Lycanthropy

Causes

The only way to get infected with lycantrophy is being bitten by someone else who has the infection, and only when the biter is in hybrid shape. It's close to guaranteed that the bitten will be infected, with only a few exceptions through the ages.

Symptoms

The symptoms of lycantrophy starts showing up just after infection, and become more severe through the time until the next full moon. The first ones to be noticed is the accelerated healing factor, since the bite wound will heal unnaturally fast, and the eyes turning yellow. Also, the infected will start to have strange dreams as the Inner Beast starts manifesting. Their senses will sharpen, and although not having to change their diet, the infected will get a hunger for meat. If the infected is unlucky enough to get hurt by silver, the weakness will make the experience a memorable event.

At the first full moon after being infected, the infected will change into hybrid shape and experience their first moon rage. Only after this can a lycantrophe learn how to control its shape shifting.

Symptoms of Lycantrophy

Although every lycantrophe has all these symptoms, the severity of some of them may vary between individuals.

Physical Changes

The lycantrophe's eyes will turn yellow, and their movements will turn slightly more predatory. They will also get a kind of aura that will unnerve people close by, and make it easy for other lycantrophes to identify the infected.

Heightened Senses

The senses of sight, hearing and smell will become more acute, and a lycantrophe can often listen in on conversations across the room. In human shape these senses are only slightly heightened, but in wolf shape they are much sharper. In wolf shape the color vision gets slightly altered, though, and colors will become less vivid, but night vision gets much better.

Healing Factor

Wounds that would take days to heal only take hours. One can almost see the wound knit together with the bare eye. More severe damage will take longer than smaller wounds, but it's drastically faster than humans. It's almost impossible to get infections, and illnesses are fought down faster in the immune system. Bleeding will also stop much sooner. However, this won't make the lycantrophe invincible, and a severe enough damage might still be deadly. Still, some lycantrophes have survived getting stabbed through the heart and survived without too much medical aid, so it's much harder to kill a lycantrophe than an ordinary human.

Shape Changing

A lycantrophe can change between three different shapes - human, wolf and hybrid. Human shape looks like a human, with the changes listed under Physical Changes further up, and with the added bonus of the healing factor. Wolf shape looks like an ordinary wolf, only slightly bigger. The hybrid shape, however, is very different. The size of the lycantrophe's body expands, getting muscular and massive. Everything on the lycantrophe's body that can't fit the larger body size will burst, like clothes. The lycantrophe gets may times stronger. The claws are razor sharp, and the biting power can easily crush a man's skull. The healing factor turns into overdrive, and the lycantrophe is almost invincible - even cut off limbs will grow back if held together. It's hard to keep the hybrid shape up without losing control, however, and the longer the lycantrophe spend in hybrid shape, the more likely it is to slip into the Moon Rage.

It's relatively painless to turn between human and wolf shape, but changing into the hybrid shape is rather painful. There is a lot that needs to change to bulk up in this manner, and the body isn't designed to rearrange and resize its shape like this. The lycantrophe will also have a soreness like after exercising heavily for the first time in ages, due to the muscles not exactly being built to grow so much.

Metabolism and Shape Changing

Shape changing, especially to the hybrid shape, burns a lot of energy. After returning to human shape the lycantrophe is usually ravenous, needing to fill up on muscular energy as soon as possible. The lycantrophe can, however, last for a little while before eating, but should eat as soon as possible to not become weak from hunger.

The Moon Rage

The Moon Rage is what gives the lycantrophes a bad name. Its name is from the period of the month when it's the most powerful, but a lycantrophe can go into Moon Rage at any time of the moon cycle. The closer to the full moon it is, the more tense and moody the lycantrophe gets, however, so becoming angry is much easier around the full moon. When in Moon Rage, a lycantrophe slips into hybrid shape, and loses all control at the moment the transformation is done. It is possible to stop this transformation if the lycantrophe can get calm enough, but the growing rage that grows during the transformation process at this time makes it almost impossible to calm down. The Moon Rage lasts until the body is exhausted, as the lycantrophe falls unconscious for an hour or two, and slips back into human shape.

How hard it is to resist the Moon Rage depends on the individual. Some are afflicted by Moon Rage every full moon, for all the two or three nights it lasts, while others might get Moon Rage about once a year. Most Lycantrophes fall between these two extremes, averaging on about six Moon Rage episodes a year.

