10. They call themselves 'Ferals'.
They refer to their Tribe with a growl/snarl combination whose rough translation is 'the Garou'. Most of them can't even PRONOUNCE 'feral'--it takes time in human form to learn how to move a homid mouth and create that combination of sounds, and most of them could care less about such an accomplishment.
9. Ferals hate humans.
Your average Feral would claim that hatred is a human emotion that a superior species has no need for. (Smugness, on the other hand, seems to cross all boundaries.) Humans who know their proper role, which is to be a group of awkward, pale monkeys who pose no threat to wolf safety, wolf food supply, wolf territory or the Wyld in general, are just fine. There are numerous cases of bands of humans, ranging from a few individuals to several hundred, being allowed to regularly pass through Feral territory in their nomadic migrations, and even settle for a season or two. It should be noted that without exception these humans are at a Stone Age technology level and take great care to leave no trace as they move about.
8. Ferals do not understand technology, and can be easily frightened away by humans dramatically brandishing a glowtorch or starting up a power saw.
It is true that an action like this might stun a group of Ferals long enough for a feckless group to attempt a getaway, as it is the equivalent of peeing in a town well during the busiest part of Market Day while waving a sign reading 'Ha Ha I'm Poisoning Your Water Supply' and singing three choruses of "You're Going to Get Very Sick, All Thanks To Me," but it is NOT RECOMMENDED.
Ferals are very very aware of what technology is. Technology is a creation of the Weaver which grew unchecked until it was nearly too late and almost destroyed the world. As if that was not enough, they feel that each item of technology carries a small fraction of the Weaver, and that bringing a technological item into a place no Weaver-fragment has ever been before strengthens the Weaver at the expense of the Wyld. They understand technology the way a gardener understands a woodchuck sneaking towards her prize carrots, and the response is roughly the same.
7. Ferals do not understand magic, and can be easily frightened away by humans dramatically brandishing a glowing sword or starting up an incantation.
Even setting aside the fact that Ferals have mystical abilities themselves, and that many Feral opponents even before the dilution of paradox used magic of one sort or another, Ferals generally have at least as much exposure to magic as their better-known cousins do. During the Long Night, many Feral groups formed a symbiotic relationship with nature- and spirit-oriented magic-users who had fled to the wilderness for shelter. (There are also the legends of more "colorful" mages who are said to have operated with, or even LED, groups of Ferals, 'Tarzan, Lord of the Yosemite Jungle' and 'Lonnie Chaney and her Magic Monsters of Movieland' being the two most notorious. If there is any truth behind these folktales, the Ferals are not telling.). Many of the Stone Age-level humans mentioned previously are led by nature-mages, some of them descendents of the mages who made pacts during the Long Night-one or two claim to be the original mages, unnaturally preserved, reincarnated, or 'year-blipped', whatever that means.
6. Ferals are stupid, and do not understand human languages unless the person addressing them speaks very loudly and slowly, and repeats himself several times.
While it is true that some Ferals are brighter than others and that quite a few Ferals have no interest in learning how to speak a human language, gambling that a Feral you're addressing is less intelligent than you are, less fluent in your language than you are, AND naturally inclined to be polite and patient with smelly, loud tourists is so amazingly dim that your insurance agency might hire a Time Mage to retroactively cancel your policy. (Check your policy right before you leave. It won't prevent you from doing something stupid, but you'll be slightly more ready for the consequences.) It should be borne in mind that for every Feral you actually see, there are at least three that you never do. It should also be borne in mind that Feral territories have Gauntlets so thin that a hiccup can sometimes send a spirit skidding into 'our' world, so any crow or squirrel watching you might be centuries old, fluent in several languages and more than happy to translate if you say something they feel a Feral should know. The wise hominid in Feral territory always speaks and acts as if a Feral who understands his language perfectly is standing right behind him.
Quite often, one is.
5. Ferals are cuddly grey doggies who help lost children find their grandma's cottage and secretly yearn to play fetch and sleep in your kitchen. Especially the cute little puppies.
First, a word about Feral puppies--Never touch the cubs. Never touch the cubs. Never! Touch! the Cubs! The difference between a dog (well, most dogs) and a wolf is the difference between a butter knife and a scalpel. Make the scalpel venom-coated with nasty jagged bits and threatening spikes all up and down it, and you have a Feral. If they wanted to sleep in your kitchen they'd break down your door, destroy anything Weaverish (and you'd be amazed what that can include) and/or slightly threatening and/or annoying and sleep there. Fortunately for you, they don't and never will.
Every year some idiot whose great-grandparents were missionaries gets the idea that if the Ferals just were told about domestication and urban life they'd realize it was a great concept and come down from the hills and buy everyone an ale with their Garou Gold (see #4) and register to vote. The very reason the Ferals came into being was to be an alternative to what they saw as a Garou Nation corrupted by domestication and urban life: they saw their peers as intoxicated with human weaknesses and vices, too caught up in politics, backstabbing, and skullduggery to be effective protectors, and saw renunciation of all these things as the only course for a true Gaian servant to take. They see their survival and rescue of the sun (for of course they, like every other supernatural group, are convinced that their members were responsible for the end of the Long Night) as vindications of this belief system.
Never forget that they're wild animals, and damn proud of it. And never EVER touch a cub.
4. Ferals have enormous hidden caches of (in order of increasing improbability) a) magical items and antiques taken in raids upon vampire Elders and other Setites, b) silver, confiscated so it couldn't ever be used against them, c) gems and gold from abandoned mines, d) living crystal-and gem-spirits that dance and sing at the hearts of their Caerns, e) pots of leprechaun gold they guard as a favor to the Fae.
