Setting and characters
The Wolf Among Us is set in the year 1986, nearly twenty years before the events of Fables . [21] For years, many of the magical lands described in myth, legend, and folklore (known as The Homelands) have been occupied by an enigmatic tyrant known as the Adversary. [22] To escape the Adversary's totalitarian regime, many of The Homelands inhabitants (collectively known as Fables) fled to colonial America, and created an enclave known as Fabletown, now located in modern-day Manhattan. To mask their presence from the native humans (referred to as "mundys"), all non-human Fables have to purchase an enchantment known as a "glamour", which allows them to appear human, otherwise they will be relocated to a rural community known as "The Farm".
The protagonist of The Wolf Among Us is Bigby Wolf (Adam Harrington), formerly the Big Bad Wolf. He is the sheriff of Fabletown, currently working at the "Business Office" under corrupt interim mayor Ichabod Crane (Roger L. Jackson), aided by Snow White (Erin Yvette) and the Magic Mirror (Gavin Hammon) in his investigation along with the help of Bufkin the winged monkey (Chuck Kourouklis) that manages Fabletown's records. Aristocrat Bluebeard (Dave Fennoy) also works at the Office though his motives are unclear. Bigby resides at the Woodlands apartments where Colin (Brian Sommer), one of the Three Little Pigs, occasionally crashes at his place. Beauty and the Beast (Melissa Hutchison and Gavin Hammon) are also residents of the Woodlands, though currently struggling with a troubled marriage. One of the Fables that Bigby frequently contacts is Mr. Toad (Chuck Kourouklis) and his son TJ (Melissa Hutchison), who live in a run-down apartment building nearby.
In the first episode, the player is introduced to The Woodsman (Adam Harrington), who lives in the same building as Mr. Toad. Standing in Bigby's way are Dee and Dum Tweedle (Gavin Hammon), twin private investigators and criminals. Bigby also encounters Holly (Janet Lipsey), a Troll who runs the Trip Trap bar, and barfly Grendel (Kid Beyond). The second episode introduces trickster and thief Jack Horner (Colin Benoit), Georgie Porgie (Kevin Howarth), a pimp and the owner of the Pudding & Pie strip club, along with prostitute Nerissa (Molly Benson), the former Little Mermaid, Vivian (Sandy Delonga), Georgie's lover, and Clever Hans (Ben Knoll), the club's bouncer. The third episode introduces the janitor Flycatcher (Dustin Rubin), the Crooked Man (Philip Banks), a loan shark with a large influence in Fabletown, Bloody Mary (Kat Cressida), a sadistic minion of the Crooked Man, and Aunty Greenleaf (Laura Bailey), a rogue witch who illegally sells cheap black-market glamours to Fables. The fourth episode introduces the Jersey Devil (Bobby Vickers), the manager of the Lucky Pawn shop and another minion of the Crooked Man; and Johann the butcher (Terry McGovern), the former owner of the Cut Above butcher shop who has been forced out of his business by the Crooked Man's henchmen.
Plot
This is a broad overview of the plot. Certain decisions made by the player will alter details of specific events.
Bigby Wolf, formerly the Big Bad Wolf, is the Sheriff of Fabletown, a hidden community of fairytale characters located in 1980s New York City. Receiving a call from Mr. Toad, Bigby protects a prostitute from an intoxicated Woodsman. Before she departs, she tells him he is not as bad as everyone says he is. Later that night, Bigby and Snow White find the woman's head left on the Woodlands doorstep. Clues left with the head identify her as Faith, a Fable from Allerleirauh . Deputy Mayor Ichabod Crane orders him and Snow to investigate her death. They head to the apartment she shared with her husband Prince Lawrence and find the Tweedles, Dee and Dum, snooping through it. Bigby pursues them, but they escape. He and Snow then learn that Lawrence and Faith struggled to make ends meet and Faith took up prostitution to help pay the bills. Bigby leaves Snow at the Woodlands while he continues to trace leads. When he returns, he finds the Woodlands surrounded by police, with Snow's head sitting on the building's steps.
Bigby is taken in for questioning by the mundy police, but Crane uses a spell to wipe the incident from the police's minds. When they return, they are surprised to find Snow alive; the head, actually that of a troll named Lily, was disguised by a black market glamour. Bigby tracks Lily's connections to the Pudding & Pie, a strip club run by Georgie Porgie, but Georgie claims innocence. Another prostitute, Nerissa, cryptically directs Bigby to a nearby hotel room, where he finds Lily's blood and photographic evidence of Crane engaging in sexual acts with Lily glamoured to look like Snow. After informing Snow of this, they race back to the Woodlands to find Crane gone, and the Magic Mirror, which could have revealed his location, shattered with one shard missing.
