About Werewolves

About Werewolves

Physical Forms

Real werewolves have three forms: human, a natural wolf form (lupine), and the loupe-garou (French for werewolf) which is an anthropomorphic form that resembles what we think of as a werewolf today — human torso and relatively human proportions with a wolf’s head, fur, digitigrade legs, human-like clawed hands, and you get the idea.

In their human form, a werewolf looks just like you or me.  It takes a meticulously trained eye to distinguish a werewolf in their human form from another ordinary person, and even then it’s easy to mistake a normal human being for a werewolf (and vice-versa).  They are trim, but never show up as bean poles like so many of the eating disorder suffering female models of today’s popular literature, or the steroid taking male bodybuilders who are all mass and not much else.  They do have a little healthy layer of fat on them which helps to make their muscle tone more subtle.  They are well toned, and very strong (think bending jail bars and ripping through high tensile steel), even juveniles (teenagers).

However, their human form is their weakest; they are more powerful in their lupine and garou (their physically most powerful) forms.  They look like they could be athletic without being overly so.  They tend to not go in for sports and favor leisurely sporting activities that don’t allow them to really show off their extra-human abilities.  Hiking, dancing, and running seem to be the more popular favorite human activities, and they often combine these with other appropriate hobbies (such as photography and/or drawing/painting, dancing [a big one among teenage werewolves, especially swing dancing], running, camping, biking, etc.).  They are thus not built for power alone (even though they have a considerable amount even in their weakest, human, form), but instead are built for spectacularly controlled agility.  

A trained eye can identify the precision and agility that a werewolf moves as very few regular humans can move with the precision and purpose that a werewolf can.  They are very attractive nonetheless, although many like to downplay their natural beauty so as to not attract attention to their physicality.

The second form is their lupine, or natural, wolf form.  Unlike popular fiction today, the natural wolf form of the werewolf is just that, a wolf.  Basically, this is just the form a werewolf takes on when it’s a wolf.  A werewolf looks like a gray/timber wolf to the untrained (or only slightly familiar with wolves) eye.  The werewolf generally takes on the appearance of a gray wolf from the Continental United States (dimensions of colder climate wolves are a little different) no matter what part of the world the werewolf lives in.  The only difference in size is that werewolves tend to be anywhere from 4-12 inches taller at the shoulder (and everywhere else proportionally in line) than the average gray with ever so slightly thicker legs.  Also, the fur patterns generally reflect both the skin and hair color of the individual’s human form.  If a werewolf in her human state has brown hair and light colored skin, then her fur pattern would be the same, or very close, brown on the upper portions of her body with light tan fur on her belly.  

On rare occasions there have been exceptions: white wolves, black wolves, and even a silver wolf are known to exist or have existed in North America (and other parts of the world).  However, these are the exceptions to the rule, and these deviations from the norm are held among werewolves as a sign of some extra ability or destiny for the particular wolf (the silver wolf is a mystic).  Their eyes are yellow as adults, like normal wolves; although again, there have been exceptions to eye color that also are believed to signal extra-normal abilities in a werewolf as mentioned above.  

The third form is the anthropomorphic, or garou form.  This is the form that we nowadays attribute to werewolves as portrayed in movies such as Underworld and Van Helsing: the monster that stands on two legs and is half-man and half wolf.  It is their most powerful form, allowing the werewolf to shred through thick steel and rip cars up like paper.  The head of a wolf, torso of a human, humanlike hands with wickedly sharp claws, fur covered bodies, etc, standing upright on two digitigrade legs (exhibiting characteristics of both human and werewolf anatomical elements) are all characteristics of this form.  In fact, certain werewolf artists who’ve actually portrayed the garou form correctly on Deviant Art (see such artists as Novawulf, Sugarpoultry, and others in the werewolves-at-heart DA group) are thought to be in cahoots with werewolves, helping them become portrayed as less of the monster than popular media has made them out to be (some obscure conspiracy theorists think said artists may be marked by, or even be werewolves, themselves).  They stand anywhere between 1-3 feet higher in their garou forms than when they’re human, and their fur pattern is the same as their lupine form’s.

