The Moonwood Collective
The Moonwood Collective exists as it does now — an almost fully self-sustaining compound that provides shelter, food, education, work, and community — because of Kristopher. Over his mysteriously extended lifetime, he’s stitched together a patchwork family of valued elders and promising youth. Respected for mastering his fury and teaching others to do the same, some bristle at the stubbornness they believe keeps the Collective from truly evolving. His refusal to engage on the subjects of his spellcaster lineage, his apparent immortality, the aggressive lone wolf in the woods, and his estranged adoptive daughter’s new pack doesn’t help.
Jacob has no memory of his earliest years. As the story goes, Lily discovered him in the woods one night, crying his little lungs out, an abandoned pup of unknown origin, and brought him to Kristopher. There was never any question they’d raise him as their own; after all, that’s the Collective way — nurture over nature, as Kristopher says. As a teen, Jacob’s sense of self blossoms a bit more every day. Raised in many ways in his adoptive father’s image, he values cooperation, though his generosity extends to even the Wildfangs, and moderation, though Kristopher finds his recent commitment to vegetarianism extreme.
Originally hailing from San Myshuno, Wolfgang was an assistant librarian living in a grossly overpriced shoebox of an apartment before his academic interest in the occult led him to migrate to Moonwood Mill. He’s one of the few people Kristopher has agreed to turn, with the understanding that the addition of firsthand experience to the literary canon would be invaluable. Ever since, Wolfgang has almost single-handedly built the Moonwood Mill Library from the ground up while authoring novels that defy werewolf stereotypes under a pen name. Although he believes in the Collective’s mission, he insists the library remain neutral territory where all werewolves feel welcome.
Named after a second cousin who disappeared decades before she was born, Lily has always felt adrift in a world of unknowns. A desire to uncover mother nature’s secrets drew her to Moonwood Mill, where danger soon found her. She despised the beast she became on full moons after that night and grew reclusive, content with little company but her plants until Kristopher came knocking, having heard tell of the “forest crone” who brewed powerful restorative elixirs. Since lending her apothecary skills to the Collective, she’s found renewed purpose, for which she’s grateful to Kristopher, despite disagreeing with his stone-faced approach to conflict.
Marcel has always marched to the beat of his own drum; he knows people think he’s just an aging party boy who refuses to grow up, but he’s never been too bothered by this perception (though his long record of bar fighting arrests says otherwise). But he always believed he was destined for more, and when he met Adelyn, a teen orphan tossed out of multiple foster homes for aggression, he saw a reflection of himself. He remembered a little place called the Collective and thought it might be the ticket for them both. These days, he’s doing his best to keep her out of trouble while running a bar out of the back of his junkyard.
As a young pup whose confident, excitable personality sometimes translates as aggression, it’s been hard for Adelyn to find her place in the world. Her many human foster parents tried their best, but they were too frightened of what the system deemed her “affliction” to truly understand her. Although she and Marcel make a strange pair, he’s finally brought some much needed stability to her life, with additional support from the Collective, of course. Finally around other werewolves, she’s free to be herself for the first time — even if that occasionally means getting into a heap of trouble.
After graduating from her Collective education, having distinguished herself as a voracious reader and passionate advocate, Alyssa was recruited by Wolfgang to do community outreach for the library. She’s still not sure how she lucked into the position, but her “fake it till you make it” attitude seems to be working so far. Lately, she’s found her penchant for order and obedience challenged by her burgeoning relationship with Aubrey, a human who will stop at nothing to become a werewolf. Should Alyssa encourage her to find an in with the Wildfangs or buck Collective tradition and turn Aubrey herself?
Despite his last name, Emmett has always been the peaceful type. Growing up, his parents would tell anyone who’d listen that he couldn’t even bring himself to hurt a fly, an odd quirk for a born werewolf. He grew up in the Collective and decided to stay upon reaching adulthood while some of his best friends chose to leave. It hurt to see them pick the Wildfangs, whose snarling and spitting he’s morally opposed to in almost every way. Luckily, he’s found a new friend in Jacob, who shares many of his ideals even if Emmett thinks he’s way too forgiving of his sister’s abdication of the Collective’s values.
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A note on werewolf immortality: I'm still ironing things out, but I've been wrestling with whether or not immortality is an innate werewolf trait in my story, and I'm leaning more toward not at the moment. However, I like the idea of certain characters having something that resembles immortality for their own individual reasons rather than it being a perk any werewolf has. I could see Kristopher's suspended aging having to do with his spellcaster origins, but seeing as many werewolves are distrusting, suspicious and often downright hostile toward other occults, he might be cagey about revealing too much about his lineage, even as he advocates for peace among the occults. I reserve the right to tweak and refine things as I go along, and I'm also not sure how much of this will actually come out, but I like having answers even if they just exist in the background, and I'm trying to respect the lore while putting my own spin on it. I'd also like to shout out @charsimsalot and @ethicaltreatmentofcowplants for giving me some very helpful ideas about pack membership and dynamics that I ended up borrowing from a lot!
