Learn a long-winded, meandering history - The Werewolf Chaff with Scott Stephenson

Gather ‘round, if you dare, and prepare for a journey so convoluted, so absolutely drenched in centuries-old triviality and tangled lore, that one may ask, “Did anyone actually ask for this?” Well, such is the spirit of Werewolf Chaff! We’ve asked ourselves this very question, and each time, we’ve answered with a resounding howl of defiance, unperturbed by petty concepts like relevance or brevity.

 

Werewolf Chaff did not begin in the ordinary sense, as most columns or newsletters do. No, it began, as all proper mysteries should, on a fog-draped night, somewhere on land that was neither here nor entirely there - a threshold zone, if you will, which may or may not have been in the vicinity of what would eventually, and with considerable patience, become Huron County. It was a mystical, mist-swirled eve, the likes of which Werewolf Chaff would come to insist upon for all significant occasions.

 

The first unofficial edition of Werewolf Chaff wasn’t written, you see - it was bellowed. Lonny Grimbald, a man renowned for his loud and frequent declarations on all manner of irrelevant subjects, gathered woodland creatures under the light of a suspiciously bloated moon and began the now-hallowed tradition of speaking on topics on which no one had asked him to speak. Thus, Werewolf Chaff was born as a spoken word event, a sort of primal oratory news medium in which we were the sole arbiters of what was worth announcing, a legacy that we hold close to our heart and continue in spades to this very day.

 

Generations passed, and Werewolf Chaff mutated. One such mutation occurred in the hands of Boudica Grimapolline, a great-niece of Grimbald himself, who adored the spoken tradition, but was exhausted by it. Grimapolline’s contribution was groundbreaking: she gave Werewolf Chaff its first written editions, if you can call a stack of birch shards written in berry juice an edition.

 

Ah, the bark issues! Some of our staff (those with questionable taste and a fondness for erect oaks, willows and bimbleberry mahoganies) still long for the days when editions were pieced together from erratically-carved pieces of tree, circulated to whomever found them first and inscribed with news ranging from the vital to the nonsensical to the downright baffling. The editors back then, as now, took an intense pride in their handiwork, often to the point of self-congratulation, which, in turn, became another enduring tradition of Werewolf Chaff.

 

One era’s whim, however, is another’s mandate, and as the 1500s rolled around, Werewolf Chaff had become rather determined to outdo itself. Grethelda, the self-appointed “patron lupine” of the publication, took to running it single-pawedly. While circulation was somewhat limited to a handful of wolves and a particularly loyal beaver, Werewolf Chaff’s legacy was in good paws. Our ethos of self-aggrandizement, verbosity and fierce independence was cemented under Grethelda’s regime. Werewolf Chaff would no longer cater to mere mortals, but instead aimed to cater to the “werewolf within”, a guiding principle that remains poorly understood and inexplicably essential.

 

Fast-forward to the age of print! While Werewolf Chaff is quick to boast of its history as the longest-running, semi-unintelligible column in the known universe, the actual “printing press era” has been, to put it delicately, a series of noble failures. The mysterious ghostly editor Ezekiel Peabody, in his spectral wisdom, thought it prudent to print issues that could only be read under certain moon phases, thereby ensuring their incomprehensibility to all but the most dedicated, supernaturally-attuned readers. It was Peabody, that translucent tyrant of typesetting, who coined the phrase, “If you don’t understand it, Werewolf Chaff has done its job.” Our mission of delightful opacity continues unabated by neither man nor ghost.

 

Yes, Werewolf Chaff has taken many forms over its storied life: from bark scrolls to wolf songs, from spectral etchings on dewy leaves to the current ink-laden format you hold before you. And yet, through each change, we have held fast to our one timeless principle: no one must truly understand Werewolf Chaff, for it is not comprehension we seek but communion in confusion.
Now, dear readers, as we embark on the next chapter of our saga, let us not overlook the lesser-known figures who shaped the grand tapestry of Werewolf Chaff. For every illustrious Grimbald or Grimapolline, there creepily lurked an array of eccentrics - a rogues’ gallery of oddballs, if you will - each leaving their mark in ways that would confound even the most astute of historians.
So, while the world may seek clarity and coherence, we stand as proud sentinels of the obscure, custodians of a legacy that revels in the delightful disarray of existence.

 

WEREWOLF CHAFF FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!