Black Furies
"We have every reason to hate Man. The catalogue of his outrages against us would fill the Abyss. Across the world in recent years, Man's fear of our rising power has led us into open war with him. But even if Man were faithful to the Goddess, he would still have no place with us. Our way is the way of Artemis, the Virgin huntress, and her purity is our own. We shun Man for his weakness, his place in Gaia's shadow, not for his crimes."
- – A Black Fury, on Men... the gender, not the species.
"Man can be kind, gentle, respectful and understanding. Like a dog, he may be a faithful companion, but will bite, and bite hard, if he feels himself wronged. Sadly, his confidence is so fragile that any hint of his weakness is often enough to bring him to homicidal rage. Man makes a good lap-dog, but far too often he has rabies, and must be put down for his own good. In the end, the choice is yours. Man is not evil by nature. The Wyrm, however, is only footsteps away from his heart."
- – See above. Starting to notice a pattern?
The Black Furies are one of the 13(-ish) remaining Garou tribes in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. They can be summed up as amazon werewolves. Whether they're one of the more rational tribes with a focus on saving human society from itself, or slavering lunatics who want to castrate every living thing with a Y-chromosome is largely dependent on the edition, the writer, and the faction you're talking about. We are not kidding about the misandry thing: their original 1e creation myth could be unironically summed up as "in the beginning, Gaia was supreme, all was paradise, and women were the most important gender because women are connected to Gaia, and that's why they can get pregnant; when man realized he was powerless and inferior, he revolted, betrayed Gaia to the Weaver, defiled nature by seizing control, and basically ruined everything by inventing the concept of patriarchy".
Their Revised tribebook in second edition had an elder Fury chiding a younger for assuming that they're all lesbians, and it was only kind of a joke, is our point.
Either way, their Totem Pegasus is a big time misandrist who will only allow female Garou to join the Tribe (with the possible exception of male Metis born to an established Black Fury. Again, their characterization is super inconsistent), admittedly because, mythologically speaking, a man gelded him as part of the process of taming him enough to ride, explaining not only the bitterness but the weird on-and-off obsession with castration running through the tribe. They tend to have at least a passable relationship with the Bone Gnawers and Children of Gaia, which is where they tend to direct any male children they produce (those who they retain usually get ritualistically sacrificed to Gaia behind the scenes, which is still somehow a step up from 1st ed., where that was the fate of all male Fury children). The Get of Fenris, on the other hand... well, the bunch of pseudo-Viking blood knights with testosterone poisoning get on with the pseudo-Greek amazon radfems with a hate-on for anything with a Y-chromosome about as well as you might expect (hint: not very well, beyond maybe one or two "Your female members for our male kids" trades).
Some of them lean pretty heavily on the Greek Mythology angle and work closely with the Sisters of Hippolyta from Mage: The Ascension. Others are dedicated to infiltrating human religious institutions (making them werewolf amazon nuns).
They're also notable for being one of the "Tribes of the Wyld", which is precisely what the name implies - they're uniquely suited to interact with the weird flux-spirits that inhabit the Umbra, due to their extensive connection to the Wyld in their practices and tribal culture. These skills are often in high demand, especially considering that the other "Wyld Tribe" is the Red Talons, and as bad as the Furies can get, they're still preferable to the Talons' misanthropic bullshit. Unfortunately, as 2e went on, it meant they contracted a horrible "metamorphic plague" from Wyld exposure that started ravaging their tribal population.
Traditionally, the Black Furies have been the "feminist" faction, with a sacred mandate to respect women and protect them from abuse. As with other factions in the World of Darkness, exactly how much they have secretly been pulling the strings behind literally every feminist achievement of human society, from the suffragettes and establishment of protective shelters for abused women to modern-day SJWs, depends heavily on the edition - earlier editions attribute more direct influence to them than to humans, while later ones generally frame them more as helping from the sidelines in the fashion of many progressive World of Darkness factions (like ensuring the Seneca Falls Convention took place near a Fury stronghold, allowing them to protect the gathered Suffragettes).
The camps/Kukloi of the Black Furies consist of:
- Amazons of Diana:: Less a formal group and more a catch-all for the more violent and warlike Furies, which run the gamut from the "We want to prove ourselves equally strong fighters!" camp to the "Look at us and be castrated!" assholes. The "hate men for being men" mentality is particularly attributed to these members as a result, though (in a microcosm of the tribe) exactly how true this rings varies from member to member. In 1e, they were known as the Maenads, and had about the same role. Very heavily populated with Ahrouns, which doesn't precisely help their reputation as a bunch of raging, warlike maniacs.
- Avenging Mother: A group of Black Furies seeking to destabilize Garou politics to force the Garou to become matriarchal. Haven't seen much success, partly because of their tiny size next to literally every other kukloi (let alone the actual tribes) and partly because the Garou are generally very violently ill-disposed toward change.
- Bacchantes: The "conservatives" of the Furies, dedicated to their traditional role of destroying anyone who wrongs women or children. Of course, their track-record against taking down female abusers is spotty to say the least, when it's mentioned at all.
