Stidolph Family

== History ==
The Stidolphs trace their founding to the Norman Invasion of England in 1066, when several Norse werewolves from the Viking invasion force stranded in England joined with several Norman and Saxon counterparts. This loose pack first took form as a noble family in 1070 during William the Conquerer's Harrying of the North, when the pack's leaders were raised to the nobility for their role in the campaign and took the name "Stidolph." The first family patriarch, William Stidolph, was a grizzled veteran who viewed his burgeoning family as an entity independent from the human world, owing fealty directly to the King of England. As werewolves with a strong sense of bloodline-imbued power, they were natural royalists. The Stidolphs largely with their werewolf counterparts among other noble families, but when no appropriate matches were forthcoming, married among themselves.
For the first six hundred years of their history, the Stidolphs served as loyal if bloodthirsty shock troops and landholders. Their peasants considered them harsh but fair in matters of justice and appreciated that the Stidolphs took particular care to provide security, regularly displaying the heads of thieves and bandits from their battlements. However, few dared to question the regular howling of wolves - or the occasional disappearance of peasants. During this period, at least some Kings of England either suspected or were aware of the Stidolphs' werewolf natures, but tolerated them on account of their loyalty.
The Stidolphs' history changed notably in the seventeenth century, when much of the male leadership of the family died in the English Civil War, having sided with King James II. Lady Stidolph, who had urged caution and been ignored due to her gender, took control of the remnants of the family in 1660, reclaiming their lands and titles during the Reformation. The Stidolphs, having seen the cost of being loyal royalists, decided that they owed nothing to the human world. Lady Stidolph also began to alter the culture of the family, establishing herself as an autocratic matriarch and carefully rebuilding her family's numbers. Despite their losses, nearly a dozen Stidolphs were directly involved in the shapeshifter colonial conflicts in the New World, often called the "Wars of Forty Sides" in family history. 
Although the Stidolphs retained their titles and ancestral home, they began to find themselves more and more on the margins of human society. By the twentieth century, they were actively involved in criminal enterprises, though they continued to be wary of humans. The first loyalty of any Stidolph is to the family as a whole.
==PCs==
*Jonas Stidolph
==NPCs==
Aunt Broken Fang
Edmund Stidolph
==Trivia==
Category:Families