hey all. i'm developing a series of interwoven werewolf questlines for the Province: Cyrodiil mod, and could use some suggestions for fitting clan names. although werewolves did not appear in TESIV, and are therefore not officially 'canon', i'd like for the clan names to be as lore-based as possible.

here's a brief description of each:


- Redguard Clan (only joinable by Redguards). a werewolf clan dedicated to the purity of their Redguard blood. believing that, because of the races natural aversion to disease and sickness, that it is a miracle or blessing of sorts that they became werecreatures. they are fierce, proud hunters and warriors. their territory is along the northern Gold Coast up into the Colovian Highlands.

- Blackwood Clan. living in the trees of the swampland area of Blackwood, this clan of thieves and acrobats possess the ability to control the fauna of the area and to deceive their opponents through Illusion Magic.

- Northern Clan. existing in the mountains along Cyrodiil's northern border with Skyrim, this clan possesses a strong resistance to cold, whether natural or magical. due to the harsh climate and scarce prey, they have developed the ability to go much longer without feeding than the other clans. also, when they do feed, the bonuses gained are much more intense and of longer duration.

- Great Forest Clan. the most loosely knit clan, the Werewolves of the Great Forest coexist and cooperate for the sole purpose of surviving the constant attacks from other clans. they make their homes in caves and dens throughout the dense forested area west of the Imperial City, and come together when council is needed at an enormous hidden cavern just north of Fort Wooden Hand. they've learned to use all the forest has to offer and therefore excel at Alchemy, as well as exhibiting an innate resistance to most forms of magic, excluding that from fire.

any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

I do recall Vampires clans but I don't recall werewolf clans, they're all just Hircines hounds. There'd be nothing to base their names on. The names would only have to sound pleasant and perhaps be vaguely related to where they are from.

Werewolves don't form clannes.. They haven't the same origin story as they do in real life lore... they are just followers of a daedric prince and don't form clannes....

Werewolves are induviduals and don't know wich other humans are fellow werewolves... sometimes they form packs but that's most of the time for a special assignement of Hircine.. but then again a pack isn't a clan...

Most lycan tend to stay to themselves, since they're either driven crazy from the disease (like the lunatics you see in BM), or don't want others to find out (the less people know, the safer your secret is). Plus, when they are a werewolf, they're not going to remember whose butt they were sniffing the other day when they were werewolves, let alone what happened, other than seeing an image of Hiricine. The ring is the exception.

I dunno, I just don't like the idea of werewolf clans.

that's why i gave the descriptions!

i guess when i say 'lore-based' i really mean 'lore-sounding'. like, i imagine the Redguard Clan would be something like 'proud wolf', but in their native tongue. stuff like that. there's a lot of room for creative license here, i just thought i'd throw a line out to those who may have more knowledge of lore than i.

thanks though.

Why wouldn't a pack of hounds be a clan?
It fits the same purposes pretty much.

The clan is a certain amount of people joining together for what ever purpose they feel like.
A pack is the same thing.

Thou usually the hounds of Hircine dont form packs/clans but keep them for themselves, for different reasons.

they aren't hounds they are werewolves...
The Elder Scrolls Werewolves are most of the time lunatics infested with a disease and ideed mst off them don't remebered what happened that night and when they are a werewolf they can't seperate friend and enemy..

It just doesn't make sense at all that bloodthirsty servants of a daedra lord would form seperate clans since they are all servants of the same one... and thus have no other goal then to serve him..

I know.
But it doesn't change the fact that they can in rare occasions form a pack/clan.

And by hound I of course meant Werewolf, I thought that was obvious...

i can't find it now, but i thought i read something about the Solstheim werewolves, or 'Hounds of Hircine', being much more feral than the others. even to the point that they are forced to change once a day, whereas varieties elsewhere do not.

anyway. as i mentioned, i'm not looking for something tied down to existing lore. although they were mentioned as residing in Cyrodiil, they were left out of TESIV entirely, leaving their existence to speculation. my goal is that -- to use existing information to imagine what the Cyrodiilic version of the beasts may have been like.

thanks either way, though.

