After I wrote The Debased, I sometimes got questions about stuff I didn't make clear or account for. So I thought I'd answer the most common questions (at least the ones I remember) in the form of a FAQ. I tried covering all the bases here, but if I missed anything, email me your questions and I'll happily answer them (or even put 'em up here, with your permission).
And before anyone takes offense at my supposed "tone" here, I'm not cranky, just playing rough. So adjust the narrating voice in your head accordingly as you read and we should be fine. We're talking about the illegitimate kids of werewolves that hump dogs, after all. So we can't take ourselves too seriously... right?

Lexicon Canid: The term some dog-blooded use to refer to their own kind, in place of other, derogatory terms. (q.v. Debased) canis: Dog-blooded born to dogs; when capitalized, it refers to the full animal form of a Debased, analogous to a werewolf's Lupus form. Company Dog: A Debased bred, trained and directed by Pentex. (q.v. Project Proteus.) convert: In a Vanguard of Sirius context, a feral that has joined the tribe. Debased: Common term given to Garou-dog hybrids, considered derogatory; also dog-blooded, mongrel and mutt. debasement: A deformity or weakness dog-blooded are born with, similar to that possessed by a metis. feral: A mutt with no tribal affiliation (most of them). lapdog: A mutt that serves the Garou Nation. There are almost none left, as almost all lapdogs were killed or exiled by werewolves after the discovery of the Vanguard. mad dog: Slang for a Wyrm-corrupted mutt, especially one that joins the Black Spiral Dancers. the Masters: The secretive cabal of Garou that established and directed the Vanguard of Sirius, now exposed and disbanded. Project Proteus: The subdivision of Pentex's Special Projects Division responsible for producing and training the Company Dogs. Rite of Adaptation: The rite that allows Garou to sire young with dogs, resulting in Debased. Rite of Holism: A miraculous rite exclusive to the Vanguard of Sirius that repairs a Canid's body and spirit. sectary: A Canid born into and raised within the Vanguard of Sirius. Sirius: The patron totem of the Vanguard of Sirius. stray: A bestial mongrel that has had no contact with Garou or other dog-blooded, and remains ignorant of her true nature; the Debased equivalent of a Lost Cub. Vanguard of Sirius: A tribe composed mostly of Canids, with a smattering of ex-Ronin and Kinfolk. Once hidden, the recently unveiled tribe has become militant and a concern for all Garou. Alternately shortened to "Vanguard" or "Sirius." vector: Slang for a Garou that has undergone the Rite of Adaptation and has produced Debased offspring; predictably, this term is considered insulting.

Okay, what is the true nature of the Rite of Adaptation? Is it really of the Wyrm? Oh yeah, that. Okay, the rite's secret origins begin in... oops! I almost let it slip!
Look, I gave you plenty of origin possibilities in the Debased netbook -- pages 36-37 in case you missed it. What else you want from me? I gotta give Storytellers at least some room to do their own thing. Or are only official White Wolf writers allowed to be cryptic and leave things open-ended?

You call Debased a lot of different things (mongrels, dog-blooded, mutts). Why not "weredogs"? Because Debased aren't weredogs, they're werewolf-dog hybrids -- a distinction that's more than semantic. Only Gaia can create a true Changing Breed; Garou with a defective rite and bent sex urges don't cut it. Shifters are unified spirit and flesh, beast and man, granted a sacred purpose and responsibility. Debased have no Gaian mandate, and their physical and spiritual attributes conflict. So they're not weredogs, but artificial and flawed werewolf knockoffs. Sucks to be them, eh?
Whether Gaia will ever validate Debased and accept them as a true Breed, or Luna will grace them with auspices... well, even this late in the game anything's possible. But I wouldn't bet on that just happening out of the blue.
(Oh, you can add another term to the list. "Canid" is what a growing number of Vanguard of Sirius and ferals with a sense of racial pride are calling themselves. Better than using a derisive slur to refer to oneself, right?)

So Debased turn into dogs? Sorta. A few mongrels are werewolves, for all intents and purposes, with just a smidgen of dog in them. Others have no recognizable wolf heritage and look like domestic dogs. Most fall between these ranges and display varying degrees of apparent lupus ancestry. All are still Debased, however.
Generally, "first generation" Debased -- the spawn of vector Garou and/or wolves -- closely resemble wolves. They also tend to be stronger and manifest fewer flaws than other mongrels; Strong Wolf Heritage and certain other Merits are appropriate for such characters. The further removed from Garou or wolf stock a dog-blooded is, the less he resembles a wolf and the more doglike he looks. Most Debased are the products of several generations of stray dogs, and evince just enough wolf ancestry to make people nervous. Very few look like dogs of any particular breed or pedigree, befitting their cognomen "mutts."

