Paracritters

Since the Awakening, any animal population can produce Awakened individuals: paracritters, ordinary species carrying something extra, the way the corebook's own barghests and hellhounds are "Awakened animals in the canine family." It is the species that Awakens, never the ground. A litter in a corporate kennel can throw one as easily as a litter in the canyons, and what ground decides is only which animals survive on it: nothing with lungs prospers on poisoned dirt, so ash country and the dried suburbs hold the wild packs, and a corporation that wants dogs pays to keep them indoors on cleaned air.

Three populations matter in this city:

• Barghests, the money's dogs left in the canyons a household at a time and Awakened out there. The one animal that will hold cordon ground, which is most of why they are feared rather than hunted.
• Hellhounds, the payroll: kennel stock bred to the book for corporate security, and ash country's ferals, built like whatever their grandmothers were.
• Parrots, the unaligned: the real red-crowned flocks, holding the same range they have held for a century, San Pedro to Sylmar and the coast to Pasadena. The whole city says the Oceanwide roost is Awakened, and nobody minds.

What the crew knows#

• Animals Awaken the way people did. Everybody knows somebody whose dog's litter had one in it, and everybody has heard the howl off the canyons at least once.
• Corporate security runs paracritters on patrol where it can afford them, with handlers, and a healthy animal on bad ground is always a statement about somebody's budget.
• Some of them see you on both planes.

Standing with the crew#

None, and none is possible: they are animals. What stands or falls is the crew's standing with whoever owns the kennel, and nobody owns a flock or a canyon pack.