This comic was created to introduce people to the pathos of Werewolf: the Apocalypse so as to introduce the upcoming reference guide for it: Werewolf: the Essentials. A team of dedicated fans and scholars on the setting have amalgamated all the best of WtA into an easy to parse format, coming to Storytellers Vault this winter! At long last, all the deep lore on Garou Society and the denizens of the tellurian are coming together into a single series of references that span the entirety of their lore, condensing thousands of pages into a single series.
Enjoy, and don't forget to share with your friends and follow this account and @werewolfessentials to stay up to date on news!
A very special thank you to @mekanikaltrifle for illustrating the comic, and to @wolfgirlbites @excelgarou @redratt @balthazarslostlibrary and @bekandrew for their contributions to writing this!
We're a queer gaming server and now brancing into TTRPGs and our first TTRPG campaign being ran is Werewolf the Apocaylpse 5th edition with the module the Spider and The Fly from The Moonlit Path book
This friday we're doing a character building session. If you're 18+ and in the LGBTQ+ community come join us here!
For an edition focusing on being more aware of different cultures, W5 sure does spend a lot of time hating on oral histories;
NOTE: LONG post and critical of W5, don't read if you like it.
"A history of the Garou is both impossible and reductive. The stories of the past that werewolves tell are oral histories, part legend and part reality, revised, reinterpreted, and redone, according to the needs of the generation doing the telling. They contain multiple narratives that are all considered to be true. The finer details, locations, and players in these grand dramas may shift with the times, and with the storytellers spinning the tale for those listening to them.
"
- W5 core, p.22
"The Garou Nation, as it was known, existed for a brief period of relative success, but even there, its actual duration is unknown and varies by who’s reciting the history. Was it decades? Centuries? Millennia? Because the historical events involved in it date to various times across myriad locations, to say with any certainty is impossible, and even spirits speak of it in terms unsuited to the physical world.
"
-W5 core, p.37
"Much of the Garou’s history is oral, more within the realm of legend and even self-mythology than a true history. Given the animistic perspective of Garou, when one says, “the mighty Silver Fang rode upon Falcon’s back,” that might literally mean a werewolf rode an enormous falcon in a legendary time, or it may mean that a falcon-spirit carried the werewolf, or even that Falcon himself transported the werewolf through the Umbra.
So it goes with the Litany, a code of Garou custom that’s equally as impressionistic and open to interpretation as the animistic lens through which werewolves see the world."
-W5 core,p.46
"The Litany is an imperfect set of rules by which to wage a guerilla war of resistance during an ongoing Apocalypse. Those rules mean different things at different times to different werewolves, and the oral tradition of the Garou is rife with the Litany being used to justify self-dealing or even atrocity.
"
-W5 core, p.47
"Above and beyond the tribes and the septs, there used to be something called the Garou Nation. It was understood that all Garou were united in their war against the forces of the Wyrm.
Some dispute whether this was ever really true. Were the Garou of old really united in a global nation in the mythical prehistory of Garou legend at a time when humans had barely managed to get from one continent to another"
-Shattered Nation, p.37
"The Garou are creatures of the present, their traditions built on oral storytelling. This means that factual accuracy is often not considered particularly important as long as the broad outlines fit what the crowd at the moot wants to hear. The stories of Garou from the '80s and '90s are already ancient history, having happened before most Garou today were even born.
Garou legends are notoriously difficult to date accurately. When was the War of Rage or the Impergium? In the Middle Ages? In the Stone Age? Who knows, and the spirits are no help either. Their sense of time is so different that it’s impossible to translate into human reckoning."
-Shattered Nation, p.40
I apologize for the paste spam, but I wanted to show you that this is not a one-time thing. This is constant.
This is not that the books are saying that the garou specifically are bad at keeping histories straight, it is saying that with oral storytelling, it is impossible to tell when things happened.
Which doesn't pass the smell test even if we focus solely on Europe. People have, for generations, kept information up through oral histories. Minor things might change, but the core details are there.
Think about it, how many of your family histories are written down? Most likely they are told orally a put into memory. And the time these events happened is usually a big part of it. Those of you with immigrant backgrounds will know why your family left, what kind of journey it was and when they arrived.
It gets even less acceptable once we get to Indigenous people. Australian Blaks are very strict about accuracy and so there is no drift in stories over the centuries. Most Native American nations told their histories orally, maybe using metaphor but still recalling exact details over the centuries.
