Glass Walkers
The Glass Walkers are one of the 13(-ish) remaining Garou tribes in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. They are the archetypical city-werewolves to the point other Garou accuse them of being "more human than wolf" or outright Weaver-tainted. While most Garou are disgusted by the "scabs" they call human cities, Glass Walkers thrive in them, embracing human culture and technology, incorporating it into their rites and gifts, and using it to their own benefit and the benefit of Gaia (as they see it of course). They're the richest of the tribes and often take the job of financing nation-wide projects, so even their harshest critics in the Garou Nation can't exactly deny they'd be fucked without Glass Walkers and their resources.
Glass Walkers are mostly known for three things: money, technology and guns. Everything that needs good financing needs a Glass Walker behind it. You need someone to hack security or delete footage of you breaking the Veil? Glass Walkers. Want gunslingers that can shoot a klaive out of a Black Spiral Dancer's hand from 500 feet away? You go Glass Walkers. Want someone who knows two shits about surviving in a forest? You DON'T go to Glass Walkers. They're hilariously useless outside cities (to the point where they can't recharge Gnosis outside of them) and halfway to useless in Garou politics, too involved in human affairs to pay attention to the games the Silver Fangs and Shadow Lords play.
The tribe is the most Homid-heavy out of the Nation's members, with Lupus-born so rare and treasured most end up growing spoiled rotten due to constant care. They're also one of the most lenient tribes to Metis, second only to the Children of Gaia, and as Lupus are so rare, their Metis tend to dominate positions that require high Gnosis. Unlike Children of Gaia, however, Glass Walker Metises are valued on merit, not loved unconditionally. Walkers see it that malformed or mutated Garou is still a Garou and have a lot of use, if a bit more limited than healthy Homid or Lupus, but they have little patience with those Metis born insane or too crippled to be useful and dump them to CoG just like other tribes. On the plus side, GW Metises can be proud in knowing they're valued for their achievements, not out of pity. Most Walkers don't care about blood much and eagerly accept those born of other tribes if they agree with Walker philosophy, and sizeable minority of Glass Walkers are exiles from more "backwards" tribes that see cities and technology as inherently evil and ostracize those who embrace them. As a result, Glass Walkers blood is VERY mixed and they breed true less often then more pure blooded tribes and don't have pure blood lineages.
Meritocracy and focusing on the future have it's downsides, though. Glass Walkers internal politics are quite cutthroat - not to the level of Shadow Lords, but often too uncomfortably competitive by the liking of other tribes. Those "stuck in the past" and incapable to keep up with rapidly progressing technology and human society are looked down upon and mokingly called "Iron Riders". Older Garou, venerated in most tribes, are not given "proper respect" unless they can prove their worth and keep up with the young blood. Wisdom of the old age holds little value in they eyes of Glass Walkers, and countless gifts, rites, fetishes and tallens are lost every few generations, forgotten in pursuit of newer shinier toys.
Being Glass Walker Kinfolk sucks though, not because they abuse them or something, but because Walkers are so good at dealing with human stuff their Kinfolk end up feeling kind of useless for all but making babies, while in most other tribes they're tribe's providers and invaluable buffer between humanity and Garou nation. Being Walker wolf-kinfolk is it's own can of worms, as many Walker septs prefer to keep their wolf-kin in well protected zoos or parks - not exactly an ideal conditions for a wolf. Sometimes other Garou try to "liberate" them from these "chains of the Weaver", but Glass Walkers aren't messing with security of their treasured wolf-kin and often send trespassers back to their caerns in a series of small sandwich bags.
Living in the cities means coming in contact with vampires, and while in combat most vampires are not really a threat even to the weakest of werewolves, they can hit back hard in the field of intrigue and politics, and Glass walkers (being heavily invested in human business) are particularly vulnerable on that field. Besides, the majority of vampires' obsession with keeping the Masquerade often makes them clean up behind young hot-blooded packs who break the Veil, so leeches can have their use. Walkers kind of deal with vampires by not dealing with them - Banes and Pentex are much more immediate threats and much more visible one next to vampires who hide behind their Masquerade and are afraid of dreaded "Lupines" almost as much as they are afraid of humans finding them out. Sure, some young packs would occasionally kill some young vampires for a few points of renown, but older Walkers have learned to compromise and ignore them until they start going too far.
