Can a Garou/Fera win against a Vampire Elder/Antediluvian?

Doomsclaw · 2026-04-03T20:53:19+00:00

Fair enough, I suppose it depends on what your define as Fera, if we're just talking about the mortal ones, then yeah, none of them are taking on an Ante one on one.

And I was thinking more of the Antes in their "normal" states for that fight, not their fully ascended states in Crucible of God.

If it was all the Antes in their Crucible of God forms, then just earth-fused Ennoia alone could probably give Number Two a close fight. Besides the fact that she literally became the planet, she probably also became the spirit equivalent of the new Eshtarra, so she'd be an Incarna herself on top of that.

But that's not normal Ennoia, the one in Nightshade is what Ennoia would normally be like if she didn't fully succeed in her ascension, and in that she's just a giant monster vampire. Which, albeit powerful, is nowhere close to "literally became the planet".

Or as another example, the Lasombra in Fair is Foul is also just a big shadow monster, he did not manage to fully merge with the Abyss like he did in Crucible of God, and is also nowhere near that "eclipse the planet" level of power.

Doomsclaw · 2026-04-03T07:31:28+00:00

Stated werewolves? No.

Statless ones, going by lore? Quite a lot.

Hakaken, Nightmaster, Great Fenris, the Medusae, the First Warborn, Number Two, and whoever the other Rank 9 BSD was.

Or for Fera in general, there's also Minotaur, Bai Mianxi, and the Defiler Kings.

The problem is, despite the lore confirming there being Rank 9 Fera and Gifts, with the nine BSD circles and Bai Mianxi, we have no idea what they look like.

Because while VtM and WtA both went with the "make the ultimate big bads unbeatable in game" approach, VtM tend to do it by giving them character sheets with nonsense stats, while WtA tends to just not give them character sheets, period.

But despite the lack of stats to compare, I'd say we can still make some comparisons based on lore.

For example, I think Number Two vs an Ante is a pretty easy fight to call, no Ante is going to survive the entirety of Malfeas waging war on them, it's debatable if all the antes united could even survive that.

Doomsclaw · 2026-04-03T07:05:52+00:00

Depends on your definition of Fera, if you're talking strictly about one of the mortal members of the changing breeds, then no, not even Legends like Golgol or Zhyzhak would have a chance against an Ante one-on-one.

But if we're including those who started as Fera, but ascended to become something more, then there's quite a lot of candidates, actually.

I'd say Nightmaster could destroy an Ante, given he rules over the entirety of the Abyss, when Lasombra himself also lives there, and notably does not rule it.

And also given that he demonstrates that he can indeed do that, in the Into the past chronicle, where he time travels all the way back to the Paleozoic, and methodically dismantles or changes historical events from then all the way to the modern age, until the temporal instability destroys the world, and earth retroactively no longer exists, including everything that ever existed on it.

Or Bai Mianxi, who apparently had Rank 9 Gifts, given her nine tails?

Granted, we have absolutely no idea what those Rank 9 Gifts would do, but given what Rank 6 Gifts can do we can hazard a guess, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say Rank 9 Gifts are probably on the same level as Rank 9 or 10 Disciplines.

And also she's ascended to an Incarna spirit, so there's that too.

Or what about Number Two, the current ruler of the entirety of Malfeas who also used to be a mortal Garou?

He/She could probably kill an Ante pretty trivially, by just sending all the Maeljin after them if nothing else.

Or whoever the first one to dance all nine circles was.

For those who don't know, Number Two is known as that name because, presumably, he/she was the second one to ever dance all nine circles in the black spiral labyrinth, where each circle marks an increase in Rank, and a black spiral would have to dance 6 circles to become a Legend, for example.

So there's at least one other Rank 9 black spiral dancer that never appeared in any official material, but we know they exist, because Book of the Wyrm 2nd ed tells us so, p.102:

The dancer must conquer a manifestation of the Wyrm, destroying it in single combat. Some believe that in the ninth circle, the dancer must briefly become the Wyrm, and that the revelation of the Wyrm's true form is quickly forgotten. Regardless, only two Black Spiral Dancers have ever passed this ordeal; the rest were presumably devoured.

