Marrow Moth

One might imagine that werewolves live for the hunt and that hunting season is their favorite time of the year. The truth is darker than that. Hunting happens during the times the wolves have to supplement their stores or their agricultural efforts. Relatively independent of the need for human business, werewolf communities (often single packs but occasionally entire clans) farm together and store the leftover foods for the winter, when they will be needed.

It is rare that the wolves are able to store enough food to last them through the winter, and this is when Hunting Season becomes life or death for some of the less prosperous packs.

During Hunting Season, the pack's Gammas (ordinarily the warriors) and some of the Deltas venture out into the wilds to bring back meat and sometimes gathered root vegetables, mushrooms, or other foods to sustain them through the winter. They make their camp in the wilds where they are hunting, and, inevitably, the campfire attracts Marrow Moths.

These moths would be nothing more than a nuisance if a healer had not once discovered that he could grind down their wings to make a powder that accelerated healing and made the wolves that swallowed the tonic made with it almost invincible during a fight.

Wolves know and understand sacrifice. If there is one time of year when giving up any food is a deep sacrifice, it's during hunting season. The pressure is on to bring back large kills that can feed an entire pack, while the hunting wolves allow their own stomachs to go empty for as long as possible to ensure the survival of their den.

And so, in order to thank the moths for their wing scales and to encourage them to keep visiting their campfires, the wolves leave behind the best part of the meal: The bone marrow. This attracts the marrow moths, who eat the bone marrow (which the wolves would otherwise happily suck down!), who in turn shed their wing scales so that they can be collected and ground down to help the hunters with healing symptoms of various ailments more likely to affect them when they're hunting than when they're close to their pack lands.

Marrow Moth Powder does make it home, of course, and it is included in the medicines available in the infirmary of each pack or clan.