Sorry for linking the whole thread to another site I will put it on this post asap sweatdrop I will keep this link up till I finish writing the whole post.
The most important thing that you must do now is take everything you have ever heard about werewolves and put them away. Now the biggest thing about the Garou is that they are not made, they are born. Garou don't have to be born as humans, they can also be born as a wolf and sometimes as a werewolf. Another major part of being a garou is the first change. Before the first change a Garou lives for the most part as a normal wolf or human. For those born as a werewolf they lead an odd life. They live in Garou society from birth and fit in rather well except for their disfigurement and the fact that they can't change forms. The first change almost never ends well. Something always ends up dead and most times the events of the first change though masked by the veil force the young Garou to leave. With the first change comes the ability to change forms as well as fluency in Garou and if lupis born, an understanding of human language and if homid born, an understanding of wolf.
So now that we have gotten past the basics things get much more complicated. The Garou are divided into tribes. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages. Each garou also is marked by the sign of the moon that they were born under. Both there traits as well as which birth they had (human, wolf, or metis) will shape who they are and the abilities that they have.
The Garou are usually divided into packs after they pass their rite of passage which happens after their first change. A pack is like a family and like a family they are together because they will work well together not always because they want to be together.
Some of what you have seen in movies or read in stories does hold true to the Garou. The biggest is that they are hurt by silver. There are some exceptions: in homid (human looking) form silver doesn't hurt them at all, if the garou was lupis (wolf born) it doesn't hurt them in lupis (wolf) form. Garou also have regeneration abilities in any form, but their breed form.
Now for a little on how the Garou fit into the World of Darkness (WoD). In WoD the people think of werewolves as what you set aside at the beginning of this post: can't touch silver, they have marks on their hands, they change at the full moon, so on and so forth. Though this is mostly untrue the Garou make no attempt to correct these myths and in some cases enforce them because it helps to hide what they really are. The only thing that keeps the Garou mostly hidden from the human population of the world is The Veil. The Veil, which somewhat masks all supernatural activity from humans, will drive a human who sees a Garou in Chrinos temporally insane because the primal fear of the Garou that originates from the time of the Inquisition when the Garou would cull the humans to keep them inline. Afterwards the human mind will rationalize the event and chances are they will think it was someone in a costume or something along that line. The Veil in not perfect, there are some who are unaffected by it. These can include Kinfolk (humans who have Garou blood, but not the gene), other supernatural being relatives, people with an extremely high willpower, and those who just simply aren't affected such as Hunters.
Ok so because every WTA section in the books has a quote I may as well put one in myself.
"Hero's think they can save the world when they themselves are lost, you could not possibly understand the dark forces at work here. " Seem Jak 3The Garou view themselves as Gaia's only defenders, and this is their biggest mistake. There used to be others, but they were mostly killed off by the Garou. The few who are left are no friends of the Garou and are trying to save Gaia themselves. In this sense the Garou have already lost the war they are waging, but they have also lost much more than their only allies, they have lost each other. The Garou have split into twelve tribes, most of which fight with one another. There are however two tribes that don't fight with the others, but their paths differ from one another. The Children of Gaia have taken a passive, but important roll in the Garou Nation, they have opened their tribe to those who have been rejected by others for petty reasons. Because of this they are the largest tribe. The Stargazers upped and left the Garou Nation to join with some of the other changing breeds. This has hurt the Garou, but by far it is not the most harmful thing to their battle against the forced that would destroy Gaia. It is their pure ignorance of what they are fighting that will be their downfall. Though they do know some things about what they are up against, they are too concerned with their differences to notice the things happening around them. The largest help to the Garou is the fallen tribe called The Black Spiral Dancers (sometimes referred to as Dancers, Black Spirals, or with the younger generations the BSD). Though they have fallen to the Wyrm and are a huge threat to the other tribes they are what open a Garou's eyes to the possibility of falling to the Wyrm. This keeps most Garou from falling completely to the Wyrm, but it is all too easy to find Wyrm taint in every Garou.
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