming bronze.
The former cultists of the Transmutative Path who have now joined the pack's ranks live in their own homes scattered around the banlieue. Some are very remote, coming together with the rest of the pack only on those specific nights when a fire is lit out in the junkyard and they come to find comradeship with their fellow survivors; but even these packmates always keep their eyes open, make sure to send emails or texts in for anything suspicious that they encounter, and ensure that their trades and places of work offer pack members good prices and favourable opportunities. The other pack-mates are more dedicated to the here and now, throwing themselves into pack work with enthusiasm or desperation - helping guard the junkyard, actively patrolling the streets, watching for changes in the graffiti and the gangs or even trying to worm their way deeper into the occult community of Paris.