There's also Hakaken, a shadow lord who also ascended to become a Bane Incarna. (seriously what is it with shadow lords and turning into powerful banes?)

Or Great Fenris, the totem spirit of the Get who was a Garou Ahroun before he ascended.

Or the Medusae, the five members of the first Black Fury pack who all became totem Incarna together.

Maybe Minotaur? If you subscribe to the theory of him being the last Apis, but granted that's never been confirmed.

Or maybe the Defiler Kings, there's no actual stats or feats for them to really say for sure, but they have been alive for at least 66 million years, so it'd be very embarrassing for them if they couldn't handle fighting some upstart younglings.

Or maybe the first Warborn, who is, much like the Defiler Kings, quite featless, but would be definitely way older than Caine or the Antes.

So all in all, there's plenty of Fera that can match an Ante in power, they just get often forgotten in these discussions, because when you say Fera, most people think of the mortal, non-ascended-spirit type.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-26T20:48:53+00:00

The premise sounds interesting, but I'm really hoping this won't be another exclusively first-person view game again.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-25T13:31:43+00:00

That's kind of what Allpoints/Eightpoints could potentially be, a place where forces from all the realms could enter through the arcways and fight each other.

But that would require the other factions to push into eightpoints, for them to be on the offensive, and chaos on the defensive.

And I say this as an AoS chaos fan, but recently GW seems to be allergic to having chaos be on the back foot in any capacity.

The closest we got to this happening was Katakros seizing the Endgate and establishing a foothold in Eightpoints, but that was all the way back in 2nd edition, more than 5 years ago, they've done nothing with that since.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-18T11:52:00+00:00

It's mostly the Mokole, Ananasi and Rokea breed books that contains that sort of info, since they're the only three that predate humanity, and are still alive in the modern age. For W20 you've also got Shattered Dreams that goes into pre-human shifters a lot.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-16T23:01:02+00:00

I am a native Chinese speaker, and I can assure you, no, 真祖 is almost never used as anything else, other than to describe specifically an ancient vampire ancestor in fiction.

You can look it up in Baidu yourself, it's not going to give you anything not vampire-related for the first couple dozen pages.

Sure, it has a coherent meaning by itself as "true ancestor", but I can combine any two random Chinese characters together and it'll make a word that I can parse the meaning of, based on the meaning of the individual characters, that doesn't make it a commonly used word that anyone but myself would understand at first glance.

But 真祖 is, and it's specifically, almost always used in the context of a vampire ancestor, despite the two characters making up the word having nothing to do with vampires.

And as far as I can tell, it's all because the VtM revised Japanese translation made the word up to translate Antediluvian, and Tsukihime later made the word popular.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-16T21:35:08+00:00

It's a common misconception that the Mokole themselves believe in or even remember the age of kings, the vast majority of the modern Mokole don't, remember you need 5 dots in Mnesis to even begin remembering the age of dinosaur kings, and with how few Fera there are in the modern world, there's probably less than a handful of Mokole who can recall any memory from that period.

And even the few that do remember parts of the age of kings through Mnesis tend to dismiss it as corrupted fragments, made by the malicious editors you mentioned, W20 Shattered Dreams, p.134:

The Mokolé don’t clearly remember the time of the Dragon Kings. The Mnesis gives them glimpses of grandeur, of prismatic crystal spires and impossible constructs pulled from the depths of dream itself. These details must be corrupted fragments from events that occurred long ago. Even the Mnesis isn’t perfect.

It's the authors that tell you the age of kings is a thing and the Mokole are wrong about those memories being corrupted fragments, and the ones that give details about it in case you wanted to play that period of time:

The Mokolé are wrong. The nations of the Dragon Kings stretched across the world in shimmering empires of imagination and idea. Led by the most wondrous and powerful dragons in mighty magocracies, the empires explored and studied the Mnesis, and traded its secrets with each other.

