Editing Werewolf

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''Were you looking for the RPG by [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse|White Wolf Games]]? Or perhaps the us versus them [[Mafia|party game]]?''

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'''Werewolves''' are people that change their shape into something lupine. It used to be turning into a for-real wolf, but modern people don't find wolves so scary anymore, so we've come up with transforming into half-man half-wolf monstrosities, or turning into HUGE wolves.

Sometimes werewolves are the way they are because of a curse, or a transmitted disease, or just because they're evil. Or they're aliens. Or furfaggots that made a wish. Or it can even be that their situation is genetic and their ancestor was or turned into one. Werewolves of the cursed variety will transform against their will and have no control while in their monstrous shape, and get all emo when they turn back into a person, which usually makes sense if they have family or loved ones that they don't want getting killed, or even worse, cursed too. Many stories say that the cursed types will transform during the three days of a full moon; some make them transform when they experience intense emotions such as lust or anger (q.v. HULK SMASH!) Notably, however, the idea of the curse being spread by a bite didn't show up until around the mid 20th century. Up till that point, werewolf attacks generally didn't leave enough left of the victim to turn into much of anything besides chunky salsa.

Common weaknesses include weapons made from [[silver]] (a "pure" metal), and a plant called "wolfsbane", based on a genus of whose juices were used on arrows and baits for killing wolves, and are thus obligated to show up on equipment lists for fantasy games.

There are other monsters that are people-turning-into-animals, but werewolves are the most famous. So much so that they have forced their naming convention onto all other therianthropes, so that we have [[wererat]]s, [[werebear]]s, [[werebat]]s (not to be confused with [[vampire]]s), and even werebirds, weredolphins, werewhales and weresnails. An inversion is an animal that turns into a person. The fancy name for these is antherion. D&D tends to call these "inversions" by the formula of "(animal)-were", such as [[wolfwere]] and [[jackalwere]].

For more details on shapeshifting beasts, see the [[therianthrope]] page.

Also, never tick off a Werewolf. Despite the [[furry]] jokes we make, they can typically kick your ass six ways from sundown. Even though wolves themselves aren't that notable in the muscle strength department, Werewolves tend to have incredible strength and/or speed for some reason. They're killing machines to be respected, despite the furry crap they're given.

== Werewolves in games ==
===[[Warhammer Fantasy]]===
Instead of being called werewolves, they were called "Skin wolves". They are mutated human who were cursed by either witches or chaos. The reason they are not called werewolves is due to their transformation phase. [[Grimdark|When a human is undergoes this phase, they transform from the inside of their body, ripping through their former skin. After this is done, the man-wolf thing is covered by blood and its former skin]]. Like Fimir, these creatures were largely ignored by GW as other unimportant background lore until [[Total War: WARHAMMER]] [[AWESOME|made them a playable units in the hand of Norsca]], fighting along side the chaos viking with their enormous strength, cavalry like speed and anti-large bonuses.

There is also some fluff about the children of Ulric, they show up in one of the Gotrek and Felix stories and are referenced in a couple of other places. Supposedly the results of Ulric's fling with a human woman the jury's out on whether or not they're chaos tainted. But that's very old, 2nd ed, and may or may not have been retconned.

===[[Dungeons & Dragons]]===
Werewolves started out as just the "lycanthrope" monster type, but issues of Dragon Magazine and later editions allowed players to add werewolf-ism as a feature of their character, or to take lycanthrope as a race like "elf" or "dwarf." Werewolves are always the disease type, with voluntary transformations. They are immune to damage unless you're using magic or silver weapons. There were also '''[[wolfwere]]s,''' which are basically bizarro werewolves who have a huge hate-on for their opposite numbers, '''[[seawolf|seawolves]]''', which were seafaring werewolves, '''[[loup-garou]]''', which were more powerful werewolves, and '''[[loup de Noir]]''', which are mythological skinchanger type werewolves. All of these kinds were pretty common in [[Ravenloft]] setting. The 3.5 Edition setting "Eberron" adds the [[Shifter]], which are distant descendants of true lycanthropes with watered-down lycanthrope traits.

