The Garou are better known to other creatures as werewolves, and they are every bit as frightening and mysterious as such beasts have always been in folklore and legend. Once mortals (either humans or wolves) who awoke to their true nature in adolescence, they consider themselves the custodians of the planet and the only race with a true rapport with Mother Earth, which in turn means that they often take matters into their own hands when it comes to issues like pollution, destruction of natural resources, or any species attempting to assert dominance over them. They tend to be violently opposed to all other races except for human beings, and even humans, who have such a terrible track record when it comes to despoiling the land and attempting to take over the planet, do not necessarily get a free pass from them.

For obvious reasons, Garou tend to congregate in natural areas and uncivilized wildernesses, and are much fewer and more difficult to find in cities and industrialized areas. They are not unknown in the modern world, however, and cities often see a few Garou lurk around their less developed edges, in their large landscaped parks, or slumming among mortals in order to achieve some errand known only to them.

Werewolf Forms

Contrary to the werewolves of legend, most Garou do have a degree of control over their forms, and may choose to transform into their more lupine shapes when they deem it appropriate. Some Garou do accidentally shift when they become too angry or scent enticing prey too close, while others do have the traditional connection to the moon, but for the most part they choose when to stand on two feet and when to stand on four.

• Homid: Garou in Homid form look like normal, everyday human beings (although they often have an air of savagery around them that makes actual human beings uncomfortable).
• Glabro: Garou in Glabro form become significantly larger, more muscled, and more feral, with fur and various animal features on their still mostly-human frame.
• Crinos: Garou in Crinos form are a terrifying nightmare, nine feet tall with the vague shape of a human but the slavering jaws, teeth, and claws of a gigantic wolf.
• Hispo: Garou in Hispo form resemble the ancient, now-extinct arctic dire wolves, much larger and more dangerous than an average wolf and frightening in their prehistoric bestiality.
• Lupus: Garou in Lupus form look like normal wolves and cannot be distinguished except by actual wolves, who find them unsettling.

Werewolf Society

Garou are insular and unfriendly, rejecting almost everyone except for their own small communities; many are even hostile to other Garou, considering a visit from a foreign werewolf to be an unwelcome challenge to their territory. Since they can't breed among themselves and must mate with either normal humans or wolves to produce new Garou, they frequently drift into populated areas and then back out again with all due haste, uncomfortable anywhere but their traditional haunts.

Packs

Most Garou are members of a single pack, which typically consists of three to eight Garou and has a hierarchy that functions much like that of a mortal wolf pack. Packs replace conventional family units, which most Garou can't cultivate due to their feral natures, and generally either travel as a unit in order to accomplish a specific goal, or more commonly remain based out of a home Cairn or Sept in a particular area (which the highly territorial Garou vastly prefer). Ties between members of a pack are close, and any threat to any one of them is generally seen as a threat to the others that should be met with all due force.

Septs

Several Garou packs may live around a Cairn (a spiritual center) in close proximity to one another, forming a Sept. Septs usually have an overall name to describe those Garou living within it, and are dedicated to protecting the Cairn from any outside forces that might threaten it, from landscaping developers that might pave it over to unscrupulous mages meddling with the natural order of things. Septs generally have older Garou who act as leaders and fulfill ritualized roles to keep conflict to a minimum, and meet as a unit only once per month, when they discuss any business they cannot resolve in their packs on their own.

Kinfolk

Unlike normal humans, Kinfolk are not affected by the uncomfortable presence of the Garou, and can coexist with them without succumbing to their fears at any moment. This is entirely reasonable, since Kinfolk are always related to Garou in some way, but did not become Garou themselves. Some Kinfolk are the children of Garou who, for whatever reason, did not breed true; others are extended members of the family, but all have a blood tie to the werewolves. Kinfolk may be either humans or wolves.

Kinfolk cannot hold rank or have any true say in the affairs of the Garou, but they are still considered part of their communities and to be protected (and ordered around) as necessary. Depending on a given pack or Sept's outlook, Kinfolk may be valued members of the community, forgettable by-blows who hang around the edges of society, or little more than useful slaves to do the grunt work for them. Many Kinfolk are kept in Garou communities because of the belief that they are more likely to breed new Garou than a normal human being or wolf would be, and are frequently considered only as valuable as they are fertile.

Regardless of their second-class-citizen status, Kinfolk are still considered to belong to the Garou, and any action taken against one of them is likely to be met with brutal, wolfish force from the pack that considers that Kin "theirs".

Other Shapeshifters

Although the Garou are by far the most numerous and likely to be encountered in modern nights, they are not the only form of shapeshifter in existence, with several branches of "cousins" in various parts of the world. Other shapeshifters, many of them extremely rare and confined to small geographic areas, include:

