Gnosis is the essence of the spiritual world; it allows Garou to access the spirits that surround them. In some ways, it is the expression of their half-spirit nature. This connection is what makes travel to the Umbra possible, and it fuels many of the powerful Gifts the spirits can bestow. Without this spiritual force, Garou would be cut off from half of their natures. Characters with low Gnosis can find contact with the spirits rare and difficult. On the other side, those with very high Gnosis scores sometimes find the worlds blurring, and they may have trouble distinguishing each side of the Gauntlet from the other.
Gnosis is recorded in two forms, much like Rage and Willpower. The first is the character’s permanent Gnosis rating, indicated on the character sheet by the dots. The second is the temporary Gnosis pool, represented by the squares, which shows how many Gnosis points the player has left to spend. The Gnosis pool can never be greater than the Gnosis rating. When you spend a point of Gnosis, remove it from the Gnosis pool, not the permanent Gnosis rating. Permanent Gnosis stays constant through the story, while the pool fluctuates.
Using Gnosis
Much as Rage fuels battle and the physical world, the uses of Gnosis tend toward affecting insight and the spirit world.
- Rage and Gnosis: A player cannot use both Rage and Gnosis in the same turn, whether spending points or rolling the Trait. The only exceptions are certain Gifts that demand both to function. These two forces are very powerful, and the Garou’s body is not strong enough to pull the power from these two natures simultaneously. For example, a werewolf cannot spend Rage for multiple actions and activate a fetish in the same turn.
- Carrying Silver: For every object made of or containing silver that a character is carrying, she loses one effective point from her Gnosis rating. More potent objects will cause the character to lose more. Luckily, this effect is only temporary, and it lasts only a day after the silver is discarded.
- Using Gifts: Many of the Gifts the spirits have bestowed upon faithful Garou call for Gnosis expenditures and/or rolls.
- Fetishes: Gnosis is used to attune or activate fetishes.
- Spirits: Many spirits accept Gnosis as chiminage.
Characters can regain their Gnosis in several ways.
- Meditation: When a character takes time to center himself and reconnect with the Sacred Mother on a personal level, he can sometimes regain Gnosis. The character must spend at least an hour in one place, focusing on his deeply spiritual side. The player rolls Wits + Enigmas (difficulty 8). For each success, the character regains one Gnosis point, up to a maximum of one point per hour of meditation; additional successes are lost. A Garou can only meditate to regain Gnosis once per day. The difficulty increases by one for each extra day a character attempts it in the same week, to a maximum difficulty of 10. The spirits are gracious, but not always generous.
- Sacred Hunt: The Sacred Hunt is one of the most frequently performed activities at Garou moots. The chosen prey — an Engling — is summoned and then hunted down. This activity can be done in either the Umbra or on Earth. After the prey has been caught and “killed,” werewolves who have taken part in the hunt give thanks to the spirit for the gift of its life. All who participate in the hunt replenish their Gnosis pools completely.
- Bargaining with Spirits: Ritual hunts are not the only way to get Gnosis out of a spirit; the soft sell can work just as well. A werewolf can simply ask a spirit to share some of its Gnosis. The character must be able to speak in the spirit language through the use of a Gift or similar. The spirit may ask the character to perform some task before it shares its life force with the Garou. Once the bargain is completed, the spirit spends an amount of Essence, and the werewolf gains that many points of Gnosis.