Gaia's Sentinels

"I don't believe it," I said.

She shrugged. "'Strue."

"They'd never admit it," I said.

"That they weren't the first to have the idea?" she said. "Of course not. Silicon Blaze did it first, and it took all the Fangs, Get, and Fianna nearly forty years to figure out that there weren't enough of themselves left to call tribes. Too many went down in 'the Last Battle,' and more threw themselves away on 'noble' crap -- suicide, I call it."

"So who figured it out first?"

"Took a damned vision from on high to clue in two of 'em." She assumed a pose, cleared her throat, and began to declaim with all the bombast of Terrence, our local Sentinel bard, "Deirdre Flute's-Song-Slays, gibbous moon Fostern of the Fianna, awoke deep in the darkest night of the darkest night, hearing a voice call her. 'Daughter! Bide and heed me! Thou shalt go forth and gather thy fellows of Fionn's Children, the Children of the Falcon, and the Slayers of the North. They are few and far and fading, and...'" She started to cackle, then sat down again. "Sounds like she was drunk off her ass and heard the faeries talkin'. Basically, this Deirdre, and a nearly sane Fang named Gareth Falcon's-Eye got together -- there's rumors that they got together in more than just one way -- and traveled the world to find the dregs of the other 'noble' tribes. They spent a year or more trying to convince the Get that the Get couldn't survive alone. They would've grown old doing this, too, except that the tribal totems put forth their last energy and helped."

"Were all Garou that dumb in the old days?"

"Mostly. Anyway, yadda yadda bing bang, Grand Moot at Winter Solstice of 2061. By this time, Deirdre'd reworked the Rite of Renunciation, and everyone there Renounced. Gareth's job'd been to make a new Rite that would create a new tribe and call down a new totem. Word is he went off to Silicon Blaze and asked purty please, could he have their Rite and would they not tell anyone he asked. Sure thing, they said, handed it to him and went off to tell all their friends."

"He was lucky it didn't turn him into a rat or something."

"I'da done it," she mused. "Anyway, he spiffed it up with fancy talk so's no one'd know but him that it came from dirty city-dwellers -- remember they thought that anyone living in a city was Corrupted, same way they believed that sex between Garou was evil -- and held it up like it was his own. So everyone joined up to Gaia's Sentinels, making the tribe than and there, and Eagle showed up to tell them that he was their new totem."

"Didn't someone tell me that some Sentinels think their totem has two heads? How can there be a two-headed bird? Wouldn't it crash when it tried to fly?" I asked, wondering.

"Them as says that are probably ex-Fangs with pipedreams left over from the Holy Roman Empire," she replied curtly. "Them as says that are probably crazy."

"Oh," I replied, somewhat chastened.

"So after Eagle came, and they all knew they were part of this new tribe, then came talk of The Mission."

"Mission?"

"Mission. 'What Were They Going To Give Their Lives For Now?' That sort of thing. And really, it's a good idea to discuss and think about that." She gave me a look sharp enough to lop my head off. "What matters? What goal are you going for? That sort of thing."

I shifted my feet. "Y-yeah."

"Well, that was when they took the name. The Sentinels, I mean. They'd be Gaia's watch against the Corruptor, Her knights errant, that sort of thing. Even now, since the Sun's Return, it's an important role. They must've had some people with foresight there, somehow, who knew that the Night wouldn't last forever. So the Sentinels became the Garou's vanguard during the Night. They got out there and mixed it up, got their claws bloody, covered themselves in Glory and Honor and all that crap. But for all their pompous ass talk, they sure did thrive having a new identity and totem. Boosted the troop's morale and stuff. And when push came to shove, they did take orders from the Blazers, who knew what the heck was happening and where."

"What'd they do when the war was over?"

"They did what all soldiers do: enjoyed 'emselves. And then got discontented and bored. So then they made a new identity for 'emselves. They were the knights who went on quests, found the Holy Grail, and slew the Corrupted dragons. They're heroes and warlords, teachers of tradition and history. Some of the most damnably romantic figures of our day are Sentinels, or their Kin." She started to sound... admiring? "They cleaned up their act, stopped being Litany lawyers, and just started doing what was right. Some of the oldtimers can still have sticks up their butts, but most of 'em... most of 'em are worthy of the trust that people put in 'em."

"You like 'em, don't you?"

"'Course I do! Some people still remember what they were, and don't give them credit for what they are. Not but they could still improve. Nobody's perfect."

I chewed on that for a minute. "They sound like fun. All that traveling and stuff."

"I bet they are. But you can be a Dancer or anything else and still travel. And you can hitch up with a Sentinel hero-wannabe who's heard about some silly-ass quest somewhere. Cover yourself in Glory and Honor and all that crap." She creaked to her feet. "Now I got some things to do, child. Don't run off on a Grail quest on me before supper."

I'm not purebred, I don't have that aura of power you can cut with a knife, and I doubt I'd look good with a sword, but I could enjoy spending some quality time hanging with the Sentinels, I think, once I grow up and Change.

The Gifts and Rites of the tribe are a refined pool of those from the Fangs, Fianna, and Get, as well as a few sneaky Shadow Lord contributions -- which suggests that not all the Shadow Lords turned, and some joined the Sentinels on that winter solstice.

The Sentinels are still very much the most egoistic of tribes, in that they believe that they are all lofty nobility engaged in the practice of an Arthurian sort of chivalry and feudalism. Every Garou and Kin who come of age within the Sentinels are addressed by the titles they have inherited from those ancestors who performed the original Rites that created the Sentinels (or who arrived later to perform not only those Rites, but a Quest to prove their worthiness of becoming a Sentinel). There are a number of Laws of Inheritance, as well as Laws of Titular Surrender and Award, that function to tie together the scattered Sentinels all over the world.

Note that while the Sentinels continue to have patriarchal elements in their culture, there are no laws forbidding equal inheritance by daughters, and there is an explicit law which makes the male and female equivalents of the same title of equal power and stature (e.g. Duke and Duchess).

Rumors among other tribes suggest that there is a worldwide Emperor of the Sentinels, but that is not true. At the First Winter Solstice, one of many acts of democratic rule assigned Gareth as Tsar of the East and Deirdre, Queen of the West (despite a number of misgivings on the part of the former Fianna). The tradition of having a ruler of the East and one of the West has continued. There has been an Ard Righ, an Empress, a Sultan, a King... just about any high Eurasian title will do, although there has never been a of the West. When a male rules the Western hemisphere, he is usually known as of the New World. The fae-wise of the Garou refuse to allow a King of the West.

The Sentinels major goals are three: unite and support their fellow Garou by dint of their noble example, retrieve fetishes and other items of power that can aid in the battle to extinguish the Corruptor, and hunt the Corruptor where it lives and breeds at all costs. This tribe has lofty goals, performs quixotic quests, and generally attempts to act as though their every move was a step on the quest for the Holy Grail.