Dark Fantasy X Race Deep Dive: Woodwoses

The woodwoses, or 'woses (or simply woses) as they are sometimes called, are an unusual demihuman race in the Dark Fantasy X setting that are the descendants of ancient werewolves. Today, the curse of lycanthropy is very diluted, and isn't really a "curse" per se to most of them; rather, they are simply a race of human-like people that have some unusual characteristics because of the ancestry that they have. This lycanthropic heritage makes them slightly more animalistic; they tend to be somewhat hairy, occasionally bordering on furry, walk with a stoop, but they are strong, have sharp teeth and eyes and ears, a keen sense of smell, and are very adept at the wilderness. In fact, most of them feel uncomfortable spending too much time in urban settings, and they often wander as part of that uncomfortableness.

Woodwoses have no real homelands of their own. By nature, they are unlikely to band together in organizations larger than a modest sized tribe or clan. Maybe of these clans live quiet lives far away from humans or other demihumans in the deep forests that stretch across the Three Realms; the Wolfwood in particular is fairly thick with them, but they also live in the Chokewater Forest, the Garenkarst Woods, and the Bitterwood. Not all of them live in the forests, though—there are tribes in the pinyon/juniper scrublands of the Boneyard. Of course, not all woodwoses live in tribes in the wilderness; the ones that you're actually most likely to encounter are the homesteaders who live in the rural areas, mingled with humanity. The Copper Hills and the Garen Hills in particular have many such woodwose homesteaders, and for the most part they reject the clan life, and are welcomed by their farmer and homesteader neighbors, who value their greater skill in the wilderness when it comes to hunting and providing.

Woodwose homesteader couple

The tribal woodwoses aren't necessarily as friendly, of course. They are rather insulated, by choice, and when they do interact with the outside world, they're often viewed with suspicion or even hostility because of their tendency towards banditry or other hostility towards anyone traveling through their territory. In addition to this, woodwoses are often associated with organized crime in urban areas; there is a long tradition of woodwoses being the "muscle" for cells or pockets of the Chersky Mafia.

This tendency towards wandering and crime means that unknown woodwoses are often looked at askance in communities where they are not known, sometimes most especially by any more settled woodwoses already in the community. They tend to feel that they have worked very hard to integrate themselves into their communities, in spite of being outsiders by race, and don't want anyone coming along and jeopardizing it with bad behavior. However, what many wandering woodwoses do is follow a pretty routine route, and while they may not stay in one place, they are well known by the various communities that they pass through, and their ability to bring news and reports of conditions outside of the community is valued, and their judgement is often trusted.

Deep in the Wolfwood and (allegedly) in the Bitterwood are tribes of woodwoses that have full-blown werewolves as their chiefs or shamans, and they practice strange cults to the Moon and to lycanthropy generally. These are the most feared woodwoses, and some believe that they will kidnap isolated farmers and homesteaders, and those that they don't kill may become infected with werewolfism themselves. Because of this, in Timischburg in particular, and farther to the north, woodwoses are much less likely to be seen positively than in the Hill Country.

Below is a selection of woodwose characters, just to give a better example of what their physical appearance is like

While of course there are many personality types among the woodwoses, there are three stereotypes, and the majority of woodwoses seem to belong to one of these three personalities:

— loners and introverts who have few friends, are quiet and stoic, and prefer to spend their time on isolated homesteads, or even in the wilderness.

— koryos packs, who model their behavior on wolf packs. Somewhat jingoistic and often hostile, these will be drawn to other woodwoses, and see most other people as marks or prey. Many of the urban thugs who work with the Mafia belong to this personality type.

— the final, and most likely to be encountered frequently by hillmen in particular are the loyal seconds; they don't crave leadership, but they crave integration into a community, where they are extraordinarily loyal to the community and strive to be seen as trusted and useful members.

Like all of the demihuman races, woodwoses have a curse that occasionally manifests. In this case, it is a lingering trace of their lycanthropy. During full or nearly full moons, their behavior can occasionally become erratic. They will be at -1 on all d20 checks, except for in combat where they will be a +1. They will also get sick and have further penalties if exposed to (or wounded by) silver. This isn't meant to be a penalty applied universally; in fact, it shouldn't be a factor at all unless you (as GM or player) decide that you want that to be a plot point or conflict to explore; it otherwise happens so infrequently as to not be something that would otherwise need to be defined.

This is maybe a little bit shorter than most of the other Race Deep Dives. In reality, the woodwoses have always lacked the same kind of history as most other races. They aren't a discrete population group, except for some of the tribes deep in the wilderness, but have rather been always drawn out of regular human communities during their origin as werewolves, and even as their werewolf curse started fading, they tended to reintegrate, or remain integrated, as the case might have been, with other human communities. While not always trusted or welcomes, especially in the early days when their association with werewolves made them much more dangerous, they're never had their own homelands, or been completely disassociated with human communities, which means that in many ways there is less to say about them. Even now, their relationship, although maybe not quite as tight as they would like, with the human communities around them defines the woodwoses more than their connection to other woodwoses.