An Alternate Ecology of Werewolves
The werewolf. A juxtaposition of man and beast, reviled and vilified in myth and legend, very often used as an analogy of man's inhumanity to man. In Dungeons and Dragons and related games, like Pathfinder, they have a long, dark history. Let's get into it.
From the very first, in D&D, werewolves have been evil monsters, affected by a disease-like curse. Lycanthropy turns them into raging, bloodthirsty beasts, and those who embrace it gain control only at the cost of becoming evil in their humanoid (or giant!) form as well. Usually. They are listed as chaotic evil, so they are disorganized, violent, hateful of both goodness and order. Other than occasional exceptions like the worshippers of Selune and the lythari (elven werewolves) in Faerun, this characterization has stayed solid. The 3.5 Monster Manual sort of hints that this is arbitrary, based on the popular perception of the animals that the therianthropes turn into. But honestly, there's very little solid lore in D&D for them. The aberrations got Lords of Madness. The undead got Libris Mortis. Dragons got the Draconomicon. Wereecreatures don't show up in Volo's Guide to Monsters, or Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. The Ravenloft book of Werebeasts from 2nd edition just gives us specific unique therianthropes.
According to the very sparse lore in all the editions, the basics stay the same. Lycanthropy, werewolfism, is a curse that can be spread two ways: you can be born with it, or you can be 'infected' by the bite of a werewolf. The natural born have more control, the 'afflicted' have to learn it, but they are almost invariably evil. Wolf lovers like myself are probably a bit offended by this, especially if they've been exposed to the more heroic werewolves of say, the World of Darkness.
In the real world, in the wild, wolves are gentle, kindly creatures. They move in organized packs, mostly family units. They don't actually fight for dominance. They respect each other's territories. They communicate long distances via howls. Attacks against humans are exceedingly rare, especially in modern day, and can probably mostly be blamed on human foolishness rather than lupine malice. Our perceptions of them as evil, vicious monsters seem . . . odd, at best.
By contrast, wolves in a zoo setting, made up of unrelated individuals, do seem more violent. They do fight for dominance and position in the hierarchy. Much like convicts in a prison yard, they are wary, violent, and unhappy. They need hierarchy...and they have to establish it with new wolves they don't trust, often with no genetic relationship beyond species. This is important, and we'll come back to it.
So let's square the perception and the reality. What if hereditary werewolves, in the wild, in full control of themselves, are like real wolves? Organized, loving, altruistic, at least toward their own pack.
They get unfairly painted as 'evil' because they are strongly territorial, and object to 'civilized' incursions into their lands. Called 'savage', as many indigenous people across the world were, because they are closer to nature, and less technologically inclined . . . and understandably resist the theft and destruction of their homes for slash and burn agriculture and the filth of cities. They would actually usually be lawful good, (but portrayed otherwise by humanoids), while as sapient, free-willed beings, they can have any alignment. And Some may well be very bitter toward humanoids in general, and for good cause.
If they are a kind and loving people, and a natural one...where do the 'afflicted' come from? Possibly from a tragic mistake. A primal caster of their people, a druid, crafts for them the magical ability to make others like themselves, in the hopes that it might give the afflicted insight. This backfires. You see, a 'civilized' person, granted suddenly the primal urges and abilities of a beast, is overwhelmed. They cannot control it. The beast rises to the surface, especially as the moon becomes full, as most humanoid cycles are moon tied, and the beast gets out to wreak havok, with the fierce power of a wolf . . . but the pent up anger and malice of a 'civilized' person who has always had to restrain themselves. Who has never understood their primal urges. The chaos and evil come from the human side, not the wolf, and the struggle to suppress the beast just makes its depredations worse. You have to learn to accept it, rather than fight it. In many cases where the afflicted werewolf comes to terms with the beast, the cognitive dissonance between the natural primal urges of the wolf and the suppressed urges of the man overwhelm them, and dark motives they have always suppressed come forth, and the beast becomes a weapon. So afflicted werewolves are often chaotic evil...and those are the ones, used to civilization as they are, that others encounter more often.
It is made worse because like calls to like, and afflicted werewolves can still pass on what is now truly a curse, for others more than for them, often. So groups of afflicted werewolves form, instinctually becoming packs. But remember how zoo packs work? How wolves that don't know each other that are not family, but are forced together interact? That dysfunctional, violent, prison yard hierarchy becomes the norm, and the afflicted outnumber the natural werewolves greatly...since the natural ones know what is going on and can avoid afflicting others, but the afflicted have much less such volition, especially in the early stages. So a cycle of horror and abuse starts, and the abused take their grievances out on the innocent, and evil begets evil. The werewolves in charge become the most vicious and violent, which makes those below them violent, and so it goes, an entire warped system based on the strain and dichotomy between 'man' and 'beast'...which is actually strain between natural and repressed, leading to excess.
For games where one plays the werewolf as a sympathetic character, that also explains why their societies seem steeped in the same violence. We now know that real wild wolves don't act that way...but in the World of Darkness, none of the wolves are real wolves in the wild. Even the few wild lupus (in Apocalypse, there are none in Forsaken) have now been thrust into packs and groups they do not know, and usually lorded over by homids, who have no idea how real wolves act. So these packs are all dysfunctional, even if they try to be loving, tending to violence...because they are all actually packs in captivity, zoo packs. Red Talons might behave very differently inside packs made up of just them . . . but they actively hate humans, so they are still going to come across as evil, aren't they.
