A chain of soldier werewolves in a family tree

[.matthew.]

An inherited mutation (parents/relatives had the problem over several generations) is known as a germ-line mutation and affects all cells in the body, including the gametes, so it can be passed down the generations.

That's a very good point and something technology is only just managing to replicate now (that Chinese doctor for instance). I like her being genetically werewolf before the nazis found her at all.

 

[-K2-]

I suspect the more you write this work then the more opportunities for insights into the backstory will come up.

Btw, though - if you really want to explore a cause for the effect, if you haven't already you could always make the original werewolf a victim of Josef Mengele's experiments:

Nazi human experimentation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yeah, that might have been done already:

And a whole series of comics:

And of course this artistic masterpiece:

Then there is this gem, though not exactly 'were-wolf':

K2

 

[tinkerdan]

My concern would be that the term Werewolf can be traced back much further than WW's and men changing to wolves even farther back.

Perhaps this would be an experiment that was trying to use the Germ of existing werewolves who where uncontrollable to produce soldiers from the chosen who could be controlled. Perhaps after destroying several of thier soldiers they began experimenting on people they could afford to lose trying to perfect the method to use on their elite.

I was going to offer a novel I read recently that has vampires working with and against the Germans. I can't remember if it had werewolves. However it's been a while and I can't quite recall it and I won't have access to my bookshelf until a bit later today.

Anyway the point is that it does sound interesting; however there is a genre out there that is already doing this type story.

edit note added::

Amazon.com

here we go.

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

Well a lot of the wars after WW2 didn't portray the US in a good light either; plenty of room for moral dubiousness on every side.

(And if they are mercenaries, don't they just go on the side with the most money anyway?)

Anyway that aside, I think your ultimate antagonists should be the shadowy organisation that really runs the world - the British Royal family. As we all know they are shape-shifting 7 foot tall lizard people who regularly consume babies.

I can promise you that shadowy organizations and giant lizards will have their role

Re the science around heritability of mutations. You can gloss over this, but if you are not careful someone might call you out.
Acquired mutations (nazi experiment/bitten by radioactive wolf etc) might affect the individual, but they do not generally affect the germ cells. In other words they are not passed on to offspring.
An inherited mutation (parents/relatives had the problem over several generations) is known as a germ-line mutation and affects all cells in the body, including the gametes, so it can be passed down the generations.

I looked more into this and it seems that acquired mutations are possible to be passed on to the offspring from the carrier. Again correct me if I'm wrong but I read somewhere that it still is possible. I'll have to dig back and see where I have found it.

I'd go with Polish, spreads it out a bit and she would be more oblivious to the Nazis; I imagine Jewish werewolves would flee pretty quick, but Polish ones might just try to hold their territory (Poland had little warning or time to run). I think there was more experimentation outside of Germany as well if I recall correctly (but might be wrong).

The problem with the second point is age though, how old is she when she gets taken? I was thinking like 10ish when you say girl, which would invalidate her to have a real love interest anytime during the war, but could be a really fun guerilla fighter ending with her being like 15-16 (or maybe a few years older) but having her as a young fragile looking girl who can tear the heads off nazis

So if I say she was Polish, does that mean the Kristallnacht, Night of the Broken Glass that happened in Germany, 1938 would not work? The reason I was thinking of connecting this to the girl being a victim at that time when taken captured after turing into a werewolf, losing control when that pogrom happened because of how that event could easily tie into me saying there was a werewolf present and went crazy from that stressful moment. And it took place Nov 9th and 10th, one or two days after a full moon which was on the 7th of Nov in real life so it just seems fitting. Is it possible this could be added in the story? If she was from Poland and not Germany, then it would make sense her and her family were taken to the concentration camps in 1939? I'm guessing her and her family would be Polish Jewish? Or just Polish? But if Jewish werewolves would flee quickly, would they still have been captured before they had the chance to escape? I can't even find any Polish werewolf myths but I did find it in Norse, Greek, French and Balkans.