Although the laundry list of powers and the strongly established "bloodthirsty monster" fluff makes it difficult, D&D has made some attempts to offer a playable werewolf. In [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]], fan-made rules for werewolf (and other [[therianthrope]]) PCs can be found in the [[Books of S|"Book of Souls"]] netbook for [[Ravenloft]]. In 3rd edition, you could just slap the werewolf template on your PC, although that [[Level Adjustment]] was a bitch, and [[Dragon Magazine]] #313 offered the werewolf (and several other therianthropes) as "racial classes" you could take. 4th edition, finally, had character themes for the werewolf, wererat and werebear in [[Dragon Magazine]] #410, granting players some extra features and some optional utility powers so they could be shapeshifting wolf-monsters without being overpowered compared to the rest of the party.
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===[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse|Old World of Darkness]]===
Werewolves are genetic, the product of having a werewolf ancestor. You could be born a wolf that turns into a human, or a human that turns into a wolf. Werewolves are considered heroes fighting for hippy-dippy nature causes, do some special nature magic, and are always in danger of flipping out and killing everyone they can reach. They are in control of their transformations, they have a half-way state that is awesome, and they can regenerate from any wounds unless it was caused by silver or fire or other werewolves.

===[[Werewolf: The Forsaken|New World of Darkness]]===
Werewolves are genetic, the product of having a werewolf ancestor. You're born human, but transform into a werewolf "when the time is right", probably killing everything in sight in the process. Werewolves are the descendants of two mighty spirits (Mother Luna and Father Wolf), are charged with policing the spirit world, can do magic, and are always in danger of flipping out and killing everyone they can reach. They are in control of their transformations, they have a half-way state that is awesome, and they can regenerate from any wounds unless it was caused by silver.

===[[Shadowrun]]===
Werewolves have a unique designation; instead, the "loup-garou" (French for "werewolf") are humans infected with HMHVV II, a strain of a Awakened (read: "magical") virus. Loup-garou will transform under a full moon (or for a four day period in a 29 day cycle not linked to the phases of the moon, depending on the edition). Instead of becoming animals the loup-garou will turn hairy and monstrous, with fangs and claws, a hunger for metahuman flesh, enhanced physical abilities, diminished intelligence, and berserker rage, similar to "were-neanderthals" or Lon Chaney's version from ''The Wold Man''. Other metahumans with the same strain of virus will turn into other creatures, such as dwarves becoming cadaverously thin Gnawers, Orks turn into Grendels, etc.; while different strains and metahuman combinations of the virus are responsible for vampires, ghouls, and other creatures.

Similarly, Shifters are rare Awakened animals who can shapeshift into a metahuman form and back. They can learn to speak and behave like humans, but they are very much their original animal in mind.

===[[Warhammer 40,000]]===
A special order of Space Marines dubbed "[[Space Wolves]]" are infused with wolf-beast traits in their genetics during training. Part of the process of earning their place among the Adeptus Astartes is to learn to suppress their bestial urges. Those that fail become [[Wulfen]], those that succeed keep their intelligence and loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind, and gain resistance to the corrupting effects of Chaos and The Warp. The bestial traits still grow slowly. Under extreme conditions (Like the nightmare hellhole that is the Eye of Terror), many Space Wolves have shown increased wolf-like traits, to the point where they more or less become Space Marine Werewolves (a.k.a. Wulfen). With these Wulfen, the outnumbered Space Wolves 13th company has been kicking Chaos ass since M30.

===[[Ars Magica]]===
Werewolves are cursed, either by magic or by faeries, but some player-controlled companions or grogs can be werewolves who can control the transformation.

===[[RIFTS]]===
Modern humans are actually were-apes that lost the ability to change back. There is also a species called Loup-Garou that are Nazi Furries that must be killed twice, once in each shape, to stay dead. Plus there is a race of humanoid wolves, the Wolfen, that adapted pretty well to a good number of dimensions in the Megaverse with a structure similar to the Roman Empire( Italy included)

===[[Iron Kingdoms]]===
The Iron Kingdoms houses a faction called the Circle of Oroboros, a conclave of druids trying to protect the balance of Order and Chaos, nature and civilization. They worship the Devourer Wurm, the aspect of nature, and he grants them all kinds of awesome, if kinda [[furry]] powers - There among the Warpwolf, humans warped into wolflike forms, used by the druids to kill and maim in the Wurms name and to defend nature from those who harm it. No one really know if that human can change around to human again.