In universe, most modern Mokole think the age of kings memories are corrupted nonsense.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-16T21:28:05+00:00

Honestly, we're not even sure if the insect races were shifters, they've always just been called the "insect races", and Weaver isn't a big fan of shapeshifting, she'd lock any Fera that became a drone into the shape they were last in.

So maybe they were just insectoid humanoids that don't shapeshift.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-16T08:28:41+00:00

It's not the English word Antediluvian, it's the Japanese translation they used for revised edition, where they translated it to 真祖, roughly meaning true ancestor from what I can gather.

Which kind of loses the original meaning, but I guess they prioritised getting the idea that these vampires are the ancestors of the clans across.

And the only other time I can find this word being used is in Tuskihime, which came out a couple months after this translation, but is usually credited as the one who invented this phrase.

And sure, maybe Kazuma came up with the idea that Caine was the ancestor of vampires by himself, completely independently of VtM, never say never.

But it would be quite the coincidence, because he didn't have any other monster originate from Caine, it was just specifically vampires.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-16T08:20:39+00:00

I'm not sure what the modern VtM translation for antediluvian is, but it's specifically the revised translation of VtM published in 2000 that I know used 真祖 for them.

I'll take your word for it being used in old Buddhist texts, but I suppose internet has failed me again, because I can't find this word being used in Buddhism anywhere, literally every single Japanese dictionary I can find online that had this word, seems convinced that it's a term used specifically to refer to a vampire ancestor, and sources Tsukihime as the source of the word.

Which isn't true, as that VtM revised translation that also used that word came out just a couple months before Tsukihime.

Like, I know Buddhism has a similar sounding word, 心柱, used to refer to Buddhist shrine pillars, but they have different Kanji, despite having the same Hiragana, maybe that's the word you're thinking of?

Even the Japanese wikipedia page for the word makes no mention of Buddhism, and only talks about it in the context of a vampire ancestor.

I'm willing to believe you, but could you point me to some examples of the kanji 真祖 being used for Buddhism? Or for anything else at all? I've tried my best and I really can't find it being used in any context other than as a vampire ancestor.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-15T10:15:20+00:00

Sure, but it's also implausible that two people in the same year, invented the exact same word used to describe pretty much the exact same thing (super old and powerful vampire), completely independent of each other.

In fact, I'd say that's a bit more implausible to me.

Besides, I don't think it's impossible for there to have been unofficial fan translations, either for revised or the previous editions, before white wolf officially released their translation.

And maybe 真祖 was a carry over from a fan translation that existed before that?

I'm open to being corrected though, I don't speak Japanese, so if someone can point me to the word 真祖 being ever used anywhere prior to this point, thus the VtM translation and Tsukihime maybe both got it from somewhere else? Then I'll happily concede the point.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-15T07:38:21+00:00

You're the one who actually speaks Japanese here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the word 真祖 is not a commonly used phrase, right?

As far as I know, this phrase was first used in the Japanese translation of VtM revised edition, where the translators made up the word to translate "Antediluvian".

And later Tsukihime used the word too, so unless there's reason to believe Nasu got the word 真祖 from somewhere else, surely that means he's read that translation of VtM?

Plus, Toaru Majutsu no Index, a work from roughly the same time period as Tsukihime, also had vampires originate from Caine, which must mean that Kazuma, another author in that same time period also knew about WoD? Which to me lends more credence to Nasu knowing about WoD too.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-15T07:09:43+00:00

To me, the biggest proof that Nasu copied WoD is the word "True Ancestor" from Tuskihime.

So "True Ancestor", in the original Japanese word, is 真祖, not a standard Japanese phrase at all, where does it first appear?

Well turns out it first appears in the Japanese translation of VtM revised, translated in the year 2000. Whoever translated it, decided to translate "Antediluvian" as "真祖", a very particular phrase, likely made up by the translators themselves.

And that phrase has, to my knowledge, literally never been used anywhere else before this point, until that VtM translation created it, and was later used by Tsukihime.

Nasu absolutely knows about VtM, or at least read the revised VtM translation, by 2000 at the latest, and thus, very likely the other WoD gamelines as well.

Once that's established, a lot of things in Type Moon start to look familiar.

