My lycanthropes are different

In my setting, diseases are caused by disease spirits a la RuneQuest, OpenQuest, Mythras, etc. Lycanthropy in particular is caused by lycanthropic spirits. Lycanthropic spirits are creations of the beast lords, a subset of the primal spirits venerated by barbarians and druids.

Why exactly lycanthropic spirits exist is a matter of debate, and it’s an excellent opportunity to segue into a discussion of the beast lords themselves. D&D and derivatives like Pathfinder never had particularly sensible theology. They have a bazillion redundant deities, when real religions pair down redundancies. Relevant to the beast lords in particular is that D&D and Pathfinder have a bunch of animal deities distinct from their beast lords. It’s quite common for so and so demon lord to be the patron of beastmen races or lycanthropes or whatever, typically invented ad hoc. It’s common for beast lords and demon lords to overlap in portfolios, which again is needlessly complicated. (There’s no reason a god can’t have multiple types like fey and fiend or whatever, but that’s D&D for you.) I don’t need a bunch of redundant deities like Pazuzu the lord of the skies and the lord of vultures too. I’m not interested in wasting my effort on a bazillion one-note deities. To that end, I’m just going to generically refer to a “beast lord of lycanthropes” or whatever whenever it’s necessary. Gods in my setting are just power sources, and simply don’t exist whenever they aren’t needed. I’m like Eberron in that respect, because it’s simple.

The default types of lycanthropy (and their alignment) in the 5e SRD are werebear (NG), wereboar (NE), wererat (LE), weretiger (N), and werewolf (CE). There can, of course, be an arbitrary number of lycanthrope phenotypes. Werebats, weresharks, entomanthropes, entothropes, quasilycanthropes, monstrous lycanthropes, etc. I'm going to ignore those for right now.

By default in 5e the lycanthropy is passed pathologically and struggles with the alignment of the infected. The monster manual depicts this as a horrible affliction like in horror movies, seemingly ignoring the fact that the werebear and weretiger are not evil. As Keith Baker helpfully points out, lycanthropy is a curse either way. Regardless of alignment, lycanthropy causes profound personality changes. Not only that, but it is very easy to spread epidemics. The RAW lycanthropy seemingly having a mind of its works quite well with my interpretation of lycanthropy as spirit possession. Even the good alignment of the werebear invokes Anne Rice’s The Gift, which interpreted pathologic werewolves as chosen heroes or something.

Each of the five types of lycanthropic spirits is associated with the beast lord of their animal aspect, as well as the generic lord of lycanthropes. Unlike in standard D&D, my setting practices genuine polytheism. Lycanthropic spirits are beholden to the lord of their animal aspect because that’s just how the beast lords roll, as well as to the lord of lycanthropes because that lord provides the whole transformative disease linked to the full moon and harmed by silver yadda yadda. I’m not sure whether the lord of lycanthropes should be the same as the moon god or not, but if the gods are just arbitrary mental shortcuts created by religions invoking a universal power source then it doesn’t matter either way.

5e lycanthropy doesn’t make a distinction for heritable, induced or cursed lycanthropes, but that’s easy enough to change. There aren’t any rules for dealing with infection like there were in 3e, since it wasn’t intended for lycanthropes to be playable, but that can easily be homebrewed.

• Typical lycanthropes are pathologic lycanthropes: they are possessed by a lycanthropic spirit that struggles with their mortal soul unless they embrace the curse or train in controlling it or whatever (in any case, D&D is NOT suited to playing as a lycanthrope due to game balance). They may be infected by another lycanthrope, or inherit it from their parents. They can be cured by exorcising the spirit.
• Heritable lycanthropes don’t have the internal struggle, because the lycanthropic spirit is their soul. As such, they cannot be cured of lycanthropy any more than an elf may be cured of being an elf. In other words, you need to cast a reincarnate spell.
• Lycanthropic spirits can be bound into tokens, such as a ring of Hircine. This allows the wearer to gain the benefits of lycanthropy without actually becoming infected, or for a pathologic lycanthrope to control their condition without relinquishing control to the spirit or training in self-control. (Yes, this references The Elder Scrolls.)
• Lycanthropic spirits may be bound to hosts by a curse, such as the spell curse of lycanthropy. This doesn’t necessarily allow the cursed victim to transmit lycanthropy themselves. If they can transmit their curse, then the curse escape clause probably remains the same for the secondary infections.