===[[Deadlands]]===
The DuPont family are inbred black magicians cursed with being werewolves.

There are also rules for playing a werewolf PC (or a vampire PC) in the sourcebook "Rascals, Varmints & Critters 2: The Book of Curses". It's quite powerful, but completely worthless thanks to being one of the rare cases of game designers baking in their own moral take on shit, even when it's stupid: see, the big issue that a werewolf PC has to worry about is amounting a stat called "Corruption", which eventually turns your PC into a hostile NPC if it gets to high. Now, this'd be just fine on its own, and fitting for the setting, but guess what causes corruption? That's right: ''voluntarily changing shapes''. So you've got a race whose primary unique trick, changing forms, is one you can't ever use or you'll end up losing your character! Even the [[Harrowed]] aren't this gimped over! Admittedly, vampires have it worse.

Needless to say, most decent Marshals will throw ''that'' steaming piece of crap right out the window and make up their own, fairer rules for earning Corruption based on what you actually do as a werewolf.

===[[Monster Hunter International]]===
Were-creatures don't make any radical deviations from the norm here. They're weak to silver (though most monsters are), virtually all-evil, long lived, transform at a full moon (though can voluntarily change at other times, with varying control ability based on the moon cycle) and turn others into werewolves with a bite or, rarely, claw. Like [[Vampires]] PUFF bounties are fairly high on PUFF list for a well-known monster capable of quick reproduction, though they are deadly enough to warrant it. Since being turned into a werewolf creates a dominant mental urge to be evil, only three sane were-creatures are known: The King of the Werewolves (or at least the North American ones) who is a WW1 veteran and experienced hunter that learned to control the beast by living alone on an island for years and throwing himself off cliffs, his girlfriend that's only in control thanks to an ancient artifact her grandfather stole, and a briefly mentioned were-Dolphin codenamed "Mrs. Fish" by the US government. Before the creation of the second, the first was explicitly the only lycanthrope with a PUFF exemptions. A young werewolf has the honor of being the first monster to appear and die in the series, when the main character is attacked in his office building by his werewolf boss and [[Awesome|wrestles said werewolf out a window]]. The RPG mentions that Werebears (primarily Canada/Alaska), Werejaguars (central America/Mexico), Wereleopards (various parts of Africa), Weresharks and Weretigers (India) also exist.

== Werewolves in video games ==
===[[World of Warcraft]]===
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qae25976UgA Play this while reading this entry.]) Worgen had been a mysterious species of savage, humanoid wolves which popped up out of nowhere, but served as an otherwise another generic mob. With the launch of Cataclysm, the Worgen became a playable race in a way that was ''less'' retarded than expected. The nation of Gilneas had all but disappeared from the fluff after they had [[/pol/|built that wall]] to keep out the decreasing-but-persistent Alliance tax collectors and the increasing-and-persistent Undead, until years later the Undead broke in. It turns out that Gilneas had been falling under an epidemic of the Worgen curse. Given a serum that partly cured them, the Gilneans are now stable and have to deal with the crisis of feral brethren and an Undead invasion. They're also Regency-era English people. They possess racial bonuses granting Shadow and Nature resistance, as well as a +1% Critical Strike bonus. They also /sniff and /roar. Horde can't wait to learn how to skin em in the next patch. They're also led by a badass old man called [[Vance Stubbs|Genn Greymane]]. And a [[C.S.Goto|drunken Irishman]] called Darius Crowley. An obvious reference to the song of Ozzy Osbourne, but not the [[Occultist]].