W5 says that garou don't know when the Garou Nation existed. Given the former silver fang king is alive, it is clear it was within living memory. Yet the book still paints the garou as ignorant of their own history, the origins of their laws and so on.
What is worse, is that this is often contrasted with written history being accurate. Essentially implying that the correct history is only found in books. A VERY Western European take if I ever heard one.
Let's remember that, according to W5, any tribe can be found anywhere. So those garou found in mostly oral cultures just failed to record their own history?
Writing like this, in a work with heavy animistic inspirations from Native American cultures and other animistic cultures, is insulting because it suggests only the western method is accurate.
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I think Werewolf is an inherently queer medium
This is all a part of a larger long-term project.
I am trying to hold the World of Darkness to higher standards of inclusivity
Read our introductory comic here
Werewolf: the Essentials Project Update 04/02/2025
Hello, Kinfolks. Woof. What a time to be alive. This is a period that's been reflected many, many times in the past under many different names. It seems like every time I pick up my phone there is always some new awful thing awaiting us. The intentional composition of the writers on this team are diverse and come from cultures across the world, and what ties us together has been our queerness, our passion for Werewolf, and our commitment to let our passions fuel our writing. The result has been a product that shows the passion from one page to the next.
In short, the state of the world has impacted the pace at which we're working on the book. The priority right now is survival, and surviving is the task that has consumed most of the attentions of those helping with W:tE. It should come as no surprise that people who passionately care about Werewolf also care about the world around them at large, and that is exactly what many of us are doing.
All the same, what's agreed between everyone on the team is that we all feel the work we're doing matters, and in many ways it can be a good way to keep one busy when the other option is the good-old doomscroll. And so, work is still happening, and beyond that, its starting to pick up again.
So, what work remains?
Writing
Writing is more or less finished. Editing is ongoing and as small issues or missing mechanics come up we've been working them in. Chapters 1-7 are complete, and Chapter 8, our storytelling and chronicle section, is in its last few pages before calling it done. We have a small number of writers still working on this, and so far we're looking at 100 Rite of Passage Story Seeds, and 40-60 Cliath Story Seeds. All in all we're handing Storytellers enough game material to be able to keep their tables plenty busy for at least a year of weekly game sessions. Also as a spitball number, by the time this book hits shelves we are looking to be at around 450 pages.
Layout
We are at the 75% complete mark! Chapter 6 of 8 is underway. Due to an influx of support, we're able to have one of our editors pick up work on a more daily basis, so this process should similarly be speeding up in the immediate future. It always feels like the work is neverending, but slowly and surely we're making progress. I've promised myself once this book enters preflight I'm taking a long vacation.
Now, onto the fun stuff:
New W:tE Preview - Meet the Gaians!
With our full tribe writeups completed, we're happy to entice you with a new preview. For those ko-fi subscribers on the Fostern tier or above, you can now read not just our society and history dives, but can now see all the new tribes as written for Werewolf: the Essentials! This massive 80 page preview encompasses all twenty tribes of Gaians represented in Gulaka'i including background, territories, patron, and an all-new cultural outlook section!
All proceeds from ko-fi supporters help fund our commitment to using cultural consultants on our project!
To sign up and gain access to previews and our exclusive BTS discord to our project, subscribe to our ko-fi today! We've already raised $2,450 of our $3,500 goal!
Support Mundus Artis monthly
I'd like to also extend a special thank you to my Adren and above supporters Durodragon, Tobias, Madame Badger, The Bohemian, and SmilingCoder for helping make this passion project a reality. THANK YOU!
Likes don’t increase visibility to others! Please reblog this to spread the word!
I think Werewolf is an inherently queer medium
This is all part of a longer term project
Read our intro comic here
Coming soon:
Book 1: Cliath
In 1992, White Wolf Publishing released the first edition of Werewolf: the Apocalypse to the public. Throughout the 1990s, it rapidly grew to become one of the most played role-playing games of all time, and this persisted well into the noughties when the series concluded with the Revised (3rd) edition.