For someone so often accused of being tainted by the Weaver, the tribe is extremely dynamic, changing with time and human civilization and even changing the tribe's name (something no other tribe has done, ever). They started as the Warders of Men, and were the tribe charged with overseeing human civilization in ancient Mesopotamia, Syria and Israel, and as city-based human civilization spread from there all over the world they followed. During antiquity they spread westwards and infiltrated Roman society, much to the chagrin of vampires (who infiltrated Roman politics and priesthood) and most other European Garou (who got their human Kinfolk royally fucked by Roman legions). During Medieval and Renaissance they continued to operate mostly from Italy and co-opted Italian scholars, philosophers and engineers, incorporating their teachings into tribe's philosophy, changing tribe's name to Tetrasomians (although most other Garou continued to call them Warders).
When the industrial revolution started, the tribe's political heart migrated to London (starting a long rivalry with the Fianna) and then across the ocean to Americas, where they moved behind the more aggressive tribes that conquered Pure caerns from the locals and instead established railroads and built new caerns in big cities that other werewolves were avoiding, resulting in them being renamed the Iron Riders. At the break of the 20th century, one of their camps (called the Glass Walkers) discovered City Fathers and Mothers - powerful urban spirits - and overtook the whole tribe, to the point it changed their name. Again. In a bit of a twist, the Glass Walkers' reign as the top camp wasn't long but everyone kind of agreed to keep the name because it rocked. (And because it was getting tiresome to change their name and update everyone on what one to use every couple years.)
There are currently several major camps in the Glass Walkers:
- Wise Guys - Werewolf mafia. Traces its lineage to Italy, so a lot of their Kin and members are Italian; when the Mafia rose to power they got carried in and found out there's a lot of money and power in organized crime that could be used in the name of Gaia. Their founder worked directly with Al Capone and was one of the most brilliant theurges of his time, resulting in the Wise Guys developing lots of new rites and Gifts under his leadership. Probably the most "brutal" and "aggressive" (in quotes because they still look like hippies next to the Get of Fenris and Red Talons) of the Glass Walker camps, it dominated the tribe from the Roaring Twenties to the 1950s, and are currently considered "old-fashioned traditionalists" despite the camp being less than 100 years old (for comparison, "young and energetic" house Wyrmfoe from the Silver Fangs is 500 years old).
- Corporate Wolves - The camp that replaced the Wise Guys when the Mafia went out of power, and most Glass Walkers switched to legal business. Think Wolf of Wall Street, except very literal. Continues to be the richest and most well-connected Garou around and are the go-to werewolves to hurt Wyrm corporations where it stings the most - in the stock market. Usually seen fighting Pentex and its subsidiaries.
- Random Interrupts - Werewolf hackers and IT, and the camp on the rise, dominating the tribe politics since the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Expect every hacker cliche in the arsenal and make it double. Capable of doing batshit insane stunts like Matrix-style battles against Wyrm-produced compouter viruses in online space, or travelling through an ethernet cable before popping out in Crinos form on the other end.
- Cyberdogs - Started out as a camp of transhumanists who discovered how to make spirit-powered bionics, first to patch up combat wounds then to upgrade healthy limbs to bionics, then to run insane experiments. Their leadership was certainly corrupted by the Weaver, got exposed as such, and was massacred by the rest of Glass Walkers. Those who got in purely to replace lost limbs or eyes with cool prosthetics are still around and trying to rebuild the camp from the scraps left, with various degrees of success.
- Dies Ultimae - Half mercenary company, half doomsday cult, they are military werewolves who work for the highest bidder and prep for Apocalypse. Except, you know, the real one. If Wise Guys are the brutal enforcers of the tribe, Dies Ultimae are tactical spec ops, on the bleeding edge of military technology and tactics. They are known for incorporating Kinfolk into their war packs in some kind of combined arms tactics, kind of solving the problem with Kinfolk feeling useless but creating another problem by putting them in harm's way.
- City Farmers - Focuses on bringing the green back to cities instead of trying to slow down their growth, founding parks, hydroponics and designing bio-domes and arcologies for self-sustained cities of future that could leave the nature alone. The hippies of the tribe. Would probably work very well with the Children of Gaia.
