Category
Gnosis: 7
Birnam sands don't look like anything spectacular. Indeed, they resemble nothing so much as a handful of yellowish dust, marred with occasional sparkles that the untrained eye might take for flakes of mica or quartz. Close examination, however, reveals that the shimmers actually move throughout the sand at a pace just short of a blur.
What the Birnam sands do is quite remarkable. A pinch of the dust, properly activated and sprinkled in a circle around the base of a tree, is enough to convince the tree to pick up its roots (temporarily) and go walking in a random direction. Needless to say, a hundred-year old oak tree gallivanting about using its roots for legs can do quite a bit of damage, and when a particularly crafty werewolf gets a whole grove up and stomping around at once, the results are usually quite impressive. The effect of the sands lasts up to a half an hour, and while the trees seem to be utterly chaotic in their motion, they always somehow manage to avoid colliding with one another or with the Garou who turned them loose. Said Garou's companions, however, may not be quite so lucky.
When the effect of the sands wears off, the trees reroot themselves comfortably and stably in their current positions. Left behind are gaping holes in the earth and torn-up sod where they once stood, but anyone looking at the trees' new positions would have sworn they'd been there for years.
System
Generally a small handful of the sands can handle between one and five trees, a medium one between five and 10, and a full pouch up to 20 trees. There are songs of legendary Garou spreading enough of this material around to wake entire forests, but the amount of sand needed to accomplish that feat is simply mind-boggling.
The Garou who wakens the trees will not be harmed by them. However, she also has no control over them; the best she can do is stay out of their way. Awakened trees have no apparent sight or hearing, but they can respond to a threat. Anyone attempting to cut down or otherwise harm a rampaging tree is liable to be trampled by several tons of very angry wood. However, even just a blundering tree is liable to do a lot of damage to buildings, cars and whatever poor souls get in its way.
Like all other Wyld fetishes, Birnam sands are found, not made. Occasional upwellings can be discovered near Wyld places, but such fountains are always brief, and always vanished upon a return visit. Essentially, the Garou who is lucky enough to find such a deposit (assuming he knows what he's found) can take as way as much as he can carry at the time, but that's all. Up wellings of Birnam Sands are only found by solitary Garou, for some reason. Attempts by a werewolf to inform others of his find inevitably produce nothing more than barren patches of sand and faint echoes of mocking laughter.
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