Werewolves

We have scanned your species’s folklegend, sweetling. The silhouette of the solitary beast-man crying longingly to the pregnant moon is a common image. A human cursed by the heavens, by demons, or the magic of the elements, and forced to lunar cycles of frenzied release. Metamorphosis. The predator within manifested in flesh and blood. Blood. Blood everywhere!

Your fireside stories are a faint reflection of the truth. The werewolf was yet another of Lilith’s creations. The mother of monsters combined humans and wolf-like demons, producing something savage and strong. Her creation spread and flourished in number, useful in her wars, yet they proved too short-lived to reach their potential and too hard to control. Lilith lost interest in her bestial children and left them to their own devices.

They walk between worlds, welcome nowhere. Feared by humans and discarded by their mistress, the werewolves became outcasts, hunted by mortals and immortals alike. The other children of Lilith treat them as little more than failed experiments. The werewolves are at the bottom of every pecking order. And so trapped, their only recourse is to claw their way out. And so the years honed them into cagey survivalists. Kill first. Consider later.

History forced them to run. As nomadic creatures, they travel in packs with a strict and brutal hierarchy. Only the strongest survive, and their numbers are dwindling. Each successive generation of werewolves shrinks. They are desperate, sweetling.

Young werewolves follow instinct rather than intellect. They intuitively use their rudimentary magics. In their first decades, they have little control over their aggression. These years are the most crucial in their lives, when their demonic blood rages uncontrollably in their veins. They lash out blindly. If they survive these violent years, time and hormonal changes ease their temperament. Few live to experience this. The elder werewolves are calmer and often more intelligent than their younger pack members.

The werewolves could live hundreds of years, if they can avoid the hunter’s mark and the self-devouring rage of youth. The few who have survived wars, abuse, pack violence and time itself are driven to rehabilitate their younger cousins, hoping to stop the decline of their species. These ancient werewolves believe themselves to have transcended the squabbles of the Secret World. They only kill out of survival. They lead solitary lives in the mountains of Europe, but recent events in Transylvania have dragged them back out of legend.

Though they are conscious of Gaia, werewolves are amoral by their unnatural design. History has forced them to care only for themselves. Though they are aware of the imminent threat to the world, they chose to take no sides other than their own. But choice is a luxury few supernaturals can afford. Some will become pawns. Some will rise above their natures. The night is so full of teeth. Eh, sweetling?