Dragon

Land of Karchan

Calenwood Pack

Alpha Male: Eiric.
Alpha Female: Freya.
Beta Males: Neraj, Ruarc.
Beta Female: Pending.

The Calenwood Pack is aptly named as they claim their main territory as being the southern half of Calenwood Forest (The entire extent of their territory they claim as being the whole of Calenwood Forest as well as the village of Dunholm and the surrounding farmlands). They are a race of werewolves that are more casually referred to as, "Calenwolves." The term Calenwolf actually refers to members in one of two packs in Karchan, both located in Calenwood Forest and both of the same race. The larger, more powerful Calenwood Pack is the first; and the smaller Pack Faolan is the second. It should be noted that the word, "Calen," is elvish for, "green," making the term doubly significant, as these werewolves originated in a land called Greenhaven.

The Calenwood Pack is headed by an Alpha Male, Eiric, and an Alpha Female, currently an unfilled position. They also have a variety of other ranks which are more or less job descriptions of how the wolf fits into the pack - such as healer, musician, herder, hunter, pup, and so forth.

They dislike humans as a rule, though they have occasionally been known to form agreements or alliances with them. The most notable of these was their alliance with the City of Ammerville in which they provided military assistance in exchange for cattle. After the tragedy of the Sunbane, much of their forest's natural resources became depleted. Thus, their Alpha decided that the only way for them to survive in the coming generations was to begin raising their own food as the forest was no longer able to sustain enough game animals to feed the pack. This was a somewhat controversial decision, as some in the pack felt that rather than adopting human ways, they should be eating humans to make up for the difference. Still, the Alpha's word is law; so they now have a healthy and thriving herd of cattle that they keep on land bordering the village of Dunholm and the forest's eastern edge.

Pack Faolan is headed by Gregori Faolan and Juliet Frida Rivens-Dalite Faolan, the daughter of the Calenwood Pack's Alpha. Due to this as well as his mating of Gregori's mother, Eiric considers them to be a side branch of the Calenwood Pack rather than a pack in their own right. That is why he tolerates them using the land that technically belongs to him.

Contents

Origins and Classification

There are a few things to note regarding Calenwolves that are different from other types of werewolves in Karchan. They are a race of people descended from the god of Shapes, Kulanin. They know him as, "Kul," and their religion largely revolves around superstition, ancestor worship, spiritualism, and traditional witchcraft. The pack witch is essentially their priestess, acting as a go-between for the superstitious wolves. Though there are many legends regarding how their race was started, most of them colorful and full of meaning and historical significance to the pack, the actual truth is much simpler. As Kulanin was wandering the land in the form of a black wolf, he saw a human woman and partook of her. The resulting child was the first Calenwolf and the father of the race. For many generations after this, wolves mated with humans because there simply were not enough wolves to go around. The offspring of a Calenwolf and a human is always a Calenwolf. Therefore, as their numbers grew, it was no longer necessary for them to defile themselves in this way. In fact, it has been so long since the last Calenwolf/human pairing that they do not even remember ever having mated with humans.

As a race rather than the result of an infection, it is not possible for a human or for any other species to become a werewolf from being bitten by one of these creatures. Injuries sustained from these creatures may be more prone to infection, however. Additionally, they are not susceptible to silver as silver interacts with the lycanthropy virus - something that they do not have in their system. In fact, silver is a preferred metal for many of them for talismans and other mystical uses, as it is considered a metal of the moon and therefore has symbolic significance to them. Some of them (though not all) have an allergic reaction to wolfsbane that is similar to a human's reaction to poison ivy. Additionally, the smell of this plant is odious to their sensitive noses. They are not bound by the moon and can change at any time, day or night. If desired, a Calenwolf could remain in human or in wolf form for the duration of its entire life without ever shape-shifting. Such a Calenwolf would likely be considered odd by its pack mates, however. They are capable of transforming from birth, though they usually do not do so regularly until they are at least a few years old. Until a certain age, their mothers have a way to influence when they shapeshift or not.