In general, the rules for lycanthropy are arbitrary and will depend on what atmosphere you’re going for. A horror setting like Ravenloft emphasized the unpleasantness of lycanthropy (such by requiring you to kill the patient zero of the infection before even attempting a cure, and giving every curse a specific escape clause rather than letting the party breeze through curses with abjuration spells), but that isn’t strictly necessary in a more lighthearted setting. I’m not sure which mine is.

Since D&D doesn’t lend itself to playing as a victim of lycanthropy, you’re probably better off looking for a lycanthrope class on DM’s Guild or something. I found over a dozen results on a casual search.

Anyway, I take a lot of notes from all the 3pp published for lycanthropes over the past two decades. The Complete Guide to Werewolves was particularly useful because it listed a bunch of ways (many taken from folklore and popular culture) for contracting and curing lycanthropy. For example, a character could contract lycanthropy from “picking the lycanthropic flower” or “being born on Christmas.” A character could cure lycanthropy by “being struck on the brow three times with a silver knife” or “eating the heart of the werewolf who infected you.”

So I suppose my lycanthropes aren’t that different aside from the logical beast lord connection and the spirit possession angle. Oh, and I'm taking notes from Eberron's depiction of lycanthropy, too. Lycanthropic spirits aren't mere animal spirits possessing humans, otherwise they'd act like the animal. No, they're spirits of how humans perceive those animals. An evil werewolf spirit will turn its host into the Big Bad Wolf from fairytales. A good werewolf spirit will turn its host into a wolf-loving tree-hugging hippie living in the wilderness. While lycanthropy might have been a natural gift at one time, now it has been corrupted and turns innocents into weapons. As the beast lords themselves are amoral as far as humans are concerned, both good and evil lycanthropes can worship the same beast lord. Or there might be multiple competing lords with the same portfolio. I still need to work through my theology!

Here are some brief example titles for the beast lords relevant to the core lycanthropes. The names come from historical religion, so anyone can use them because public domain.

• Artemis/Luna, lord of the moon, silver and lycanthropes
• Lycaon, lord of wolves
• Moccus, lord of boars (and pig-faced orcs)
• Artaius, lord of bears
• Bast, lord of cats (including tigers)
• Ninkilim, lord of rodents (including rats)

Here are some supplements that might be helpful to read:

• The Complete Guide to Werewolves by Goodman Games
• The Complete Guide to Wererats by Goodman Games
• Slaves of the Moon: The Essential Guide to Lycanthropes by Green Ronin
• Curse of the Moon by Sean K. Reynolds
• Bite Me! Series by Misfit Studios
• Blood of the Moon by Paizo

Curse of lycanthropy, version 2

In an earlier post on lycanthropy in D&D, I divided the condition into three types. However, this was a mistake on my part as I forgot to include the first and second edition iterations. In this post, I present an expanded and revised version of my previous taxonomy.

All iterations of lycanthropy in D&D may be categorized along three common axes. These axes are: whether the condition is acquired or inherited and how, whether the lycanthrope is a natural at self-control or afflicted without it, and whether the lycanthrope is infectious or not.

This results in roughly four broad types of lycanthropy, or alternately therianthropy, and several subtypes. Here a lycanthrope, or therianthrope, is defined broadly as a humanoid who can transform into an animal. This taxonomy is closely based on that presented in the D&D 2e Monstrous Manual.

• Type 1 lycanthropy is a disease as seen in horror movies. It is transmitted by the natural attacks (and potentially body fluids) of type 1 lycanthropes. Type 1 lycanthropes have no control over or mental faculties during the transformation, but may train themselves otherwise.
• Type 1b lycanthropy is identical to type 1 lycanthropy except that type 1b lycanthropes cannot transmit lycanthropy.
• Type 2 lycanthropy is hereditary. Type 2 lycanthropes carry and transmit type 1 lycanthropy, but display full control over and mental faculties during the transformation.
• Type 2b lycanthropes are identical to type 2 lycanthropes except that they transmit type 1b lycanthropy.
• Type 2c lycanthropes are identical to type 2 lycanthropes except that they do not transmit lycanthropy. They may transmit other diseases, however.
• Type 3 lycanthropes use a magic token to transform, such as a swan maiden’s cloak, a selkie’s sealskin, or a ring of Hircine. They retain full self-control and cannot transmit lycanthropy.
• Type 4 lycanthropy is contracted as a result of a curse, such as the spell curse of lycanthropy. Type 4 lycanthropes are otherwise identical to type 1b lycanthropes.
• Type 4b lycanthropy is identical to type 4 lycanthropy except that they may transmit type 4b lycanthropy.

