Crinos

Crinos is the half-man, half-wolf battle form of werewolves in the role-playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The crinos form is what most contemporary people will think of when they imagine a werewolf. It is nine feet tall, has the head of a wolf, a large anthropomorphic body covered with a wolf's hair, and huge clawed hands. The hands of a werewolf in crinos are unfit for tasks requiring much manual dexterity (such as operating a firearm) but can still wield a knife or club. A werewolf in crinos has many advantages in the form of game mechanics as well as being huge, strong, and terrifying.

A werewolf in crinos is terrifying for normal humans to behold and incites what is called the "delerium". The delerium is a state where after seeing the werewolf in its war-form the unfortunate human recalls the ancestral memory of a prehistoric time where humans were culled as herd animals by werewolves. The resurfacing of such a disturbing memory and the realization that there really are Horrible monsters out there in the world shatters the mind of most humans. While in the delerium a human will act irrationally, driven by fear. Typically this includes running and screaming, and the inability to form memories or rationalize what is happening. This inabliity of most humans to form memories of a werewolf in crinos is helpful to werewolves in upholding their law requiring that no werewolf take an action revealing the existence of werewolves to the populace.

Werewolves are shapeshifters and have multiple body forms to choose from. Crinos is not the NATURAL physical state of most werewolves. Usually a werewolf is born from one werewolf parent and one human or wolf parent and their offspring will begin life in the form of their non-werewolf parent. Human from human, wolf from wolf. For these children when they want to enter the war-form they must spend time shifting through other forms in a manner determined by the games mechanics. However rarely a werewolf will be born from two werewolf parents resulting in a Metis, a werewolf whose natural form is crinos. This is forbidden by werewolf law because the resulting child is always deformed in some way. These deformities are usually supernatural in nature and cannot be hidden. Metis have a tremendous disadvantage in that they are not immune to silver in any form.

References

Brian Campbell, et al Werewolf: The Apocalypse Revised EDition (White Wolf Publishing, 2000, ISBN 1-56504-365-0)

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