I was actually thinking that maybe she'd be about 13-14 when first taken and during the war, she'd be around in her early 20's, at least making her old enough to have a love interest if she met a soldier about 22-24 years old? But I'm really loving the idea of her as a small fragile young girl using guerrilla tactics to rip Nazis apart, maybe when she was still in her teens

Maybe I could keep her young throughout the WWII story starting at age 10 and at the end is 16? Have her help this soldier and the Allies and her as an underestimated assassin to the Nazis. But then how would I have the love interest happen where the parents of the half breed werewolf son would fight Soviet bad guys during the Cold War? By the time she would be grown up would be in the mid 1950's and the son would be old enough to fight in Vietnam. Then by the time the 1980's conflicts would arise, he could be old enough to fight in the Nicaragua Revolution or the Angolan Civil War? Continuing the werewolf gene offspring if he meets a woman from either country.

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

Yeah, that might have been done already:

And a whole series of comics:

And of course this artistic masterpiece:

Then there is this gem, though not exactly 'were-wolf':

K2

Looks like it has ...well I can still put my own spin to it, I think. but this looks really awesome, nice find!

My concern would be that the term Werewolf can be traced back much further than WW's and men changing to wolves even farther back.

Perhaps this would be an experiment that was trying to use the Germ of existing werewolves who where uncontrollable to produce soldiers from the chosen who could be controlled. Perhaps after destroying several of thier soldiers they began experimenting on people they could afford to lose trying to perfect the method to use on their elite.

I was going to offer a novel I read recently that has vampires working with and against the Germans. I can't remember if it had werewolves. However it's been a while and I can't quite recall it and I won't have access to my bookshelf until a bit later today.

Anyway the point is that it does sound interesting; however there is a genre out there that is already doing this type story.

edit note added::

Amazon.com

here we go.

They can, as a matter of fact I found some stuff that relates it back to the Middle Ages and I would trace it to that time.

Oh this I like, after some failed attempts of it causing their soldiers to be uncontrollable, they test it on regular victims and prisoners of the war first. This could expand on more characters like offsprings if I want to in the future?

Great Novel! Thank you for this

 

[.matthew.]

Oh this I like, after some failed attempts of it causing their soldiers to be uncontrollable, they test it on regular victims and prisoners of the war first. This could expand on more characters like offsprings if I want to in the future?

The timeline issue is boggling my mind so I'm going to leave that for now.

For this point, if you make the nazi werewolves uncontrollable, the same would likely apply to your heroine. I'd make the natural werewolf girl more packlike, with strong family bonds, loyalty and compassion and that (much how real wolves behave in nature), which leaves the nazi ones with a loyalty to the cause but still displaying some of the violence indicative of forced packs you find in zoos (with infighting and more viciousness). This would act as a pretty natural separator for the differences between the two sides.

Edit: I think that any attempt to shoehorn nazis invent lycans in labs wouldn't work because of all the long history, but they definitely had occult research going in real life, so it's not a stretch to believe they would exploit werewolves for war if they found some.

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

The timeline issue is boggling my mind so I'm going to leave that for now.

For this point, if you make the nazi werewolves uncontrollable, the same would likely apply to your heroine. I'd make the natural werewolf girl more packlike, with strong family bonds, loyalty and compassion and that (much how real wolves behave in nature), which leaves the nazi ones with a loyalty to the cause but still displaying some of the violence indicative of forced packs you find in zoos (with infighting and more viciousness). This would act as a pretty natural separator for the differences between the two sides.

Edit: I think that any attempt to shoehorn nazis invent lycans in labs wouldn't work because of all the long history, but they definitely had occult research going in real life, so it's not a stretch to believe they would exploit werewolves for war if they found some.

I know, I kind of messed the whole thing up, my mistake

Let me simplify it and say she was taken captive at age 14, she is either rescued or escapes and over the years she's still a young teen and beats the crap out of Nazis as a still small and fragile girl with her werewolf powers. Eventually meets up with this soldier and his team of Allies by now at age 20-21. The soldier could be 22 or 24 at least. They fall in love and their offspring son is born 1945 and their son fights in the Cold War conflicts. Does this sound good? If I keep her a young girl the entire time of WWII, she would probably not marry someone until the mid 1950's at least and her offspring son would probably be too young to fight in the Cold War conflicts I'm guessing but would probably fight in the 1990's conflicts then.