It should be noted that the garou form is not a natural form of the werewolf unlike many have been lead to believe.  This form was discovered by a werewolf named Angus McDonald, a Scotsman, back in the 15th century.  Several of his neighbors were…, “infringing” on his grazing fields (he raised sheep, ironically enough), so to scare them off his lands, he discovered a way to twist his transformations (painful at first for any werewolf until they get the hang of it) and grow in stature into the intimidating garou form.  It worked.  He surprised his enemies on a cold, full moonlit night (which, incidentally, started the whole werewolves transform at the full moon tradition at the same time) when he tore through their sheep, scattering their flocks and driving them off his land.  Of course, he was careful not to hurt anybody (he just wanted to scare them) and only killed one sick sheep, whose wool was falling out, for effect.  News of this event spread much more quickly among werewolves and it became a great prank to pull on unsuspecting commoners when they encroached too much on a werewolf’s land.  However, it eventually backfired in such superstitious times, transforming the ideas of werewolves into the creatures we know of today.

Although it’s considered an essential skill nowadays for any werewolf to shift into his or her garou form, werewolves rarely use this form except when socializing with the pack (since they do recover the ability of human speech as an garou, although their voice becomes a bit deeper and many times unrecognizable unless a human knows the ‘were’), climbing trees, and in very special instances in fighting (especially helpful when taking vampires one on one; see the note below).  In some places, where the violence of the past has all but disappeared, the skill of turning into a garou is actually becoming a lost art form as the sparse older generation is either failing to pass on the technique or not available to begin with (such as small informal pockets of werewolves that aren’t older than say fifty or sixty years).

NOTE: before their extinction, the vampire’s strength and blinding speed made the werewolf the only supposedly “supernatural” creature capable of defeating a vampire. Even the various breeds of werecats were no match for the shifty vampire since they never really learned how to shift into their own type of anthromorph.  Before werewolves discovered their garou form, they were only able to take the vampire down as a pack.  They would have to separate a vampire from the rest of its clan/house in order to overpower it.  The garou form allowed the werewolf to take a vampire single handedly in a one-on-one fight, heretofore unheard of previous to this.  What started out as a silly prank turned out to be the one thing that kept humankind free from eternal oppression and tyranny.  Such is the reality of the werewolf.

Sociality

Werewolves, much like the two species that they share their lives with, are very social creatures, mixing human sociality with lupine sociality.  About half of the world’s werewolf population lives as rovers, i.e. wolves that don’t associate themselves with a pack.  They may live alone or as a mated pair and tend to prefer habitats in either suburban settings or rural areas on the edges of civilization.

Their dual nature (or rather, holistic — since they are both human and wolf at the same time) allows them to enjoy a much broader range of experience in living.  They tend to value family life, and show a remarkable tendency to choose a mate sometime in their twenties; binding themselves to that mate via the socially accepted methods common to the human society in which the werewolf lives (a.k.a. marriage).  They are also singly and powerfully loyal to that mate, generally choosing to marry once the decision has been made and the mate’s trustworthiness proven (in other words, they know their spouse’s secret and are willing to keep it).
 
Many times, if the pairing originates with one half of the pair being a normal human, the offer is made open by the werewolf member to be bitten, or turned into a werewolf.  The majority of the time, the human spouse actually welcomes this opportunity and becomes a werewolf themselves.  There are some occasions however when they wish to stay normal but are okay with the other one being a werewolf.  They exist as ordinary members of society and, sometimes, become activists given an issue that is close to the heart of the werewolf (environmental and social issues being the two that really catch the interest of your average werewolf).

Packs are a whole different matter and can take many forms.  The largest pack of werewolves in North America numbers some thirty individuals who are spread out across the Pacific Northwest (given their alpha’s preference for living in that climate), with four members living in Utah, and one in Texas, generally coming together as a whole pack only on special occasions (about once a year during the summer for a big camping trip).  

Unlike many other packs, this pack shows immense egalitarianism in the fact that the only designation of social hierarchy is the Alpha pair; there is no Beta or Omega as all the others are viewed as equals.  And even the Alphas see themselves as members who just make sure the rest of the pack is taken care of.  The Alpha of the pack is a male, and has the singular distinction of being the only living Akela Alpha in the world today.  An Akela Alpha is a leader chosen by the common unilateral consent of the pack and, because of the love and devotion of the pack behind him, possesses immense power as a leader.  Usually, Akelas see themselves not as leaders, but as caretakers, as the aforementioned alpha does, and the servant, much like a father or an older brother figure, for the rest of the members of his pack.