Furthermore, their shift is not accompanied by any pain or grotesque re-arrangements of bone and sinew. When they transform from human to wolf, or the reverse, they simply are one thing one moment and the other in the next. It is nearly instantaneous (if you blink, you could miss it!), and to them it feels similar to having a good stretch. Naturally, clothing is not part of their transformation. A wolf transforming into a human will find himself or herself naked as the day they were born; and likewise, a human neglecting to remove clothing will become a wolf in an incredibly awkward position. It is also important to note that Calenwolves have no hybrid form. Either they are fully human in appearance or they are fully wolf in appearance. Their wolf and human forms match each other pound for pound - A 200 lbs. man will turn into a 200 lbs. wolf every time. A female that is 120 lbs. as a human will be 120 lbs. in her wolf form. Naturally, that means that their wolves are unusually large - though not so overtly large that they might not be mistaken for an ordinary wolf.

Barring illness or injury, the natural lifespan of a Calenwolf would be anywhere from 150-200 years. However, given their violent lifestyle, death may occur much earlier. Any Calenwolf who has aged past 100 years would be considered an elder, and the younger members of the pack owe them respect and deference. Currently, there are two Calenwolves that meets this criteria: the old witch, Yepa, who is aged just past 150 and Einar, who is 165, Kvelt who is 96...The next oldest wolves in the pack are in their 70's. Due to culling by humans in their homeland, the majority of Calenwolves are currently in their 20's, with a surge of new offspring having been born since arrival in the Land of Karchan.

Calenwolves mate for life, and it is not uncommon for them to wait until they are in their 30's or 40's before finding that special someone. Females remain fertile until past 80. Likewise, pairings can also occur as young as 16 or 17, though sometimes youth may run into disagreements with parents when mating that young. When a Calenwolf's mate dies, it is more common for a male left behind to find a new mate than for a female in the same position. However, either gender re-mating too soon would raise suspicion, as the loss of a mate is one of the most severe traumas a Calenwolf can endure.

Physical Features

There are two branches or "races" of Calenwolves, and their physical appearances differ substantially.

The majority of the first branch of Calenwolves are blond. Not just any blond, either - bleach blond, platinum blond, or golden blond. There are also a few redheads, and these almost always have strawberry blond hues or flaming bright red - never dark or auburn. Very rarely, there may be a brown-haired Calenwolf; but this is nearly always the result of an outside line breeding into the pack. They have pale skin, and a few end up freckled. Their eyes are typically light in color, the most common colors being yellow and then blue - in that order. Occasionally, there will be a brown-eyed Calenwolf; but either the coloring is quite light or it is also the result of outside genetics. Heterochromia, while not overly common, is much more likely in the Calenwolf population than in the ordinary human population. There is usually at least one wolf with two eye colors per generation, and sometimes there are several. This is the branch of Calenwolves that currently live in Karchan, and their ancestral home was Greenhaven, a large valley surrounded by impressive mountains.

Their coloring when in the form of wolves does not correspond with their human coloring. They eye color will match, but none of the rest of them does. Their fur is almost always dark, ranging from silver to pitch black. Some have brown and reddish hues, all colors that help them blend in with a forest background. Very occasionally (as in almost never) a white or cream-colored wolf will be born. When this happens, it is nearly always the result of outside breeding. Albinism is possible but rare. Currently there is one ablino in the pack.

The second branch of Calenwolves are dark-skinned and dark-haired. They resemble Native Americans, for those who need further imagery. They are a plains people, and they live on the far side of the mountains surrounding Greenhaven. In their wolf forms, they are light-colored, ranging from snow white to silvery-gray. Their eyes are nearly always golden or brown. There is one Calenwolf from this race currently in residence in Karchan, the pack's witch, Yepa. She is claimed as part of the pack by virtue of having been the mother of the Alpha's first mate.

Recent History

The first Calenwolf to find her way into Karchan was Juliet. She arrived several years ago, alone, and joined the Rangers of Karchan. She was barely 13 at the time. This seemingly unimportant event went unnoticed, as there is nothing unusual about a stray girl wandering into Karchan.