I agree about the werewolf girl. She'd have some real wolf-like pack behavior and loyalty. The Nazis could have loyalty for what they are told or believe in but having that vicious killings forced packs would betray. I like that two sides like this being distinguished from eachother.

What do you think now about the timeline issue? If the werewolf girl starts young as a teen and then throughout the years in WWII she would be at least 20 or 21 years old she could meet an elite soldier close to her age, because if she's just a little girl throughout WWII I can;t see how she'd be old enough to continue the bloodline of her offspring.

Edit: I forgot about the occult. I had this idea in mind when thinking about werewolves, vampires and the different kinds of creature lore. It makes complete sense for the Nazis to focus on that as compared to something such as DNA, which would not have been justified yet by them creating genes in a lab.

 

[.matthew.]

So, by no means total, but this list includes noteworthy conflicts involving either the British, US, or the Soviet Union.

The numbers in brackets is the girls age, followed by her son - beginning at the start of the conflict.

The Second World War, 1939–1945 (14)
First Indochina War 1946-1954 (21, 1)
Romanian anti-communist resistance movement 1947-1962 (22, 2)
1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état 1948 (23, 3)
The Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 (23, 3)
The Korean War, 1950–1953 (25, 5)
The Kenya Emergency, 1952–1960 (27, 7)
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany 1953 (28, 8)
Vietnam War 1955-1975 (30, 10 - 50, 30) The only major war they could realistically fight in together.
The Suez Crisis, 1956 (31, 11)
The Aden Emergency, 1963–1967 (38, 18) Son turns 18 here.
The Troubles, 1968–1998
Sino-Soviet border conflict 1969
Ethiopian Civil War 1974-1971
Angolan Civil War 1975-2002 (50, 30) Son turns 30 here.
The Falklands War, 1982
Singing Revolution 1987-1991
The Gulf War, 1990–1991 (65, 45)
The Bosnian War, 1992–1995
The Kosovo War, 1998–1999
The Global War on Terrorism, 2001–2013 (76, 56)

Not sure when you'd want him to have a kid of his own, but timeline wooo.

Edit: Yea, I got bored of doing the math and started skipping some

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

So, by no means total, but this list includes noteworthy conflicts involving either the British, US, or the Soviet Union.

The numbers in brackets is the girls age, followed by her son - beginning at the start of the conflict.

The Second World War, 1939–1945 (14)
First Indochina War 1946-1954 (21, 1)
Romanian anti-communist resistance movement 1947-1962 (22, 2)
1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état 1948 (23, 3)
The Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960 (23, 3)
The Korean War, 1950–1953 (25, 5)
The Kenya Emergency, 1952–1960 (27, 7)
Uprising of 1953 in East Germany 1953 (28, 8)
Vietnam War 1955-1975 (30, 10 - 50, 30) The only major war they could realistically fight in together.
The Suez Crisis, 1956 (31, 11)
The Aden Emergency, 1963–1967 (38, 18) Son turns 18 here.
The Troubles, 1968–1998
Sino-Soviet border conflict 1969
Ethiopian Civil War 1974-1971
Angolan Civil War 1975-2002 (50, 30) Son turns 30 here.
The Falklands War, 1982
Singing Revolution 1987-1991
The Gulf War, 1990–1991 (65, 45)
The Bosnian War, 1992–1995
The Kosovo War, 1998–1999
The Global War on Terrorism, 2001–2013 (76, 56)

Not sure when you'd want him to have a kid of his own, but timeline wooo.

Edit: Yea, I got bored of doing the math and started skipping some

Hey this is perfect, thanks very much!

Ok so if I put some of this together, by the time WWII is over the girl now 21 has her son born during the First Indochina War. I'm guessing she could've met with an American special forces soldier, with the Viet Minh, Soviet Union, China and Eastern territory as her enemies.

