The Court of Wolves

Howl with the wilds

The Court of Wolves was originally an alliance of versipellis packs from Latium whose members included the famous twins Romulus and Remus. They played a key role in the founding of the Roman Republic, and many patrician families were lycanthropes themselves, or had ties to the shapeshifters.

The packs enjoyed great power and prestige during the republic, and for nearly 450 years, they controlled one of the most powerful nations in Europe. Then Julius Caesar came along with this strange druid from Britannia named Ambrosius, and together they routed the lycans and sent them fleeing into the German lands with their tails between their legs.

However, while defeated and exiled into the wilds, the Court wasn't broken. They looked upon their savage kin--the Greek lukánthropos, the Norse varúlfur, the Germanic weriuuolf, the Slavic vlko-dlak, and the kurtadams of the Turkic hordes--and took the best and brightest alphas, teaching them the secrets of iron, while instructing them in governance and how to control and influence human societies. They rose in Central and Eastern Europe, enemies of the Roman Empire, the wolves of the woods who prowled the bordermarches and laid low Roman legions with strange powers. They allied with the other shifters of Europe--the bereserkers of the north, the wereravens of the mountains, the ganymedes (wereeagles) of Asia Minor and Greece, the selkie of Brittania, and more: the boars, the stags, the rats, the horses, the weasels, the aurochs.

The werewolves enjoyed a period of prosperity then, in the northern woods. Though they still told stories of the stolen glories of Rome, Odin replaced Jupiter and Thor came to be favoured over Mars. They founded a new settlement, where the great families and packs could meet and resolve differences, which they called Odins Vé. They were kings, or kin-of-kings, and ruled from Dublin in the west to Novgorod in the east. When Rome fell, they celebrated, and expanded their grasp south into the Gaulish lands, Iberia, and the Balkans.

But the world was constantly changing, and the demise of Rome signalled the rise of successor nations. And in a gleaming city of knowledge founded upon the banks of the Tigris river, a treaty was struck between angels, jinn, faeries, dragons, the heirs of Atlantis, and the monsters that go bump in the night. The Veil Treaty, signed in 821 in Baghdad, separated the mundane and magical worlds in hopes of ending the millennia of conflict that followed the sinking of Atlantis.

The Veil Treaty sought out the Packs of Odins Vé, sending ambassadors north into the lands of the Danes. When informed of this treaty, Vigi the Silvermane, the Lawspeaker of the Thing, reportedly laughed the men in black cloaks out, proclaiming the Wolves would never bend the knee to soft-men of the desert. The agents of the veil responded by informing Vigi they had come not to seek his approval, but to bring him warnings of the changing times. When Vigi ordered his warriors to place the ambassadors in chains, they vanished into shadow.

A few years later, the Romans returned to the north, bringing with them not legions, but the Cross; and coming not to seek vengeance on the wolves, but the ears of the human kings and chiefs. They promised the human nobles that they could be free of the Wolves, if they recognized a new ruler in Rome... not an Emperor, but a Pope. And slowly, but surely, the people came to accept the offer of the Cross, and the Cross sent their hunters, their Inquisitors, into the wilds to hunt down the 'devil-spawned' beastmen.

The Catholic Inquisition was remarkably effective at what it did, and it broke the hold of the werewolves on Scandinavia and Eastern Europe--where the werewolves had already been spent fighting the vampires. One by one, the allies of the Wolves abandoned them, turning to the Veil Treaty for help, until, in the early 12th century, the wolves called back to Baghdad, and the men in black cloaks returned to Odins Vé--or, as the Danes now called it, Odense.

The Court of Wolves remained reluctant allies and supporters of the Veil Treaty, seeing it as a grim necessity to preserve their way of life and traditions in an increasingly hostile world. When the Wars of Religion started in the 1500s, the Court eagerly supported the Protestants, seeing it as a way to finally weaken Rome and get revenge. The weakening of the Catholic Church brought about a resurgence in the supernatural world, most exemplified by the Veil Treaty relocating from Fez to London in 1668. The Wolves began to exert more power over local Veil councils, and wormed their way into speaking on behalf of all therians the world over in numerous cases--something modern scholars term "lupine imperialism."

In the modern era, the Court is still one of the strongest alliances of werebeasts in the world, and around half of the werewolf packs and clans swear allegiance the Vargting in Stockholm (relocated from Odense in the 1400s to a region where wolves continued to roam). The various clans elect representatives from across the world, where they sit in council and resolve whatever issues may arrive. The Lawspeaker of the Vargting is sometimes called the 'king of wolves'--and some have even claimed that title--but the court is a parliamentary body where all are equals. And it shows, with disputes sometimes breaking out into battles of tooth and claw, and more than one member leaving with a broken arm or torn ear. Indeed, it's considered a good session of the Vargting when only half the desks need to be replaced.