Lycanthropy

Curse Of Despair

Also known as a "blood curse," the Curse of Despair is the original progenitor of the lycanthropic curses.

The lycanthropy curse is not willfully bestowed upon another individual. Rather, it is the universe's response to an individual's utterly broken spirit and cries of anguish. This is not simply the suffering of someone losing a loved one in a random act of violence. This is the pain and despair of having lost everything -- an entire community of friends and family, one's livelihood, one's dreams and desires, all being destroyed or pushed out of reach. The Curse of Despair manifests only when the victim of this tragic loss knows of the person responsible for the cause of this horrible agony.

When these conditions are met, the victim's despair causes the perpetrator to be cursed. The curse might manifest in many forms: sudden, unexplainable paralysis, terrible diseases, haunting dreams that place the perpetrator in the shoes of the original victim. The Curse of Despair is retribution for the victim and all that they have lost at the cost of their own life. In return, the perpetrator of these tragedies suffers in their own ways: exile, helplessness, psychoses...

One of the manifestations of the Curse of Despair is lycanthropy. The bestial nature of the perpetrator overwhelms the thin veneer of humanity that allowed them to operate within society. At the worst of times, their inner beast bursts forth causing them to be ostracized, hunted, hated, and feared by all they encounter. Often, they have an extended life span filled with this torturous existence.

Many afflicted with the Curse of Despair end up taking their own cursed lives. Others end up dying old, forgotten, and alone. However, over the centuries a few of those with the Curse of Despair have been able to gain a modicum of control over the transformations as well as find partners. These partnerships gave rise to a new era of lycanthropy: the Curse of Heritage

Curse Of Heritage

The Curse of Heritage is the state in which most of the lycanthropes in the world exist today. The Curse of Heritage can be passed to a child born to at least one lycanthropic parent.

Even when both parents are lycanthropes, their resulting child may not necessarily be a lycanthrope themselves, although it is very likely that they shall. When the child is a lycanthrope, it will be the same species as one of its parents, although there seems to be no pattern in how that is determined.

When only one parent is a lycanthrope, the odds that a child has the Curse of Heritage are about 50/50. When the child of a mixed heritage is born with the Curse of Heritage, they will always be the same species as their lycanthropic parent.

Since lycanthropy is still widely feared, most lycanthropic families will form small, xenophobic tribes. The tribes that exist successfully often construct or embrace local legends of hauntings, ferocious animals, or other supernatural stories to discourage others from finding them. These tribes are well aware of the stigma the outside world holds, so they will use the unafflicted children to interact with the world on their behalf.

Lycanthropes with the Curse of Heritage have a much greater degree of control over their transformations than someone afflicted with the Curse of Despair or Curse of Transference. This is a result of generations of training, learning, meditation, and exercising control over the beast within. Children afflicted with the curse are taught the physical and mental exercises from a very early age, but each generation finds it easier to work with the Curse instead of fighting against it.

As a result, the longer a tribe, or family, has lasted with the Curse, the more control they will have gained. In the oldest families, the elders have attained the ability to retain full mental composure even during a full moon, although the physical transformation still occurs.

In contrast, young families that try to survive often end up causing damage and injury in nearby areas as a result of their uncontrolled transformations. This leads to the family being hunted in retaliation. The local towns put out bounties to hunt the lycanthropes, but usually the response to these bounties comes too late to stop the family from having another generation of children. This cycle may continue for generations, with towns being periodically terrorized by lycanthropic threats, until the young family is able to gain enough control to prevent the attacks... or they are fully wiped out.

It is not unknown for an older family to welcome a younger family into their tribe in order to better protect themselves. Young families will occasionally seek their brethren and a sense of community, but this can lead to turf wars instead. In most cases, tribes will be composed of primarily a single species. At the same time, it's quite rare to have no species diversity.

Curse Of Transference

The Curse of Transference is, as the name implies, transferred from a current victim of any lycanthropic curse to an innocent, unsuspecting adventurer. This occurs as the result of an injury sustained from the more bestial attacks of the lycanthrope. Claws, tusks, saliva are all potential routes for the curse to spread -- like a disease.

An individual who contracts lycanthropy in this way is not immediately affected. They feel no different (aside from the wounds they sustained), and there is no evidence that the curse transferred. Assuming they killed the offending lycanthrope, the transformation from beast or beast-humanoid hybrid into a humanoid is their only indication of what might have happened.

Those lucky enough to know about lycanthropes are often able to realize what they might soon have in store. In the cases where help is obtained quickly, things need not get worse. However, many unfortunate souls neglect the danger they are in and soon find that the simple solution is no longer an option. Worse still, is that they begin to feel the symptoms of their new condition: constant hunger, quick to anger, denser hair growth, and even their bodies morphing towards a physiology more aligned to their lycanthropic species.

Contracting lycanthropy through the Curse of Transference is often followed by vivid nightmares. Even those races that need not sleep, such as elves, experience these visions or hallucinations while in their trance. The speed at which these dreams occur varies from individual to individual. It ranges from one per night to one per week, at least for the cases that have been studied. The scholarly research on the topic indicates that each victim will experience three dreams before the curse has taken full hold. There are no documented cases in which a transformation occurs before the last dream. However, after the last dream, the curse will have taken full control of the individual.

Those in the wild may quickly find themselves without a way to prevent the progression of the curse. Many that realize their plight will ask their companions to execute them if they become a threat to anyone. Those that are unaware or are not kept watched and chained will often turn on their companions in an unexpected transformation.

It is often the individuals cursed in this way that cause the most trouble for society. The uncontrollable urges and transformations that these cursed individuals undergo leave a wake of death in their path until they are hunted down and killed. In the best of cases, they retain enough sense and sanity to be found by a lycanthropic society willing to burden themselves with controlling this new member.