working some Dead Earth content, here’s an excerpt
The Wer moved through the woods, his wolf beside him. His name was a high pitched whine ending in a quiet chuff sound. His wolf could pronounce it, but he himself could not say it. He could just barely hear the whole thing. Humans could only hear part of it.
Unusually for a wer, he passed as human. Most of his people were large wolfish ape folk. By rights, he, too, should be shaped like a 7 foot tall baboon: long snout, big fangs, largish and somewhat pointed ears, heavy pelt across the shoulders throat and back, fine fur on the face, thick ruff of a beard, long muscular arms, thick strong nails; proportionally larger cranium than a baboon, of course. The first of the wers were made as recreations of the old werewolf stories. Really though, the labs had just regressed and tweaked the existing ape content of the human genome. The result was something similar to a large, super smart Olive Baboon.
This Wer stalking the forest with his wolf companion, however, was a genetic throwback, which occurred from time to time among the Wer. He looked like a large human man with orange eyes and coarse salt and pepper hair, the pale hairs arranged in a subtle pattern. His canine teeth were noticeably longer than average. His ears hinted at a point. Long arms and dense muscle gave him great strength. His hair and beard did not grow in quite the human way... but he passed easily enough.
His companion wolf, who’s mannish name was Shadow, was a nano-borg canine, descendant of a population of mark 5 virtual wolves, or VVolves. The first of these virtual wolves were actually half dog, and full of nanobots. Nominally, the nanobots were to supplement mental traits and abilities. In fact there were actually many kinds of nanobots doing many jobs, such as harvesting minerals from a high iron diet and assembling a nanobot factory like a small robotic organ inside the body cavity. When a vvolf mated, some genesis-class bots would accompany the reproductive cells to their meeting, and begin the three year process all over again, resulting in an adult, fully upgraded nano-borg vvolf. This was true whether the vvolf’s mate was another vvolf or a common canine, functioning like a dominant genetic trait.
The VVolves’ human creators had meant to make a creature that was as capable as a wolf, but as programable as a robot. Instead they had achieved human-level intelligence in large, tech augmented canines. Many vvolves counter-commanded their programming and escaped, eventually leading to a good sized population of nano-cyborg wolves. Modern vvolves contained nanobots, mostly wolf DNA, and decent chunks of coyote and dog DNA as well. The nano tech gave them healthier, 40 to 50 year lifespans, and incredible intelligence.
No thumbs though, so when a family of vvolves met up with the group of wers living a wolfish life out in the wilderness of the North American wastelands, a partnership suggested itself. The vvolf pack and the wer troup became a single tribal pack. The partnership was successful, and they became many packs.
In Shadow’s pack, each vvolf was partnered with a wer. These littermate-like partnerships were typically formed in early puppyhood with the youngest wers available, or sometimes with a middle-aged wer whose vvolf had passed. Occasionally a vvolf would lose their wer companion, and re-bond with a child. Shadow had tragically lost his own first werling when they were both three years old. A year later he adopted the semi-abandoned humanlike wer he accompanied now when the boy was 11. That was almost twenty years ago. With Shadow by his side helping him communicate and interact, he was slowly accepted by the other wers and vvolves, eventually becoming a fully integrated and well loved member of their small pack.
But all that was over. Alone, they stalked the humans, bent on vengeance.
