The Hunt in Paradise City
Imagine you’re constantly surrounded by invisible beings that hate you. Normally they can’t do anything directly but, if they can find the right doorway, they can reach through it just long enough to give you a good, hard shove. Now imagine stepping onto a subway platform with that knowledge. Such is the life of a werewolf in Paradise City. The hunt is about survival. About seeking to restore a shattered balance. About living up to the reputation which has been handed down to the Uratha.
Life for a werewolf is one of never-ending struggles, healing wounds, and exhaustion. Once, the Uratha were the guardians of the balance between the two worlds; material and spiritual. Then, in ages long past, they grew arrogant and neglected their duties. Feuding with the vampires, the undead clan Nosferatu in particular, saw the complete decimation of the werewolves. Once the secret of their weakness to silver became known the richest of the undead equipped their blood slaves and servants with the appropriate weapons and the Uratha fell in droves. A rare few survived, bred, then passed on as they succumbed to old age, were discovered by the lords of the night, or died fighting alone against a world which rejected the half-flesh shapechangers that had in turn rejected it. Years turned into decades, decades into centuries, and centuries into millennia until all knowledge of the wolf-changers faded from memory and into legend.
Then Zander, the last of the Uratha, was born. The blood of the ancient wolves had lain dormant through untold years as it was bred slowly but surely through the ages. Finally, concentrated enough in Zander, the ancestor spirits of the werewolves found that one tenuous link they needed to regain contact with the material world and entered the humans body. They bestowed him with unnatural strength, health, and a burning hatred for the ancient enemy which had doomed their race; the vampires.
Ironic,then, that it was a vampire who allowed their kind to return.
Slain after battling the Ventrue, Tobias Van Dorn, Zander fell only to be the vessel of rebirth for the former lycanthropes. The ancestor spirits poured out of their broken champion and howled their victory to the stars beyond the jungle of concrete and asphalt. There were those humans within Paradise City who possessed the merest fraction of the blood but that was all the great wolf spirits needed to trigger their flesh into rippling and to awaken the nascent power within them. Spiritual energies suffused their forms as these humans realized that their truth birth right is not one of flesh but of both the body and the spiritual. Able to transition between the two, the first werewolves stalked the night since the Nosferatu had eradicated them so many centuries prior.
Heirs to a Fallen Realm
The first of these new werewolves entered the world without any inherent knowledge of their birthright, lost, alone, and afraid with the changes that had been afflicted upon them. Some committed suicide (or tried to), others were locked up into prisons or asylums which only led to spiritual degradation and culminated in blood baths, yet others were destroyed by the myriad Others which infest the city like roaches. The werewolves may have easily once again been vanquished if not for the ancient pacts their ancestors had formed with mighty Wolf spirits in eras past. Sensing the return of their charges, these god-like beings sent their representatives to offer their patronage once more to the children of the moon. Thus, were the tribes reborn.
The ancient wolf spirits, through their servants, provided a light for the newborn race to follow and a chance to reclaim the honor and birthright that was once theirs. Long ago, their race had succumbed to corruption, but now they were made anew. Like a forest which regrows after the fire they were different and yet healthier for the inferno. The tribulation of the Uratha had passed and it was time, once again, for them to fulfill the duties that Ur-Farah, or Father Wolf, had placed upon them. Luna, Mother Moon, also blessed their re-emergence by partially forgiving their sins of the past. While her sacred metal was still deadly to her half-spirit children it would no longer burn them from its mere touch. The Lunes, spirits tied to the moon, then descended as well and re-taught the Forsaken the old rituals which would enable them to make use of the pacts between their kind and the spirit realm. Though the spirits would never again trust the shapechangers they remained bound by the ancient laws to respect, or at least respond to, the proper placation given by the Uratha.
The Life
Where the Uratha go from here and if they succeed or fail is entirely in their hands. The errant children of Father Wolf have been granted the tools to accomplish their purpose if they but use them wisely. The world is not a forgiving place and for all their power the werewolves are neither invincible nor immortal. They need every ounce of ferocity, every measure of cunning, and every last drop of blood they can muster to survive. Their eyes are open, creatures of both worlds yet fully a part of neither, and once they change it’s impossible to maintain their former lives.
