Well those are murder mystery stories, and those are usually based in places like posh castles or modern societies, where the most important bit is, that the people involved are not dependent on each other. This town is small, everyone is needed to run it, everyone cares for eachother, the potato farmer brings food to the table, the lumberjacks get firewood for everyone, the blacksmith fixes your axes and whatnot etc. you kill somebody and then you'd have caused a terrible dent in the whole society.



Aha, but there are ways of transmitting lycanthopism to other people. Those who do not want to become lycanthropes are not made into them, because obviously that would be a bad idea. Also, if I mentioned that the lycanthropes and humans do not meet, then that was a mistake. They do meet, and oftentimes those who have had a relative of theirs will go see them in the forest, of course being very inconspicuous about it every time they do so, just in case. Usually these meetings happen near the treeline of the village, so if it just happens that someone would waltz into Burgenwehr at that time they would not notice them.



Well that is to say the same that if you have some weaker people in your society you could just throw them all into the bin. The villagers provide a safety net for the lycanthropes, when times go bad, the villagers of Burgenwehr will be able to provide for the lycanthropes as well. When times go really bad, like when the potato fields and everything else rots, well, then there is little anyone can do, but the lycanthropes will probably be able to make do by hunting animals and helping the villagers a little bit in their time of need by bringing back some meat they don't need. As you can see the connection between the town and the lycanthropes is not entirely just "you stay there and keep us safe, capisce?".



You seem to think the human to lycanthrope ratio is pretty big, but in fact it isn't that large, maybe 10-15% of the villagers have lycanthropism per generation (either naturally or afflicted to them (in a normal society this percentage would be closer to <0.05%)). That makes about 10 lycanthropes per generation. So it could be assumed that there is about 30 lycanthropes living in the woods nearby at any given time and about 10 of these 30 would be elders once the new pack comes in and they would be able to teach the younger lycanthropes how things work due to being (hopefully) wizened with age. The lycanthropes would then be unable to populate the town properly. So this would still leave behind about 70-80 normal people each generation.



Jealous? Well, sure in the healthy way I would imagine. being the strongest doesn't always necessarily have to mean being the most physically strongest, but I would imagine that sometimes they would allow other people to become lycanthropes depending on their set of skills and abilities. After all, you would not want all of them to be very strong people with nothing in between their ears, that'd be dangerous. However, everyone has a reasonable chance to become a lycanthrope if they so wish, especially if you present your interest in becoming one I think your odds would be even higher. Another case would be that if someone close to you became a lycanthrope and you'd much rather wish to join them you could be possibly allowed to do so. Being a lycanthrope is a prestigious place to be in their society, but it is not for everyone. However every single newborn in Burgenwehr must be made to appreciate the help the werewolves provide to them. if they do not respect and appreciate them, then the entire town will fall apart for sure. However, the people of Burgenwehr must be careful in hiding all these memorabilia that represent lycanthropes, wood carvings, books etc. because of someone leaves something like that out in the open when a stranger comes into town, they may just be able to make the connection between the two things.



Also they don't really kill them after the first offence, but if you are literally advocating killing peoples loved ones, you wont be in a very good place, especially when people will start to think that you may just end up spilling the beans about their whole werewolf thing. When someone has a terrible secret such as this, you will go to great lengths to keep it a secret. In fact, look at this way, you could argue that killing this one person who threatens to go spread the word about their secret to be a more humane and moral thing to do, after all you would be saving about 100 lives this way all of whom would be burned on a pike or a stake otherwise once the word got out. Medieval societies also were not really known for being especially progressive, many things were scary, life was cheap and belonging into a group was often the only thing you had backing you up.