Rowan Rallies-Protests (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ralliesprotests) wrote2028-07-05 04:37 pm
ralliesprotests) wrote2028-07-05 04:37 pm
Full History
Setting keynotes | TL;DR
Please note there are a lot of links on this page - their history should be readable without clicking on any of them, but they're there for anyone who would like more information about or a more thorough description of canon elements and words.
Rowan was born in 1996 to a lesbian couple. Their bio father was a friend of a friend who was happy to donate sperm but didn’t want to be involved in the child's upbringing, and who moved and they lost contact with not long afterwards. Both their bio father and mother are both callow Kinfolk (are related to werewolves, but don't know about them).
As a child, Rowan was loved and well treated. Both of their mothers are very involved in the LGBT+ community, as well as various other left wing protest groups, and they have been attending protests since they were a baby. Their mothers split up when they were six, as Sara (non-bio mother) wanted more children, but their Mum (Jess) didn’t. Rowan lived with their Mum, Sara remarried to Cathy and they have three half siblings on that side that they were often called to babysit. Their mothers and Cathy remain good friends, and Rowan considers themselves to have three mothers.
They were always gender atypical, and went through an extremely feminine stage as a pre-teen, to the point where they reacted violently to being treated as male. Their mothers took them to a gender clinic, and the decision was made to put them on hormone blockers when they reached puberty (13).
At school, they were a fairly average pupil, aside from in IT which they took to like a duck to water, excelling in all aspects. Despite their gender nonconformity and occasional violent outbursts, they had plenty of friends, and were generally liked by teachers and fellow pupils.
As a young teen they began to program various apps for fun, often while babysitting their siblings, and surprisingly one had a decent degree of success. At 15 they were able to sell it for enough money that they could pay off their Mum’s mortgage, with enough left over to put into savings to pay for uni.
During their teenage years they came to the realisation that they were agender (although they often also define themselves as genderqueer or nonbinary), and made the decision to stay on puberty blockers for as long as possible (17), after which they microdosed hormones to try and keep themselves from masculising too much, using a prescription from the NHS for oestrogen. After reaching 18, they elected for bottom surgery (vaginoplasty), which was successful, allowing them to reduce the amount of hormones that they need to take.
In their last year of school, they applied, and were accepted, to go to uni to study computer programming. However, during the summer that year (2014), on the way back home after a protest, they were cornered in an alley, and various abuse was hurled, including being called ‘it’, at which point they experienced their first change, transforming into the war form of the werewolves in their rage and tearing into their abusers. Luckily they were close to a Caern (sacred place), and the sept of werewolves that protect it found them relatively quickly, before anyone less savoury could. When they were found, naked and covered in blood, surrounded by the remains of their victims (entirely normal in this situation), they were freaking out as much as anything else about the CCTV. Just as well they were in Glass Walker territory – the tribe that has found it's niche in the city and knows how to deal with such things. Once in the Caern, curiosity overtook trauma as a coping mechanism (the circumstances of their change probably helped diminish the trauma), and by the next day they were actively helping in covering up the mess their change had caused, passing the Glass Walker’s 48 hour test, and therefore fast tracking themselves towards an easier Rite of Passage. The Glasswalkers consider the first 48 hours a test by themselves, and any werewolf that does well during them will be one to watch going forward, so they are given an easy passage through the tests that all cubs need to do to join a tribe. Of course, not everyone in the tribe approves of this, and Rowan found out later that a lot of people considered them to be green and untested because of it, preferring those who had gone through the proper, rigorous tests.
At this point it was clear that they would not be attending university, but without leaving the city, they would not be able to hide themselves safely from their family, which they didn’t want to do in any case. So as far as their mothers knew, they were offered a job in one of the companies owned by the sept. They were given their deed name pretty quickly; they're named for a speech that encouraged a kettled protest to break free. They were attending the protest in their own time, separate from werewolf society, but they were noticed by another werewolf attending who realised that they had seen them plenty of times at other protests, and reported back to the sept. They adapted to werewolf lifestyle fairly easily, but it always played second fiddle to the identities that had always dominated Rowan's self identity; their queerness and being a Londoner. On top of this, there were a number at the sept who considered Rowan to be self-gelded due to their surgery, and looked down on them for it, as werewolves have a number issue, and it is considered the duty of werewolves to have children to keep up the population, which Rowan is unable to do. All of this combined with their insatiable curiosity leading to them asking awkward questions led to them failing to find a pack, even though they were generally sociable, and they ended up in a flat with a couple of other Cilath that were also still without one.
