"Logistics" Of A Town Run By Werewolves

I'm thinking of re-writing an Urban Fantasy series I'd created years ago, and had a few questions about a (very important) element of it.

The protagonist's hometown is a small town surrounded by woods. It also happens to be inhabited by a large pack of werewolves, meaning that a significant portion of the town's population consist of these supernatural beings. Now, what I'm trying to figure out is to realistically make it so that all of these individuals are able to keep their secret without too many slip-ups over the years, something that is slightly difficult considering the nature of their condition. I just wanted some help brainstorming.

For a reference, the werewolves:

• Change form almost at will—-they're not limited to the full moon except for their first time. Apart from that, they have to change at least once a month or it will happen involuntarily.

• Keep most of their human cognitive abilities when transformed, though they are far more aggressive and subject to violent rages with minimal provocation.

• Cannot be mistaken for ordinary wolves under any circumstances. Picture wolves the size of full grown horses with Glowing Eyes of Doom.

• Have a Wolverine-like Healing Factor in both human and wolf forms that can fix injuries within hours to minutes and never get sick.

I'm just wondering if these attributes even requires logistics to plan how they keep such a large secret and ensure no "mistakes" are made. I'm trying to avoid having them murder anyone who discovers their true nature, but if it really comes to it, I will accept it.

EDIT: Just in case anyone wondered about the setting, the story takes place in the United States in late 2008 so it's pretty much the modern day.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jan 12th 2020 at 7:07:47 AM

This is more or less the setting for How To Be A Werewolf, so be sure to check that one out. They don't seem to have a difficult time keeping their secret from the townsfolk, but hiding from the magic using witches is another story.

Hmm, I haven't heard of it. Is it a book, or a movie or show? I've read many Urban Fantasy books over the years and certainly wouldn't be averse to adding in one more.

As Benjamin Franklin said, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead." It's unlikely that a bunch of werewolves could keep an honest-to-goodness masquerade going for very long. The more likely scenario is that the existence of the werewolves is known^note while the town does sound like it's pretty remote, it'd still be impossible to keep the secret confined to just one town unless none of the werewolves traveled ever, but individual werewolves would keep their condition/identities secret.

That being said, you might find these helpful.

@Agent Kirin Thanks for the links, I skimmed them enough to get the gist but will definitely do more in-depth reading at a later date. To address your point about the impossibility of keeping The Masquerade a secret, there is one aspect I did not add to the original post since it didn't seem relevant, and I wondered what you make of it:

There are certain humans who do know of the existence of werewolves, sort of friends of the pack, who found out either through accidental exposure or because it is in the best interest of the werewolves to have these people in on the secret. These people do aid them in keeping their existence a secret (the protagonist's father is one of them).

That does help believability to some degree, but there's still the issue of people traveling to or from the town. All it'd take is one tourist to find/record evidence, or one werewolf to slip up elsewhere, and the masquerade would be done for.

True, that kind of masquerade is difficult to maintain...

...one suggestion might be to tweak the setting just a little bit to make it more plausible and discreet.

Like if the population in that town has a psychological illness (spread in a currently unknown way) that makes them "believe" that they turn into wolves and acts accordingly whenever the illness flares up.

The changes might include:

1. "Increased aggressiveness" = Giving them the mindset of wild animals that no longer recognize the human form as its "kin" and might attack them if threatened, hungry, or if the risk that they might have their "food" taken from them flares up.

2. "No human language capability": They, mentally, are wolves. Words and sentences just turn into random noise in their ears when they "change" and can't be understood at that point.

3. "Quadrupedal stance": Might occur, as they roam around during their "attacks".

4. "Increased strength": Their fight or flight response is set off, allowing them "hysterical strength" until the "attack" stops or they're put down.

5. "Increased Durability": Numbing to pain, thanks to the adrenaline from the fight-or-flight response.

6. "Other effects"

To plus is, that it makes it much easier to cover up, as it would be considered "fits of a madman" if one of them got caught in the open and arrested. But of course, if too many "random fits of madmen" shows up in the same area, it might drive people to investigate the cause and expose them to the threat of "extermination" once it turns out that the condition can't be cured and is transmittable to other hosts through body-fluids, which might prompt the response of putting all affected by the "lycanthropy" down like mad dogs or "mercy killings", which could drive the story on how these people, (fearing this with no proof it would actually turn out that way) tries to live their lives with this "illness" as good as they can.

Wouldn't it be a nice change of pace if a werewolf-story actually only depicted a "psychological" form of the wolves rather than a "physical" one? (Since the real life source for the werewolves are actually witness account of people with a certain mental illness that drove them into acting like wild animals in the past, which allowed the superstitions to morph into "turning into wolves" as a literal thing rather than figurative one.)

Just a suggestion in terms on how to handle with logistics in a werewolf story.

Ever entertained the idea of making one based on "psychological-based werewolves"?

Edited by TitanJump on Jan 13th 2020 at 6:36:19 PM

That's actually pretty fascinating. I must say that it never crossed my mind to do something like that. Unfortunately I can't really go that route—there's too much plot involved with them actually being the real thing. Plus I did work pretty hard on designing the curse of lycanthropy in this story to be at least a little different than the usual werewolf tales.

That being said...

What a lot of the feedback on this thread has told me is that maintaining a masquerade—not just in this town, which is the "starting" setting of the story—but all throughout the world is not realistic. One of the endings I've been playing with for this series is that my protagonist does something so reckless and horrific that it shatters The Masquerade into so many pieces that none of the powerful supernatural factions working behind the scenes can clean it up.

I don't see why it would be so hard. Provided they don't attack humans, there is no particular reason why anyone should suspect them.

"How to be a Werewolf" is a webcomic.