i’ll try to explain this as easily as i can: the hatake (in WILDR) are not a bloodline, family, coalition, or anything; there is no real term that i’ve come across that encapsulates how i see them, how they operate, who they are, and who they are willing to be.

traits of an individual hatake:

an innate connection with nature, knowing when there is danger around, prefering to be away from large crowds.

a connection with their own insticts, understanding and acknowledging them, but still able to think mostly rationally.

makes connections to others quickly, and feels strongly about others, even if that is not mutual.

willingness to act for the benefit of their loved ones, even if it might harm themself or other bystanders.

bullheaded stubbornness, an unyeilding will to do as they will, regardless of social or societal norms.

unwillingness to be ordered to act by someone who has not earned their respect, or to be forced to act by anyone.

unsettled or disturbed by uniformity and lack of individual personality.

    As the Hatake Clan strayed from their ancestral homeland and traveled into the lowlands in search of finer weather and better opportunities, and they grew more warlike, their tradition of sacrificing their sheep turned into a tradition of sacrificing the enemy. This sacrifice was really more of cleaning the bodies up and stripping them of armor and laying them at the edge of the woods to be feasted upon by the White Ones after every battle, whether that was physically or metaphorically. Being eaten by one of these creatures was considered the highest honor among the Hatake Clan, and it was one that was granted to every Hatake and any enemy that fell to them in battle.

         It is said that when the Hatake rode to war, there was always a pack of wolves lurking at the edges of the battles, much in the way that carrion birds typically would.

    Thus their funerary traditions were a bit atypical: they were a kind of open air burial, a feast left for the gods and scavengers alike. Being buried was for people that had shown great disrespect to the clan or the gods or both, and was actually considered the worst way to be disposed of– an eternity of never seeing the sky again. After a few extremely hard winters, Hatake Kitiara reportedly made the decision to keep her people from starving by shifting this custom occasionally into cannibalism; after all, that was a lot of good meat they were wasting.

    Whether the rumors were true or not, other clans firmly believed that if you met death at the hands of a Hatake your flesh would be consumed by man and beast alike. They hunted and spread tendrils through the great mountains of the land of Earth and the rocky plateaus of the land of Lightning and then finally the massive forests of the land of Fire like wraiths, ghostly as they flickered in and out of sight. The Hatake were almost as much boogeymen as the wolves they hunted for.

    That being said, by the time what might be considered the main branch of the Hatake made it into the land of Fire to settle and farm and sell their blades for money and influence, they tended to try and settle disputes between other clans with diplomacy– after all, that’s a principle on which their clan was founded: the idea of reconciliation with an enemy that becomes your dearest friend was the origin of their very first legend. Diplomacy was both easier and harder when your intended audience believes you will eat them if peace talks fall through, and as clans jockeyed for power and influence and land it seemed to happen far more often than it should. The Hatake punished broken bonds with swift acts of extreme violence and prejudice, and soon it was realized that the clan was one of their word and it did not take lightly a broken treaty.

   Once their farms were established and food was more plentiful for the traveling swordsmen, the cannibalism fell a bit to the wayside, even if the stories and rumors of it did not. The Hatake continued to leave the bodies of the dead for the White Ones, and the White Ones continued to work with them. As the Warring States Era came to a close and Konoha made agreements with the clan (an exchange of their land and loyalty for the protection of a massive hidden village), Hatake Hisoka officially wrote the banning of cannibalism into clan law as a concession to a more ‘civilized’ time and place.

         The Tenets Of The Wolf are as follows:

    The Wolf And The Body Are The Land; All Shall Be Respected     Pack Belongs to Pack And Shall Be Protected     Those Who Endure Shall Be The Judge     Combat The Wills Of The End Wherever They Breed And Grow     Respect The Territory Of Others     Accept The Surrender Of Others Honorably     Littermates Shall Not Be Paired     Secrets Are For Mortals; The Land Shall Have The Truth     The First Share Of The Kill For The Pups And The Elders     The She-Wolf Reigns But Serves The Pack     The She-Wolf May Be Challenged During Times Of Peace     The She-Wolf May Not Be Challenged During Times Of War     Travelers Must Follow The Tenets In Hatake Territory     Take No Action Causing A Tenet To Be Violated

    In the days just before the Sage of Six Paths the Hatake remained secluded in the highlands, close to the sky. Their agreement with the White Ones made them deadly– fleet and silent and cunning, survivalists, pack-oriented. They tend their sheep, they sell their wool and meat for whatever they cannot grow or gather to survive, and they guard the hunting grounds with their steel and their wits.

         It’s a cold and rough life.