It was, however, the result of turmoil in her homeland that eventually led the rest of the pack to join her. She, along with the majority of the Calenwood Pack, came from a city-state called Greenhaven. The municipality is part of a larger empire, but their parent government has left them to their own devices for generations. The city is snugly surrounded by towering mountains, and a river runs from one end of the valley to the other. Consequently, passage along the river is the easiest way both in and out of Greenhaven.

The Calenwolves had lived in Greenhaven for centuries untold before the first humans arrived by boat to form a colony. Much of their earliest interactions are lost to history, but their initial relations were at least somewhat cordial. The end of it, however, was that the human colony grew and prospered. The river was a key trade route, and it became a cash cow for their growing colony. Eventually, the city had grown to such a state that there was no forest left in the valley - it was all city. As the city had gradually expanded, the calenwolves likewise withdrew further and further until their territorial lands were almost completely within the mountains surrounding Greenhaven. By this point, it was more than four hundred years since the first humans had arrived; and tales of creatures who were both human and wolf were nothing more than old wives' tales meant to scare children.

The Calenwolves had just begun to become alarmed by the expansion of the humans when the government of Greenhaven noticed the problem of their expansion and passed laws to prevent further destruction of forests. It was decreed that the boundaries of the city from thenceforth should stay the same, and the natural areas of the mountains surrounding should remain uncultivated. There were, by this time, some Greenhaven families who owned large tracts of land in the mountains. Now that these lands were legally unavailable for development, many of them tried their best to sell off their investments. A few families, however, capitalized on the natural resource. They used their land to open vacation resorts and hunting lodges - necessary retreats for citizens who were overburdened by the stress of living in the big city.

The Rivens family, a branch of which had served Greenhaven as Governors for generations, was among the first to open a hunting lodge in the mountains surrounding the city. It was the third generation of Rivenses that sparked the tragedy that led to the Calenwolves' exodus from their beloved mountains. While hunting wood elk, John Rivens mistakenly shot a wolf in a misguided attempt to save a baby that he believed had been snatched from its crib by the animal. Since the lore of men who turned into wolves had passed into such obscurity by this time, he could hardly be faulted for not realizing that the wolf was in fact the child's older sister. He took the baby home and attempted to find its parents. When he and his young wife came up empty, they adopted the girl as their own and named her Juliet.

Meanwhile, the Calenwolves discovered the dead body of the Alpha's oldest daughter, Ilsa. The trail for the lost baby had grown cold, and they were unable to track her. This angered the pack, but they had no way of knowing which humans had been responsible for the slaughter of one pup and the kidnapping of another.

Some time later, when Juliet had grown to five years of age, her human father began taking her out into the woods to teach her hunting. It was the family business, after all. Due to these excursions, the child's true mother, Lieke, picked up her scent. The pack traced her back to the Rivens Hunting Lodge and then organized a raid to reclaim her. There were roughly thirty guests staying at the lodge at the time, and all of them were scattered out in cabins around a large mountain lake. Therefore, the pack did not believe it would be difficult to sneak in, kill them all, and take back their pup. Unfortunately, they did not take into account that all of the guests were also trained hunters with firearms. Once the alarm was raised, the wolves walked into a slaughter. Though they managed to kill all but two people at the lodge (Juliet and a city guest that was staying in the big house by the name of Dr. Stubbs), they failed to get the pup back and took heavy losses. Lieke was killed that night along with one of Freya's sons and several other valuable members of the pack.

In the confusion, Dr. Stubbs was able to escape and "rescue" Juliet in the process. The two of them took refuge with her distant family members in the city, one of whom happened to be the Governor. Because of his outrage at this crime against his family as well as pressure from the citizens to protect them from this new threat of werewolves, he used his position as Governor to launch a massive-scale purge of wolves from the mountains. The pack could not stand up against their guns and machinery, so they were forced to flee. Most of the fighting-aged wolves died during this purge in order to allow the pups to escape safely away. This is why the majority of Calenwolves now are in their twenties - they were the pups who escaped during this assault. This left them devoid of older wolves, and the pups who survived then have only recently come into mating-age.

