Wererat (Where-rat)

Wererats (alternately known as ratmen) are lycanthropes common in urban areas. True wererats have three forms: their humanoid form, their giant rat form, and their humanoid-rat hybrid form. Infected wererats have two forms: their humanoid form, and either their giant rat or humanoid-rat hybrid form. Which form they get is random upon infection.

Basic Information

Anatomy

A wererat in humanoid form tends to be a thin, wiry individual of shorter than average height. The eyes constantly dart around, and the nose and mouth may twitch if excited. Males often have thin, ragged mustaches. The animal form of a wererat is that of a dire rat two feet long from nose to rump. In hybrid form, the wererat is shorter than in its human form and its head, torso, and tail are those of a rat while its limbs were a little more humanoid in appearance.

Genetics and Reproduction

Wererats rarely mate with other wererats, instead mating with uninfected humans. The progeny of a male wererat and a human woman is human, but the child would inherit many of the physical characteristics of its father in his human form. The child of a female wererat and a human male are giant rats with paws that resemble human hands known as ratlings. These ratlings grow to maturity by the age of two and can transform themselves into human children who appeared to be roughly three times their actual age. Wererats don't usually mate among themselves because of their psychology as a parasite, not wanting to become populous enough to threaten their host city's prosperity.

Ecology and Habitats

Wererats recognize their relative weakness and congregate in numbers in the sewer systems beneath surface cities. Not only do those who live on the surface maintain their lairs for them but they unknowingly protect the wererat lairs with their fortifications, allowing the wererats to leave their defenses lacking frequently.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Ratmen are cannibals, eating uninfected humans and subsisting on what they could scavenge or steal.

Behaviour

Wererats steal anything they determine to have any value, accumulating piles of junk that could contain valuable treasures.
When in their humanoid form, the stench of the sewers remains, leading to wererats on the surface being relegated to the seedier parts of the city. This suits the ratmen though, as those areas frequently contain the dives that serve the strong alcohol that they favor and make it easier to attack drunks.

Additional Information

Social Structure

A wererat never lives alone if they could help it, though they don't tend to form strong interpersonal relationships beyond a pack mentality - love and marriage are almost alien concepts to them. They delight in pitting their superior cunning against surface-dwellers, seeing the cities that tend to be above their lairs as hunting grounds where they can steal food and wealth by killing its inhabitants in a parasitical manner.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Due to the multitude of diseases that fester within a wererat's body, they usually lose their eyesight at a young age. They make up for this with their excellent smell and hearing, and they are able to see better while in animal form.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

Wererats are hosts to many diseases due to the environment they choose to live in (usually the sewers). Due to how many diseases fill the uncleanly creatures' bodies, they usually build up a resistance to or don't notice their symptoms. Wererats see the diseases as great boons, inflicting them upon their enemies through their weapons, which they coat with saliva.

Lifespan

39 years (it is possible for them to live as long as humans, but the diseases festering in their bodies usually do them in earlier)

Average Height

4-5 ft

Average Weight

80-110 lbs