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The Silver Pact

The world is not yet completely settled. Although technology has spread across the face of Creation, there are those who disdain it as weak. While it undeniably makes live easier to live, it does so only by damaging the soul of humanity; the will to survive. The weak thrive and the strong are crippled behind iron walls and stone hearts.

The Silver Pact still remembers the old ways, however. While some aspects of modern technology are accepted, it continues to hearken to a more primeval time, one where the law of the jungle held sway, and tribes of humans lived in accordance with the wilderness. These Lunars hold court in their animalistic natures, withdrawing from the ever-weakening world or making war against it, reminding humanity that there are still powers far beyond them.

Membership

All told, the Silver Pact considers about half of the Lunars to be members, and has found and tattooed more. The Pact mostly searches the border towns, small cities, and outlying regions to find their new recruits, and is not afraid to push as far inland as possible in order to achieve their goals. Usually, specific elder Lunars go looking for young ones when they believe that one is nearby, and it is not usually difficult to find them. The Silver Pact also has the largest concentration of elder Lunars, including such luminaries as Tamuz, Ma-Ha-Suichi, and the venerable Leviathan.

The Silver Pact also controls many barbarian tribes. These modern barbarians use technology where they find it, but are not controlled by it; guns are in evidence, but so are older bows and javelins, and many barbarians take advantage of the cities' reliance on technology to fool them; thaumaturgy that slows or damages technology is often taught, as a means of restoring a system where the barbarians and their foes must compete in a straightforwards manner; a battle that the barbarians often win.

The Silver Pact attempts to explain to young Lunars why their ways are best, but they are not always successful. If their teachings truly fail to take hold, they reluctantly allow the Lunars to go their own way. Sometimes, they even direct them to the Undercities, which they believe are marginally superior to nothing. Failing that, Lunars are tough. They can survive being on their own. The Pact bears no ill-will towards Lunars who are not their members, as long as these Lunars live for themselves and do not become decadent and weak. City-based Lunars can be respected sometimes, but these are exceptions to the city rule, not arguments against it.

Territory

The Pact is everywhere, on the fringes of the world. While their presence on the Blessed Isle is essentially nonexistant, there are elder Lunars in every corner of the world, controlling dozens of minor tribes that escaped the Shogunate's purges and finding their own ways to live in the new world. Some raid cities, others live apart entirely, and still others find ways to live on their own. A few have settled, and created semi-barbaric city-states, but these are considered dubious, and the Lunars that run them are usually on the fringes of Pact society, often finding themselves aligning somewhat with the Undercities instead.

As a rule, the Pact is opposed to all the major nations, save Rathess; the Dragon Kings are the lone example of how civilization can function without falling to decadence, and even they only survive through constant adversity. The Pact mostly live on the far fringes, near or even slightly within the borders of the Wyld, and have more contact with the Fair Folk than other Exalts - such contact is generally hostile, but this is not a certainty, and some Pact members learn to shape from some raksha in order to combat others.

Organization

Organization of the Silver Pact is loose at best. While Pact members are willing to help each other out in certain circumstances, they also believe strongly that too much aid ultimately weakens tribesmen, especially if they come to rely on said aid. As such, aid is only given when a Lunar is certain that the person asking has tried their best and failed to succeed. Despite this, respect and understanding are given to elders, who have stronger voices at Pact meets and are more likely to be quickly responded to should they send out a call for aid; they have proven themselves, and if they say that they cannot solve the problem, they are almost certainly correct.

The Silver Pact follows the Renown chart in the Lunar corebook, with the modifications noted in their character creation section.

This loose kinship is both a boon and a curse to the Pact. On the one hand, it ensures that Pact members are capable; no weak links are supported for long, and the Lunar (or Lunar pack) that cannot defend itself will find itself cut off. On the other hand, this can make the Pact slow to respond to major threats, and co-operation between different packs can be tricky at times. In fact, Pact members have be known to fight each other fairly frequently; this is generally accepted by older Lunars.