Ghouls and the Curse of Cannibalism

The idea of eating another person may turn the stomach of any civilised being, but there are those who see no other option. When the fields run dry and the people starve sometimes the only source of food available are your starving neighbours. However in your quest to survive you may lose what you once were.
Those that consume the flesh of another of the mortal races fall prey to the curse of cannibalism, turning their skin sallow and their form hunched. Normal food becomes unsavory, instead needing the taste of flesh to survive. These creatures grow sensitive to the sun, hiding away in sewers of under the canopy of forests during the day, stalking the land at night searching for sustenance. Often this is found by digging up graveyards or prowling sites of recent battles.
Due to their gruesome diet, festering flesh gets caught in their teeth and under their claws and many who have survived attacks by ghouls have died soon after from horrific infections in their wounds. Ghouls have also been known to use clubs fashioned from the femurs of their unfortunate victims.

Whilst travelling through the Timer province of Jinyi during the drought of 864 I saw a huddled mass of ghouls piled upon one another to stay within the shade of a lone tree in the open fields. My escorts told me this was not uncommon in those days but that they were innately cowardly, as they chose damnation rather than face their death, and they would not be a threat to any settlement for fear of the retribution of the settlers. I am unsure of the truthfulness of these claims however, as, in the sewers of Yvres during the plague of 886, I am certain I witnessed the scrabbling forms of ghouls on the riverbank late one night. -Szabo

Ghouls will generally starve out relatively quickly as they either devour their communities and find themselves without food or are successfully driven out of settlements to starve in the wilderness. Those that do survive grow larger, and with their size their appetite increases, as does their bravery.
Due to the weaker will of the ghouls, they are preyed upon by dark mages who can enthrall their twisted spirits to do their malevolent bidding.