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.

Curses in DH5

I often describe DH5 as a humano-centric setting,but that's not strictly speaking true.  I certainly focus more on nations made up of humans, and my expectations are that humans make up a vast majority of the individuals that you'll find unless you wander farther afield than the portions of the setting that I intend to develop and detail.  That said, there are small pockets of demihuman communities in the Hill Country and Timischburg both, and any of them could potentially be found anywhere in either country.  Most of them would arouse curiosity, especially in the smaller towns where cosmopolitanism is completely unknown, but in larger cities, especially Simashki and Waychester (and to a lesser extent, Upwater) they are relatively commonly spotted for those who are looking for them, and there are a number of permanent residents of every demihuman race.

I use demihuman quite deliberately.  I'm not quite sure what Gary Gygax meant by the term; he seems to have used it for the most anthropomorphic of the non-human races; i.e., dwarfs, elfs, halflings, etc. were demihumans, but orcs, goblins, gnolls, etc. were not, because they were more savage and less anthropomorphic in rough terms.  I use demihuman to refer to the fact that the non-human races are, in fact, mostly human—their differences are the result of either a curse or a monstrous admixture into their genetic matrix at some point in the past (with the exception of orcs and goblins, who are simply monstrous non-human humanoids).  This is usually quite minor, but it has effects that are immediately obvious on their physical appearance, and more sinister in some cases than one may think.  Few of the human populations, hillmen, drylanders, Timischers or others are truly aware of the nature of these curses, and they often only manifest at very low levels among the population; but these dark secrets are not unknown to most members of the races in question, and they often police their own very carefully to avoid having these curses manifest among mixed populations, because they would make the race unwelcome in Hill Country, or anywhere else, for that matter, if they were better known.

In terms of the game (as opposed to the setting as a place for potential fiction) I'd suggest that unless a player wants to roleplay out the effects of one of these curses, that they be seen as not affecting PC characters.  I suggest, in fact, that they not affect major NPCs either, unless it's a theme or something that you want to explore deliberately.  I'd suggest that if you needed a statistical number for how likely it is to occur, that in every case, that number is less than 1%.  However... there are considerably more than a hundred individuals (or even a thousand, in most cases) of these races in the lands that I'm detailing, so if this is something that you want to use for whatever reason, you can.  I'll have a very brief section below on all of the available demihuman races.  And folks; although DARK•HERITAGE as a label is now out of date; i.e. the reason I picked that name no longer applies, the fact that every demihuman race is cursed, and there is still a fairly strong Lovecraftian vibe in the setting means that the label still works even so.