How's this?

The Rihad Howlers.

The Swamp Dogs.

The Whiterun Runners.

The West Weald Wolves.

The Tampa Bay Rays

:P

Just grab either one of thehttp://www.imperial-library.info/pge/'s and look at some of the names used, then come up with something in the same vein. Can't do that work for you.

that's the point there are no others.. all werewolves are warriors of Hircine...



There's a difference between a clan and a pack.... they would form a pack as being werewolves to hunt the same prey... A clan is probably a unity with a banner and symbol and they would know each other and (as QuixoteUgly describes) most clans fight other clans while i doubt that werewolve packs would attack other packs.... Since they all serve Hircine.. Hircine is the prince of the hunt, the game... He wants the werewolves to hunt cuz that enjoys him... when they're fighting each other with clan wars they wouldn't hunt... wich is what Hircine wants them to do...

could a mod lock this, please? it was a simple request for suggestions, but the point was obviously missed. :facepalm:

You're thinking of the Bloodmoon itself. During the bloodmoon, all werewolves transform every night. Not just his specific hounds(Which I suspect are actually Daedra and don't transform). They all serve Hircine though.

As for werewolf clans. They're very unlikely. Good way to draw attention to yourself and get a bunch of you killed. Only way I could see it working out is if it isn't advertised, and inductions were done very very cautiously. They also wouldn't meet up at night, as that would be another good way to get yourselves killed. The only realistic "clan" I could see is Hircine's followers. And not all of them are werewolves.

The same could be said for vampires, and yet they have clans.

I don't see why a bunch of werewolves couldn't all form a pack, retreat to some remote area in the middle of no-where, and have fun killing deer or guar or something.

You talk of Hircine's Hounds - well, what about the other forms of Lycanthropy? Wereboar, Wereshark, etc. They aren't "hounds" and the lycanthropy is passed on as a disease rather than transmitted as some sort of magic thing from a Daedric ritual to Hircine. Same with vampires - and yet, you don't see them strictly worshiping Molag Bal (or whomever spawned them).

Since lycanthropes normally only change during the 'full' phases of the two moons (except during the Bloodmoon), it is feasible that a person could 'hide' amongst the sheep (so to speak). The odd relative that retreats to the remote hunting cabin every few weeks? What of it?

But still the Hounds (Werewolves) hunt for Hircine mostly around the time of the Bloodmoon and during the other parts of their life they do... like most other Werecreatures, do what the feel like.
And as said by Alaisiagae "the lycantrophy [disease/curse] is passed on as a disease rather than transmitted as some sort of magic thing from a Daedric ritual to Hircine. Same with vampires - and yet, you don't see them strictly worshiping Molag Bal (or whomever spawned them)."

thanks Alaisiagae and Adaqueril for providing good, open-minded counterpoints to the more "because i've only experienced them in TESIII: Bloodmoon a certain way, that must be the only way it can be" posts. :thumbsup:

honestly, though, i've come to the conclusion that no one's interested in addressing the original point of this thread in a serious manner, so i ask that it be closed.

thanks for the discussion though.

I will give a point towards clans in this statement. Daggerfall oftentimes had dungeons with several werecreatures in a room, so it's not completely farfetched that they'd gather together. I never said it was impossible after all.



Hircine seems to want them to kill something more sporting(people), and punishes them when they don't. Also the Daedra are the original creatures that passed lycanthropy to mortals. They're the ones that infect you in Bloodmoon after all. Vampires don't completely lose their minds every night to satisfy Hircine's hunting requirements. Molag Bal doesn't seem to care too much what they do. Hircine does care about what his "cursed" do though.

I can see one or two clans, but it's definitely not going to be like an Elks Lodge setup. I think even if werewolves are solitary, wolves and people are not, so it's feasible that in one town with a high infection rate would have some family members and childhood friends, who maybe were even born with the disease (werewolf parents) so would not tear each other apart.