Can Debased (or Garou using the Rite of Adaptation) breed with coyotes, jackals or other animals? Nope. They can only produce young with humans, dogs and wolves. Coyotes, jackals, foxes, wolverines, spider monkeys, fruit bats, orca, Humboldt squid, et cetera ad nauseum are spiritually distinct from dogs and wolves, and so can't create kids with pervy mongrels or Garou vectors.

Are there "debased" Bastet, Nuwisha, Gurahl, etc.? No, at least not "officially." First, the Rite of Adaptation is tailored to Garou, and it wouldn't do Fera much good if they were to swipe it. However, Mokole are past masters of breeding with all sorts of reptiles, and in Bastet there are oblique references to dark fertility magic that let Bubasti do some freaky shit. The Rite of Adaptation might be related to those powers in some way. And who's to say the first attempts by these Fera (or others) to breed with an exotic species turned out just right? Who knows, there could be hidden bloodlines of mutant horrors in forgotten corners of the world or the Umbra even now.
As for using dog-blooded as a generic template for degenerate versions of other Breeds, I suppose nothing's stopping you. But keep in mind what makes dog-blooded unique is they're... well, unique. Mongrels are defects, unprecedented aberrations. Even if mistakes were made by Fera trying to inflate their numbers, they wouldn't have spawned pallet-swapped Debased, but instead unique monsters fucked up in their own distinct ways. If you add other crippled quasi-Changing Breeds to your setting, the mongrels will become just another sort of deformed critter in the menagerie... and lose what makes them unique in the process.

What are debasements and why do mutts have them? Debasements aren't marks of Gaia's displeasure or any Litany-banging, silver-and-Erebus fundie crap such as that. Debasements are the unfortunate side effects of the Rite of Adaptation, spiritual flaws manifested in the flesh. Not all dog-blooded have them, but most do, and some are worse than others. There are rumors that the Vanguard of Sirius now have a "cure" for debasements... though if you believe that, I got a sweet deal on a genuine silver klaive with a real spirit in it.

Can Debased become Abominations? Can a Life rote fix a debasement? What would happen if a Pooka with a dog form-- (Sigh.) I've gotten too many of these sorts of questions. Sorry, but if you want to mix and match game lines, you'll have to do the footwork yourself. I did consider adding a crossover chapter to this book, but I decided against it once I sobered up. Not for lack of cross-game story ideas or possible neat rules variants (I have both), but this is a Werewolf book and oddly enough I wanna focus on that game. Even so, I snuck in a few teasers from other game lines here and there, so run with 'em if you want.
As a rule of thumb, when in doubt about how a particular power or supernatural phenomena might affect a Canid, default to the rules for "standard" werewolves. So mutts react poorly to vampire vitae, mages may need to use conjunctional Spirit effects to fully affect mutts, and so forth. Of course, story needs always take precedence.
Now for the obligatory IHAL rant. I can only hope this won't fall upon deaf ears or vacant eyes, but please consider the game's abstracts -- theme, mood, internal logic, etc. -- before throwing Debased into a big orgiastic pile with everything else from the World of Darkness. Just a mongrel in itself is pretty weird and disturbing, if you think about it. Must a leech Embrace the flea-bitten thing for it to be a compelling character? Is it necessary to load the mutant down with demonic investments before throwing it in front of the Rage-driven Forces-fueled Potence-assisted adventuring party? If so, what does that say about the games you run? Like Rifts a lot, do ya?
You're gonna use my material however you want, so I'm not sure what good this little tirade will do. All I can do is ask you nicely not to abuse the material. It's not like the poor Debased don't deal with enough.

What was your inspiration for the Debased? Actually, there's a funny story behind that. I was once under the impression (informed by previous editions of Werewolf, in my defense!) that Garou could breed with dogs and make doggish offspring that way. I got into a heated discussion with Ethan Skemp and Chris Campbell on the old (pre-nWoD) White Wolf forums, who corrected me on the matter. It took some effort for them to pound into my skull that werewolf breeding is spiritual, not genetic. It doesn't matter if dogs are genetically identical to wolves or not, there are spiritual differences between them, and therein lie the incompatibility between Garou and dogs. (After all, it's not like humans and wolves are genetically viable, right?) So I finally got what they were saying and relented on the issue.
But I didn't stop mulling over the idea of dog-Garou, and exploring its potential for Savage Horror instead of something silly. Using the Bunyip and what Red Talons did with African wild dogs as a springboard, I began to consider ways the same might be done with dogs... and what the consequences of such a fell act might be. And that's when the concept for "thin-blooded Garou" was born.
There's a lesson in this, folks: it never hurts to listen to the people that write the game. Had I not listened to Ethan and Chris, or had they just thrown up their hands and not bothered straightening me out, none of this Debased stuff would've ever been written. So if you guys are reading this (I should be so lucky!), thanks you guys, and the rest of you on the old WW forum that talked sense to me.