Bigby follows a trail of clues to Crane's whereabouts to the apartment of Aunty Greenleaf, a witch that makes the black market glamours. Along the way, he discovers that Crane has been embezzling money from Fabletown over the years to pay off a loan shark known as the Crooked Man. Greenleaf points Bigby and Snow back to the Pudding & Pie. Storming the club, they find Crane trying to extract information out of the prostitutes to prove his innocence. Though Snow realizes Crane was not the murderer, he is nonetheless arrested for embezzlement, but as they leave the club, the Crooked Man and his henchmen, the Tweedles and Bloody Mary, confront them. Mary and the Tweedles goad Bigby into his werewolf form, and a fight breaks out. When Mary critically wounds Bigby with a silver bullet, Snow stops the fight and willingly gives up Crane to save Bigby's life.
Back at the Woodlands, Bigby struggles to find clues when Nerissa appears. He realizes the ribbon she wears prevents her from speaking the truth, that Faith wore an identical ribbon, and that she died when it was removed. He follows another trail of clues, and finds evidence of the black market glamour ring in the Cut Above butcher shop, a pawn shop called the Lucky Pawn owned by Jersey Devil through which the Crooked Man distributes his loans, and Crane's presence, as well as the missing Mirror Shard. The Mirror reveals Mary putting Crane onto an overseas flight to Paris to keep him from talking, and the next location of the door to the Crooked Man's lair, which moves around the city.
Bigby enters the Crooked Man's lair alone, meeting him and his agents. The Crooked Man reveals Georgie as Faith and Lily's killer and claims he misunderstood his orders to deal with them, but Georgie asserts the Crooked Man told him to kill the women. A fight ensues and the Crooked Man and a fatally stabbed Georgie escape. When Bigby pursues the dying Georgie and his lover Vivian to the Pudding & Pie, she explains that the Crooked Man and Georgie were trying to stop a plot spearheaded by Faith with the other prostitutes to escape their forced servitude. Vivian is revealed to be the original girl with a ribbon around her neck, and have made copies of it to trap other women and force them to work for Georgie. Regretting her actions, Vivian undoes her ribbon, severing her head and breaking the spell.
Bigby finds the Crooked Man hiding in an old foundry, and after turning into his true wolf form to kill Bloody Mary, corners him in an office, where he demands a fair trial at the Woodlands. Bigby brings the Crooked Man either dead or alive before the assembled Fables of Woodlands at the Business Office, where he and Snow are forced to defend their actions against claims from the Fables. Bigby recounts Vivian and Georgie's confessions regarding the Crooked Man's involvement, but his word is deemed untrustworthy. Nerissa appears and testifies that she and five other women heard the Crooked Man order the murders. Their testimonies are considered sufficient to believe what Bigby did was right. If the Crooked Man is alive, Bigby is allowed to choose his form of punishment: locking him up forever, slice his neck open and kill him, or throwing him down the Witching Well used to dispose of dead Fables.
In the epilogue, Snow becomes the new Deputy Mayor and deals with the fallout of the Crooked Man's actions, while Bigby sees off the Fables being taken back to the Farm. Nerissa approaches him and admits that she, Faith, and Lily concocted a plan to blackmail Georgie and the Crooked Man for their freedom, using a picture of Lily and Crane together, but Georgie killed the two women when she panicked and revealed their plot to him. Nerissa left Faith's head at the Woodlands to get Bigby involved, as she knew if anyone had a chance to go toe-to-toe with the Crooked Man and come out on top, it was Bigby, and gave false testimony to have the Crooked Man punished, convinced that he was the one who ordered their deaths but lacking the evidence to prove it. She explains that, while Bigby has his faults, Fabletown would not have survived without him. If not for him fighting the unjust and his own inner demons for the good of the community, everyone would be dead due to actions from people like the Crooked Man. Leaving, she comments that Bigby is not as bad as everyone says he is, causing Bigby to recall Faith's similar words to him and question Nerissa's true identity, hinting that Faith is not really dead. Bigby is allowed to choose either to go after Nerissa or let her go.
