DANAE KINVARRA – Wild Irish Rose
Kinvarra (Irish: Cinn Mhara, meaning “head of the sea”), is a sea port village located in the south of County Galway in the province of Connacht, on the west coast of Ireland. It is home to a clan of Weres which takes its name from this location; Clan Kinvarra. Once a small and weak pack of werewolves they have gradually fought their way to where they stand now; as the ruling clan of all Irish wolfen.
Their history is extensive and fraught with wars spanning centuries as they gradually asserted their right to rule as the most vicious and dominant of all the wolfen.
Packs from local areas were broken apart and assimilated into Kinvarra and those few who did not wish to amalgamate were exiled.
For several hundred years their leadership was firmly established and fiercely defended until eventually they were unquestioned in their right to rule and unrivalled by any other clan in size, strength and loyalty.

Now, a wolf pack has a definite social structure and rules of conduct. The pack leaders are the alpha male and female. These two wolfen are dominant over all the other wolves in the pack. The alpha male and female are the only wolves that breed and produce pups in the pack, and they also get to eat first at kills.
The alpha pair has the greatest amount of social freedom among all the pack members, but they are not “leaders” in the human sense of the term. The alphas do not give the other wolves orders; rather, they simply have the most freedom in choosing where to go, what to do, and when to do it. The rest of the pack usually follows.
However Clan Kinvarra took this social order to a higher level; they realised that to conquer, govern and continue with their governance they would need an elected leading pair who would actively make decisions and administer the Clan.
An alpha pair would need to be elected who would enforce rules and strategise for the Clan’s expansion and future and this new tradition would need to continue into the unforeseeable future to maintain the Clan’s status.

Rank order amongst wolves is usually established and maintained through a series of ritualised fights and posturing best described as ritual bluffing. Wolfen prefer psychological warfare to physical confrontations, meaning that high-ranking status is based more on personality or attitude than on size or physical strength. Rank, who holds it, and how it is enforced varies widely between packs and between individual animals. Clan Kinvarra chose ritualised fights at specified points of the year, usually on auspicious nights favoured by the Goddess, to determine who was the strongest, the best and the most vicious. The triumphant winner would lead the Clan.
However, loss of rank could also happen gradually or suddenly. The current alpha wolf can choose to give way when an ambitious challenger presents itself, yielding its position without bloodshed. On the other hand, the challenged individual may choose to fight back, with varying degrees of intensity, in an effort to defend its position. The loser of such a confrontation was frequently chased away from the Clan or, albeit rarely, killed.

Werewolves can live indefinitely provided that they take good care of themselves and feed often meaning that particularly strong, vicious alphas can rule the clan for many years.
The most recently documented hierarchy of Clan Kinvarra had been established for decades; the alpha male successfully fought off many contenders and his mate successfully diverted the attentions of females who would oust her from her position, thus ensuring their ranks and status for many years.

Title Name Rank Name Pronunciation
Taoiseach (tee-shoch) Faolán Alpha Male FEH lahn
Tánaiste (Taw-nish-ta) Aoife Alpha Female EE fah
Leifteanant (Lef-tenant) Cathal Beta CAH hal

Faolan and Aoife were mated wolves before they ascended to the coveted Alpha positions and as such, took over the rulership together as a couple.
Once they scaled to the heights of the Clan ladder, they were then allowed to breed and did so with relish, providing between them thirteen new additions to the Clan.
To a regular wolf pack, thirteen additions would be only the work of a couple of pregnancies, each one producing an average of between 5-6 cubs. Weres however produce their offspring in much the same way as regular humans; usually one, maybe two at a time. They gestate for nine months and give birth in whichever form the child is conceived as, as their children can be produced either as wolves who turn into humans, or humans without the gift.
Faolan and Aoife sired between them twelve male cubs, born as full wolves and one female, born as a human without the gift.
The humans are usually scorned as lesser creatures, treated as outcasts and generally forgotten about. But because their daughter was the thirteenth child, a number auspicious to the Goddess, she was revered and held in a state of awe by the lesser members of the clan and cherished and beloved by her parents and siblings.
The daughter was named Danae, meaning bright as day, for she surely was a ray of sunlight to all who met her.

