An Old Species in an Old Country

They’ve been here for thousands of years, and even though the wolves are all dead, the werewolves remain. This is not an easy country to live in.

The lack of the wolves just increases the isolation the werewolves feel. Separated from the animals, caught in a country where every inch of land bears human’s mark and yet unable to ever fully become part of the human communities in which they’re forced to live.

Many go mad. They decide that they’re damned to Hell, as the werewolves were in the stories their greatgrandparents believed in, and, having nothing to lose, they come to terms with it by giving themselves over to the demons. Some never find a tribe to be part of, or can’t get over their social or religious hang-ups. They stay on the outside, getting by in their own way, as best they can. Some get to find their way into one of the Tribes of Luna. But that has its own difficulties.

The werewolves of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland are much like any others in most respects. Some fight to uphold Father Wolf’s duty, some fight only to protect their hunting grounds and loved ones and others seek no more than to come to terms with the changes that have taken hold of them. But they all fight to survive. One way or another, the urge to keep going, to struggle on, to get through one more night, is ingrained in the blood and souls of these Uratha. Being a werewolf in the British Isles often comes down to one thing: survival.

It can be a desperate existence for many of the People. The Tribes of the Moon are populous, actually outnumbering the Pure, but the Pure seem to hold all the prime hunting grounds and are ruthless about never giving ground. Luna’s children scavenge and claim what they can, but they are also scattered, in some cases broken, and greatly weakened overall by their mistrust and isolation from one another. Even in countries as small as those of the UK, the large Forsaken population is disparate, perhaps even shattered. Infighting and isolation are the watchwords of Uratha relations.

Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom never saw the savage outbreaks of Pure and Forsaken battle that is now known as the Brethren War. Here, the two factions of werewolves have been meeting in irregular hostilities for centuries with no distinct turn in the tides of war. The Tribes of Luna have enough to worry about in regards to each other, which means that in many hunting grounds the Pure are a very distant threat and worthy of much less concern than the other Forsaken packs nearby.

When trouble rises, nobody comes to help. A werewolf can rely on his pack and no one else. Trust is the most precious currency among Forsaken packs, and, on the rare occasions trust is exchanged, it is worth much more than its weight in gold.

Just as the British Isles are ethnically and culturally diverse in the modern age, so it has been throughout history, as the population adapted to suit invading cultures, suffered the effects of conquering colonization or accepted immigrants and refugees from abroad. Mirroring this, the werewolf packs of Britain — especially in England and Scotland — are commonly formed on multi-tribal bases. This is much more the norm than in the United States, where packs can roam for dozens, even hundreds of miles in the wilderness without encountering others of their kind. The werewolves of the United Kingdom are something of a melting pot, much like the mortal population. In some cases, this practice emerges from tolerance and co-operation. Though these Uratha take pride in their tribal allegiance as any others, prejudice against the adopted children of other Firstborn is rare in most territories. It’s usually because there is no room to worry about being elitist over something as unimportant as tribe, because to British werewolves, a close-knit pack comes first, last and always.

The Forsaken

The Forsaken of Britain are in a sorry state. Most of the rural territory belongs to the Pure, meaning that, for the most part, the Forsaken have been forced into the cities, in close proximity with humans. The Forsaken are disorganized and isolated. They fail to track down many of those who undergo the First Change, and find it hard to properly control territory when their main concern is the everyday business of survival.

This means that they can’t exploit the greatest resource they have — their numbers. Unlike most other parts of the world, in Britain the Forsaken outnumber the Pure. However, here the Pure have all the best territory, all the hunting grounds and all the resources. The Forsaken have nothing, and they have to live alongside people from whom they’re going to be separated all their lives, a constant reminder of their difference and their curse.

It’s like this in almost every part of the United Kingdom: the Pure have the countryside and the Forsaken have the cities. There are exceptions — there are some places in the South of England where there are Pure in urban areas (including parts of London), and there are plenty of rural Forsaken in parts of Scotland and Wales, but, for the most part, the Pure get the open spaces and the Forsaken get the claustrophobia.

Everywhere in the nation the Gauntlet is weak. Ghosts and spirits alike batter at the gates, and the Beshilu, strong and clever here, gnaw at the borders of reality. Everywhere, the holes are widening. The Shadow reaches out across the
Isles, threatening to swallow the nation completely sooner or later, and the Forsaken may be powerless to stop it.

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