Of Man and Wolf

Of Man and Wolf

mankind, birthed by a half-god descending from a Jotunn, a servant of the Great Wyrm, and still boasts about it. But they fail to realize that the history of the Get of Fenris is so much more than simple human folktales and beliefs. And, more importantly, that there may be more to Great Fenris himself than the human tale of a destiny in chains before the Ragnarok, at which time he is destined to swallow Odin and be slain by Vidar. Much more.

Listen carefully, pups, as our sept’s finest skalds tell you the history of our people.

The Telling of Fenris As recounted by Krister Voice-Of-Alfar, Get of Fenris Galliard Hear me, o children. I am Krister Voice-OfAlfar, Skald of the Fenrir, and I now recount to thee the ancient history of the Get of Fenris, mightiest and strongest among the sixteen tribes of the Garou.

For we are the true Warriors of Gaia, and protectors of the World, and our tale is not one of petty truces and submissions to quarrelsome gods. No, my pups, for it began so long ago that no bard remains with the exact account of how it came to be. No doubt you’ve heard several stories and legends on how our kind came to be, on how Mother Gaia created the Garou to protect the world. This is not the telling of the Garou. This is the telling of the Get of Fenris; a tale of glory and strength, of honor and valor, of adventure and conquest, of anguish and desolation.

Let me tell you the tale of our tribe.

The Mythic Ages You may think Great Fenris a mighty wolf-spirit, patron deity of our tribe, and mere servant of Gaia the Great Mother. That is not so. The exalted Wolf Father is none other than our own antecedent, the forefather of our proud lineage. He was one of the First, the sixteen man-wolf warriors created by Gaia to protect Her creation, to wage war on the forces of wanton Chaos and Destruction, and bring the Wyrm and its minions to an end. I see some of you, brighteyed and inquisitive, with the scholar’s look about your faces. Doubtlessly, you have heard this tale before, in different form. Know you that the tale as I tell it has been handed down, generation after generation, among the finest skalds of our tribe. Have you doubts to the authenticity of my tale, or intelligent questions about detail, perhaps one day after your Rite of Passage we shall meet and compare tales.

Until then, sit idly by my side and do not interrupt my telling, for then my anger will be fierce.

Get of Fenris Fenris: Wolf or Werewolf?

Obviously, not all Fenrir agree on whether or not Fenris was truly a Garou or “simply” the greatest progenitor-wolf of the tribe. The Fenrir, like all other tribes, have more than one tale of their beginning, but the tale of Great-Fenris-asfirst-of-his-tribe arises fairly frequently. To some Fenrir, it is the most sensible explanation; to others, it devalues Great Fenris by trying to make him (unnecessarily) more accessible to his children by calling him “like” them. It’s a point of contention among several Fenrir, but not a particularly divisive one; it hardly merits the label of heresy. Still, the Fenrir are notable for agreeing to settle disputes by physical means, and so this issue, like many others, has caused its fair share of brawls.

The simplest solution would appear to be to ask Great Fenris himself, but not even the mightiest Get of Fenris Theurge has done so. For one, spirits of such magnitude have a way of absorbing many lesser concepts into themselves. Great Fenris might well be “original war-totem” and “progenitor Garou” in one, just as Rat is a war totem, a fertility goddess, a spirit of disease and a spirit of survival among other things. If he is both, why waste his time asking if it’s otherwise? For another, as a Tribal Totem and Incarna, Great Fenris is likely now more powerful than he ever was when he walked the earth freely, and asking after his “weaker” self might be… insulting. Finally, most Fenrir Theurge elders achieved their high rank by focusing on the immediate problems at hand — genealogical mysteries might be interesting, but if you were going to go to the trouble to ask something of Great Fenris, it’d be foolish to ask him for something trivial. After all, if it really mattered, Great Fenris would surely have settled the issue himself some time back.

Of Man and Wolf Great Fenris lived for the hunt, battle, and service to Gaia. These were tasks that he held in the highest regard. For although no Garou was ever as filled with Rage as Great Fenris, none that lived thereafter was as honorable as he. As he was the strongest warrior among those of the First Pack, he could pick any mate he wanted from flocks of both humans and wolves, and none would dispute his leadership in combat with the forces of the Wyrm, the Jotunn. He fought with ferocity unmatched, skill unimaginable, and strength that is as legendary as his name alone. The other Garou of the First Pack Chapter One: Voices of Thunder acknowledged him as leader of the Garou in those times; it was much later that the Silver Fangs should rise to become leaders of our nation. Many great battles did the First Pack engage in against the growing armies of the Wyrm, and many spawned new Garou to fight alongside them. But not Great Fenris.

As the other members of the First Pack chose mates and bred as they pleased, Great Fenris, although free to choose whichever mate he pleased, felt that a female companion worthy of him did not exist. He held strength and honor most dearly in his heart, as his love for the Great Mother, and he found the humans he protected to be weak and puny, and the wolves to be too sly and dishonorable for his predilection. He longed for a female so strong in will and body and so pure of heart that she would glow so with the radiance of the heavens that he would spot her among a hundred of her kind.

Many years passed with Great Fenris living in solitude, and he perfected his will and his strength in his loneliness, while the other Garou of the First Pack shaped tribes of their offspring indiscriminately. He had but given up the hope of finding a mate, a like, that he had devoted all his time to tuning his spirit and the flesh to the arts of combat.

His heart wept, but his mind denied the pain that grew within his chest, for he knew that sadness over petty matters such as longing for love would cause him to grow weak and pitiful. He made up his mind to not be bothered with the pain, to shut it away and accept that he would forever be lonely.

Yet still it came to pass, in one of the most glorious battles against the Jotunn, that Great Fenris caught a glimpse of an unnatural beauty leading a group in a flank attack on the Jotunn. She shone out like a star amongst hundreds of her kin; she fought with a ferocity he had never before seen.

She wielded a massive axe with double heads as if it were the flexible trunk of a spring sapling; yet her strong arms held it firm as stone. She fended off hordes of beasts and monsters with resolute swings of the axe. Her long, wild, bright hair danced in the wind of the battle, and her soft, fair skin shone unlike anything Great Fenris had seen before. He almost forgot his place in the battle, and