The expansive amalgamation of smaller packs into the Kinvarra collective was such that they spread throughout whole regions, using up precious resources, bleeding the land dry. It also meant that only two wolves were able to breed amongst hundreds and this stunted any further expansion.
However, there were too many clan members for the alphas to be constantly watching them and secret interbreeding started occurring in their own ranks.
Faolan and Aoife were unable to prevent this breeding and even Cathal, enforcer of pack law, was unable to ferret out all those who dared to defy the strict social regime.
The in-breeding led to some adverse side-effects, for the clan as a whole and also, specifically, for the cubs of the interbreeders.
The lack of genetic diversity between the inter-breeders meant their offspring were susceptible to diseases, as they lacked the ability to resist certain viruses. Extreme inbreeding affected the parent’s reproductive success with small litter sizes and high mortality rates and increased the possibility of gene mutations and deformity.
Faolan decided that some diversity was in order to aid in the avoidance of disease and disaster. He came to the conclusion that if clan members were too socially close, it would only take one rabid wolf to lead to the clan being decimated from within.
So Faolan allowed those with cubs to disperse so they could form their own packs and stake out personal territories, on the proviso that they remained loyal to Kinvarra. They could govern themselves as they would an independently set-up pack and were not required to pay any sort of tithe or make any special obeisance to the Clan’s alphas.

Faolan’s plan may have come across as very generous-hearted, and indeed some members of the clan challenged his leadership over this decision, but he had an ulterior motive.
In allowing the parents to take their cubs, they also took away any deformities and diseases those cubs might carry. In allowing so many to leave, it freed up resources and food supplies for the rest of the clan. Faolan was also growing old and weary and the introduction of young blood into the clan meant more threats to his alpha status; younger, fitter challengers for him to wrestle with.
Indeed, Faolan was a cunning leader but his lack of foresight was what failed him in the end.

The small packs were wary at first of their newfound freedom after months of attempting, unsuccessfully, to hide their litters. They had lived in fear of retribution for so long that they feared this some grand master plan that would backfire on them unexpectedly and painfully.
Some of them even came to the conclusion that what Faolan had actually expected was for them to declare their loyalty to Kinvarra by destroying the illegal puppies.
But time passed and when the expected reprisals never materialised, they let down their guards and started to enjoy their newfound freedom.
Until resources became scarce and cubs started dying from malnutrition.
Their pact with Kinvarra prevented the packs from encroaching on Kinvarra hunting grounds and they were too well-disciplined and too wary of the Clan’s wrath to break the treaties Faolan had set up in good faith.
So instead they started to sneak into other Clan’s territories in desperate attempts to keep their young fed and alive.
It wasn’t too long before these packs were found out and held accountable for their actions and under great duress they revealed their individual allegiances to Kinvarra.
Their misdeeds became Kinvarra’s problem.
Their treachery led to civil war.

The offended, insulted clans declared their hostile intent against Kinvarra and they met on battlefields as wolfen, humans and in upright bestial states.
The earth drowned in the blood of the slain yet neither side would back down. The might of Kinvarra against the combined strength of several smaller clans meant they were equally matched in strength, viciousness and valour.
Faolan was always to be found in the thick of battle, his gigantic sons by his side as they tore a bloody swathe through the opposing force’s troops. He took down many a beta and fought head-to-head with the rival alphas, howling his victory to the goddess each time he took one down with his powerful claws and ferocious bite.
But the more he fought, the more clans joined the challenging forces, seeing this as their opportunity to throw down the Kinvarra supremacy and take the mantle of undisputed leadership for themselves.

They fought for weeks on end, then both sides would retreat to recuperate, to count their losses and strategise a new plan in a bid to outwit the other side.
Kinvarra suffered great losses and Faolan was desperate for victory. His clan were becoming disillusioned with him and it was only a matter of time before they conspired within his own ranks to take him and his mate down. Drastic measures needed to be taken.
His daughter Danae was still a human. Long had she begged to be turned but the auspicious number associated with her birth marked her out as a chosen of the Goddess. As such it was forbidden to change the form the goddess had granted her.
Faolan, in his despairing state made a pact with a clan from overseas, unawares that it would seal his doom and Kinvarra’s, for it went against the wishes the Goddess had for her daughter.

Faolan promised Danae as mate to the Triath of Sleitagh Artan, Callum Vantra, in return for his assistance against the forces which opposed and harassed Faolan’s lands and Clan. This agreement would bind Callum to Faolan as son-in law and Faolan to Callum as father. A risky move, for Callum’s status as Triath (alpha) meant he was more than capable of challenging Faolan’s status as Taoiseach. In fact, Callum would be a worth adversary if he was inclined towards thoughts of domination over Clan Kinvarra.
So it was agreed.
Faolan sent his only daughter off to unknown lands and an unknown clan to face hardships untold through her marriage to Callum. She would be seen as an interloper and would never be able to return to her homelands, she would be changed by him and forced to bear his cubs so that Sleitagh Artan could prosper.
Faolan thought it a fair sacrifice and a small price to pay in return for the victory of his clan.

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All featured material copyright of the writer of Danae.