Eventually two of them moved out, leaving Rowan with Serenity and Walkie Talkie, both of whom also stood out awkwardly in the sept, and bonding through that they formed their own small pack. It wasn't very balanced, and there was no clear alpha – one of them would take the role until they were tired of it, and then ask one of the other two to challenge them to a harmless challenge (who can binge netflix the longest, who can win on the level of this video game, who can touch their toes), and they rotated in this way for 6 months or so, until they were joined by Ami and her Metis (child of two werewolves, which is taboo) daughter. Not only was she more self sufficient than the other three, having lived on the streets for quite a while, she also brought a much needed second point of view, coming from the Bone Gnawer tribe, rather than being a Glass Walker like them. It didn't take her very long to settle in and take the alpha role permanently – and also naming the pack ironically, in the fashion of the Bone Gnawers. They were now the Gay Agenda pack.
Between one thing and another, Rowan had never done more than teenage dating up to this stage, but at this stage, they meet and quickly start dating a Kinfolk woman. At first this goes well, until her parents and the Sept find out, at which point they are forcibly separated. Since Rowan is unable to have children, it's made very clear to them that they are not allowed to date a Kinfolk, and therefore stop them from having children (and therefore, maybe, more Garou). Rowan quickly realises that dating someone from outside the community is not an option, as they refuse to have a partner that they can't tell what they are, and as Garou dating Garou is outlawed, they quickly realise that this means that a romantic relationship is not an option for them. At that point, they declare themself aromantic, and declare that this doesn't bother them at all, and after some time come to believe it themself as well. While they continue to pick up one night stands, from this point forward, they actively avoid sleeping with any one person more than once.
After Rowan's first year as a werewolf, they felt confident enough to go to uni, taking up their place that they had delayed by a year, and going on to complete their undergraduate and a masters degree. The household was also joined that year by Sappho, a young woman related to werewolves that needed a room in a household with no men as a foreign student. Unfortunately, no one had thought to check if she actually knew about werewolves or not, since the placement was arranged by her werewolf aunt, and Sappho had a bit of a shock when seeing Ami's daughter for the first time, as as a metis, Revvie's natural form is that of the werewolf warform. It was even more of a shock when during that first year Sappho experienced her first change, as she was older than average, so it had been assumed that she wasn't a werewolf. She went back to her family and their tribe, the Black Furies, to learn to be a werewolf and take the Rite of Passage, taking Walkie Talkie with her so that she could experience life outside the city. When the pair returned, Sappho to finish her degree, she was welcomed into the pack, meaning for the first time that the pack had a member who was born under each phase of the moon, making a surprisingly rounded pack for such a group of misfits. As a pack, they were surprisingly and annoyingly effective, frustrating the werewolves that looked down on them by consistently achieving the goals and tasks that were set for them. Not only were they rounded in terms of auspice, they found they were fairly well balanced in terms of skill set, even if three out of five of them were happiest on the computer (which is hardly surprising in such a Glass Walker heavy pack; poor Ami had to work double translating what the other three were doing out of Extreme Computer Nerd into something that Sappho could understand). Rowan slipped into the role of the outgoing, social greaser of the group, using their overflowing charisma to great effect and always finding creative ways to celebrate the pack's success and make sure that the sept knew about it. Their greatest achievement in their eyes is an ongoing fighting game that they developed, showing off the pack's greatest fights.
After finishing university, Sappho left the pack, but not before finding them a replacement in Skyler, a Get of Fenris who had left his sept in order to transition. Unsurprisingly, Rowan took him under their wing, and it wasn't long until Skyler was accepted into the pack as Sappho's replacement. It was around this time that Rowan finally reached promotion, moving up to the next rank of Fostern. Their challenge for the rank was fairly standard, and they spent almost a week working on the music video and song that they finally presented, honouring the battles and fights that the werewolf they had challenged had been through in the last year, assembled mostly from stolen CCTV footage.
In summer 2021, Skyler left the pack. After a couple of months, he was replaced by Liam, a gay Fianna struggling to get his traditional tribe to accept him. He had come down to London, having heard about the strange queer pack making waves in London, and amused by this, the pack took him in. He turned out to be a well rounded member of the Gay Agenda pack, being the oldest of them and fairly sensible, outside of having been very firmly in the closet for the last 15 years.
