The Red Wolves are the foremost known werewolf organization in Chicago. While the core of their being now revolves around organized crime (thus leading to the rather unflattering nickname of “the dog mob”), there are a number of Red Wolves who identify themselves as such without having a hand in such activities. To some, Red Wolves is somewhat of a symbol of the werewolf community in Chicago (however, a number of unaffiliated parties resent the general belief that any Chicago werewolf is a Red Wolf) being that it is the first and only known werewolf “pack”, so to speak, in the area. Its structure is also notably rare; while vampires tend to organize themselves into sects or gangs, such behavior is generally uncommon in werewolves, thus bringing it more initial attention.

Meaning
Originally called "Moon Runners" for no known reason, the meaning of “Red Wolves” is equally ambiguous. While it has nothing to do with the coloration of its members, the Red Wolves are somewhat infamous for their penchant for violence. As far as the crime branch of their organization is concerned, they are entirely thorough in their work and prefer to leave no witnesses and no chance of witnesses, and the bloody messes that are usually left behind after one of their raids or operations gone sour more than likely lends to their namesake. It's likely that Nat Koskorov anticipated this when she changed the name.

More speculation as to their name concerns their nationality; while the majority of the Red Wolves are not Russian, the organization was created by and is maintained by a (now) small family of werewolves who migrated to America from Russia in the past 50 years. Of course, this assumption is one generally used by those who are on less than friendly terms with the Red Wolves; who wouldn’t want to label their enemy a commie?

Leadership and Structure
While created by and originally led by a werewolf known as Vladik Koskorov, the Red Wolves are now under the command of Nat Koskorov, Vladik's son and previous second in command. See history for the full story.

The leader of the Red Wolves is generally referred to as the "Alpha". Below the Alpha are the Beta, an officer rank generally consisting of a small number of individuals with unparalleled skill in various fields of expertise. The beta are very carefully chosen and are all close, trusted friends of the Alpha to minimize the chance of mutiny.

Alpha and Beta are the only official ranks in the Red Wolves, the rest of the organization simply followers and fighters (or "strays" as The Antonelli Family prefers to call them).

History
Initially, the leader of the Red Wolves (Or Moon Runners as it was known previously) was Vladik Koskorov; the father of the core family and the first to make an effort to pull the organization together. It is unknown the exact date of the Koskorovs’ arrival to America, but it is known that it was around the general time that vampires and werewolves were becoming publicly known, and because of this their greeting from the inhabitants of the port their ship docked in was less than amiable. No less than driven away, Vladik led his family to Chicago- a new and blossoming city where, perhaps, they could make a life for themselves and rise above the discrimination toward “unhumans” that was so flourishing now.

When they arrived in Chicago, however, it became quickly apparent that local vampires had also seen the opportunity presented by this new city and had seized it quite vigorously, forming an underground gang known widely as The Antonelli Family which seemed to inspire enough fear into the human inhabitants of the city to, at the very least, respect them. His dealings with vampires minimal, Vladik was ignorant to the undead populous’ predisposal to hate his kind, and thus sought to create a similar organization to further his own kind in the city. What began as sifting through residential neighborhoods and late night bars to collect other oppressed werewolves soon became small orientation meetings, which soon became large orientation meetings, each one bigger than the last. After a few months, Vladik had gathered enough of his kind to create an organization; a small one at that, but still an organization; and thus the Moon Runners were born.

The Antonelli Family did not take kindly to this. Having already established their power in Chicago, the vampires refused to see such mass gatherings of their “sworn enemies” as anything but a threat, and instead of wasting time collecting information or sending in spies, they launched a number of synchronized attacks on the homes of the Moon Runners officials. By that time Vladik was somewhat aware of general vampire hostility toward werewolves, but even so the attack caught him completely off guard. While he and his daughter Natasha managed to kill the vampires in their home before they could cause any real damage, the majority of his officers were murdered in their sleep, as well as a good number of his followers.

With his wife left emotionally and mentally scarred by the attack and his organization crippled, Vladik’s mindset changed quite drastically. Though he was bent on bringing the Moon Runners back again, his motivations and goals for the organization had certainly changed. While still determined to bring about a strong werewolf brotherhood throughout the city, as time progressed it became more and more aware that his top priority was to stop the vampires, or at the very least exert the werewolf’s dominance over them. Not only was Vladik driven, but now Natasha found herself rather hell bent on the extermination of the vampires because the attack on her family and soon, because of her vigor, was promoted as Vladik’s second in command. Not long after she adopted men’s’ clothing and took on the somewhat alias of “Nat”, becoming publicly known as a man to prevent any complications that might have arisen because of her gender.

Meetings were held in secret now, often in abandoned warehouses in the more rundown parts of Chicago, or even under the docks in the dead of night. When the Moon Runners’ numbers were high once more, an attack was launched on an Antonelli Family sleeping ground located beneath an abandoned hotel (burnt out by the Great Chicago Fire) which a number of Vladik’s intelligence officers had managed to find in weeks prior. This hotel was soon renovated and adopted as the official Moon Runners headquarters, the topmost floor serving as a home for Vladik and his family, the upper floors serving as homes for his officers, the lower floors serving as meeting rooms and housing.