- Freebooters: Black Furies dedicated to finding new Wyld places to be consecrated into Caerns... but there's not really a lot of these left, so the kuklos has been shrinking over time. A sub-faction believes that they need to go exploring the Umbra and find a new body for Gaia elsewhere.
- Moon-Daughters: Black Furies who have infiltrated the New Age and Neo-Paganism movements in order to turn these into tools to keep Gaia alive through constant change; they're probably the most inconsistent of the kukloi in terms of actual practices as a result. Probably the most likely of the kukloi to work with the Sisters of Hippolyta, due to both being heavily connected to New Age/Neo-Pagan groups and the rough alignment of their values.
- Order of Our Merciful Mother: Moon-Daughters MK1: Christianity is Fun. This faction is comprised of Black Furies attempting to subvert Christianity from within and redirect its focus from a patriarchal god (the Weaver) to a matriarchal goddess (Gaia). They're by far the most derided kuklos in the tribe, due to most Black Furies having a colossal hateboner for Christianity in general over its historical views; that a number have become genuinely converted to Christianity themselves doesn't really help in their eyes.
- Sisterhood: The information network and utility staff. They began as an Underground Railroad-style organisation, smuggling Kinfolk, Garou, and women targeted by the First Inquisition to safety during the Burning Times; nowadays they coordinate the Kinfolk information-gathering networks of the tribe, gather resources, and act as a helpline for those (typically female) Kinfolk who have been wronged by men, with those who they perceive as having done wrong swiftly experiencing Fury Justice the hard way.
- Temple of Artemis: One of the oldest and most conservative kukloi. They're basically the Bacchantes turned up to eleven, to the point of advocating a full withdrawal from the Garou Nation so that they can focus on the Furies' original purpose as protectors/avengers of women and children. They also act as the judges for Furies who break tribal customs. Likely very well-disposed toward Philodoxes, considering their role as judges and investigators.
They also have their own little group of unique totems known as the Medusae, formed from the souls of the first Black Furies. All five are named after figures of Greek myth - Euryale, Helena, Stheno, Medusa, and Isthmene. In a display of White Wolf's usual inter-gameline continuity competence, at least one of them (Medusa) is also the name of the either the Nosferatu's pseudo-progenitor Baba Yaga or a powerful Methuselah of the same generation. They're roughly summed up below:
- Euryale: The Ragabash of the Medusae. Aside from being a pretty stereotypical Black Fury (considering men "the weaker sex" and desiring their subjugation), she serves as the patron totem to the Amazons of Diana, encouraging them to break social conventions to Stick it to the PatriarchyTM. Her packs get a couple Gifts that let them deal a bit more hurt and move further, but can't ever have male members and will never acknowledge the authority of a male sept official unless he beats the pack's alpha in a straight fight.
- Helena: The Theurge and moderate. Unlike her sisters, she felt that going full SJW and demanding men be enslaved or wiped out would only open them up to Wyrm corruption, making her perhaps the only Fury of the original five with an actual fucking brain. Her packs are a little odd by Fury standards - they are required to have an equal number of male and female Garou (circumstances permitting), hold perceived female weakness in contempt (so if a mother stands by and lets her kids be abused, she's in for a rough time) and tend to come down hard on abusers regardless of gender (compared to the spotty record of the other Furies).
- Stheno: The Philodox and mediator. She was in charge of rendering judgements and decisions when the Medusae were still a physical pack, even going to the extent of defending Helena's views against her sisters (if only out of necessity). Stheno's gifts to her pack are mostly focused around the group as a whole, giving them an extra dot in certain stats; her drawback is that they must act as judges when requested, and they must find the truth before passing judgement (so they can't just go "Nope, the man's guilty, gut him!", much to the chagrin of certain leaders). Likely the patron of the Temple of Artemis, going by her sphere of influence.
- Medusa: The Galliard and the walking stereotype. Threw a bitchfit and left for several years after Pegasus allowed the first male Metis of the tribe to remain among them. Though she eventually re-joined them, by the present day she's fucked off again - it's left ambiguous as to whether it's a sisterly disagreement or a battle with Wyrm and Weaver creatures that caused her to vanish, though a few packs might have some connection to her. Her benefits are a boost to crafts and a gift that can exchange Gnosis for a group-wide willpower roll success; her drawbacks are that the pack won't work with males at all where possible and can't ever have male members (regardless of tribe or breed).
- Isthmene: The Ahroun and the biggest bitch of the lot. (And think of the ground that covers by this point!) She's permanently stuck in 200% RAGE mode, having wrecked whole forests back in the day because she felt like her sisters were condescending toward her; unsurprisingly, her pack traits sacrifice the usual Gifts in favour of an extra point of Rage, a temporary Glory point, and extra dice when wielding her signature labrys. Her drawback is probably the most obvious: if you're a dude who backtalks to a pack member, she'll beat you to a paste (and these assholes have a very liberal definition of "backtalk"); if you try and fight back (and again, remember, liberal definition of "fight back" here), they'll go full Rip and Tear on your ass, possibly to the point of outright killing you. Oh, and they can only go into berserker-mode when they Frenzy, rather than going Fox.