During end of year festivals 2021, the caern was attacked. Due to a feint attack on another caern on the other side of London, Rowan and their pack were not initially there, but turned up to turn the tide, along with two other packs from the other caern. During the attack, about a third of the City of London sept died, and the Gay Agenda pack was the only one to survive intact. Rowan took an injury that should have killed them, but managed to rage heal and survive, but ended up with a battle scar across their back. This battle scar aches during cold weather, meaning that if the temperature is under freezing, they are considered bruised (first level of damage, comes with no dice penalties, but means they will start taking them with any additional damage) until the start of the next day.
In the weeks afterwards, both Rowan and Serenity, the only two Gay Agenda wolves to have not made it to adren, the 3rd rank of 6, were promoted to it. The next six months were spent in an arms race against the wyrm, trying to find and destroy as many of it's followers as possible before it can regain the numbers to strike again. During this time, the Gay Agenda pack takes the lead in the majority of the attacks, due to being the highest rank intact pack. Walkie Talkie takes on the role of Mistress of the Rite, a position in the Council of Elders, as the most adept Theurge (druid/sorcerer-ish) left in the sept. Rowan spends more of their time doing reconnaissance and information gathering than fighting, but is still drawn into attack missions on a regular basis.
After 5 months of continual back and forth, Rowan manages to find the wyrmhole that is the source of the corruption, and an attack is set to finally destroy it and cleanse London of it's influence. Rowan uses their gifts to act as bait, luring the forces protecting the Wyrmhole to the combined forces of not only the City of London sept, but the Bone Gnawer's local sept too, while Ami leads the rest of the Gay Agenda pack to take on the Wrymhole itself. The mission is successful, and while not wiped out completely, the presence of the wyrm in the sept's part of London is significantly reduced. Rowan is once again mortally injured, and survives with a battle scar in the form of a bite on their left arm. This scar reduces their strength by 25%.
Please note there are a lot of links on this page - their history should be readable without clicking on any of them, but they're there for anyone who would like more information about or a more thorough description of canon elements and words.
Rowan was born in 1996 to a lesbian couple. Their bio father was a friend of a friend who was happy to donate sperm but didn’t want to be involved in the child's upbringing, and who moved and they lost contact with not long afterwards. Both their bio father and mother are both callow Kinfolk (are related to werewolves, but don't know about them).
As a child, Rowan was loved and well treated. Both of their mothers are very involved in the LGBT+ community, as well as various other left wing protest groups, and they have been attending protests since they were a baby. Their mothers split up when they were six, as Sara (non-bio mother) wanted more children, but their Mum (Jess) didn’t. Rowan lived with their Mum, Sara remarried to Cathy and they have three half siblings on that side that they were often called to babysit. Their mothers and Cathy remain good friends, and Rowan considers themselves to have three mothers.
They were always gender atypical, and went through an extremely feminine stage as a pre-teen, to the point where they reacted violently to being treated as male. Their mothers took them to a gender clinic, and the decision was made to put them on hormone blockers when they reached puberty (13).
At school, they were a fairly average pupil, aside from in IT which they took to like a duck to water, excelling in all aspects. Despite their gender nonconformity and occasional violent outbursts, they had plenty of friends, and were generally liked by teachers and fellow pupils.
As a young teen they began to program various apps for fun, often while babysitting their siblings, and surprisingly one had a decent degree of success. At 15 they were able to sell it for enough money that they could pay off their Mum’s mortgage, with enough left over to put into savings to pay for uni.
During their teenage years they came to the realisation that they were agender (although they often also define themselves as genderqueer or nonbinary), and made the decision to stay on puberty blockers for as long as possible (17), after which they microdosed hormones to try and keep themselves from masculising too much, using a prescription from the NHS for oestrogen. After reaching 18, they elected for bottom surgery (vaginoplasty), which was successful, allowing them to reduce the amount of hormones that they need to take.
In their last year of school, they applied, and were accepted, to go to uni to study computer programming. However, during the summer that year (2014), on the way back home after a protest, they were cornered in an alley, and various abuse was hurled, including being called ‘it’, at which point they experienced their first change, transforming into the war form of the werewolves in their rage and tearing into their abusers. Luckily they were close to a Caern (sacred place), and the sept of werewolves that protect it found them relatively quickly, before anyone less savoury could. When they were found, naked and covered in blood, surrounded by the remains of their victims (entirely normal in this situation), they were freaking out as much as anything else about the CCTV. Just as well they were in Glass Walker territory – the tribe that has found it's niche in the city and knows how to deal with such things. Once in the Caern, curiosity overtook trauma as a coping mechanism (the circumstances of their change probably helped diminish the trauma), and by the next day they were actively helping in covering up the mess their change had caused, passing the Glass Walker’s 48 hour test, and therefore fast tracking themselves towards an easier Rite of Passage. The Glasswalkers consider the first 48 hours a test by themselves, and any werewolf that does well during them will be one to watch going forward, so they are given an easy passage through the tests that all cubs need to do to join a tribe. Of course, not everyone in the tribe approves of this, and Rowan found out later that a lot of people considered them to be green and untested because of it, preferring those who had gone through the proper, rigorous tests.