After being driven from Greenhaven, the pack wandered from land to land. Most places they were not well-received and were forced to flee for various reasons. These experiences further reinforced their hatred of humans. Finally, they arrived in the Land of Karchan. They had finally found a land that, though plagued by humans, was suitable for them to settle. Their decision was based upon a number of factors. First, the pups who had been rescued during the purge had finally grown old enough to start reproducing. Therefore, they needed to stop wandering and have a set territory in which to raise their new families. Furthermore, with age also came the ability to help defend the pack. Instead of a ragtag band of a few older adults caring for massive numbers of children, the pack was now a strong force of young-adult fighters.

They chose Calenwood Forest as their territory because it was the only forest in the land large enough to sustain their numbers. Moreover, the Alpha, having discovered his lost daughter, took the attitude that the territory already belonged to him through some twisted mental acrobatics of associating her connection to the Rangers as meaning it was her land and therefore his own by rights. There were no challenges made to them by other werewolves or packs, and thus their place there has been cemented. There had been a few conflicts with nomads in the northern half of the forest, but those were minor. They have now successfully held their territory for a number of years.

Joining

You cannot "join" the Calenwood Pack. A werewolf is born into it or not. The pack does not take in strays or adopt lone werewolves who have no family connection. The ONLY exception to this is if a werewolf takes a Calenwolf for a mate. If you are mated to a Calenwolf, then you and all of your children are Calenwolves (Unless you are Majix. That evil green orc will never be part of the pack even if he beds fifty of our women). You are part of the family. Any player that wishes to create a character for the pack may do so, provided they contact one of the Alphas to work out the kinks and provided they do not create a personal history that conflicts with known facts about the pack's background (for known facts, see above). Once a character is created, it is assumed that said character has always been there and knows and is known to the pack - unless otherwise specified.

Structure

The pack is led by an Alpha Male and an Alpha Female. The male is always above the female in leadership and can override her if there is a conflict. Typically speaking, the males take care of male business; and the females take care of female business. If a female is out of line, the Alpha Female will deal with her (or, more likely, the girl's mother will deal with her). Likewise for the males.

The Alphas listen to the rest of the pack, but the final decisions for things ultimately rest with them - and ultimately with the Alpha Male. However, most of the time, a "final decision" will not need to be made, as the pack will work things out amongst themselves. Thus, the role of Alpha most often entails taking care of the pack's business with outsiders and general management and oversight. Heads of immediate families are encouraged to keep their children in line, and are in turn kept in line by those higher up than them.

There are Beta wolves both male and female, and generally their job is the same as that of the Alphas' in any instance when there is not an Alpha present to regulate a decision.

As for the rest of the pack, there is no rigid ranking system that details who is above or below everyone else. Individual Calenwolves know in interacting with each other generally who is above them and who is below them, but the pack is far too large to be rigidly numbered one above the other from Alpha all the way down to the lowest. Besides which, a Calenwolf's personal interactions with different segments of the pack may place them higher or lower depending on the company present. Males tend to be above females, elders are respected by all, pups are expected to respect adults, and witches terrify everyone. A wolf's place in the pack is further defined by his or her role in contributing to it. Some are herders, some hunters, some guards, some care-takers of young. There are also musicians and storytellers. For the most part, none of these jobs are considered less important or lower-classed than any others, though wolves involved in protecting or feeding the pack directly may receive more respect as a individuals.

Miscellaneous Information

Calenwolves will den in a variety of different living arrangements. Some are nomadic throughout the home territory, especially if they are young and unmated. There is rumored to be a large, central home den site somewhere in the forest, and if such a place exists many wolves may live there. Others clearly live separate from the main pack in their own immediate family units - parents with their children. Housing for these wolves can be anything from a hole in the ground to pleasantly furnished houses. A small number of these houses, in fact, can be found along the southern road. The homes along the southern road can be hard to spot, as they are at least partially dug into the landscape; but they are furnished human-style within for the most part. Others have actual houses in towns or cities, such as Freya living in Ammerville. These wayward townies are no less Calenwolves, however, and they are no less members of the pack.

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Last modified on July 14, 2022, 00:28:16