The Breeds chapter opens by saying that, while the Changing Breeds are crazy rare in general, the Storyteller can take advantage of “distorted probability” and have high concentrations of them in an area. The second paragraph section is a lot funnier when you consider what I just spent the entire last update writing about, as well:

If you happen to be the Storyteller for your troupe, keep this in mind: the World of Darkness is yours to determine. The following breeds may be “official,” but they’re not required. You don’t have to use all, or even one, of them in your chronicle. If you love the Corvians, they could become a fixture in your world; if not, feel free to ignore them.

This goes double for potential player character breeds. You are under no obligation to let players run any feral species. Some of the following breeds are incredibly rare, absurdly powerful or potentially ridiculous in the wrong hands. If you as the Storyteller feel that a breed would ruin your world, then leave that breed out of it entirely or restrict it to non-player status. Ultimately, you are the finial arbiter of what your players can and cannot play. If you don’t want were-elephants in your chronicle, don’t allow players to have them. Leave the Land Titans as vague rumors or thundering shadows, and keep your sense of mystery intact.

“For the millionth time, yes, the were-elephants are completely broken, and despite the fact that we spend a lot of time talking about them and how rare they are and have a big ol’ writeup of them, you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to. Just, y’know, use them in situations that wouldn’t require statistics anyway.”

There’s also a tiny section about making your own breeds, with suggestions such as “read other books” and “be balanced.” Also, according to suggested stat ranges for animals, elephants really are the incarnation of God’s wrath, and cattle, moose, and bull seals can have 14-21 health levels and Strength 4-8. I’m pretty sure that a cow doesn’t need several shotgun blasts to the head before it falls unconscious .

Anyway, now to the first of the breed supergroups, the Bastet, or cat people. There are a lot of words for all of these, so I’m going to be giving y’all the Reader’s Digest versions.

And, fitting this fucking book, the first paragraph’s about how much the author wants to fuck cats.

When Cat embodied herself on earth, so magnificent was she that it took not one godhead to contain her glory, but many. Ra took cat-form to slay the serpent of night [no he didn’t]; Lilith yowled like a cat in heat. Sekhmet roared with the fury of a lioness, but it was Bast, precious Lady Bastet, who epitomized Cat best. Goddess of the home, marriage and sexuality [not precisely, she was conflated with other gods of Egypt A LOT by the end of ancient Egypt], she purred with satisfaction and spat with rage. Temples filled with earthly cats were her sanctums, and a city — Per-Bast, called Bubastis — was raised to her earthly name. In its streets, cats and people mingled. Spirits met and blood flowed freely. Perhaps the Changing Gift had been there all along. In Bubastis, though, it became sacrament. The souls of Man and Cat merged as one.

[…]

Curious and tactile, Bastet are creatures of sensation. They see, hear, taste, smell and feel more deeply than most humans can imagine…and Bastet enjoy it. This openness to experience often seems rude by human standards; Bastet acquire “reputations” regardless of their morality. Brazen in her physicality, a werecat sizes up anything (or anyone) of interest. Still, she’s a capricious soul, and if that object of her attentions or affections bores her, she’ll be searching for another one in no time.

God damnit book. I have three cats. I love the little bastards. But stop fetishizing them. I have seen them fail to make a tight turn while chasing each other and slam into the wall face-first, eat their own vomit, piss on the carpet, get humped by my dog, get frightened by flies, and smack into the windows trying to chase birds from inside. Cats are awesome, but they are not perfect. They can be downright retarded at times.

Generally the rest of the supergroup writeup is poorly disgused ing over cats and applying cat stereotypes to people willy-nilly.

Also, every breed has a Stereotypes section. I initially skipped over all of them to save my sanity (a reflex cultivated by reading other WoD lines), but here’s the Bast one.

Stereotypes
Man: “You might be lord of half the world/You’ll not own me as well.”
Mages: Such lovely tricks. I wonder how they do it.
Vampires: *purring* Everything that’s bad about creation, wrapped up in the prettiest packages. Even the most revolting of them is worth the price of his acquaintance. (As pointed out by Mors Rattus, somebody’s forgetting a fifth of vampires are supernaturally hideous and horrible to be around.)
Werewolves: If they keep to their side of the rug, I’ll keep to mine. If not, someone’s gonna bleed.

Now for the first actual Breed: the Rajanya, the tiger-people. Basically they’re a bunch of alpha male dominant ruler types ing about the tiger dying out and being made into a cheap symbol while wanking over Indian creation myths involving god-and-tiger bestiality, gods bleeding tigers, or whatever.

