Werewolf

The Bleidd-dyn are the leaders of the Skin-Changers. They are the most populous and the most militaristic in nature. According to legend, one of the first Bleidd-dyn was named Bledri who was favored by Arianrhod who gave him the secret tynged that he could not be killed except by weapons forged of silver. During the Cad Goddeu, Bledri was slain by the Blood-Drinker Diangeuaw with an arrow tipped with silver. This begat an ancient emnity between the vampires and werewolves that remains in modern Cymru.

The Rise of the Constantine Grail Kings
During the Roman conquests, the Bleidd-dyn first encountered the luperci the werewolves of the Roman empire who fought alongside humans in the legions that invaded Britain. Interbreeding between the two raced begot the Grail Kings, the Constantine dynasty. The first known Grail King was Constans, older brother to Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon. He was betrayed by his follower Vortigern, who claimed Constans' daughters and bred with them. The children of these daughters each took the surname of Constantine rather than acknowledging their paternity. Several Bleidd-dyn served as knights or allies to Arthur; they openly lived among humans and several small kingdoms in Wales and Britain had them as rulers between 300-600 AD. They were fierce opponents of Christiandom and killed many early Christians in Britain.

The War of Salt & Silver
Saint Gwynllyw Milwr was attacked by a pack of Bleidd-dyn in 523 AD and savaged. Before he died, his son Caradoc and Dyfrig, also Saints, were able to administer the Last Rites and swear their vengeance upon him. They founded the Knights of Gwynllyw for the sole purpose of hunting the Bleidd-dyn to extinction and this was one of the founding events in the War of Salt & Silver. According to the Knights of Gwynllyw, when Saint Caradoc prayed at his father's gravesite and the Archangel Michael presented himself and gave him a sword of silver and revealed to him that circles of salt would provide protections from the magic of the fey and that silver would kill the Bleidd-ddyn. Caradoc, Dyfig and others quickly began to spread this information to others. They struck at any supernatural or spiritual forced that was not "holy" by their definition.

The Bleidd-dyn were forced to retreat further and further away from humans, opting to breed with wolves to supplement their numbers. When the gates of the otherworld began to close or become hidden, they promised the fey nobility they would remain behind and fight the humans to protect the sacred places they could.

The Culling
Constantín mac Áeda of Scotland was both Christian and Bleidd-dyn. He the first to title himself a Grail King outside of the wolf-kings of Ynys Witrin and southwestern England. He participated in a meeting at Eamont Bridge on 12 July 927 which was sealed by an agreement that Constantine, Owen of Strathclyde, Hywel Dda, and Ealdred of Northumbria would "renounce all idolatry". In 950, King Athelstan demanded that both Constantín mac Áeda and Hywel Dda pay annual tribute of 300 wolf skins which they complied with. Vampires had begun to frequent the courts of all four of these men and were suspected by the Bleidd-dyn of being responsible for poisoning the mind of Constantin mac Aeda against his own people. The Norman Kings continued the practice of paying bounties for wolf pelts and hiring wolf-hunters.

Between 950 and 1500, the Bleidd-dyn and the wolves of Britain dropped in population from tens of thousands to a hairsbreath from extinction. The survivors hid themselves with exceptional care, hidden in places where the otherworld still resonated. These "protectorates" were small in number. The largest in Wales were within the Brecon Beacon Mountains and Snowdonia. Sometimess humans who wandered too close were captured and kept as breeding stock.

The Resurgence
By the mid 1700s, the Bleidd-dyn had become more fey than human or wolf. Their hatred for humans had intensified over time. Most of them fanatically worshipped goddesses of the moon, the earth and war. At the start of the Resurgence, the werwolves of Snowdonia by the Tylwyth Teg and those of Brecon-Beacon by the Bendith Y Mamau. Gifts, blessings and promises of alliance were exchanged. The Bleidd-dyn began to spill out of their protectorates and attack small human settlements in bloody massacres. The leader of Snowdonia rejected a similar alliance with Beli Mawr and the vampires; the werewolves proceeded to attack vampires as well as humans.

It was the fey who forced the Bleidd-dyn to reluctantly agree to the Treaty of Ivy in 1820 and the Treaty of Souls in 1837. They continued to only pay them lip service until the 1840s when young Aland Constantine I, the King of the Summerlands Protectorate began to invade the other protectorates with his packs of Grail Kings. At his side was Jewellian Delucian, the godblooded luperci from Lake Nemi who was the ally of Diangeuaw the Cursed. Aland and Jewellian spent a year securing the protectorates of the Three Kingdoms into the Nations of the Moons.

The Nations of the Moon
The loose confederation of werewolf protectorates in the Three Kingdoms. Jewellian used the wolfblooded witches Annabelle and Ezmerelda to help create a network of Moon Paths that lead from one to the other within the spirit world that enable the bleidd-dyn and their allies to quickly travel from one menhir to another within them.

Within Cymru, the Bleid-ddyn were granted expansions of land around both their original protectorates and several smaller ones in otherwise Blood-Drinker controlled lands. In Gwent, this included Wentwood Forest for the Wandering Moon Tribe. As the Bleidd-dyn population began to rise once more, packs of them moved to other wildlands to claim territory. This included the Magor Swamp.


 * The Protectorates of Cymru


 * The Tribes of Cymru


 * Core Werewolf Characters

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