While The Antonelli Family was far too vast of an organization for this attack to have any lasting effect on them, the audacity of the act was still an outrage, and because of it the vampires saw fit to retaliate. The battle took place on a cold winter’s night in 1917, on the street where the Moon Runners had claimed their new headquarters, a grim scene which became known simply as “The Street Fight.” The Street Fight was a historical event for both of the gangs and proved to be the catalyst that brought them into all out war.

What began as a simple street fight soon turned into something more. While The Antonelli Family had numbers much greater than the Moon Runners, the Runners’ determination to hold their ground far outweighed the cunning of the vampires. Wave after wave of undead were slaughtered by the werewolves, this pattern continuing for hours on end until sunrise grew imminent and the leader of The Antonelli Family- Dante Antonelli- stepped forward to announce their surrender. Before calling the retreat, he made sure to curse the Moon Runners and warn them to steer clear of their territory, promising peace if they did and destruction if they did not. Vladik agreed to these terms and let the remaining vampires go free and unharmed, an opportunity which they promptly seized.

Infuriated that her father just let the surrendering vampires go without a fight, Nat was unable to find it in herself to show a shred of honor to their less than honorable foes. When her father retreated inside, she found a number of her comrades shared her ill feelings toward this decision, which thus fueled her order to block all surrounding alleys, preventing the vampires’ escape. While a small number did managed to get away, Nat’s men managed to catch and bind the several unlucky vampires who did not escape fast enough, and under her order they were thrown into the street and surrounded to prevent any chance of escape until one by one they all died a slow, gruesome death from the rays of the rising sun. Their ashes were gathered and divided amongst the present werewolves as trophies of their status as truly devoted to their cause.

Vladik was infuriated by his daughter’s- or rather, newly proclaimed son’s- complete lack of chivalry, proclaiming it to be nothing short of mutiny. He all but disowned her, stripping her of her rank in the Moon Runners and denouncing her in front of the entire organization; and while small, less organized street fights continued to break out between the Moon Runners and The Antonelli Family as a result of Nat’s actions, they were paled in comparison to the feud that ignited between Vladik and his son.

The Moon Runners were now divided; those that still remained loyal to Vladik and those who were now loyal to Nat. While Vladik hoped to settle the tension between the vampires and werewolves of Chicago in a somewhat dignified or at the very least honorable way, Nat sought to destroy the vampire population with whatever means necessary. Both argued that they were the true Moon Runners, and as time progressed it became openly apparent that there was only one way to settle this dispute.

The fight between Nat and her father took place in the abandoned warehouse that had served as a meeting hall for the first official gather of the Moon Runners, its walls lined with both of their followers as they watched the battle. It raged for hours until finally Vladik fell to his daughter, exhausted from their struggle. He offered to surrender and to step down from his rank, but Nat only deemed him a coward for this and saw to his death by driving a silver dagger* through his temple. She then used the same dagger to cut the skin from his still transformed corpse and, despite the offer from her men to escort her home, draped the bloody pelt over her back and set home on her own.

(*This act left a burn across her right palm which began the tradition of marking Red Wolves officers upon initiation through cutting across their right palm with the same silver dagger.)

Nat presented the bloody pelt of her father to her mother and sister that night, and by the next morning both of them had fled without a trace; most likely terrified by Nat’s ruthlessness and mortified by the loss of Vladik. Though deeply grieved over the loss of her mother and sister, Nat couldn’t afford to show any soft spots now that she was the leader of the Moon Runners. Soon after she had her father’s pelt cleaned and sewed into the lining of his longcoat which she then adopted as her own, nearly always wearing it in public as a sign of her dominance, a reminder of her father’s defeat, and as a sobering example of what should befall those who decide it best to betray her.

Now the “boss” of the Moon Runners (renamed “Red Wolves” under her rule), Nat quickly made sure that things were changed to be more suited to her liking, and thus regardless of her victory over him, there were still a number of officers remaining that stayed loyal to Vladik. Because their so called “honorable” intentions clashed with the direction Nat intended to take the Red Wolves, they were stripped of their power in the organization to eliminate any chance of mutiny. Some remained, but most left the city, taking their families with them.

It quickly became apparent to every remaining Red Wolf that their new leader’s motives were more ruthless, her methods far more brutal, and for the most part the response was positive. The basement of the hotel- the previous sleeping grounds of The Antonelli Family- was turned into a series of torture chambers to hold, torment, or execute any vampires who crossed into their slowly growing territory, regardless of the individual’s motive or affiliation- not that the Red Wolves took the time to ask.

