Between is a neo-Appalachian horror-mystery about survival, secrecy, and the thin line between myth and memory. The town’s magic runs deep—but it’s watching who you let in.I. ORIGINS
The Stillwater Pack rose from the drowned valleys east of Ruin, where the mining floods left lakes that never drained. When the waters came, they swallowed homes, churches, even graveyards. What remained above the surface learned to listen to the silence below.
The Pack’s founders were families displaced by both flood and fear—miners, hunters, and healers who refused to leave their land even when it was half under water. They made their new dens along the flooded edges and learned to live by what the river taught: what sinks is never lost, only changed.
Stillwater wolves are survivors and custodians. They remember what others forget, and they guard what others abandon. They carry a collective reverence for memory, water, and endurance—quietly powerful, rarely flashy, but impossible to drown.
II. BELIEFS
The Stillwater wolves are practical and spiritual in equal measure. They do not worship, but they respect.
Core tenets:
The river remembers. What is buried or forgotten carries weight; it will surface in time.
Silence is strength. Patience and observation reveal truths that violence never can.
No wolf stands alone. Each Pack member is a stone in the riverbed; together, they shape the current.
Memory mends. Forgetting wounds; remembering heals.
Hold fast. In grief, flood, or fury—anchor yourself.
They believe in the unseen ties between land and blood. The Pack teaches that emotions, grief, and love flow through them like water; to let those currents stagnate is to invite sickness.
III. CULTURE
Stillwater wolves are slow to trust outsiders but generous once they do. They are known as mediators between Packs, called in to settle disputes or retrieve the lost. Their homes are often layered with stone, driftwood, and glass from the flood years because keeping, holding, and honoring the history and their ancestors is part of keeping true to the heart of the Pack.
They tend to be soft-spoken, strong-handed, and thick with family ties. Every generation raises its young on stories of endurance, flood, and forgiveness. They have no priests, no temples, only the river.
The Stillwater Pack stands as the quiet heart between Ruin’s decay and the wilder Packs beyond. They keep the peace where others might break it, and when they strike, it is only to protect what must not be lost.
The Stillwater Pack rose from the drowned valleys east of Ruin, where the mining floods left lakes that never drained. When the waters came, they swallowed homes, churches, even graveyards. What remained above the surface learned to listen to the silence below.
The Pack’s founders were families displaced by both flood and fear—miners, hunters, and healers who refused to leave their land even when it was half under water. They made their new dens along the flooded edges and learned to live by what the river taught: what sinks is never lost, only changed.
Stillwater wolves are survivors and custodians. They remember what others forget, and they guard what others abandon. They carry a collective reverence for memory, water, and endurance—quietly powerful, rarely flashy, but impossible to drown.
II. BELIEFS
The Stillwater wolves are practical and spiritual in equal measure. They do not worship, but they respect.
Core tenets:
They believe in the unseen ties between land and blood. The Pack teaches that emotions, grief, and love flow through them like water; to let those currents stagnate is to invite sickness.
III. CULTURE
Stillwater wolves are slow to trust outsiders but generous once they do. They are known as mediators between Packs, called in to settle disputes or retrieve the lost. Their homes are often layered with stone, driftwood, and glass from the flood years because keeping, holding, and honoring the history and their ancestors is part of keeping true to the heart of the Pack.
They tend to be soft-spoken, strong-handed, and thick with family ties. Every generation raises its young on stories of endurance, flood, and forgiveness. They have no priests, no temples, only the river.
The Stillwater Pack stands as the quiet heart between Ruin’s decay and the wilder Packs beyond. They keep the peace where others might break it, and when they strike, it is only to protect what must not be lost.
Their story is one of persistence, humility, and deep-rooted loyalty—the kind that doesn’t shout, only endures.“Hold fast. The river remembers.”
I. RITES + PRACTICES
Rite of Stillness (Initiation)
When a new wolf joins—by birth, bite, or bond—they undergo the Rite of Stillness. They are taken to the Abigail's Creek at dusk, where the Pack stands waist-deep in the water. Each wolf submerges in turn, holding their breath until instinct demands they surface.
Emergence is met with the Alpha’s words:
“What holds you will not drown you.”
They leave the water as part of the Pack—reborn through calm endurance rather than blood or violence.