Why do Debased suck? Dog-blooded are the way they are because of Garou hubris: they took it upon themselves to "fix" Gaia's plan. The Rite of Adaptation might have seemed like the most reasonable thing in the world at the time. It's hard to take issue with the desire to avoid extinction, right? After all, werewolves are Gaia's warriors, and there's more on the line than just them. But good intentions or not, when you try to usurp Gaia's mandate, you screw the pooch. *rimshot*
But really, do the mutts suck that much? I may be biased, but I don't think so. Sure they're weaker than Garou, but this doesn't limit their Storytelling potential. I'd gladly play one given the chance. And look at the good the Vanguard and some ferals are doing, despite the shitty hands they've been dealt (and if you've only read The Debased, you don't know the half of it). The scene I paint is dark, sure, but I sneak hope in here and there throughout this book.

So what is all this Debased: Evolution stuff? The three Debased: Evolution netbooks are follow-ups to the original The Debased netbook. (You'll need at least a passing familiarity with it to understand these, so if you haven't read it, go do that already!) The original work allows Storytellers to incorporate Debased into their chronicles in any capacity: antagonists, player characters, or random weirdness. To this end, I left lots of loose ends, plot hooks and inferences so Storytellers could fill in the blanks and run with what they wanted.
Of course, as the writer, I had a lot of ideas how many of those things could have developed -- in fact, much of D:Evol was already brewing in me before I even finished the first book. What did the future hold for the Vanguard of Sirius? Whatever happened to Tabloid Stacy, Gray, or the Tailchasers? So what these books do is follow up on some things I left hanging in the first, advancing the metaplot forward a few years and seeing how things might've played out. Of course, not all mysteries are solved for you here. There's still room in D:Evol for a Storyteller to do her own thing, and in some ways it's more open-ended than its prequel. There's certainly more to work with. Keep The Debased handy for reference, though, as much of what's in that book still applies -- for example, the Storytelling chapter is as useful as ever. The book can also serve as a historical reference for the Sirius and certain Storyteller characters described herein; many changes that have taken place are only significant if you understand what came before.

I don't like what you did with [X]: One problem with a metaplot is that it advances in ways that doesn't set well with everyone. Some didn't care for the Stargazer defection to the Beast Courts or the extinction of the Ravnos, for example. Similarly, you may not like the changes in the Vanguard of Sirius, what happened to Janette Beal (though she had it coming I tell ya!), or the very idea of the Company Dogs. That's fine. I'm not saying all this is how things must play out in your own World of Darkness. The D:Evol netbooks are "official" only in the sense that the guy that wrote The Debased (me) has some ideas how things might have happened. So use what you like from D:Evol, and dispense with the rest. (Really, that's how all the Werewolf books were meant to be used; homebrewed netbooks are certainly no different.) While these netbooks occasionally refer to one another, they're not tied together inextricably. This means that it's easy for Storytellers to use one or two of the netbooks without having to bring them all into their games. So if you don't want to deal with the admittedly radical setting changes the Vanguard chapter introduces, you can still use the ferals or Company Dog books.

Are you gonna do anything Debased-related for the Werewolf: the Forsaken? No way.

Is this it for the Debased? Yeah, probably. I have no idea how well-received D:Evol will be; if few read or enjoy it, there would be little point in making more stuff. Even if this netbook is embraced by Werewolf fans everywhere, one can only squeeze so much from an idea before it becomes tiresome, and I think I've about reached that point. I may create supplemental net material if further inspiration strikes me, and I'm not ruling anything out. But for now, 150+ pages on the Debased should suffice, don'cha think?
And I think this is a good note to go out on. All this material seems to have a tone of finality as I write it. There should be enough hooks in the Ferals netbook to keep you guys occupied for some time. The newly reborn Vanguard of Sirius has been exhaustively detailed, and what their future holds is anyone's guess. Company Dogs add an entirely new element to Pentex that complicates matters at least as much for them as for their foes. And finally, I even give a nod to Werewolf: the Forsaken fans with the Cult of the Dog; I've shown love for Apocalypse, and it's time to give props to its successor.
So if there's significant expansion on the Debased, it'll be by you guys. I hope the concept inspires you that much.