White Howlers

One of the three Lost Tribes of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the White Howlers are the only ones the Garou really don't like to talk about. This is mainly because they aren't exactly lost enough.

What happened to them?

You see, way back in the days of the Roman Empire, there was a bit of a conflict between the Howlers and the Romans. The Empire had been (albeit unknowingly) taking clans of Howler Kinfolk from Caledonia (now Scotland) as slaves, and bringing a load of Formori north into their territory after they arrived in Britain. The Howlers were not fucking amused, and the entire tribe promptly marched southwards to kick the Romans' arses in revenge. The results were not very pleasant for the Romans, to say the least, as the White Howlers stormed their headquarters and exacted revenge on the invaders.

Unfortunately, this short-sighted act of revenge had terrible consequences. With their ancestral lands left completely undefended, the Wyrm's forces flooded on in and gleefully made themselves at home; caerns were defiled, entire lineages of Kinfolk tainted by the Wyrm, and the land itself stained with evil. Realising they'd royally fucked up, the Howlers promptly began a desperate battle against the encroaching Banes and Fomori, in which entire Kinfolk clans had to be slaughtered by the Howlers to prevent the birth of new Fomori. The casualties from this (emotional and numerical) caused them to unite into ever-larger packs dedicated to purging the Wyrm from their lands, which would soon come back to bite them in the arse.

During one particular road trip in which many Wyrm-creatures were destroyed, the Howlers made a terrible discovery - the Great Pit, a portal directly into Malfeas, the home territory of the Wyrm.

Now, you'd expect anyone sane to keep the hell out of there, or at least make certain that they had enough forces to victorious. Three guesses as to what the Howlers did.

After a tribal council in which they tried to gain support from the other European tribes (receiving no answer, presumably because the other Tribes recognised the sheer lunacy of this action), the majority of the tribe agreed to go charging into the mouth of hell with the aim of weakening the Wyrm enough to reclaim Caledonia entirely.

Unsurprisingly, this was a horrible, horrible idea. The Howlers ended up entering a region of the Umbra known as the Black Spiral Labyrinth, where they were tormented endlessly by Wyrm spirits in a series of endless battles, gradually breaking down mentally and physically until the Wyrm could corrupt them entirely. They soon became - no points for guessing this one! - the Black Spiral Dancers, better known as one of the reasons the W:TA world is so smegging grimdark and the main antagonists of the gameline.

Driven completely barking mad by the things they had experienced, they changed their names, erupted right back out of the hellmouth, and proceeded to rampage across Caledonia, capturing Kinfolk and Garou and killing anyone who would not submit to them. Those poor bastards who were captured alive were forced to walk the Black Spiral in turn, driving them insane and creating even more BSDs. By about 200 CE, the Howlers were functionally extinct.

TL;DR: Pict!Werewolves with elements of the Get of Fenris and 40k's Judged.

(Note: this is the 20th Anniversary Ed.'s view of it. The original, pre-retcon, had the Howlers regularly challenge the Black Spiral Labyrinth as a test of strength, only for this to gradually corrupt some members of the tribe while many Kinfolk became Bane-influenced. This culminated in a civil war between the corrupted and uncorrupted Howlers over their homeland's freedom, in which the corrupted members drew on the Wyrm's power, beat their former kin, then dragged them screaming into the Black Spiral Labyrinth to be converted into Black Spiral Dancers).

Organization

Prior to their face-heel turn, the Howlers were organized after the clans of their Kinfolk - a result from an early split during the Ice Age in which the Homid members went south and the Lupus stayed north. They were pretty scattered in terms of where they lived, due to their Pictish heritage - some of them lived wiith farmers, some with hunters, some rejected humanity and returned to monke running with wolves. It was only in the final days of their war with the Wyrm's forces that proper tribal councils were called to action, so they could co-ordinate their actions.

Other than that, they were split into three major camps:

• The Boderia: Also called "The Silent Ones", they were the shaman-equivalents of the Howlers, focusing on dealing with Wraiths, ghosts, and other spooky scary spiritual stuff related to death and the afterlife. They were responsible for maintaining links with the tribe's Ancestor spirits for guidance, and often sacrificed parts of their bodies to come closer to the lands of the dead.
• The Mactire: Another Red Talons knockoff, though with the "100% RAGE toward humanity" part downplayed; they were focused more on the lupine part of their heritage than the human.
• The Toutates: Less an actual camp and more a loosely-affiliated group of Garou, the Toutates were focused on preserving their human Kinfolk.