Rite of Remembrance (For the Dead)
When a wolf dies, their name is whispered into a bowl of river water. The water is poured back into the creek by the top of the waterfall at nightfall, allowing their memory to flow back into the land.
Each year, on the night of the first frost, the Pack gathers at the shore to speak every name again—so that none are forgotten.
Rite of Balance (Discipline)
When conflict arises or wolves break taboo, they are sent to the Deep Rest: a day and night spent in the cold shallows, fasting, silent, reflecting. The water cools anger and pride. When they emerge, they rejoin the Pack in shared meal and forgiveness.
II. TABOOS
Never pollute the water. It is the Pack’s heart.
Never speak a name in anger. Words ripple; what you curse may return to you.
Never hunt alone near Abigail's Creek. It is shared ground, sacred and dangerous.
Never betray a confidence. Still water runs deep; so do promises.
Never refuse the call of remembrance. Forgetting the dead is breaking the Pack.
Rite of Stillness (Initiation)
When a new wolf joins—by birth, bite, or bond—they undergo the Rite of Stillness. They are taken to the Abigail's Creek at dusk, where the Pack stands waist-deep in the water. Each wolf submerges in turn, holding their breath until instinct demands they surface.
Emergence is met with the Alpha’s words:
“What holds you will not drown you.”
They leave the water as part of the Pack—reborn through calm endurance rather than blood or violence.
Rite of Remembrance (For the Dead)
When a wolf dies, their name is whispered into a bowl of river water. The water is poured back into the creek by the top of the waterfall at nightfall, allowing their memory to flow back into the land.
Each year, on the night of the first frost, the Pack gathers at the shore to speak every name again—so that none are forgotten.
Rite of Balance (Discipline)
When conflict arises or wolves break taboo, they are sent to the Deep Rest: a day and night spent in the cold shallows, fasting, silent, reflecting. The water cools anger and pride. When they emerge, they rejoin the Pack in shared meal and forgiveness.
II. TABOOS
Alpha — The Wellspring
The Alpha is the one who keeps the river’s rhythm—steady, constant, rarely loud. They are the voice that carries through flood or drought, responsible for maintaining balance rather than dominance. Ruth-Anne Calvert is respected more for her steadfastness than her ferocity. She leads from the back, watchful and protective. She makes sure every mouth has food before she eats. She will go without to make sure her people have. She is not maternal, but nurturing. Her wit can bite, her humor is dry, her voice raspy and her strike deadly when necessary.
Beta — The Riverguard
The Beta maintains peace within the Pack, bridging between Alpha and wolves. They are mediators and keepers of the oral memory. The right-hand of the Alpha, they tend to the day-to-day cycles of the Pack while The Wellspring tends the Pack as a whole and keeps track of individuals. Patrolling schedules, chore schedules, any type of schedule that needs to be kept in order or where people need to be aided--The Riverguard is there to help and maintain.
Omega — The Driftkeeper
The Omega is the emotional anchor, tending to those who falter. They listen more than they speak. Their job is to absorb Pack sorrow and ensure no one sinks under their own weight. They will step into the middle of a physical fight to break it up until a Riverguard or The Wellspring can get there, but their hope is always to be there to stop a fight or any breakdown before it happens.
The Alpha is the one who keeps the river’s rhythm—steady, constant, rarely loud. They are the voice that carries through flood or drought, responsible for maintaining balance rather than dominance. Ruth-Anne Calvert is respected more for her steadfastness than her ferocity. She leads from the back, watchful and protective. She makes sure every mouth has food before she eats. She will go without to make sure her people have. She is not maternal, but nurturing. Her wit can bite, her humor is dry, her voice raspy and her strike deadly when necessary.
Beta — The Riverguard
The Beta maintains peace within the Pack, bridging between Alpha and wolves. They are mediators and keepers of the oral memory. The right-hand of the Alpha, they tend to the day-to-day cycles of the Pack while The Wellspring tends the Pack as a whole and keeps track of individuals. Patrolling schedules, chore schedules, any type of schedule that needs to be kept in order or where people need to be aided--The Riverguard is there to help and maintain.
Omega — The Driftkeeper
The Omega is the emotional anchor, tending to those who falter. They listen more than they speak. Their job is to absorb Pack sorrow and ensure no one sinks under their own weight. They will step into the middle of a physical fight to break it up until a Riverguard or The Wellspring can get there, but their hope is always to be there to stop a fight or any breakdown before it happens.