When it comes to mechanics, the Rajanya are…well, they’re pretty broken. The gold standard for shapeshifting is the Werewolf stat spread, which I will be referring to a lot (despite it being arguably extremely underpowered compared to how the books present it.) The stat spreads for Warform and Wolf as such:

Warform: Strength +3, Dexterity +1, Stamina +2, Size +2, Health +4, Initiative +1, Speed +4, 1/1 Armor, +3 Perception, lethal damage attacks, no wound penalties.

Wolf: Dexterity +2, Stamina +1, Size -1, Initiative +2, Speed +5, +4 Perception, lethal damage attacks.

The Weretigers, for comparison, have this:

Warform: Strength +5, Dexterity +2, Stamina +5, Size +3, Health +8, Speed +7, Initiative +2, +2 Perception and penalty negations, better lethal attacks than Werewolves.

Tiger: Strength +3, Dexterity +2, Stamina +3, Size +2, Health +5, Speed +8, Initiative +2, +3 Perception and penalty negations, better lethal attacks than Werewolves.

Also, weretigers get a discount on the ability that lets you regenerate aggravated damage. So, yeah. The very first breed the player reads about is broken as fuck. Way to go, book.

Next up, the Bubastii. They’re apparently cursed with eternal hunger due to Bast getting pissy over the Persians butchering cats when they sacked Per-Bast. This makes them look anorexic and pretty which “earns them spots of honor in the worlds of high fashion, club-hopping and mass celebriculture.” They all get five dots of Mage spells (essentially ensuring they have a 0 dot Feral Heart maximum and not clarifying whether or not there’s still a three-dot cap on individual spells!), are forced to buy Striking Looks with merit dots, and have “a curse of constant hunger” that has absolutely no mechanical impact. Also, their Warbeast form is instead “an eerie Throwback [near-human] form.”

Somehow, “eerie” doesn’t really cut it for me. I prefer “WHAT IN THE FUCK BREAK OUT THE FLAMETHROWER.”

Statwise they’re actually kinda pathetic aside from a huge boost to Perception.

The Hatara are the werelions, or “The Golden Dangers,” which still leaves me wondering if that’s a typo or just retarded. They’re a bunch of wanna be royalty who are also idiots when it comes to detecting lies. It also has this in the writeup:

Taller than the average person, these ferals boast lean muscles and thick heads of hair. Since hair is regarded by many black Africans as a sign of animalism, Hatara often shave their heads clean; some, however, grow dreadlocks in the modern age, and honor their feline ancestry with a sacred fashion statement.

Now, I don’t know if that’s an actual thing or not, but that’s still kinda…oWoD, if you know what I’m saying. Also, they say the animal form is a “tiger sized lion”, which I find hilarious for some reason. Statistically, they’re only slightly less broken than the Rajanya.

The Bagrasha are the werepanthers, whose backstory is “This one woman was like ‘Oh shit, there’s snakedemons, I better fuck a black panther and a spotted panther and have werebabies.’”

Seriously. I don’t know if that’s actual mythology being hilariously fucked up, or this book being hilariously fucked up. It’s hard to tell when you’ve read a lot of mythology.

Anyway, their shtick is having a really nasty First Change that gives them inner balance and an extra dot of Harmony. Statistics: not as broken as Rajanya, still better than Werewolf.

Then there’s the “Other Breeds,” breeds that don’t fit neatly into the rest of the group’s stereotypes themes. From this point on, if I don’t mention statistics, it’s because they’re either par for the course or just boring. First is the Balam, angry latino Aztec werejaguars who murder people for the Old Gods and can see the future.

Cait Sith are/were pagan were-European lions that survived Rome’s conquering by explicit rape and murder of populations. They’re now giant-ass housecats, who specialize in being con artists, tricksters, and politicians. Yes, the book says that. They can use trickster Aspects and have a Throwback instead of a Warform.

Qualma’ni are American big cats like pumas and bobcats with Native American ties, a penchant for tall tales, and are compulsive bullshitters and riddlers.

They also look suave as fuck.

Klinkerash are pagans, Satanists, or urban magicians, black cats with blacker magics that are the embodiment of Old Magicksz etc etc. They’re like Bubastis without the hunger curse and an even stronger focus on magic. They also turn into wolf-sized cats when angry.

Next time: The Land Titans and The Laughing Strangers.