• The Ajaba are were-hyenas, indigenous to the African savannas and very few in number now that humanity has thinned their habitat so severely.
• The Ananasi are were-spiders, almost universally disliked and viewed with massive suspicion, especially since so many of them seem to have their own designs on the world.
• The Anurana are were-frogs, a very rare and unfriendly shapeshifting breed that spends most of their time harassing particularly harmful mortal companies and operations.
• The Ao are were-turtles, and are perhaps the rarest of all the shapeshifting breeds; few even among other shapeshifters have ever seen them or even know they exist.
• The Apis are were-bulls, found only in a few remote old areas of the Mediterranean now, once considered the authorities on breeding new shapeshifters.
• The Bastet are were-cats of many different breeds, from mild housecat all the way up to mighty lion, and generally remain in small territorial areas that they defend viciously.
• The Bunyip are were-thylacines (Tasmanian tigers), and only a handful of them still hang on in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, almost completely wiped out by invading Garou.
• The Camazotz are were-bats, mostly reduced to a very tiny handful in the jungles of Central America, where their numbers were almost destroyed by the invasion of the Spanish.
• The Corax are were-ravens, and usually act as messengers, gossips, and tale-spinners who form one of the only arteries for communication between the different shapeshifting breeds.
• The Grondr are were-boars or pigs, with very few left alive in modern times and most extremely hostile toward the humanity that domesticated their animal kin.
• The Gurahl are were-bears, rare and reclusive, typically living as hermits in remote wilderness areas rather than interact with humanity or anyone else.
• The Kerasi are were-rhinoceri, found only in remote areas in Africa and prone to unreasonable rage and attacks on animals and humans alike that they claim were provoked by some slight or other.
• The Kitsune are were-foxes, generally viewed with mistrust and dislike by most of the other shapeshifting breeds due to their mischievous natures.
• The Mokele are were-crocodiles... or were-dinosaurs, or were-dragons, depending on who has seen the few of them most recently and how angry they were at the time.
• The Nagah are were-snakes, judgmental and dangerous to the other shapeshifting breeds, whom they police and even execute when they deem them to be out of control.
• The Nuwisha are were-coyotes, more prone to pranks and misbehavior than their other canine cousins, now mostly operating out of the American southwest.
• The Ratkin are were-rats, a shapeshifting breed now discriminated against by most other breeds who have gained the human dislike for their totem animal.
• The Rokea are were-sharks, originating in the seas of the Pacific Islands and very rarely, if ever, seen on land or anywhere too far from their traditional territories.
• The Samsa are were-cockroaches, and it's good that their numbers are so low since they are universally hated and usually cannot handle the mental horror of their own transformations.

Most Garou don't even encounter these other shapeshifters, let alone any normal human beings or other supernatural creatures; they are rare, unfriendly, and most have good reason to dislike the Garou, since the werewolves have long considered themselves the dominant form of shapeshifter and attempted to conquer, enslave, or marginalize the others. A few individual shapeshifters of other breeds, if they can be located at all, might consider allying with the Garou for short periods of time when it benefits them, but it's just as likely that they would immediately abandon the Garou cause before it began, or initiate violence if the wolves intruded into their domains.

Werewolves and Vampires

Thanks to their connection to humanity and some similar powers between them, vampires and werewolves are perhaps the two supernatural creatures that have had the most interaction and developed the longest history together. Of course, this does not necessarily make them like one another very much, and many disasters and calamities on both sides have historically been blamed on the interference of the other supernatural species where it didn't belong.

Aggression Between Species

Put simply, Garou and Kindred hate each other. Vampires usually refer to Garou as "Lupines", not knowing (or caring) any better, and vastly dislike them because they represent one of the few credible threats against them, not to mention being aggressive whenever their paths cross and prone to trying to prevent vampire influence or intrusion into their domains. Werewolves, in turn, refer to vampires as the pejorative "leeches" and consider them emblematic representatives of everything wrong with the world, and many of them consider it their sworn duty to destroy any and all vampires they encounter as a matter of principle.

Small groups (or, more usually, individuals) of vampires and werewolves have been known to work together on occasion, particularly members of the Gangrel or Tzimisce, but this is exceptionally rare and never lasts long, and usually has more to do with ignoring one another or failing to immediately engage in a fight to the death than with actually helping each other.

Abominations

Although it is incredibly uncommon, werewolves (and other shapeshifters) may once in a blue moon be Embraced and become a vampire. The vast majority of attempts to do this end in sudden death for the werewolf, since most of them are extremely allergic to the tainted blood that runs in a vampire's veins, but a tiny number survive and take on traits of both supernatural species. Such terrible creatures are referred to as Abominations, and are reviled by vampires and werewolves alike.

Abominations can still shift forms as they did before as well as having access to all the power granted by vampiric blood, but the conflict of the two types of supernatural blood in their system causes terrible deformities and psychological stress, and most become completely incapable of maintaining even a semblance of humanity. Those few who do retain some amount of sanity can learn and use vampiric Disciplines and attempt to act like the person they once were, but even they usually suffer from heavy derangements and slowly become less and less capable of rational thought as time goes by.

Most Abominations are accidents, the result of a vampire attempting to Embrace a person they did not realize was a werewolf until it was too late. A few werewolves seek out vampiric masters in an attempt to prolong their lives or leave werewolf society behind, but most of them die as usual when the Embrace occurs. Some vampires may use the Embrace as a threat or form of execution for a werewolf they know personally and particularly hate, but even this is rare; since both vampires and werewolves despise Abominations and generally destroy them on sight, any vampire foolish enough to have knowingly created one is likely to suffer from the immediate and violent displeasure of their fellows.

It is much safer - or at least, less immediately fatal for everyone involved - for a Garou to be made into a ghoul, although this also does not always work since a werewolf's system may reject even this small amount of blood, and they tend to burn it away quickly and become un-ghouled much more quickly than humans. Those Garou who do become ghouls are usually unmanageable and violent ones, and likely to lash out against their "masters" or attack them in order to drink all of their blood in one fell swoop. Kinfolk are a safer prospect for ghouling or the Embrace, since both processes work normally, but of course any Garou who were related to that Kin might take supreme offense to such an action.