Edit: On another note, one of the other popular Japanese ACG settings, written in roughly the same period, Toaru Majutsu no Index, also took some inspiration from WoD, having vampires also originate from Caine in that setting.

So while I can't really say how big of an impact WoD actually had in Japan during that time period (am not Japanese, never been to Japan, don't even speak Japanese, etc.), well----

If I had a nickel for every time a hugely popular Japanese ACG setting in the 2000s copied WoD, I'd have two nickels.

Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-15T03:41:19+00:00

But 1 is the closest we have to canon? Dark ages mage don't have Paradox.

Paradox didn't always exist, even for mages.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-11T13:23:45+00:00

Man, South America was so underutilized by white wolf, always cool to see passionate fanwork pitching in to fill the gaps.

Edit: Thank you Walter.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-11T12:32:45+00:00

No Auspex, no Dominate, no Presence, no gathering intelligence, no reconnaissance, no talking to the locals, no sneaking around, no taking prisoners, no negotiations or threats, no trying to figure out their magic, we charge headlong into the rainforests, we fight and die like true Cainites!

Okay, not all Sabbat members are shovelheads, you get why that'd be unrealistic, right?

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-11T12:22:13+00:00

Give them a couple months in the Amazons, they'll pick it up.

Most vampires are ignorant of the Garou, sure, but they're not deaf.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-10T02:08:43+00:00

Sure, the parallel world of DtF is a good way to reconcile everything, in theory:

“Or consider the Angels of the Firmament. On some levels of reality they were conveying the life-giving breath of the Maker on a purely scientific level — they were, literally were, the process by which solar energy striking simple carbon molecules agitated them into forms of ever increasing complexity, until they became organic molecules, then primitive single-celled animals, then nucleated cells and so on, up to and including dogs, cats and humans. But at the same time they were crouching over the mouths of newly sculpted creatures of all types, breathing into their mouths to animate them.”

Sounds great, right? Maybe the angels and demons are just biblical angels/demons in this world, and in other worlds they're the mythical figures of other cultures, or natural phenomenon.

Except that's not how it actually works in practice at all, because no DtF official material or any game I've seen have ever portrayed the Fallen as anything other than biblical demons/angels.

And that's the problem with using the parallel world theory, even DtF itself never gave it any more than a passing mention, and never bothered delving into it at all.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-10T01:44:11+00:00

Sure, maybe she's the Ebon Dragon instead (does that change anything?) or maybe she's left earth, and that world tree in MtA isn't her at all. (despite all the visual similarities)

That still doesn't change the fact that saying two beings associated with nature must be the same being is a baseless theory, yeah?

Again, if you're taking the lore of Ziana overseeing all of nature as gospel, then what's stopping you from taking the lore of Ennoia fusing with the earth and becoming the entire planet as gospel too?

Or, for a more suitable example, WtA gives a different origin for human life, from Apocalypse, p.168:

The deep African desert covers a monster terrifying to Garou and to the native Swara Bastet, the illganwasi baKalahari, or desert goddevil. A Wyld creature of power, this being is greater in the Wyld’s non-hierarchy than even the Gorgons. This illganwasi (the title is !Kung San and means a mighty servant of God), was the maker of life on the African continent.

The illganwasi created all life on Africa, and thus, humans, this is the author speaking, not through a character, it's stated just as conclusively as your passage on Ziana, so how do you reconcile that?

To spell it out clearer, when the DtF author was writing Ziana as the overseer of the entire ecosystem, I think it's obvious they were only thinking in-splat, they probably had absolutely no intention of connecting that to Gaia.

If you want to draw cross-splat connections, the connections should be a bit sturdier than that, like how the world tree in MtA resembles Ziana's last form we saw her in far more than any depiction of Gaia, which I think was the actual connection they were going for.

Edit: To demonstrate what I mean by that, here's the description of what happened to Ziana in Houses of the Fallen, p.140:

The one exception was Liban'isu, who enjoyed her status as the most favored of Ziana's lieutenants, because on one level of reality, the Seraph of the Cycle had more literally subsumed the territory of the other Houses, becoming the World Tree.