I just envision this decrepit hunting tavern at the edge of a small village. The Hounds. The Huntsmen. The Roe's Head. Basically, all the NPCs inside are werewolves, unfriendly to everyone, if you rented a room there you'd prolly be attacked.

They more niche-oriented and more vaguely specific your request for brain-storming is, the less people around here are going to answer it. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, but the thing is, we're very well-practiced at attacking (or at least trying to attack) the root of a problem, so when you give us something to bounce ideas off of something, we're much more helpful at saying "yeah, that could work" or at coming up with explanations than we are at doing something flavory. Also, we tend to be very tangential over here, so deal with it.

That being said, your descriptions for one of those packs is incongruous with the others. Allow me to elaborate:

Blackwood Clan: a group of werewolves living in Blackwood whose skillset is well suited to hunting prey in that environment
Northern Clan: a group of werewolves living in the Jeralls whose skillset is well suited to hunting prey in that environment
Greatwood Clan: a group of werewolves living in Blackwood whose skillset is well suited to surviving in the more populated areas and territory encroachments from the other clans
Redguard Clan (my suggestion for a name: Ra'wota): a group of Redguard werewolves living (probably not exclusively) in Cyrodiil who are deeply and culturally protective of their race's culture.

I mention this because it speaks to why I was able to brainstorm a name for one of your packs in a matter of seconds and still am at a loss with the other ones. For the first three, you elaborated on how living in said area affected their skillset, whereas for the last one you talked about the members who make up the pack and their ideals. While both are necessary in order to put into the game, only one of them is useful in coming up with a name. To use a metaphor, you gave us three sticks and a baby to name. It doesn't matter how different the sticks are, we're still going to shrug our shoulders and offer 'Joe?'

So after that big description and finger wagging at both you and the forum (a little) and after my one stab at your request, my point is this: I agree with Proweler. Either give us more to go on or come up with it on your own.

as mentioned in my original post, i see the clans living more like animals than men. making their homes in caves or trees, they band together out of an instinctive sense of family and for their own protection (as well as out of fear of the clan leadership or 'alphas', in some cases). of course, this would vary, depending on the overall disposition of the clan. some would have members who occasionally live in nearby towns and villages as men, to gather information, supplies, and to manipulate and lure victims outside the relatively safe walls of civilization.

it seems ridiculous to me that werewolves wouldn't make alliances or develope and respect familial instincts. there are already in-game instances of the creatures living as men (Tharsten Heart-Fang and the player him/herself), and the Bloodmoon only occurs once every thousand years, if i'm not mistaken.

anyway, as afore mentioned, the discussion on whether or not werewolves might bond together into packs is a moot one. i've already established that this will be the case in this particular mod. what i was asking for was suggestions for lore-sounding names for these groups, based on the short descriptions provided.

everything else is off topic.

Where are you getting this? :huh:

EDIT: @The OP: This is the lore forum, we're talking about clan. If you wanted only names, post on the General Discussion of Morrowind or something. Usually posting in the Lore Forum entails conversation about tangential matters. I would ask that the thread remain open, so that discussion into the viability of werewolf clans can continue.

@Mehrunes Dagon

well, while my descriptions were a bit more detailed than your paraphrasing of them , i understand what you're saying. honestly, i didn't start this thread as a "give me an answer to my problems" type of inquiry. i was merely looking for a little discussion and some possible suggestions from those that most likely spend more time pondering this stuff than i do.

thanks for your suggestions though, especially the one for the Redguard Clan!

You don't have to call them clans. They could be tribes or packs.

Indeed Tribes or Packs would fit Werecreatures better, but of course IF they could remember what they do and so on in their Human/Mer/Creature lives they could very well form more ordinary clans for themselves.

I don't think there werewolf would be able to remeber with wich werewolves he formed a pack the previous Wolf-night (can't think of another name )