When I heard about the legend of Bisclavret—a werewolf whose shifts were controlled by access to his clothing—on the Fakelore podcast, I immediately thought of it as the source of another legend-tripping adventure. While researching the original story, I discovered two other werewolf references with similar tropes: Sir Marrok, mentioned briefly by Sir Thomas Malory in Le Morte d’Arthur, and Melion, the subject of an anonymous French lay from the early fifteenth century.

I’ve used these clothing-dependent werewolves as the progenitors of the three Old Families in Wolf’s Clothing, updating “Marrok” to “Merrick” and “Bisclavret” to “Clavret.”

Naturally, I’ve taken some liberties with the stories. For instance, in the original lay, Melion’s shifts were controlled by the stones in a ring. Sir Marrok was apparently trapped by sorcery, although Malory’s reference to him was extremely brief: “Sir Marrok, the good knight that was betrayed with his wife, for she made him seven year a wer-wolf.”

Each man, however, was betrayed by the person he trusted most, and trapped in his wolf form until he was able to convince someone else of his identity.