No.
In case I need to elaborate, consider this: the war the Ferals waged was almost entirely defensive, and took place in areas where almost no organized human inroads had been made. No inroads = no gold mines or leprechauns or vampire mansions stuffed with antiques, and no silver or artifacts apart from what their opponents carried in with them (which almost invariably were destroyed in the fighting, or buried where those opponents fell. It goes without saying that digging at a battlesite in hopes of uncovering a silver bullet or necromantic tchotchke will not make you many friends).
It is theoretically possible that there are gem-spirits and untapped gold veins in Feral territory. It is also possible that these things exist on one of the moons of Saturn. A sensible prospector, given these options, would start building a rocket ship.
3. Ferals are almost extinct; they were rare before the Darkness and the centuries of near-constant war after that has left them with a tenth of the numbers of the other tribes.
Let's say a female Kin-wolf has a litter every two years, starting at age three. This is conservative. Assuming an average number of litters in her lifetime, an average number of healthy pups per litter, an average amount of pups surviving into adulthood, this single female will leave behind a legacy of twelve more Kinfolk and at least one Garou, all of whom will be adults and ready to reproduce upon reaching three years of age themselves.
While wolf populations were in great danger in the years before the Great Darkness, records now reveal that a few vampires were pushing to safeguard their populations even before the end of their Masquerade; these were the ones who could take the shape of wolves themselves, and/or (correctly or incorrectly) felt that they could control wolves' minds enough to make them 'useful', or who simply felt they, as the diary of one Toreador put it 'added a bit of ambiance'. Whatever the cause, once the vampires gained world domination most of their attention turned either inwards or to supernatural threats, and as the human populations died off or fled wolves and other previously-endangered species slipped through the cracks. They were much more likely to be secondary targets during attacks by Wyrmspawn or vampires on Garou, a fact taken into account by the Ferals.
As a result of all this, when the Sun returned the Ferals were battered but equivalent in numbers to the other tribes, while their Kin had increased greatly. There has been no way for outside observers to truly gauge Feral numbers since then, but most informed sources find it quite likely that the Ferals, even before you add in the other Shifters they count as loose allies, are actually the most numerous tribe. Just the least extroverted.
2. Ferals are soft. Their reputation and the deeds of their ancestors are enough to keep critters out of their territory, and they know better than to step out of the woods and go someplace that's *dangerous*. Most of them wouldn't know what to do if a real Bane showed itself.
This is one of those opinions that is usually expressed in front of a warm fire in a comfortable room after a large meal, by someone who thinks a day's fishing excursion is 'roughing it'. A Feral cub knows more about the Umbra by the age of five than some Garou learn in a lifetime. That includes getting a first-hand education about monsters. Large, dangerous monsters in the traditional sense of the word, referring to things that want to kill everyone around and chew on the corpses for a while and who would be quite successful at it if given half a chance.
While the wilderness areas are no longer the shifting whirlpools of chaos and wild magic some of them were during the Great Darkness, no one who's spent any time out there would ever call them 'safe'. While most of the vampires put big walls around the cities and put big locks on the doors, most of the more anti-social, destructive, and 'erratic' servants of Set and the Wyrm were given the 'great outdoors' to play in. Some of them, or their descendents, are still around; many others left legacies behind. Besides those threats, there are a number of places where the Gauntlet is thin-to-nonexistent, leading to anything from sentient trees to dimensional gateways to invading hordes of inch-high monkeys. Besides all *that* remember the likelihood that technological items will function poorly, if at all, in the wilderness and that on a January night with a harsh north wind and no shelter you can call nature many things, but not benevolent.
1. Ferals have been out of contact so long that they've almost forgotten how to shapeshift, let alone the Litany and Codes that used to define their society. Their primitive hearts are in the right places, but they're out of touch and not really Garou anymore.
Apart from using one of their cubs as a spitoon, nothing will bring the wrath of the Ferals down on your head faster than uttering this fallacy aloud. Their viewpoint (and, admittedly, it's a fine distinction) is that they've been in touch *just enough*--any less and they would not have the knowledge and skills they need to defeat Gaia's foes, and more and they, too, would have been 'contaminated' by too much contact with the outside. (Ferals who interact for prolonged periods with outsiders undergo a special Rite of Cleansing before they're fully allowed back; it may or may not be true that the length of the ritual depends on the degree of contamination, and that a Feral Ragabash who 'borrowed' a snowskimmer and flew it off a cliff after a long joyride is still paying for that mistake 38 years later. We're not sure. This Rite is also used for the members of other tribes who might wish to join, as well as the Rite of Renunciation, both of which come after some sort of intensive test/ordeal/initiation.)
It's the other tribes, Ferals feel, who have become less than Garou as their wolf-blood has thinned, and they are to be pitied. (Or, in the case of members of Silicon Blaze, scorned--a Feral quote that "their blood is one-third ape, one-third dog and one-third rat" seems to sum up the tribe's feelings.) Judging from hearsay and second-hand reports Feral Moots involve twice as much ceremony and have many more stages than the Moots of other tribes, and most of their simpler Rites are much longer and more complex (and often more effective); this seems to be due to ongoing and assiduous work by the Galliards of the tribe to rediscover and revive the parts of Garou culture that were gradually lost or discarded with the thinning of the population during the Plastic Age. As for shapeshifting: as long as wolves are born without thumbs, Ferals will continue to shift. It's true that many of them go for years without taking homid form, but this is a simple aesthetic decision.