The Inner Beast

The Inner Beast is hard to explain to people who hasn't experienced it. It's not a different being than the lycantrophe per se, but it acts like one. It manifests every night just after the lycantrophe falls asleep, and might be helpful, scornful or mocking in nature, depending on the individual, the time of the moon cycle and what the lycantrophe has done lately. After keeping the lycantrophe in a dream-like state for a while, it releases the lycantrophe, who wakes up. The lycantrophe can then go back to sleep, if they can.

There is another side of the Inner Beast. It loves to hunt, and it loves to go into Moon Rage. It calls for the lycantrophe to lose control every time they enter hybrid form, asks if everyone around is prey in a screechy voice, and generally tries to push the lycantrophe into Moon Rage.

One third function is that the Inner Beast has a powerful survival instinct, and will take over control to save the body it lives in from what it sees as the lycantrophe's stupidity or carelessness, basically preventing the lycantrophe from committing suicide if they try.

Weakness to Silver

Silver is dangerous to lycantrophes. Just touching it might at worst give a slight tingling feeling. It's when it breaks skin or gets into wounds it's the most dangerous, though. The pain from such a wound is agonizing to the point where only the strongest of minds, or someone truly desperate, are able to do anything else than doubling over in pain.
A wound from a silvered weapon, or that has been in contact with silver, will not be healed by the healing power of a lycantrophe. It will instead act like an infected wound for a small week after the silver is removed from the wound. When the infection dies down it will act as a normal wound again, and can be healed by the healing factor as a normal wound. If the silver is in the lycantrophe's body, the wound it's in will have the same infection, but the duration of the infection is as long as the silver is inside the wound plus the small week after the silver is removed.
If there is silver in the lycantrophe's body when they try to change shape, or if they are in the process of involuntarily shape change, the change doesn't go through, and the lycantrophe is left in considerable agony. If it is the case of an involuntarily change, the change will still try to force itself through, and will keep the pain constant, as well as giving the lycantrophe a horrible fever with cold sweats until the time of change has passed.

Treatment

There has been one known case of getting rid of lycantrophy once infected, and that was by being permanently transformed into something that is immune. The details about this is unknown, but the individual is definitely cured.

Prognosis

The infection is permanent once acquired, and due to the violent nature of the hybrid shape and the general mistrust to hatred from the people of the world, the expected lifetime of a lycantrophe isn't very long. If the lycantrophe manage to find and join a pack, however, the life expectancy rises, since there are more friendly people around to keep the pack members safe.

Prevention

The only way to prevent getting infected with lycantrophy is to prevent getting bitten in he first place.

Epidemiology

The chances to be infected is slim, since those who know they're infected try to make precautions to prevent infecting others by either locking themselves up or travel to places where there are few to no people during the full moon. However, staying away from areas where howling has been heard during the full moon is always a smart move.

Cultural Reception

Most people thinks lycantrophes are a myth, since there are very few of them in the world. The ones who know about the existence of lycantrophes, however, will normally react with fear-induced hatred. This is due to the myths about lycantrophes being evil by nature. Those who know a lycantrophe personally, or learn about the condition from more trustworthy sources, might not have this hatred.

Lore and Misconceptions

Many theories exist about both the lycantrophes themselves, and how to cure the affliction. Most of these are wrong. A lot of these misconceptions come from Werewolves - A Lorebook about Lycantrophy, which for a long time was the only book on the subject.

One of the misconceptions about curing lycantrophy was the True Love's Embrace. The theory was that if a lycantrophe in hybrid form was embraced by their true love, the force of their love would permanently cure the lycantrophe. The theory sounded true enough until it was tried. A blacksmith in a small town in northern Kupria was inflicted, and after managing to keep his wife safe from his curse for several months, he got the Moon Rage in their bedroom one full moon. They had for a long time talked about what she would do if he changed in front of her. They knew about this theory, but the blacksmith didn't want her taking that risk. She did it anyway on this fateful night. The theory was horribly and utterly debunked, as the blacksmith woke up the next morning with his wife scattered all over the room, so to speak.

There are also a lot of misconceptions about the nature of lycantrophes in general. Some popular ones are that lycantrophes are inherently evil, and that they are immune to any damage except inherited silver. Others are that you can't starve a lycantrophe to death, and that they love to murder children for sport. Many of these theories are the basis of the creation of the Silver Dagger, which is an organization that hunts down and capture lycantrophes, doing horrible experiments on them and torturing them for information.

Type

Supernatural

Origin

Natural

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Rare

Affected Species

• Quarter-Elders
• Beddari