The Beast Fears Fire - Great Wolves

Great Wolves

Impulse – Hunt, feed and remain unseen, unless... Great wolves are exactly what the label says. They are wolves, standing about as tall at the shoulder as a fairly tall person, with comparable intellectual capacity and the ability to converse in a rough equivalent to human speech in any language they learn. They aren't exactly common anywhere, or, at least, they don't appear to be common anywhere, in part due to their desire not to provoke the kind of reactions they usually get from humanity (hunting parties, torches, guns, dogs, the works). Most great wolves are content to stake out tracts of wilderness and be apex predators in those places, but some get interested in other sociable sapients, and since humanity appears to be one of the better of a bad lot, they sometimes seek people out. This has understandably mixed results. The more adventurous great wolves tend to spend a lot of their time, understandably, with the more adventurous of the bipedal folk, since adventurers, for all their personal faults and blights upon society, are a little more open minded than most people.

This is not to say most great wolves are friendly. They like their privacy, and tend to react to the presence of other thinking and speaking creatures as though it's an invasion. Also, while they don't find people especially tasty (we're wicked salty, apparently), they have no compunction about eating a fellow sapient, when it comes right down to it.

Great wolves are fairly idiosyncratic in terms of their capabilities and proclivities. The more savory elements of their society group in small packs (up to 7 individuals) and stake out a pretty large territory. The riff-raff will sometimes spend time with the riff-raff of other species. Their capabilities are up to moderator interpretation on a case-by-case, but generally, you are looking at a Threshold 3 individual and Threshold 4 or 5 gang.

Harm – Injury 2 (4 as a gang). Unlike other large and magical lupines, great wolves are not too good for tried and true wolf pack tactics. The difference is just fewer sets of bigger teeth, and maybe more interesting conversation during dinner. Some wolves take to witchcraft (often wood witchcraft, both for the obvious habitat-related reasons and the fact that wood witchcraft has the most utility to offer a creature without opposable thumbs).

Wolf like me. You can play a great wolf if you want. In a mixed group, you would clearly be the riff-raff of great wolf society, but, at the same time, you get to be a gigantor talking wolf, and that's got to be worth something.

Playing a great wolf does not cost you anything in particular, and with a couple exceptions, it doesn't change your mechanical capabilities. The exceptions are as follows.

First, you do not get the “Get Something You Need” move. Instead, you face Want for two different moves.

Walking Man's Road
When you want to do something that would require human hands (and not a lot of fine motor skills) or social interaction with strange people that does not hinge on them being terrified of the fuckoff big wolf you are, face want.
On a Hit, you can accomplish the thing, it just (choose 1) takes a long ass time, is an awful, embarrassing hack-job, or comes with unforeseen consequences (Moderator Soft Move).
On a Hard Hit, you do as well as a human being would, under the circumstances. Note that Make or Take makes no difference to a Hard Hit.
On a Miss, someone takes notice of what you are doing, comes to the absolute worst conclusion about it, and acts accordingly.

What's for Supper?
When you are hunting for supper in places that are not forests or are forests entirely unlike your forest, face Want.
On a Hit, you do eventually find something suitable, which is either enough or doesn't take a long time (but leaves you Hungry as a Peril).
On a Hard Hit, you manage to find something that is enough in a fairly short time.
On a Miss, the Moderator gets a Soft Move.

Great Wolves don't use Gear, exactly, but they come equipped with most of the stuff they will ever need. Instead of Clothes on my Back, Coin in my Pocket and Food in my Pouch, they get the following, at D8.
Big Teeth.
Quiet Paws.
Thick coat.
Wolf Senses.

Since Crickton runs on Murrenic law, it is technically murder to kill a great wolf, though enforcement is sometimes spotty on that account, and judges are usually eager to acquit on extenuating circumstances. Great wolf pelts aren't any finer than normal wolf pelts, so they aren't sought for fur. They'd make an impressive hunting trophy, but there go your extenuating circumstances.

There are rumors that the great wolves of the Surlycrow plateau are full citizens of the Rukh's republic, but since there is very little trade and no formal diplomatic relations, that could just be a rumor. In the west, the people there hunt the great wolves, calling them werewolves or dire wolves and pinning all sorts of unspeakable evil on them. But the westerners are superstitious, irrational jackasses, so fuck 'em.