Its a game that speaks to the core fears many of us hold about the uncertainty of the future. Of corporations harming the world to meet their profit margins, of everyday people whose homes and lives are destroyed by disasters caused by those corporations or by storms that wouldn't have been so severe even a decade before. Of politicians who sell agencies to those who pay them the most to make the most vulnerable groups in society even more vulnerable. Of people who don't even have that. It looks you all in the eyes and asks you to be enraged. It asks you to care while handing you the tools to do something about it. Then, you get to work. You don't just blow up the factories; you empower the little guy, heal communities, and confront the stagnant society that you've become a part of, and you have to be responsible custodians of the greater world around you while not trying to be consumed by the very darkness you fight against. It was as intense as it was touching, heartbreaking, and entertaining. At times its just as absurd (and nuanced) as real life.
It was revolutionary at the time for the space it held at the tabletop. Werewolf was the first tabletop roleplaying game ever made that defaulted to using feminine pronouns in all Player and Storyteller interactions, as well as the default pronouns of the Garou in its first three editions. For its many flaws, it saw itself as the first tabletop roleplaying game that held any space for Indigenous groups. It made activism a core theme of the game itself, and would conclude its books with a list of related real-world demonstrations where the players can get involved in protecting the world around them, just like the werewolves they represent at the tabletop.
The Garou have intricate and multi-layered cultures from their written language to their oral histories, the way they dress, and the ways they manifest across editions were presented with very little overlap when it comes to the multiple facets across their society, leading to a rich history and complex societies for Storytellers to weave chronicles together for their troupes.
Dark Surrealism Awaits
The World of Darkness is implied to exist just beneath a facade that all others take for granted as simply being a world gone wrong. Can you feel it? In a world of burning forests, flash floods, social inequality and seemingly worse things emerging day after day — a world where everything feels wrong and nothing in the world feels right — you are not alone.
The universe is itself a living organism, thrashing like a panicked animal at the biting darkness, and we, the Gaians, are those who join the fight to protect it. You are one of Gaia’s chosen warriors, about to experience your First Change, and become swept into a world of ancient warriors and sacred purpose.
We monsters ask nothing of you—other than to join us.
Book 1: Cliath includes
• Over 400 fully annotated pages with cross-referencing and book citations for Storytellers to delve into the deeper lore of WtA
• Cross-edition compatible character creation rules for Fifth edition and legacy games
• Comprehensive information on the histories, societies, and politics of over 20 Tribes
• Laws, Tenets, traditions and rites for 3 new factions
• Downtime and Questing mechanics
• Detailed breed information and roleplay tips on how to play a wolf
• Full sept breakdowns including roles and duties
• Over 600 level 1-3 Gifts in a whole new presentation
• 7 New Patrons
• New Renown system and detailed ranking info
• Comprehensive character creation rules
• Dozens of story seeds to get your players started
• A localized Pacific Northwest setting with Sept, legends, and over 20 new NPCs
• Citable information on first changes and rites of passage
For World of Darkness fans, do you use Storytellers Vault/Drivethru RPG for browsing and buying community content?
I've self-published WoD/CoD community content on STV
Ive purchased WoD/CoD community content on STV
I've obtained free WoD/CoD community content on STV
I've window-shopped WoD/CoD community content on STV
I've self-published books on DTRPG
I've purchased community content on DTRPG
I've obtained free community content on DTRPH
I've window-shopped community content on DTRPG
I've heard of DTRPG/STV and have never visited the sites
This is my first time hearing about DTRPG/STV
See results/Other (comment on the tags)
Voting ended onJul 15, 2025
Drive-Thru RPG partnered with White Wolf a few years to create Storytellers Vault, a website where one may purchase Print-on-Demand or digital copies of new and legacy White Wolf games and fan-made content. I'm curious whether fans are aware of this site, and use it! DTRPG users can even use their same credentials on STV, or access it directly via the DTRPG website.
Hello, Kinfolks! We're not quite there yet. We're about two weeks out from Halloween, and I'm not fully happy with the book yet. To cut to the quick of it, we're moving back the release date to November 30th.
I take full responsibility for this delay and offer an apology to everyone who was looking forward to a Halloween release. I'd rather release something complete than something that's only mostly finished and made the call this afternoon.
As a gesture of goodwill, when the 31st comes, we'll release the rough draft of one of the chapters to Ko-Fi members to peruse while we put the finishing and perfecting touches on the book itself. I'll be putting out a poll in the coming days so you can decide which chapter will be released. Additionally, throughout November, we'll share pages daily from the opening comic, Cracking the Bone, to help promote the series.
Thank you for sticking with us this far. We're almost there, and we are excited for you all to see what we've been making.
