The Fianna claim to be the second Tribe, after the Silver Fangs. It is said that the first Fianna was the first Garou to sing, the first to howl her joy into the air, the first to give in to her passions and breathe beauty into the world. While other Tribes may dispute this claim, they rarely do so to the face of a Fianna.

The Fianna are a moody lot. While other Tribes have an overall mood, the Fianna seem to embrace all moods. The Get of Fenris rage against their place in the world, and the Bone Gnawers brood over their lot in life, but the Fianna throw themselves into both extremes, often within seconds of each other. Fianna love deeply, and hold grudges beyond their deaths, and suck more marrow out of life than most people can even imagine.

While most Fianna come from Ireland or Scotland, others do come from other Celtic groups in Europe. Romania, Spain, anywhere that the Celts roamed is home to the Fianna. But most Fianna look to Ireland as their spiritual homeland.

The Fianna once shared Ireland with the White Howlers, until that tribe was destroyed by the Wyrm. The White Howlers followed the Wyrm into the bowels of the Earth, fighting it into its lair. No one knows exactly what happened to them down there, but those that came back were foul travesties of Garou. They had become the Black Spiral Dancers, monstrosities serving the Wyrm. These days, Fianna will proudly trace part of their lineages to White Howler families. They will drink a beer and weep bitter tears at their cousins' fates. And they will put aside decade old grudges to join each other in hunting down a Black Spiral Dancer and erasing its hateful visage from the Earth.  Other creatures of the Wyrm suffer the same doom - the Fianna will take the battle to the Wyrm more vigorously than any other tribe.

The Fianna have a deep connection to the Fey. In the past, Faerie and Fianna intermarried, and many a Fianna can claim direct descent from the Tuatha de Danaan. But these days, the connection is more spiritual than lineal. Few Garou can honestly claim to have met a Faerie, and fewer still have spoken with one. But the Fianna keep their memory alive, out of a sense of respect and obligation, and in the hopes that some day the Fey will return to Earth.

Among the Garou, the Fianna have the closest ties to their Kinfolk. While most Tribes try to hide their Garou heritage from their relatives, the Fianna are fairly open about it with theirs. This provides the Fianna with a secure foundation from which to battle the Wyrm. Kinfolk ensure that their feckless Garou cousins always have a job available. They comfort them and bring them out of the depths of Harano. And they proudly talk of them after their heroic deaths.

On the other hand, this close tie with their Kinfolk can also place the Fianna in a precarious position. Looking too closely into the Garou flame can cause Kinfolk to turn to the Wyrm in order to match that flame. Love of their Kinfolk can be used to pressure a Fianna into unwise courses of action. And the loss of a beloved relative can depress a Garou unto suicide.

Today, the only Fianna in the Massachusetts area are those in the Sept of the Naiad's Buried Heart.  There were no survivors from the fall of the Sept of the Salamander's Soul in Worcester several years ago, while those in Boston were pushed out in the 1960's due to a dispute with the Glass Walkers.  The Fianna of the Buried Heart occupy a contentious position in the Sept - the O'Mearas and MacKinnons have vituperatively opposed each other for over a century. They will vehemently disagree on any issue, no matter how trivial. And they will bog down even serious discussions with their litany of grudges. None but they even claim to know why the feud started, and they do not seek to end the feud - they seem to only look for more reason to continue it.

In the past, the Silver Fangs of the Sept attempted to ally themselves with the MacKinnons, and the Shadowlords attempted to use the O'Mearas. But each soon learned that taking sides in this conflict could only cause them grief and soon backed off. Nowadays, no one seriously attempts to stand in between the two factions - they simply stand aside and try to calm things down as quickly as possible.

There has been no Fianna Elder for years. Each side claims that honor, but neither side will turn to the Philodox for arbitration. Some believe that this is because each secretly fears that he will lose such an arbitration, but others understand that Fianna pride will not allow him to turn to an outsider for something he cannot win for himself. The Philodox are not allowed to make a Judgement unless they've been asked to by an involved party, so they have been unable to make any headway on this situation, though there are suspicions that they are considering a more proactive resolution.

Although there is a deep division between the O'Mearas and the MacKinnons, they both stress the same qualities in their Rites of Passage - heritage, loyalty, and pride. They investigate their family's past and must find a hitherto unknown source of pride. They may locate evidence of a Faerie forefather, or unearth a song describing an ancestor helping a White Howler, or recreate a painting of their forgotten familial homestead. When the Fianna completes this quest, she invites her entire family and her closest friends to join in her success in a boisterous, raucous party.

Attitudes towards other Garou:

Black Furies: They take pride in themselves and their past. But they don't recognize that women and men are just two sides of the same joyful coin.

Bone Gnawers: They do not deserve their infamy. They understand loyalty, and will sacrifice themselves for a packmate without a second thought. They somehow find Gaia's kindness in the wasteland of the Weaver.

Children of Gaia: A little too harmonious. They don't realize that arguing and fighting make you strong. But they understand love, almost as much as we do.

Get of Fenris: Good drinkers, and some of them can tell a good story. But collectively, they are a sick sado-masochistic macho lot. They can't properly understand what is worth fighting for - they just love fighting for its own sake.

Glass Walkers: They use the Weaver to line their own pockets. They've made the cities their own in a way that is suspicious and disturbing. Capitalists to the end, they'll sell their own mother.

Red Talons: Unlike other Tribes, the Fianna respect their Lupus brothers, which is why we can so keenly feel the Red Talons' pain. But killing all the humans won't bring their dead Kinfolk back.

Shadow Lords: A bunch of foolish back-stabbers. They think power is the way to fight the Wyrm, and they'll not only sell their own mothers for power, they'll throw in a sister or two to seal the bargain. Don't trust them.

Silent Striders: Definitely share a drink and a story with these guys, but watch your wallet. They poke into all sorts of things they shouldn't and they ask all sorts of strange questions. Sometimes they'll share some of what they know, and sometimes you'll realize they've swiped the tattoo off your arse.

Silver Fangs: They know their history, they appreciate their families, and they've led us into some mighty fine stories in the past. But maybe their sun is setting, and it's time they got off their thrones.

Stargazers: Cryptic, cerebral bastards who can tell you everything about the sky, except what makes it so beautiful. They don't understand emotions, but that gives them a strange insight that is worth paying attention to.

Uktena: Creepy. The delve into dark magics that'd scare you stiff. But they've suffered oppression, too. And they understand the pain of losing a brother tribe.  Just watch 'em closely for signs of Wyrm taint.

Wendigo: They spend too much time brooding over their lost land and dreaming of vengeance. The Fianna won't start trouble with them, but won't avoid it either. If the Wendigo want to start a turf war, they'll find out first hand how Lugh drove the Fomor out of Ireland.