• Cursed: The Cursed are originally from the land of Zobna which is a subset of Hyperborea, but they were chased from that home country by the invasion of the savage Inutos.  They have since established a new home in Lomar, but that is under attack as well, and refugees have been fleeing southwards for many generations.  The most likely places to find Cursed are the seaside town of Inganok, and Daikos in the far north of the Hill Country.  The Cursed have been cursed many generations ago by the gnophkeh, whom they swept aside when they conquered Lomar.  This curse, when it manifests, takes the form of an uncontrollable urge towards cannibalism.  Nobody knows for sure how many cursed are cannibals (some engage in the practice culturally whether affected by the curse or not), but those who fall under the curse must consume human flesh, or they will slowly devolve into ghouls.  For the most part, the repast must happen once per month at the least.  Some Cursed in Inganok suspect that their own people, devolved into ghouls, and then clawed their way out of savagery into sentience again are the origin of the vampires of Timischburg; although that seems unlikely that it is the only source of such, given that the land of Timischburg, especially Grozavest itself, has been laboring under a dark curse for far longer than the Cursed have lived in the area anyway.
• Kemling: The Kemlings believe that their ancestor was a daemon-lord named Chernavog, who lived for a time among mortals and fathered seed who's daemonic traits are now watered down to represent their own race.  This is pseudo-legendary; nobody knows for sure that such a person actually lived, although by tradition, Chernavog's son Hutran Kutir, the Hex-King, is the founder of Baal Hamazi, their glorious empire of the past.  Whether that's true or not, it is true that the kemlings are more likely than any other race to fall victim to the Black Choler, a kind of violent madness.  Such victims are usually quietly locked away or even put down entirely for the good of the community.  In fact, the latter is often preferred, although family members sometimes object; in the worst case scenario, someone afflicted by the Black Choler may burst open when the condition is fully ripe, and a daemon (usually merely an imp or servitor daemon, but sometimes more powerful ones are able to latch on to the bloodline and follow it to the mortal world) will claw its way out of the bloody corpse to afflict everyone around.
• Jann: Ifrits are to jann as daemons are to the kemlings; i.e., supposedly an ifrit lord, possibly Hammu Qaiyu himself, is the mythical ancestor of the entire race.  While the jann are often fiery tempered and emotionally dramatic, a trait that they somewhat ruefully blame on their distant, legendary ancestor, the truth is that there is a connection of some sort between Muspelheim and the jann.  Any jann who move to the City of Brass (a bit of a non sequitur, since leaving the mortal realm is something hardly anyone knows how to do) are immune from this curse, but every once in a while, a burning flame will find its way from Muspelheim to a jann person, who will spontaneously combust in a wild conflagration that can consume entire houses, or any nearby people.  Luckily, this is rare, but it has been known to happen, and the jann themselves have a body of lore and old wives tales about spontaneous combustion, how to avoid it, how to cause it in your rivals, etc.
• Skraeling: Skraelings, or Wendaks, are often considered to be merely a highly variable race of humans; short and often lanky; dark-skinned, but with brown hair and bright blue eyes, very broad, flat faces, etc.  The Skraelings have some connection to lost Atlantis, however—they are either the degenerate descendants of the Atlanteans, or feral former slaves of the Atlanteans, or some-such; even their own folklore is unclear.  Atlantis is the most evil civilization that ever lived, however—even more than Baal Hamazi, or so it's mostly believed, and everyone associated with Atlantis bears a curse that fell upon the land, destroying it, and even tainting the survivors who weren't on Atlantis itself when it sank into the sea, such as the Wendaks.  The technology of the Skraelings is limited by their curse.  They do not work metal, and do not even keep metal taken from their neighbors, as it will cause the Shrieking Sickness to come upon those who possess it.  Skraelings, if they encounter the hillmen or other more "modern" people are xenophobic, surly, often violent, and primitive, refusing to trade or speak with other people as much as possible, and more likely to simply attack them or flee from them, depending on the circumstances.  The exceptions are outcasts from Skraeling society, which exist for various reasons, but they are relatively rare and tend to keep to themselves and try and hide, as much as possible, their ethnic origin if they travel among the other peoples of the land.  But even they still use stone, wood or bone tools as much as possible, and possess no metal.
• Orcs and Goblins: Orcs and goblins are not a cursed human race, but rather a unique race (well, two associated races; the relationship between them is a source of much discussion, even among themselves) that, while humanoid, have obvious physical differences.  Orcs are relatively large and robustly built, much like Neanderthals would have been.  They also have inch long (or occasionally more) tusks protruding from their lower jaw, and very flat noses but large pointed ears, and grayish-olive skin but they otherwise appear human enough.  Goblins, on the other hand, are quite small and sneaky, with brownish-gray skin, pointed ears and sharp teeth, and beady eyes.  Neither are cursed per se, but their obvious inhumanity puts them at a severe disadvantage socially.  Both are also creatures that are less at home in the daylight than humans are, and find the sun both irritatingly hot and bright during the day (their home country of Gunaakt is near the sea, and almost always overcast and/or foggy.)  While there isn't any mechanical penalty in game for this nocturnal or crepuscular preference, if you want, on extremely sunny days, you could give a -1 penalty to almost every roll that these guys make; although in a crepuscular environment (they prefer this to nocturnal; they don't see in the dark, after all, like kemlings do), they might have a +1.
• Nephilim: While people see the "angel-people" as both beautiful and avatars or exemplars of the glories of celestial life, the reality is that the only reason nephilim can exist is because of fallen angels, and therefore, the nephilim, rarely appearing as they are, are just as cursed as the kemlings are by their heritage.  If you're looking for a roleplaying hook for a nephilim character or NPC, consider giving him a specific temptation or weakness that is his weakness.  Here's a page that has a big list of potential flaws to choose from, but I'd stay away from the more prosaic, "that's kinda annoying" and look more towards the, "uh... dude, that's messed up" choices on the list.  If that makes sense.  Nephilim are the kinds of characters that may seem beautiful, charismatic and glorious at first blush, but as you get to know them, most of them are sociopaths, psychopaths, perverts, sadists, or have other truly disturbing personality traits that make them off-putting.
• Wose: Woses are the descendants of werewolves, and while the potency (and chaos) of the original werewolf curse is much reduced and diluted in their blood, in many cases it goes beyond them merely having an affinity to nature and a somewhat bestial physical appearance. (See image for example.)  However, in many of them, additional flaws and aspects of the curse of werewolfism lingers; during full moons, they are at -1 to all checks (except combat, where their savagery gives them a +1) and they may take additional damage, or suffer from nausea or other symptoms when in the presence of silver.