    Hatake Kuro is the next name of legend to enter the records– for he was said to be as swift as flashes of light. He was the second child of a swordsman, doomed to herding the family flock and easily bored, said to be in constant motion and always exciting the sheep. The time of the Gods were long past, so who was awake to hear him brag about being faster than the frigid northern winds? Who was awake to hear him brag about being able to outrun a raging avalanche, the coldest snowstorm, even the rising sun over the cliffs in the morning? It wasn’t Fujin-the-destructive-wind. It wasn’t Amaterasu-the-royal-sun or Tsukuyomi-the-proud-moon or Susanoo-the-chaotic-storm, no.

    Hatake Kuro, second child of a swordsman, shakes his fist at the sky and laughs and taunts, and the one to answer him is the one they call Raijin. The lightning-god, a being of destruction and protection and, in some tales… mischief. Raijin hears his taunts to the gods and he watches him and he sees that the young man is indeed quite fast, so he appears before him in a crack of blue-white lightning, and rather magnanimously he makes the boy-man a deal because he likes his spirit. The deal is simple: if Kuro is swift enough to catch a bolt of lightning, he may keep it.

         What, the young man asks the god, if I fail?

         Raijin smiles at Hatake Kuro and says only, You had better not fail.

    Kuro accepts the challenge. Raijin bids him to run where the mountain meets the sky and so run he does, all across the steppe like hell follows on his heels. As he approaches the point Raijin lets out a bellow that booms like thunder, cocks his arm, and pulls a lightning bolt down from the sky. Kuro sees the great flash of light streaking towards him and steels himself against his fear, stretches out his hand, leaping into the path of the bolt and–

         Catching it.

    Hatake Kuro catches lightning in his fist. He had bragged to the gods of his speed and his pride had not been misplaced, but man is not meant to hold lightning in his fist. The strike stops his heart and kills him dead on the spot, still standing with his feet planted and his fist raised to catch the lightning and smoldering slightly. Hatake Kuro dies, and Raijin stands for a moment and ponders all of this because, well– killing him was rather an accident. The boy was victorious, he needs some kind of reward even in death.

    For three days Raijin lets him keep the lightning as he brings rain upon the steppe, thinking about how best to reward the brave and foolish man-child Hatake Kuro. For three days he watches, until Kuro’s elder sister Niko climbs to where her brother’s body still crackles with energy, and he has an idea. Kuro has kept the lightning festering in his corpse for three days, and when Niko weeps and curses his name and reaches out to touch his charred face one last time, the lightning leaps to her, and it lives.

         Thousands of generations back, the first war the Hatake of the highlands fought was not with men, but with the wolves of the higher altitudes.

    Legend has it these wolves were massive, white as the snow and as swift as the wind. Legend has it that they were fierce and territorial and their feet carried them silent and sure through mountain passes, that their teeth were as large as a man’s hand and their howls could split rock and stop a heart. Legend has it that they belonged to the land as much as the land belonged to them.

        Legend doesn’t even begin to do the beasts justice.

    The first Hatake to meet a White One was a shepherd, a boy of no more than twelve who described them as “appearing from the vast stretches of white as though they were wraiths, the size of a man. Three of them, pale as death, with golden-yellow eyes that froze me to the ground–” before succumbing to his wounds. The wolves had wanted his sheep, but a shepherd’s duty is to protect his flock. The Hatake lost a son and many of their sheep that night. Winters were about to be hard as they crept down the mountain with less food and milk and wool than they were used to, and still they geared up a hunting party.

    The guerrilla-like struggle that unfolded over the next several decades between the Hatake and the White Ones was bloody and desperate, until one day the leaders of both clans came together in the valley at the base of mountains that would come to be known as The Three Wolves. Many had been lost, killed, and eaten on both sides until their numbers dwindled to almost nothing, and so they were to come to an agreement.

    You see, both sides were simply trying to survive. The shepherds had encroached on the White Ones’ hunting grounds, and the wolves needed to eat. And though the wolves knew nothing of animal husbandry, they discovered that the Hatake had a somewhat symbiotic relationship with their sheep– they killed and ate them as predators would, but protected them like Pack. And so the Great She-Wolf known as Azumi and the Matriarch of the Hatake, a towering woman named Katsumi, came to an agreement at the base of those three mountains. They deliberated for hours, Azumi seated with her golden eyes narrowed, and Katsumi kneeling with her chin tipped up defiantly, shrewd to the last.

    It was agreed: the Hatake clan and the White Ones are Pack. The White Ones live in the higher altitudes and they prey upon the goats and the yaks and the hares and foxes and all manner of wild creatures of the highlands, and in the deepest heart of winter, the Hatake make their way up the mountain with ten head of sheep, which they are to slaughter at the treeline, and leave. The Hatake are to live by the tenets of the wolf, and they are to keep other humans from climbing into the mountains and killing the White Ones’ game. The White Ones are to aid the Hatake on their Hunts and teach them the ways of the Pack. One pup from each litter for five years is promised to the Hatake for the second year of their life, and each Hatake firstborn is sworn to the Pack for five years. Such was the agreement, until the Hatake started to move further south and out of the mountains.