The great stinging hornet-things come to me in waking fever-dreams. I see the hidden things, I know when and where to run, to move, to plan. I warn my brothers and sisters, my colony. I am the seer, they always heed my council. But this time they do not. The colony wants to take the locus, for its wolves are gone and dead. The new hot-blooded young Rokhan with the wolf-knife, he calls himself Eker. He is young and virile, and I am an old woman... he ravages like plague, I progress like cancer. Eker does not listen to my words of patience, with his blood of fire and mind of rage. I urge caution, I tell him the hornet-things claim what we desire. We are not a patient people, and so his words to action sound better. The colony follows Eker, so I follow my colony.
The colony goes to locus; though with divine chills and vomiting, they need my strength. At the locus there are no wolves. There is worse. The hornet-things from my dream are there, and they come from not the Shadow or earth but from the hated barrier between, that which we gnaw. They come as many, and they sting my colony and fill it with pain. We kill many hornet-things, and they sting many of us. I am stung but I do not die. The venom burns, nauseates, blurs my fever-vision, makes my limbs stiff and low. Some of the colony flees, hurt with poison, me and Eker with them, back to the Shadow-warren... we must leave the fallen behind.
At the warren we heal, we are few and weak but become many as the colony calls more Gnawers to us. Eker says we will swell, grow, ripen... we will rebuild our numbers, and he will soon lead us to take the locus, for there are few hornet-things left. His red anger burns away my words of caution. So I prepare, as does the colony.
The hornet-things rebuild first, hatched from our fallen brothers and sisters. As I have foreseen.
The hornet-things come to the warren, they smell the venom they put in us. They sting and kill Eker. They kill all those in the warren, as I have foreseen. I slipped away in the hours before, led by the ache in my bones and the clarity of delirium to flee to another city. But now my path and vision are unclear. So I stumble in the dark.
The great stinging hornet-things come to me in waking fever-dreams. And now I am alone.

Born of a freak series of events, Swarms are an unprecedented new threat that hail not from the Shadow Realm or the material world, but from the spaces in between. These insectile mutants carve out Hives in the Gauntlet and claim loci, using them as a base to expand their territory and numbers, hunting spirits, Hosts... and werewolves. Genesis: Unlike the mythic origin stories set in a dim prehistory, the advent of the Swarm is very recent, the unpredictable result of a bizarre chain of events -- though perhaps none know the truth of how they came to be. This page explains how the Swarm came about, and discusses the werewolf response to them. Directing the Swarm: Here is detailed systems information for the Swarm, including new Aspects and rules for handling mass Swarms in combat. Storyteller tips on running Swarms is included. (The order form for Drones, and their care and feeding instructions, can be downloaded here.)

"Generic" Terminology The Swarm is a very new phenomena, only having come into existence since the turn of the millennium. They defy classification: they aren't spirits and aren't shartha, but retain elements of both, and yet display qualities entirely unlike anything else. They're an x-factor, and so Uratha don't really know what to call them. There's nothing in the First Tongue to account for Swarms, which is why I've not coined any cool-sounding name Werewolf-flavored for them while writing this.