Lycanthropy

Lycanthropy spreads only under precise, violent conditions. A wound must be given in transformed form, claw, fang, or gore-soaked flesh. The beast must be conscious. The wound must be deep. If these conditions are met, the blood of the lycanthrope mingles with the victim’s marrow, rewriting their essence over the course of one moon’s cycle. But most die long before the change completes. The curse does not welcome new kin. It devours them, one vein at a time. Some suspect bloodline transmission, children born under certain omens bearing beastlike traits, but this is rare, and often ends in infanticide by terrified parents. Others are chosen willingly, swearing themselves to a beast-god or ancient rite, though few live through the transition.

According to preserved legends, the first werebeasts were Giant-kin warpriests, men who consumed the hearts of fallen beasts and bathed in snow-melted blood, seeking strength beyond mortal limits. It was not a blessing they found. It was an echo of the Giants’ old madness, a hunger not for food but for undoing. Whether born of Giant blood, cursed relics, or wild god rites lost to time, the curse is older than written memory. Survivors often awaken to it after dreams of bone-fire and endless forests, of moons that swell and whisper, and of jaws that do not stop tearing.

• Initial fever and bone aches, especially at night.

• Swelling in the jaw, ribs, and hands.

• Sudden blackouts or fugue states near full moons.

• Sensory overdrive: light too bright, sound too sharp, meat smells unbearable.

• Thickening of hair and nails, uncontrolled muscular spasms.

• First full transformation is almost always fatal, ripping the body into a new form, brutally, and often incompletely.

Survivors awaken among corpses, naked and half-wild, their minds fractured and their memories gnawed to the root. Many end their lives before the next moon. Those who do not, become.

There is no cure. Some hedge-priests and warlocks offer tinctures to delay transformation, usually laced with nightshade or ironroot, leaving the host too poisoned to change. A rare few bind the curse with ritual tattoos, bone-woven fetters, or blood-oaths to forgotten gods. These techniques allow control, but only barely, and never without cost. The most successful known case is that of Jarrin Wulfhalt, a bodyguard-turned-berserker who fights as a living weapon for the Crown of Everwealth. He does not speak. His mouth was sewn shut after the third mauling.

• Fatality rate: 70% during the first full transformation.

• Long-term survival: Possible only through intense training, ritual, or seclusion.

• Mental deterioration: Common; many descend into bestial madness over time.

• Chronic symptoms: Memory loss, hyperaggression, night terrors, muscular hypertrophy, uncontrollable shifts under duress or lunar triggers.

• Permanent blackened sclera or amber wolf-eyes.

• Elongated canines even in human form.

• Dense body hair, enhanced scent memory, and hypersensitive hearing.

• Occasional partial shifts: claws instead of fingers, patch-fur, or twitching limbs.

• Bone callusing and internal organ scarring due to repeated trauma from shifting.

Most carriers are found among:

• Mercenaries who survived "impossible" wildland ambushes.

• Grave-robbers bitten by strange beasts buried with chains.

• Warrior clans of the north, where the curse is used as a rite of adulthood.

• Isolated hermits or swampbound cultists who speak to moons and drink from skulls.

The only known carriers are humanoids with the curse active in their blood. No animal host exists. Some shapeshifters like Changelings are mistaken for lycanthropes, but the curse is unique, far more physical, painful, and permanent. Reanimated lycan corpses are a known horror: “moon-wrought”, creatures that remain half-transformed even in death, continuing to hunt long after their flesh should fail.

• Avoidance. The curse cannot transmit without direct, intentional wounding.

• Warpriests in border villages carry silver-thread brands to identify latent lycanthropes.

• Blood-oaths taken in moonlight, binding the cursed to villages in exchange for sanctuary.

• Fire-offerings at every full moon to appease ancient spirits once tied to the curse’s origin.

Silver is a sure deterrent, not a cure. It scars the cursed, burns them, causes shifts to halt or reverse—but never fully ends the transformation.

The curse does not spread like plague, it is selective, ancient, and personal. Historical outbreaks are rare, but horrific:

• The Howling of Windmere: A northern trade town reduced to shredded sinew and bones in one night after a chained lycan escaped a traveling freakshow.

• The Red Moon Pact: A full warband of berserkers intentionally infected before siege, only four survived the change, but they destroyed two legions of defenders before vanishing into the woods.

Earliest mentions come from scrimshaw carvings found in Giant barrows, showing half-men with wolf jaws standing atop piles of broken kin. Some legends say the curse was a gift, a weapon against the early Fae, forged by the first Storm Giants. Others claim it was punishment, an exile into the form of one's own fears. Whatever the truth, lycanthropy has been feared ever since. Its sufferers treated as cursed champions or flesh-horrors, never simply men. During the War of the Woaded Hills, captured lycans were used as siege weapons, chained and released during full moons into enemy trenches. The cost in lives was staggering, on both sides. Now, any sign of the curse draws panic. Some borderland towns still perform moonsniffing, rituals involving blood, hound’s breath, and smoke to detect the cursed before transformation. The results are not always accurate. The burnings happen anyway.

• In civilized lands: Cursed are executed or enslaved.

• In the wildlands: Feared, worshipped, or forced into moonbound cults.

• In whispers: Some say a “trueborn” werebeast exists, a perfect carrier, immune to madness, born not infected, but chosen. If they exist, they do not walk among mortals. Or if they do… not for long.

Children are taught the story of The Beast Who Swallowed Its Name, a parable warning against hunger, rage, and forgetting your own reflection. In the end, the beast kills its own shadow, and the shadow curses the world in return. In Everwealth, to call someone “moonbitten” is an accusation of savage intent. And to see a man stumble in the forest at night, groaning beneath the moon? You don’t ask if he’s alright. You run.