With the Red Wolves’ territory now growing rapidly (and violently) due to their newly aggressive tactics, The Antonelli Family was forced to acknowledge them as a growing threat and not just something to stay away from. They were quickly becoming a threat to even more of their established territory, and at the rate they were going it wouldn’t be long before they had consumed the entirety of it. Indeed such predictions were correct and within a year Red Wolf territory began to bleed into vampire, resulting in numerous small street fights, the victory results of which varied; the vampires having since learned that while werewolves were not so easily defeated on the frontline, they could be somewhat easily removed with a handful of what some might call cheap tricks. Human casualties were quite common in these fights*, mostly due to being caught in the crossfire, but some resulted from resident humans standing up to fight for their own territory. Such efforts were promptly squelched, whether at the claws of a werewolf or the fangs of a vampire.

(*Because of this knowledge, human population in Antonelli and Red Wolves territory is sparse. A few remain, however, but mostly due to financial instability.)

Such small fights continued for around two years and the Red Wolves used this time to bolster their forces; carefully seeking out humans they deemed worthy, infecting them with lycanthropy, and recruiting them into their ranks. As their numbers grew, the steady line of contention between territories slowly began to push in their favor. Around this time, the Prohibition was instigated and with it an opportunity was presented to the vampires.

While the vampires’ cunning was more than enough to defeat small clusters of werewolves, a larger line of them was more than a formidable foe, and now with their territory slowly dwindling they had to resort to somewhat desperate measures. With the arrival of the Dry Law there was a sharp rise in human organized crime, and while booze was of no real interest to the undead, the profits that ensued from running said rum were not something to be ignored. If they wanted to defeat the Red Wolves (or at the very least hold them back) they needed the proper outfitting, and the proper outfitting happened to include a fair amount of silver. Silver was not cheap. Thus The Antonelli Family began to focus more effort into smuggling and, due to their various advantages over humans as well as their proximity to the lake, quickly excelled to being one of the most sought after services in the region. With the money flowing as it then was, outfitting their forces with silver bullets (and even light armor to be worn beneath clothing) was no trouble at all. Given unfair (in the Red Wolves’ eyes) advantage, the vampires easily pushed the line back and even began to push into the Red Wolves’ territory.

Werewolves’ strengths lying mostly in close-range combat, the Red Wolves were somewhat crippled by this new development. Most street fights resulting in their slaughter or retreat, unable to get within twenty feet of the vampires before being shot down by a silver bullet, and then even if they did manage to reach them most efforts to manually harm them were stopped abruptly by the thin silver chain mail now worn beneath the majority of the vampires’ clothes. Bullets had no effect which ruled out long range combat on their end, and while decapitation and severe dismemberment- methods relied on in previous battles- seemed to get the job done, such methods were difficult to accomplish at a distance. Single vampires could be taken out easily by a pair of werewolves, but as far as street fight were concerned, they seemed mostly out of luck.

But the vampires were not without their own weakness. While silver was the downfall of a werewolf, the wood of an ash tree had similar effect on a vampire, though initially it was believed to only have effect if it was in the form of a stake being driven directly through the heart. Driven to desperate measures by the encroaching The Antonelli Family, Nat ordered that the effects of ash wood on vampires be studied further so as to evaluate its exact usefulness. A small number of individual vampires were easily plucked from their coffins during the daytime for use as test subjects, and the results of the test opened countless new doors for the Red Wolves. The effects of ash on a vampire were remarkably similar to those of silver on a werewolf; both were capable of leaving wounds that would heal at a remarkably slow pace, and both could be used to cripple or otherwise hinder the target if they happened to be struck in a non vital area, such as an arm or leg. Furthermore, just the sap or oil of ash was capable of doing damage to a vampire, having a rapid burning effect.

With this knowledge the Red Wolves quite aggressively asserted themselves in the organized crime scenario, albeit a bit late, and used their signature brute force as their token to success. It wasn’t long before they were rivals with The Antonelli Family in this field as well, using their profits to import vast amounts of ash wood and to even grow their own supplies. Bullets and blades were coated in a diluted ash sap and even crossbows with ash bolts and coated heads were constructed and heavily utilized.

With the playing field even once again, the line of contention was pushed back about to where it had originated. Though apparent that both sides still wanted to push for more territory, both were also flourishing in the rum running scenario and thus putting more and more focus on said activities, a sort of unspoken race to arms. This is where present game time falls.

While there has been a significant lull in the territory fights due to both gangs’ focus on smuggling, that is not to say they have stopped completely. While the higher ups are more concerned with increasing profit, some of the lower-ranking wolves and vampires of their respective gangs struggle regularly over territorial issues, though they tend to be smaller street fights.

Nat Koskorov still remains the boss of the Red Wolves, thus far unquestioned and unchallenged (at least publicly) in her rank. There are few remaining that know her true identity (that being a woman named Natasha), and as a whole she has very little trouble passing as a man. She is also somewhat notorious for having a glaring soft spot for her wife, Louise Loving; and as such, she is highly sought after by many lower-ranking Antonellis in seek of a promotion.

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