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Benandanti Elite

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*Please comment and fav. If you just fav me and say nothing, I will ignore you.

Yes... I know werewolves are rather cliche, but this is different. History lesson for you. This is based on the Italian legend of the Benandanti which roughly translates to "Good Walkers".
They were a Christian cult that believed that they were chosen to battle demons and witches. They went out to battle around harvest moon, and some of the Benandanti were werewolves. Basically they find a bunch of witches in one of their festivals and crash the party. If they won, harvest was fruitful. If they lost, famine struck the land.
The Catholic Church didn't look on them on a bright light because the Benandanti believed that since they were doing God a service by being soldiers against the occult, they get automatic enterance into heaven. This means they didn't need the Church and the Church too exception. The Benandanti were then condemned as heretics and punished for superstition.

This drawing is my imagination on what a Benandanti werewolf was like. I figured the werewolves were the Banandanti's "shock troops", as werewolves are pretty strong, at least according to legend. So by being an elite, this guy gets fancy armor.
The armor has St. Lucy on it, who in the patron saint of light. The Benandanti typically looked to her as an icon. Also, you see the face which is a full moon. The other designs are based on plants and the sort, since the Benandanti were very agricultural.

Just to clear things up. I think the Benandanti did exist, but the werewolf stories that are attached are fiction. Just like how I believe there was a King Arthur, but his advisor Merlin wasn't truly a wizard.
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Asanbonsam's avatar
Do you know who claimed that the Benandanti were werewolves or where you have read this? I know only of two sources saying so:
1) The Curse of the Werewolf Borgault, and her referenced source does not state so (it only pointed out analogies between Livonian werewolves and the Benandanti regarding the whole battle against evil forces thing).
2) The Werewolf Handbook by Bob Curran, and this one was stating no sources. He only said "Ginzberg's book" and if he means Ginzburg than I can only say that I know of only three books of him who deal with the Benandanti and none of them states them as werewolves.
Ginzburgs book the Nightbattles, whicch deals extensively with the Benandanti, mentions them leaving ther bodies in human, imal (cat, hare, butterfly) and even smoke form but never that they ever did so in wolf-form or even transformed into wolves.