At first, it might seem plausible to “act normal”, but after a while co-workers and friends notice the werewolf never gets sick and doesn’t ever seem to be injured… or if he is injured, even minor paper cuts heal abnormally fast. People sense there’s something unnatural about the lycanthrope, something predatory lurking right beneath their skin, and shy away from it. Meaningful human interaction becomes more difficult as the Uratha grows in power until they can scarce function in human society at all. A bad day at the office frustrates a human but it can push a werewolf to the edge of a berserk frenzy; incompetent leaders, poor treatment, and all-pervading poverty in a world where the average man is in the hole from the day he’s born doesn’t bode well for half-spirit shapechangers with razor sharp teeth and claws coupled with hair-trigger tempers. And when their leash snaps, when control slips and mindless ferocity takes over, someone always bleeds. No werewolf wants to regain their senses to find themselves covered in the gore of their spouse and children when pushed too far.
Cautionary tales abound among the People.
Yet, despite the dangers, werewolves are social creatures on a basic and even instinctive level. A lone wolf is not an object of Hollywood-style admiration, it’s an anomaly. The Uratha are compelled to join up with one another for mutual protection, companionship, and camaraderie. The pack is the most essential function of werewolf society and the Uratha are socially-structured beings. The pack is the single strongest tie for the werewolves and even two Uratha who hate each other personally would rather learn to cope than abandon their fellows. When packs split the results are often brutally violent and usually fatal for one or more members.
The Terrain
High Paradi: The topmost level of the city is not home to very many of the uratha, if any. The vigilant police force, their social difficulties, and the sheer amount of capital needed to live this high don’t avail many werewolves to the highest ranks of the social strata. A pack may transit to, or sneak into, High Paradi if a hunt takes them there but most don’t wish to go to the trouble. Still, every now and then a resident from this section will go through the Change. It’s rare but not unknown. If they stay, or move down, depends on the individual. This level also sees few Cursed and those that do exist here are inevitably forced lower.
Upper Paradi: More werewolves stalk this layer than High but there still aren’t many. Packs at this level more represent secret societies or corporate board rooms than a gathering of feral half-spirit shapeshifters. The uratha at this level aren’t tame by any means but the ones who survive, and thrive, here have made discretion an art form. They take very dimly to any who’d upset the status quo that is their cover or of messy scenes. Such things aren’t ignored at this layer as they are below. The Cursed are rare at this level also.
Middle Paradi: Most werewolves in the city occupy this level; it possesses enough cover that they can assume their other forms more readily while also providing a measure of security in numbers. The spirit world at this level is active as well, with plenty of available territory. An abundance of land for the taking does not equate to an abundance of desirable holdings, however, and competition between packs for meager resources can be extremely vicious. A locus is rare and to be treasured, and defended, vigorously. If lost, there’s no telling where its owners will find a new one. The Cursed are slightly more common, if isolated, and a pack can reasonably avoid one if they put forth the effort… if the Cursed isn’t actively hunting for them.
Lower Paradi: There are few packs who make their domains this deep below the city. The place is inhospitable even to werewolves and the spirit landscape is dotted with shoals, wounds, and barrens. The maeiljin are rumored to be potent down this deep and even claiming a single block is often more effort than its worth. Nearly all uratha can agree there’s something that has to be done about it however few can survive its rigors, even veteran packs have been swallowed up here... or returned as Bale Hounds. Few can agree on how to fix it either, with some advocating a crusade and others simply desiring to burn out the corruption. Every stroke seems to make things worse in some way and most werewolves simply shrug and call it FUBAR. Ironically, what it lacks in a Forsaken populace this realm often compensates for in Cursed, who don’t find spirits as troubling and who have an easier time hiding their predations amidst the squalor.
Under Paradi: No known packs exist or hunt this deep. If any have tried no record of their deeds or presence has ever been recorded. If Lower Paradi is a hellhole, the Forsaken shudder to think at what might lurk beneath the earth here.