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.
Tribe's totem spirit - Cockroach - values adaptation and survival above all. In human-dominated world this means learning to live alongside humans and use their ways to your benefit. Cockroach is relatively friendly with Machine and Science aspects of Weaver but absolutely hates her Patriarch aspect and sees it as the biggest threat to the world. He teaches his children to nurture "positive" aspects of Weaver while fighting her more destructive and insane sides. Other tribes tend to miss nuances in this relationship and just think Cockroach is so corrupted by Weaver he barely counts as Gaian spirit anymore, and as such get no respect from other tribes, and some even see him as evil corruptive force. Glass Walkers themselves use the fact they worship it a source of (much needed) humility: "Yes, we're the richest, most adaptive and one of the biggest tribes, but don't forget that we kneel to a tiny insect that crawls in the trash".
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. To the Walkers, a malformed or mutated Garou is still a Garou; though they might be limited next to a healthy Homid or Lupus, they're still given a chance to stand or fall on their own (though they still dump their insane/too crippled to be useful Metis on the CoG.) 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 Walkers' philosophy, and a sizeable minority of Glass Walkers are exiles from the tribes that see cities and technology as inherently evil and ostracize those who embrace them. As a result, Glass Walker blood is VERY mixed and "pure" blood lineages are almost nonexistent.
Meritocracy and focusing on the future have it's downsides, though. Glass Walkers internal politics are quite cutthroat - not to the level of the backstabbing beta bastards, but often too uncomfortably competitive by the liking of other tribes. Those deemed "stuck in the past" and incapable to keep up with rapidly progressing technology and human society are looked down upon and mockingly called "Iron Riders" (a reference to a now-obsolete camp of the Walkers from the Industrial Revolution). 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 the like are lost every few generations, forgotten in pursuit of newer and shinier toys (consumer culture, anyone?).
Being human Glass Walker Kinfolk sucks though. They aren't discriminated against for being "weak", relegated to second-class in the tribe, or essentially exiled if not killed despite what some of the more "Modern Civilization is Evil!!!" writers tried to retcon in, but the Walkers are so good at dealing with human stuff that their Kinfolk end up feeling kind of useless for all but making babies. Most tribes have them as their tribe's providers and invaluable buffer between humanity and Garou, but the Walkers are able to handle that almost on their own.
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 tend to 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 the Medieval era 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 Ireland-based Fianna) and then across the ocean to Americas, where they moved behind the more aggressive tribes as they conquered Pure caerns from the locals. Unlike the rest of the Garou, they mostly avoided conflict with the locals, instead establishing railroads and 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 decades.)
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. In modern days whan Mafia is on the decline they try to branch out and infiltrate Mexican Cartels, Irish Mob and other ethnic organized crime (although never Russian Bratva, as it's considered Silver Fangs turf). 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 and somewhat less dickish. 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 cliché in the arsenal and make it double. Capable of doing batshit insane stunts like Matrix-style battles against Wyrm-produced computer viruses in online space, or travelling through an ethernet cable before popping out in Crinos form on the other end to rip a Pentex hacker's ass open. As with the Corporate Wolves, they're usually seen hitting Pentex (albeit in the IT dept., rather than the stock market.)
- 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 - If the Wise Guys are the brutal enforcers of the tribe, Dies Ultimae are the tactical spec ops division, on the bleeding edge of military technology and tactics. Half mercenary company, half doomsday cult, they are military werewolves who work for the highest bidder and prep for the coming Apocalypse. (Except, you know, the real one.) 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.