At this point it was clear that they would not be attending university, but without leaving the city, they would not be able to hide themselves safely from their family, which they didn’t want to do in any case. So as far as their mothers knew, they were offered a job in one of the companies owned by the sept. They were given their deed name pretty quickly; they're named for a speech that encouraged a kettled protest to break free. They were attending the protest in their own time, separate from werewolf society, but they were noticed by another werewolf attending who realised that they had seen them plenty of times at other protests, and reported back to the sept. They adapted to werewolf lifestyle fairly easily, but it always played second fiddle to the identities that had always dominated Rowan's self identity; their queerness and being a Londoner. On top of this, there were a number at the sept who considered Rowan to be self-gelded due to their surgery, and looked down on them for it, as werewolves have a number issue, and it is considered the duty of werewolves to have children to keep up the population, which Rowan is unable to do. All of this combined with their insatiable curiosity leading to them asking awkward questions led to them failing to find a pack, even though they were generally sociable, and they ended up in a flat with a couple of other Cilath that were also still without one.
Eventually two of them moved out, leaving Rowan with Serenity and Walkie Talkie, both of whom also stood out awkwardly in the sept, and bonding through that they formed their own small pack. It wasn't very balanced, and there was no clear alpha – one of them would take the role until they were tired of it, and then ask one of the other two to challenge them to a harmless challenge (who can binge netflix the longest, who can win on the level of this video game, who can touch their toes), and they rotated in this way for 6 months or so, until they were joined by Ami and her Metis (child of two werewolves, which is taboo) daughter. Not only was she more self sufficient than the other three, having lived on the streets for quite a while, she also brought a much needed second point of view, coming from the Bone Gnawer tribe, rather than being a Glass Walker like them. It didn't take her very long to settle in and take the alpha role permanently – and also naming the pack ironically, in the fashion of the Bone Gnawers. They were now the Gay Agenda pack.
Between one thing and another, Rowan had never done more than teenage dating up to this stage, but at this stage, they meet and quickly start dating a Kinfolk woman. At first this goes well, until her parents and the Sept find out, at which point they are forcibly separated. Since Rowan is unable to have children, it's made very clear to them that they are not allowed to date a Kinfolk, and therefore stop them from having children (and therefore, maybe, more Garou). Rowan quickly realises that dating someone from outside the community is not an option, as they refuse to have a partner that they can't tell what they are, and as Garou dating Garou is outlawed, they quickly realise that this means that a romantic relationship is not an option for them. At that point, they declare themself aromantic, and declare that this doesn't bother them at all, and after some time come to believe it themself as well. While they continue to pick up one night stands, from this point forward, they actively avoid sleeping with any one person more than once.
After Rowan's first year as a werewolf, they felt confident enough to go to uni, taking up their place that they had delayed by a year, and going on to complete their undergraduate and a masters degree. The household was also joined that year by Sappho, a young woman related to werewolves that needed a room in a household with no men as a foreign student. Unfortunately, no one had thought to check if she actually knew about werewolves or not, since the placement was arranged by her werewolf aunt, and Sappho had a bit of a shock when seeing Ami's daughter for the first time, as as a metis, Revvie's natural form is that of the werewolf warform. It was even more of a shock when during that first year Sappho experienced her first change, as she was older than average, so it had been assumed that she wasn't a werewolf. She went back to her family and their tribe, the Black Furies, to learn to be a werewolf and take the Rite of Passage, taking Walkie Talkie with her so that she could experience life outside the city. When the pair returned, Sappho to finish her degree, she was welcomed into the pack, meaning for the first time that the pack had a member who was born under each phase of the moon, making a surprisingly rounded pack for such a group of misfits. As a pack, they were surprisingly and annoyingly effective, frustrating the werewolves that looked down on them by consistently achieving the goals and tasks that were set for them. Not only were they rounded in terms of auspice, they found they were fairly well balanced in terms of skill set, even if three out of five of them were happiest on the computer (which is hardly surprising in such a Glass Walker heavy pack; poor Ami had to work double translating what the other three were doing out of Extreme Computer Nerd into something that Sappho could understand). Rowan slipped into the role of the outgoing, social greaser of the group, using their overflowing charisma to great effect and always finding creative ways to celebrate the pack's success and make sure that the sept knew about it. Their greatest achievement in their eyes is an ongoing fighting game that they developed, showing off the pack's greatest fights.