===[[The Elder Scrolls]]===
====Daggerfall====
The ability to become a werewolf, and, uniquely, a wereboar is featured in the base game. This gives a bunch of stats boosts and a very strong alternate form. Unfortunately this comes with a need to kill an innocent humanoid every 15 days, which is a huge pain in the butt in a game where traveling time can take multiple days each way. The Hircine's Ring artifact can fix this, but it's near impossible to acquire without outside knowledge since starting the quest requires visiting one very specific witch coven that is hard to discover from randomly gifted locations and unlikely to be discovered through random map travel. Also, for some reason, being transformed doesn't lock out the ability to ride a horse or talk to non-combatant NPCs.

====Morrowind====
Bloodmoon expansion allows for a player character to become a werewolf. The player can choose to keep the curse or have it removed. Basically, the Werewolf version of the player character is a machine of outright slaughter. This can be a handy tool for clearing out tougher dungeons. Just don't let yourself be spotted transforming, or you're toast. Any and all town guards will try to kill you. As to be expected they are vulnerable to silver and there is no short supply of silver weapons available in Bloodmoon.

====Skyrim====
Werewolves make a return- the leaders of local fighters' guild, known as the Circle of The Companions, are all Werewolves, and are opposed by the Silver Hand, a band of werewolf-hunters who all employ silver weapons. Transforming against a group of them is tantamount to suicide, at least in the beginning. When you reach the higher levels they're easy. You can become a werewolf yourself, and when transformed you are forced into third person, must consume corpses to stay transformed and heal, and get an claw attack. While not transformed, you gain immunity to disease, and lose the ability to gain rested bonuses. It should also be noted that PC werewolves can only transform once every 24 hours without the help of Hircine and are one of the fastest creatures in the game, easily outpacing even the best horses. The aforementioned "help" from Hircine is a ring that lets you transform whenever you want, but until its quest is finished will transform you at random. Unless you're not a werewolf, allowing you to get the purified ring without having to deal with the curse, something Hircine apparently never thought of. Also worth noting is that the Dawnguard DLC (DLCs are rarely awesome, but this one includes overzealous paladins led by a bald bearded Samuel L. Jackson and helping out a hot vampire chick who is a follower) will allow the player to gain werewolf perks by eating corpses in Beast form. These perks can then be used to make you into an absolute killing machine. The train will have no brakes...

==Monstergirls==
Werewolves suffer the same problem as [[Gnoll]]s and other hirsute humanoid monstergirls: they're [[beastfolk]], and leaning into what /tg/ considers "[[furry]]" territory. Even with their shapechanging abilities, you're still looking at someone who can turn into a humanoid wolf, if not an actual wolf. Certain media solve the issue by making werewolf monstergirls into canine [[catgirl]]s: they display features of the animal they're based on on a human body. Dog ears and tails are common, as are tailwaggings when the girl receives headpats. Expect plenty of awoo, and they'll get mad if you don't take them for walkies. In Japanese media the lines between werewolf girls, dog girls and kobolds can be very thin, if not outright absent. Werewolves tend to be less common as well, with the other two taking the main stage in lieu of their [[Therianthrope|therianthropic]] cousins. The one unique fetish material they have is their transformation destroying clothes, which often results in a naked (or at least dressed in tatters) girl when she reverts after mauling people.

===Monster Girl Encyclopedia===
The werewolves of the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] take many variants.
*Werewolf: The standard werewolf is a pack animal of which the pack will form around a single man that they pass between each other and has heat cycles just like typical dogs. However, they can be tamed if one is capable of defeating them. Like the typical werewolves, they can turn other women into werewolves by biting them.
*Anubis: A dog monstergirl subservient to the Pharaoh queens who guard the ruins of their ancient society. Massive control freaks, they'll punish intruders with a 'Mummy Curse' that makes men extremely sensitive to pleasure and turns women into mummy monstergirls (who are also extremely sensitive to pleasure). 
*Kikimora: A maid monstergirl who serves hardworking men as their wife.
*Hellhound: One of the most aggressive werewolves with black skin and fur, burning red eyes and an intense domination streak. Unlike the werewolves, they are untamable, even by men stronger than them. This doesn't stop some men from trying, but it always ends with the man making those double peace signs hentai artists are so fond of for some reason.

[[Category:Therianthropes]][[Category:Monsters]][[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Werewolf: The Apocalypse]][[Category: World of Darkness]][[Category:Deadlands]]
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