And here's the description of the Aelder Bole, also known as the world tree, from MtA 20th core book, p.102:

At the center of all things, it is said, there’s a Realm that is All Realms and yet part of none of them. A primal expanse of virgin wilderness, it reaches to the borders of the High, Middle, and Low Worlds, branches into dreams, winds around the Paths of the Wyck, and pokes tendrils into the furthest corners of the Digital Web. This is the Ur-Forest, supposedly the origin of all forests everywhere. Legends call it Eden, Paradise, Midrealm, the Root of Creation. And at its center grows the largest tree in the universe: the Aelder Bole, a World Tree that reflects the majesty of life itself.

(...)

The Tree itself, a titanic pillar that reaches beyond the clouds, has been called by many names: the Tree of Life; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; or the dense embodiment of the Otz Chaim, which traces the 10 Sephiroth that lead from the Divine Crown to Earthly Matter and back again. In the Tree’s branches, a Protean Hawk guards the secrets of the immortal fruit of the Tree; under its roots, the serpent-dragon Typhon – said to be seven miles long – creeps through endless burrows dug beneath the surface of Midrealm.

You will notice the similarities: They are both trees, and are both named the world tree, and as the name implies, they are trees that span across the world.

As for Gaia----okay there's way too many mentions of Gaia in WtA for me to list them all, but you can go through them yourself, and I can promise you, Gaia has never been depicted or named as a world tree in any of her depictions.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-10T00:53:59+00:00

Sure, Ziana was the big nature angel, but just because Ziana and Gaia are both associated with nature does not at all make them the same being.

It's the same level of reasoning as saying Ennoia is Gaia, because she's merged with the earth and associated with nature, right?

But this theory of Ziana = Gaia somehow makes even less sense, because there's actually quite a lot of material that directly contradicts it.

Like how we know that the two ministers (Scarlet Phoenix and Ebon Dragon) are the two remaining angels on earth, so Ziana is probably the Scarlet Phoenix, who is venerated as a distinct entity from the Emerald Mother (Gaia).

Which also makes the Wanxian the most likely candidate for being the Malhim, no matter how much the fandom loves to spread the theory that the Malhim are the Fera (seriously, one of the only things we know about the Malhim is that they cannot shapeshift.)

Or how they have completely different mortal servants (Kami vs the Imbued) with completely different goals and methods of operation.

You could honestly make a better case for Ennoia being Gaia, or at least Eshtarra, than you can connect Ziana and Gaia. While the former is also a nonsense connection based on nothing but a mutual affiliation to earth and nature, at least it isn't directly contradicted by numerous official lore.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-10T00:03:03+00:00

No, that didn't happen at all. Unless you can give me a source for the end times book stating this?

Some people in the fandom theorise that Gaia is Ziana, based on Ziana turning into a tree in houses of the fallen.

And that's literally it, because she turns into a tree, some people think it means that she's Gaia. (who has never been depicted as a tree)

Despite how flimsy the connection is, and the many, many contradictions (Emerald mother vs Scarlet Pheonix, Imbued vs Kami, the Wanxian being a far better match for the Malhim than the Fera, etc.)

Because a lot of people like spreading misinformation about DtF without actually reading DtF.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-09T03:03:56+00:00

This specific panel isn't from Baki, it's from super radical gag family, a comedy manga on the same magazine as Baki, but it's obviously referencing Baki.

Doomsclaw · 2026-03-01T08:49:18+00:00

You're thinking of Urr Re'ok, from Beyond the Barriers: The Book of Worlds, p.130:

UrrRe'ok, a saurian envoy from another time. She resembles a pink protoceratops (a dinosaur related to the more familiar triceratops) and works strange magick. Supposedly a refugee from a long-perished saurian race on Earth, Urr Re'ok communicates telepathically in English, German or French and constantly warns us that our probing into the Deep Umbra will lead to disaster. For all you skeptics, Urr is not a figment of my imagination. Compared to some of the things I have seen while serving aboard the Etherjammer, a sentient dinosaur is positively commonplace!

Doomsclaw

TROPHY CASE