After finishing university, Sappho left the pack, but not before finding them a replacement in Skyler, a Get of Fenris who had left his sept in order to transition. Unsurprisingly, Rowan took him under their wing, and it wasn't long until Skyler was accepted into the pack as Sappho's replacement. It was around this time that Rowan finally reached promotion, moving up to the next rank of Fostern. Their challenge for the rank was fairly standard, and they spent almost a week working on the music video and song that they finally presented, honouring the battles and fights that the werewolf they had challenged had been through in the last year, assembled mostly from stolen CCTV footage.
In summer 2021, Skyler left the pack. After a couple of months, he was replaced by Liam, a gay Fianna struggling to get his traditional tribe to accept him. He had come down to London, having heard about the strange queer pack making waves in London, and amused by this, the pack took him in. He turned out to be a well rounded member of the Gay Agenda pack, being the oldest of them and fairly sensible, outside of having been very firmly in the closet for the last 15 years.
During end of year festivals 2021, the caern was attacked. Due to a feint attack on another caern on the other side of London, Rowan and their pack were not initially there, but turned up to turn the tide, along with two other packs from the other caern. During the attack, about a third of the City of London sept died, and the Gay Agenda pack was the only one to survive intact. Rowan took an injury that should have killed them, but managed to rage heal and survive, but ended up with a battle scar across their back. This battle scar aches during cold weather, meaning that if the temperature is under freezing, they are considered bruised (first level of damage, comes with no dice penalties, but means they will start taking them with any additional damage) until the start of the next day.
In the weeks afterwards, both Rowan and Serenity, the only two Gay Agenda wolves to have not made it to adren, the 3rd rank of 6, were promoted to it. The next six months were spent in an arms race against the wyrm, trying to find and destroy as many of it's followers as possible before it can regain the numbers to strike again. During this time, the Gay Agenda pack takes the lead in the majority of the attacks, due to being the highest rank intact pack. Walkie Talkie takes on the role of Mistress of the Rite, a position in the Council of Elders, as the most adept Theurge (druid/sorcerer-ish) left in the sept. Rowan spends more of their time doing reconnaissance and information gathering than fighting, but is still drawn into attack missions on a regular basis.
After 5 months of continual back and forth, Rowan manages to find the wyrmhole that is the source of the corruption, and an attack is set to finally destroy it and cleanse London of it's influence. Rowan uses their gifts to act as bait, luring the forces protecting the Wyrmhole to the combined forces of not only the City of London sept, but the Bone Gnawer's local sept too, while Ami leads the rest of the Gay Agenda pack to take on the Wrymhole itself. The mission is successful, and while not wiped out completely, the presence of the wyrm in the sept's part of London is significantly reduced. Rowan is once again mortally injured, and survives with a battle scar in the form of a bite on their left arm. This scar reduces their strength by 25%.
Setting
Werewolves are the warriors of this setting. They believe in primal spirits, celestines, such as the earth, Gaia, the sun, Helios, and their patron god Luna, the moon, who (depending on who you ask) gave them their powers. They also believe in the Triat: the Wyld, dynamic wilderness, matter and life, the Weaver, creator of patterns and order, and the Wyrm, which destroys the work of the other two. Some say that the Wyrm was once the source of balance, but whatever the case, today that balance has shifted – man's influence has made the Weaver stronger than ever before, and the Wyrm has fallen to madness, and now seeks to destroy everything that it touches. It's against the Wyrm that the werewolves fight, against the apocalypse that it would wreck on Gaia.
But they're not a unified front: each tribe has it's own beliefs and spin on the tale. Some blame the Weaver and man entirely, others believe that the Weaver's tools can be used to their advantage. Some believe that the apocalypse will be the end of all things, others think that there will be a new world afterwards that the victors will be able to mould to their liking. And with the hunting of wolves to near extinction, werewolves are losing touch with that side of themselves, weakening them still further. With no unified front, their chances of winning the coming war are low, and they know it, and yet they still fail to find the common ground needed to come together.