Change of Heart

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Change of Heart
by Simon W. 

You ever meet someone and, for reasons you can't quite place, you instantly mistrust them? I don't know, maybe it's a Fenrir thing. But for about that past 18 months now I have been what can only be called skeptical if we're being polite and downright suspicious if we're being more accurate about a person.

Anyway, about a year and a half ago, Valka One Eye now called Valka Thrice Blessed reappeared after being shoved deep, DEEP into the Umbra by Grandfather Thunder. She came back with a new rank (Legend) and a new Vision (a unified Gaian Nation) and a new plan to achieve it based on prophesy she couldn't fully explain. And the plan, as she explained it to our Tribe, was that she was going to seek to become the High King of the Garou Nation...and then change the Garou Nation to a Gaian Nation.

I have nothing against the idea of unifying Gaians. And Gods know I have not been quiet about the fact that the Tribal Council is lousy at governance. But something about Valka just never sat right with me. I thought she was seeking Glory, and power, and her unwillingness to share more of the prophesy she'd been given in depth seemed both suspicious and convenient to me.

Maybe it's being kinfolk, or possibly it's just being me, but as far as I am concerned you can take your Glory and shove it. Honor and Wisdom are what I value and Glory ranks so low on my list of concerns on basically any day that ends in Y. So when I encounter someone who strikes me as vainglorious I react very badly to them. And that's what Valka struck me as.

I watched as she made her decisions, her proclamations, her challenges. Some of her initial ideas she was willing to amend after discussions within our Tribe and I was glad to see that. Hey, even I don't like to change my mind and admit that I'm wrong... and I don't have three Incarna spirits giving me their blessing so I was willing to concede that she was, very possibly, not all bad. But still I was skeptical.

I was skeptical when we found the Great Caern in the desert. I was skeptical even though she did with it exactly what she said she would do. By that point nearly everyone I knew believed that I was all in for Valka because we are both Fenrir and I suspect that fueled my skepticism. I hate being assumed to just follow the party line, as it were.

And then we went to Russia, to the Sept of the Crescent Moon. A whole lot of Fenrir and Silverfangs in very close proximity for a week of moots, songs, stories, some grieving, and then, finally, Valka's challenge. This did not go as any Fenrir expected. I'm still not certain that it didn't go exactly as some Silverfangs suspected but, as should already be obvious by now, I'm kind of a suspicious person.

When Jonas Albrect, High King of the Garou Nation, did appear I saw something. I don't know if anyone else was looking at Valka's face at that moment. But I was and I saw hope. I saw joy. I saw relief at her friend being able to speak to her again. And in that moment I realized that whatever reasons she had for challenging for High King, Valka was not doing it for personal glory in the slightest.

So I have changed my mind about Valka Thrice Blessed, High General of the Garou Nation. I'm not sure she and I will ever be friendly but I no longer think she is seeking personal glory. And that matters, at least to me.

See, sometimes I can admit when I am wrong... but Gods know I hate doing it.