Her and the soldier she meets would fight in all those conflicts, when the son finally reaches 18 during the Aden Emergency, he continues to fight, along with his mom and possibly dad in the other conflicts. Maybe by then the son meets a female soldier/mercenary or spy during the Angolian Civil War during the mid-80's? Then they both have their own son together. They can go to those later conflicts through the 80's and 90's and maybe even the Global War on Terrorism. Their son would be too young in the 80's and 90's but unless he is still carrying the werewolf powers he may be able to do some damage

But their son would most likely fight in the War on Terrorism conflicts. Then by the 2020's or 2030's he would have his own kids, two twins. One male and one female who go on to being main protagonists. What do you think?

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

One more thing I wanted to add, if the first generation son(the one born from the grown up werewolf girl from WWII) meets this female soldier/spy during the Angolan Civil War, would it be best if she was an Angolan soldier/spy? Or better if she was an American or British? Or she's British but with Angolan relatives or ancestors?

And when their son is born, the second generation son who would have the twins, what would be a good conflict for him to meet a woman and have the twins? A Baltic female sniper who's in the midst of a conflict in Eastern Europe with Ukraine-Russia tensions? Or he meets a Tibetan or Indonesian warrior monk woman with some sort of conflict happening their with terrorist and Maoist insurgency?

 

[Brian G Turner]

I think you just need to start writing your story and see where this leads you - at the moment you are going all over the place with your backstory and all the time you do that you're not actually writing your story.

Have a go - you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by the insights you get as you're writing it.

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

I'm on it. Thanks! Appreciate all the insightful support

I was actually told that having part of the story in the future taking place in Tibet or Indonesia and the third generation son having twins and with meeting a woman there is a bit cartoony and meeting a female sniper with twins in some Ukraine-Russia conflict is making Russia look bad?

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I may be rusty on the mechanics here, but if you start from the girl, and she passes it down to her son, then he got it from one of her X chromosomes. Following that, son's son would be getting his Y chromosome, on down the line, as each son's X chromosome would be from his mother. So I'm not sure that works. There could be something I'm not seeing, though. Anyone?

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

I may be rusty on the mechanics here, but if you start from the girl, and she passes it down to her son, then he got it from one of her X chromosomes. Following that, son's son would be getting his Y chromosome, on down the line, as each son's X chromosome would be from his mother. So I'm not sure that works. There could be something I'm not seeing, though. Anyone?

I think so, but say her son meets with the soldier woman from Angola who is a werewolf herself, or maybe a wereleopard and their son would get a mix of chromosome X and Y I think? But if the Angolan soldier is just human I'm not sure if he would get any of her X chromosome side? Then their son meets a Baltic female sniper who could be a werewolf but I'm not sure how their both boy and girl twins would end up getting which side of the chromosomes? I'm bad with genes.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Well (and this is only speaking of strict X/Y without getting into the myriad other combinations where people can get extras or be missing bits, because that's not particularly helpful for you in trying to establish a lineage of inherited characteristics), a male (XY) baby gets his X from his mother and his Y from his father, and a female (XX) baby gets the father's X and one of the mother's X's. That's why some things are sex-linked, because they exist on one of the sex chromosomes and can only be passed down in certain ways.

You could have it existing on some other chromosome entirely, but those aren't reliable for a line of inheritance, because there are so many possibilities in the ways that genes combine -- it wouldn't be that likely to exist in each generation. The X and Y are very limited as to how we get them (again, aside from the larger combinations that occur), which is how things linked to them are so reliable for passing down.

I may have to draw up a chart and contemplate peas for a while.

 

[.matthew.]

I don't think it'd be necessary to go into the whole chromosome stuff.

If you did, you could still say it was 50/50 chance of the gene being passed on, so it's not even remotely hard to buy that the next 2 generations could be werewolves. Hell, if the son meets another werewolf, it'd be a guarantee. So looking at it that way, it'd be a single coin flip for the first son to be a werewolf, and a sure thing on the son's children (if the partner is a werewolf).

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

Or if they are mixed with other were-genes from another were-species partner right?

 

[.matthew.]

Maybe taking it a bit too out there with other were species

 

[WolfSpirit0909]

So just stick with the werewolves? I could say they mixed with super human soldiers, creating a super human werewolf soldier

 

[.matthew.]

I'd just stick with the regular old werewolves. Escalation and power creep should be reserved for long series. Doing it here would strip the book of the realism you seem to be going for with the deep historical research too.