However, Akelas are exceptionally rare; there is only one Akela in the world today.  Every other pack has an alpha that has  proven himself in some sort of a struggle to the pack.  Many packs do not condone fighting to the death, and may choose tests of strength and prowess, such as a hunting contest, to choose their alpha with the winner proving the stronger wolf and thus the worthy leader of the pack.  But some packs do subscribe to the once popular method of fights between the alpha and their challenger.  These fights generally are no longer to the death, but the risk is real and werewolves have been known to die in them.  In those instances, the one who does the killing faces banishment from the pack.  

It’s only in some of the oldest packs that fighting to the death is still condoned.  Sociality in these packs (non-killing and killing) follows very much the social patterns of wolf packs in the wild; there is(are) an alpha(s), beta(s), and omega(s) with everywhere in between.  Omegas are often mistreated (although there was the story about a pack in Germany were a particularly abused omega challenged her particularly brutal alpha for control of the pack and ended up killing the alpha and thus supplanting him as leader, and once she’d secured her place as alpha, she put a stop to the killing — and over ninety years later, she’s still the head of the pack).

These most violent packs live in areas far removed from human society and generally live in close proximity to one another.  Other more civilized packs may live communally, on a compound of some sort under a false guise, or in a tight nit subdivision (the pack living in the northern part of Washington State is one of the prime examples of this method).  One California pack poses as a nudist colony so people won’t mess with them; although they do tend to spend the vast bulk of their time covered in fur and not running around naked (thank heavens).  They tend to stick together and take care of their own, for the most part.  Some packs live almost completely feral, while others balance their lives between the human and lupine worlds.  The more brutal ones though, tend to shun humanity and its entrappings in favor of their more feral natures.

Mating Habits

Werewolves for the most part choose a single mate and mate for life (the only exception is in certain primitive packs).  A werewolf will not take a mate until he or she can care for that mate in the environment they choose to live in.  If the werewolf lives mostly in the human world, they generally wait until they can provide for a family before settling down and marrying.

According to a study conducted (without the knowledge of the rest of the human world) in the 1960s by Dr. Phyllis Proudmore, werewolves are hard wired for fidelity.  Once a werewolf takes a mate, they are mates for life, rarely separating before death of one or the other.  What Dr. Proudmore (her sister dated and married a werewolf, opting to become one herself with her mate/husband) discovered would astonish the world if it were common knowledge.  Over the course of several years, she studied select werewolf packs and couples, both werewolves, or just a single member werewolf.  

She began with the courting practices of werewolves, both male and female.  Initial courtship occurs through first date, dances, etc., following human trends with the single exception as the courting couple approaches physical intimacy.  

Werewolves didn’t push physical intimacy nearly as fast as humans today do.  Even before their first kiss, the werewolf would want to better know his or her potential partner.  Dr. Proudmore later discovered the reason behind this.  A werewolf’s psyche is built not just of human or wolfish instincts, but a combination of the two.  Dr. Proudmore found that any expression of physical intimacy, both given or received by the werewolf, strengthened the emotional and even spiritual attachment of the werewolf to his or her perspective mate.  This concept was particularly highlighted with a case she ran into later in her studies when she came across a once in a decade occurrence — a werewolf in the middle of a divorce.  The wife of the werewolf in question decided she’d had enough (really she was just bored with the relationship, getting into it in the first place because she thought being with a werewolf would be a wild ride; turned out not to be wild like she thought it would be) wasn’t going to work after ten years and pursued a younger human male.  The werewolf was devastated, and, after their daughter had grown (she having inherited the werewolf gene herself) and married (and still is happily married to this day), the werewolf in question withered away and died with a broken heart (incidentally, one of the major killers of the otherwise immortal werewolf).  Because of these attachments, werewolves in reality aren’t anywhere near as promiscuous as many popular modern gothic tales make them out to be.