Riverguard
Build: Tank
Temper: Restrained
Instinct: Guard
Mark: Footsteps too quiet for a woman built like a cathedral, she moves like snowfall. Her presence announces itself not by sound but by the sudden realization that she’s standing exactly where she needs to be — already reading the situation, already deciding.
Wolf: A massive, pale-shouldered titan with glacier eyes — the kind of creature that doesn’t chase danger, but makes danger reconsider its life choices.
Tamsin is a wolf whose power comes from composure, not chaos. Her Tank build gives her a commanding physical presence, but her Restrained temper and Guard instinct refine that force into something deliberate, protective, and quietly intimidating. Her Mark — those impossibly soft footsteps — completes the contradiction she embodies: overwhelming strength delivered with disarming grace. She is Stillwater’s living warning label, the unshakable hand that keeps order from fraying, and the wolf whose silence says everything.
Riverguard
Build: Warden
Temper: Balanced
Instinct: Brood
Mark: A low rumble in the Voice. Crystal’s voice carries a warm, playful melody…until it doesn’t. When the Beta rises in her, the rumble beneath her words is unmistakable — a vibration that settles in the ribs and makes every wolf in earshot straighten without thinking.
Wolf: Broad-chested and honey-colored, with bright eyes and a tail that sways like a banner—right up until danger appears, when she becomes a wall of fur and fury.
Crystal is the sunlight of Stillwater — the Beta whose warmth keeps the den thriving, whose laughter breaks tension before it cracks, and whose protective instinct could level a mountain. Her Warden build anchors her in the physical world; her Balanced temper lets her move easily between softness and command. Brood instinct makes her the emotional centerline of every space she enters, while her Mark — that subtle, seismic rumble — reveals the deep power humming beneath her kindness. Crystal Ackerley is the Beta who welcomes you with breakfast…and the one you never want to see angry. Unmistakably Stillwater’s smiling, steel-spined Riverguard.
Driftkeeper
Build: Warden
Temper: Restrained
Instinct: Guard
Mark: Riverbed Eyes. Silas’s eyes look carved from wet stone — deep, steady, quiet. When he watches someone, it feels like a river settling around their shape, reading their currents and choosing whether to let them pass. Dogs love him. Liars avoid him.
Wolf: massive and slate-gray, built like a boulder loosened from the mountain — low to the ground, silent in movement, with a stare that pins threats in place. He does not chase. He waits, patient and immovable, until the moment to strike is undeniable.
Silas is Stillwater’s quiet anchor — the Omega who keeps vigil without needing praise, whose presence steadies the entire Pack. His Warden build gives him a physical and emotional gravity; his Restrained temper keeps him measured even when the wolf stirs. Guard instinct roots him in every doorway and trailhead, turning boundaries into sanctuaries. And his Mark — those riverbed eyes — reveals the deep, unshakeable knowing beneath his gentle humor. Silas Ackerley is the man who welcomes you inside…and the wolf who ensures nothing follows you in.
Wellspring
Build: Scout
Temper: Steady*
Instinct: Boundary*
Mark: Fur-like hair, shadow sometimes shows a tail flickering or in the heat of anger her physical body doesn't show, her shadow may appear in her Lycan form.
Ruth-Anne is wiry, tall, spectral in movement—she slips through the woods like the memory of wind. Her speed and perception are unmatched; she sees threats long before anyone else does. As Alpha, this gives her a watchtower-like awareness of her Pack’s safety.
In wolf form: long-limbed, pale-coated, impossible to track unless she wants to be found.
Ruth-Anne leads with devotion, but not warm devotion—steadfast, clean, almost ritualistic devotion. Her Packmates aren’t afraid of her, but they don’t cross her. Not because she punishes, but because it feels like letting down the mountain itself.
She knows every wolf intimately—their triggers, their fears, their strengths, their limits—and assigns roles with almost eerie accuracy.
When conflict arises, she appears silently—no footsteps, no warning—just a tall, pale figure whose gaze strips away all posturing. Most wolves apologize before she speaks.
How Other Packs See Her:
Stillwater wolves revere her.
Other Packs respect her, fear her, or avoid her entirely.
Her Weakness:
She gives so much steadiness to her Pack that she has very little left for herself. Her private emotional world is a deep, cold cavern. Only her closest wolves (Grey & Silas) ever see the cracks.