Of all the peoples the watchers have set eyes upon since the world's cooling, the Lupin are among the most clearly shaped by the beasts that share their blood. Wolf-like in feature and bearing, the Lupin stand upright as any human does, but carry a lupine cast in the sharp muzzle, the pricked and mobile ears, the low-slung power in their haunches, and the dense fur that covers them—grey, black, brown, russet, and the rarer silver-white, often patterned in ways that echo the packs and territories they call home. Clawed hands manage tools and blades as readily as any human's, and a Lupin's eyes hold a keen, low-light clarity that serves them well in the dusk-hunts their kind favors.
The Lupin are a people of the far south, having made their home in the wild territories beyond where Cét-Talam's maps ever thought to reach in any detail—territory rugged enough, and Lupin society insular enough, that few outsiders had cause to know much of them before the kingdom's fall sent refugees stumbling toward their borders. What little was known painted them, not unfairly, as a wary and self-contained people, slow to trust strangers and slower still to forget a wrong done to the pack.
Pack and Pack-Bond
Lupin society is built, unsurprisingly, around the pack—though the tome must clarify for readers unfamiliar with the term that a Lupin pack is closer to an extended clan than to the hunting-groups of true wolves, bound as much by chosen loyalty as by blood. A pack may include dozens of Lupin, sometimes more, spanning several generations, and it is to the pack rather than to any wider nation that a Lupin's deepest loyalty is owed. Lupin who lack a pack—orphaned, exiled, or simply wandered too far from home—are regarded with a mixture of pity and unease by other Lupin, for a packless Lupin is considered, by their own reckoning, only half a person.
Leadership within a pack falls to an Alpha pair, chosen not by birthright but by a combination of strength, judgment, and the pack's collective trust—a trust that can be lost as well as earned, and Alphas who prove reckless or unjust with pack lives have, on more than one recorded occasion, been quietly deposed by their own kin rather than tolerated out of tradition. Beneath the Alphas, a pack organizes into looser roles suited to individual strength: hunters, who provide and defend; watchers, whose keen senses guard the pack's borders; and elders, whose long memory of old grievances and old alliances the pack relies upon before any major decision.
The bond between packmates runs deep enough that the tome's own watchers, who have observed a great many forms of loyalty across the ages, still find it remarkable. A Lupin will risk grave harm to protect a packmate with a readiness that other races often call reckless, and the death of a packmate is mourned with a communal howl that can carry for miles across open country—a sound other races have learned, over the years, to recognize and to leave well alone.
Wariness and Trust
The Lupin's caution toward outsiders is not baseless. Long isolation in difficult southern territory taught them, across generations, that unfamiliar faces more often bring danger than aid, and pack instinct runs deep enough that even individual Lupin who might personally warm to a stranger will often defer to the pack's more guarded judgment. Trust, once given, is a serious thing among the Lupin—closer to a pack-bond extended outward than to the casual trust other races offer freely and revoke just as easily.
This is what makes their alliance with the fleeing humans, brokered through elven persuasion, so remarkable a moment in the tome's account of that age. For Lupin packs to extend aid to strangers, on the word of the Athàn-Garrow alone, without any long history of trust to draw upon, speaks to something the tome considers worth recording plainly: that whatever their wariness, the Lupin are not without compassion for suffering clearly and honestly shown to them. Several Lupin packs are known to have guided human refugees through southern passes that would otherwise have swallowed them entirely, at real cost to their own hunting grounds and, in at least one recorded account, at the cost of pack lives lost defending refugees from creatures loosed by Cét-Talam's fall.
Lupin Subgroups by Territory
Grayfang Lupin (southern highlands) The largest and most populous of the known Lupin packs-of-packs, the Grayfang favor grey and black coats suited to the stone and scrub of the southern highlands. They are considered the most traditional of the Lupin groupings, holding tightly to Alpha-led governance and pack-bond customs, and were among the first to answer the Athàn-Garrow's call to aid the human refugees.
Emberrun Lupin (southern scrublands, near volcanic vents) Marked by reddish-brown fur and an unusually high tolerance for heat, the Emberrun make their home near the scattered volcanic vents of the deep south. Somewhat more aggressive in temperament than other Lupin groupings, quick to challenge trespassers, though fiercely protective of packmates and allies once trust is earned.
Silverhowl Lupin (southern coast, near the Obsidian Sea) Rare and reclusive, marked by pale silver-white coats, the Silverhowl dwell along the remote southern coastline and are said to communicate across great distances using long, layered howls that carry information—danger, welcome, mourning—encoded in pattern rather than mere volume. Little else is reliably known of them, as they are the most withdrawn of all Lupin groupings, even from other Lupin packs.
Duskmere Lupin (southern borderlands, overlapping human Duskmere elven territory) Named, as the Duskmere elves are, for the borderland territory they share, this pack-grouping has had the most regular contact with other races through trade and shared land, and is correspondingly the least insular of the Lupin groupings—though "least insular" among the Lupin still means considerably more guarded than most other peoples of Dúnamhar.
- AGILE: Wolf-like grace gives Lupin a d6 Agility attribute instead of a d4. This increases maximum Agility to d12+1.
- BITE: Lupin fangs cause Str+d4 damage and may be used against grappled foes.
- LOW LIGHT VISION: Lupin eyes amplify light. They ignore penalties for Dim and Dark Illumination.