Dr. Proudmore also discovered that as the courtship progressed and an exclusive trust established between a potential mate and the werewolf, only then did werewolf courtship behaviors begin deviating from pure human elements.  Both male and female werewolves, once their secret is known to their potential mate, were known to kiss, but also gently lick and nip their potential mates.  

However, werewolves tend to leave the neck area alone (the only exceptions being gentle stroking, like petting a dog on the neck), being a region much more attached to sexual intimacy (and social dominance) among wolves than among humans; and since that factors into werewolf society, no werewolf would encourage that kind of behavior in anyone until the honeymoon.  

Many a human has been shocked to discover that the vast majority of werewolves wouldn’t even think about intercourse until after the mated pair declared their devotion to each other and claimed themselves as each other’s in every other socially acceptable way (a.k.a. marriage).  Some would think this would be counter intuitive to the way the natural world is perceived to work (which is a contradiction in terms since we still have so much to learn about how our world really works).  What has to be remembered is that, across all background cultures, — and even isolated werewolves that have rarely, if ever, come in contact with human society, — to a werewolf, intimacy strengthens intimacy no matter what kind it is; and those bonds can be life-threatening if broken.  Werewolves only engage in intercourse with someone who is wholly committed to being their mate for life.  Don’t even think about making love with a werewolf unless already married to him or her, because no self-respecting werewolf would allow a relationship to get that far without the utmost commitment to them bound in every way possible.

So far, the discussion has been about one-on-one mating habits of werewolves, and the vast majority of werewolves follow the above pattern, even the ones in packs, although there can be and generally are multiple breeding mated pairs in a single werewolf pack as opposed to normal wild wolves were only the alpha pair breeds in their packs.  

However, Dr. Proudmore discovered that there were deviations from werewolf norms given certain circumstances.  She discovered a pack of Canadian werewolves that had a disproportionately larger number of females than males in a fairly isolated geographic region.  Thus, males in the pack could have two or as many as three claimed female life-mates.  It has to be remembered that the pack distanced itself socially from the human world, more-so than many others, so there wasn’t any form of legal issues involved, and not all of the males had multiple mates; but many females chose to be attached to a mate that already had a female before and were treated as equals with the primary female.  Strict rules among the pack established fair treatment among females, and all females were held with equal respect.  This is only one isolated exampled though.

There were also tales of wild Siberian packs (of which only three still survive) on the steppes of Russia and Alaska, were it was a violent free for all when it comes to mating (based on stories of werewolves that escaped those packs who, when interviewed, expressed an resoundingly unanimous mindset about how life is so much better outside of their old packs).  These packs, constantly at war with each other over territory, resembled many of the modern gothic tales of feral promiscuity and “animal instinct” (generally a contradiction in terms in light of the fidelity many animals, wolves especially, show their chosen mates) when it came to mating partners — among other things.  With the werewolf psyche, this leads to trust issues and an overall breakdown in respect of the pack hierarchy, order only existing through the employment of brute force.  These are the packs were death matches for the alpha position (both male and female) are frequent and bloody.  Many werewolves have escaped this environment and led peaceful and fulfilling lives apart from the pack societies they were born into (One of North America’s two resident mystics, Natalia, is just such an escapee who never hesitates to share a word of warning about even coming close to one of those packs).  Those that stay in these packs rarely have hope of experiencing a life expectancy longer than many disease ridden third world countries as life is short, bloody, and brutal, where the only rule is “might is right.”

Dr. Proudmore also discovered (which has been since proved by an anonymous werewolf researcher) that the stability of a werewolf’s intimate relationships has a direct effect on their emotional and mental stability as a whole.  If a werewolf’s ties to a relationship is suddenly severed, like losing their life-mate, a grieving time is essential to that werewolf’s recovery.  Without that grieving period, the werewolf becomes more unstable.  The Rogue Werewolf is a phenomenon that exists as the extreme example of this tendency, and the ultimate fear in werewolf culture.  

Rogue’s are created, it’s theorized, when a werewolf’s life is torn apart without being able to have the grieving/healing period, which is rare since a werewolf, if unable to socially grieve, could, and generally does, seek solace in their feral nature, isolated from the rest of the world.  Thus, it was proven that, disallowed this opportunity to purge the depression, the werewolf will turn to other methods of protecting itself from the flood of negative emotions accompanying such a traumatic event, ultimately leading to the severing of the psyche of the beast with the human psyche as a form of self-preservation.  This unfortunately causes the werewolf to lose complete control.  

