The Bone Shadows are keepers of secret wisdom, explorers plumbing the depths of the Shadow and of otherworlds even stranger. They understand the laws that govern those worlds, and they know the rites that allow them to punish the things that would violate them. The world has slewed out of balance since Father Wolf was slain, and the Bone Shadows constantly dance back and forth upon the scales, holding the line between the physical and the ephemeral. Other tribes confront the symptoms, but the Hirfathra Hissu strike at the source of the disease, for long ago they swore an oath: Su A Sar-Hith Sa. “Pay each spirit in kind.”

They are the hermits in the wastes, possessed of secrets that claw at the mind. They are shamans and intercessors, for the things they hunt cannot be slain by fang and claw alone. Their rites catch ghosts in bottles and bind spirits beneath mountains, and in the name of their Father they cast out angels. They speak the language of the dead and pry secrets from the lips of corpses. Their gazes pierce obfuscation and self-denial, and they see the things you love and fear above all others. They will take those secrets and twist them into a knife, pointed straight at your heart.

The Bone Shadows have a reputation for strangeness among the Forsaken, but that’s a product of their heightened understanding of the Shadow. Ephemeral beings obey laws and compulsions that seem bizarre to the outsider, but to the Bone Shadows they’re as natural and ingrained as “look both ways before you cross the street,” or “don’t bite the hand that feeds.” Taboos have power, both in their keeping and in their breaking, and the Bone Shadows know when to call on that power.

The Bone Shadows follow Kamduis-Ur, the Death Wolf. The most curious of Father Wolf’s children, she ranged deeper into the Shadow than any of her siblings. She sought out ancient spirits there, and questioned them about their doings and the ways of the hidden world. When the first Bone Shadows bound themselves to her, Death Wolf passed that secret knowledge on to them.

The Bone Shadows hunt the most dangerous prey: the spirits of the Shadow and other ephemeral beings. When spirits cross the Gauntlet to feast on the Essence of the mortal world, when toxic shades pollute the Shadow and poison loci with their foulness, when the unquiet dead rise up and choke the world with their necrotic Essence, the Bone Shadows appear with their ghost rattles and their nine-demon bags. Their howls echo in two worlds, filling the courts of city and wilderness alike with fear. When the Bone Shadows are on the hunt, spirits huddle in their dens and pray that the words on the wind don’t call their names.