A werewolf that indulges with many mating partners and fights against the attachments that naturally occur between a werewolf and its mate further undermine the overall emotional stability of the werewolf, causing violent mood swings, overall aggressive and untrusting behavior, and eventually anti-social tendencies abhorrent even to werewolf standards; and it also weakens the werewolf’s ability to heal emotionally/spiritually, thus increasing drastically the risk of the broken werewolf going rogue.  Over time, constantly severing these connections can prompt the werewolf to lose his/her connections to both their humanity and natural wolf selves turning them into a machine subject to only the basest of instincts, lower than both human or wolf.  These sorts of creatures go on murderous rampages (thus becoming Rogues), and are quickly killed by the werewolf community before the murderous individuals can expose werewolves to the public.

A werewolf will not choose a mate solely on looks.  In fact, some men and women that werewolves have claimed as their mates seem completely contrary to what the modern world would think natural.  For example, it is not uncommon for what the world would consider a “hot” werewolf male to choose a slightly plump (or even fairly plump) women as a life-mate, or a incredibly attractive werewolf female to choose a geeky and socially awkward (and he can be chubby too) guy to be her life-mate.  Werewolves are attracted to the overall person behind the physical characteristics, someone who is willing to commit and learn how to make a long-term relationship work.  Werewolves are also more attracted to intelligent mates who are willing to adapt their lifestyles and respect their werewolf spouses throughout the entirety of their lives.  Besides, should the mate, once the relationship is permanently bound, if a werewolf decides to accept their spouse’s offer of becoming a werewolf, looks become a moot point.
And a word of warning to any human who approaches a werewolf with the intention to “hook up,” they will be sorely (and probably painfully) disappointed as a werewolf will have none of that.  Any attempt at compelling or forcing physical intimacy of any kind (attempts at rape being the extreme example) will be countered with a werewolf’s natural instinct to defend itself.  This means a man who inappropriately advances on a woman who happens to be a werewolf is going to get hit, scratched, neutered, and probably killed as a werewolf, even in human form, is much faster and stronger than any normal human being.  One case of attempted rape by a man against a female werewolf ended up with the man’s body being found ten miles away in the wilderness, mutilated beyond all recognition (dental records were needed to identify the body).  The death was ascribed to a bear attack.

Children

Werewolves love kids (also known as cubs or pups).  Finding a mate and having a family has actually been proven a crucial part to the emotional and mental well being of a werewolf, and in a pack environment, the pack will take a communal interest in the raising of children; family is the only thing valued above pack allegiances (and the only thing valued period where there is no connection to a pack).  If the parents are temporarily or permanently unable to care for their children, the pack will take over by either designating a member to fulfill the role of a foster parent(s) or care temporarily for the cubs when the parents aren’t available.

It’s important to understand how the werewolf gene is passed to offspring of mixed werewolf families.  In a pure werewolf family, were both parents are werewolves, the children always receive the gene.  This remains the case even when the mom is a werewolf but the dad isn’t.  Only in the case of a werewolf father and human mother is there a fifty-percent chance that the children may not be born with the werewolf gene (certain studies currently suggest that the werewolf gene may be dormant in normal human children from these unions even when it isn’t active; such instances are rare, but allude to a person having a “predisposition” of becoming a werewolf).  Of course, such children, should they wish, can always be bitten later on in life to become werewolves.
Werewolf children are taught to be respectful of and towards their elders, and develop mentoristic ties with the older members of the pack and/or family.  Heroes of werewolf children are generally chosen from within pack and/or familial circles as opposed to the rest of humanity which will choose heroes many times based on fame and popularity.

Werewolf children are born human, with birthing following human standards.  Rarely are children birthed as wolf cubs as the ability to shift forms doesn’t develop until after the child’s eighth birthday, and sometimes not developing until the child hits puberty.  Many a family has been surprised when a child is thought of as human in a mixed werewolf/human family and all of a sudden, with puberty comes the first shift (of course, the kid is often elated).

(To be continued...)