Obviously this taxonomy is arbitrary and lycanthropy may be categorized in other ways. For example, the most recent fifth edition of D&D restricts the usage of the term lycanthropy to contagious lycanthropy and not human-to-animal transformation in general. For the purposes of popular recognition, I will use lycanthropy to refer only to those conditions caused by curses and diseases, such as werewolves and wereboars. I will refer to human-to-animal transformation and vice versa collectively as therianthropes. I will otherwise refer to type 2c lycanthropes, as defined here, as zoanthropes. I will refer to animal-to-human transformations, such as jackalweres and wolfweres, as antherians.

Beast lords and shapechangers

Since I've decided to make the beast lords a basic part of my setting's theology, that means I have to tie them with beasts and various related monsters. That includes beastmen, beastfolk, lycanthropes, therianthropes, and more.

The distinction between beastmen and beastfolk is arbitrary and the terms are often used interchangeably. When one does wish to make a distinction, it generally boils down to this: beastmen are chimerical combinations of human and animals features (e.g. centaurs, harpies, satyrs, etc), whereas beastfolk are anthropomorphic animals (e.g. catfolk, ratfolk, lizardfolk, sea devils, gnolls, etc).

Lycanthropes are humans or other humanoids suffering the affliction or blessing of lycanthropy. In my setting all diseases whether mundane or magical are caused by disease spirits a la Glorantha, a variation of which applies here. The disease spirits that cause lycanthropy are lycanthropic spirits and they behave a bit differently from other disease spirits, not the least of which being that they cause transformation into animal forms.

Antherians (from "antherion," a compound of an- + therian meaning "not animal") are intelligent beasts that may assume humanoid form as a racial trait, typically to infiltrate humanoid societies. (This concept appears quite a few times in real world folklore, such as the stories of fox fairies in China, Korea and Japan, the goblin spiders and raccoon dogs of Japan, hyena men in some African countries, deer women in some indigenous American cultures, and so forth.) Antherians cannot contract, carry or transmit lycanthropy; their innate animal spirit repels the lycanthropic spirit.

Therianthrope is an ambiguous term referring to 1) all shape changers that switch between beast and humanoid forms, or 2) antherians specifically (a usage originating from the 3pp Tome of Horrors, which introduced them under the OGL).

Zoanthrope is a synonym for therianthrope, referring to a man that assumes the form of an animal. For purposes of game setting world building, I will use the term to refer to humanoids that assume the forms of animals as a racial (or class) trait but are neither lycanthropes nor antherians. An example would be the Mhuinntir race from Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races, the Skinwalker race from Blood of the Moon, or the Weretouched archetype for the Shifter class in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Wilderness. Like antherians, they cannot contract, carry or transmit lycanthropy.

Vermin hosts (introduced in Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie under the OGL) are shape changers whose animal aspect are vermin like leeches, rats, roaches, and spiders. Although appearing similar to lycanthropes due to their assumed forms and ability to infect others, physically vermin hosts are actually swarms of vermin with a shared mind. I will treat them as a type of lycanthropy.

In the setting itself, most people are unaware of these distinctions and treat as shape changers as interchangeable.

All of these therianthropes may trace their origins to specific patrons among the beast lords, such as the lord of lycanthropes, the lord of vermin, etc.

In future posts I hope to explore the distinctions and ramifications further.

Gnolls, gnomes and trolls

The gnoll has undergone a dramatic evolution over the course of its appearances in fiction. It first appeared in the work of Lord Dunsany as a vaguely described gremlin or goblin. Next it appeared in early Dungeons & Dragons as a gnome/troll hybrid, perhaps derived from the way "gnoll" could be interpreted as a portmanteau name for the hybrid offspring of gnome father and troll mother. The writers soon thought this was too silly the changed the creature to a humanoid hyena, while retaining the non-indicative name. From there, the new gnolls eventually evolved from generic savage humanoids to hyenas mutated by demonic possession by the most recent or "fifth" edition of the game.

Some lore and ideas concerning lycanthropes

Lycanthropes are an interesting part of D&D history. What follows are some ideas of mine for fleshing them out.

Classifying the undead

Since the undead do not exist in reality, any attempt to classify them is arbitrary. The best way to classify the undead is by their traits and capabilities, such as their corporeality, appearance, intelligence, motivation, etc. Like others have done, I would prefer to place all undead into a small number of families to keep track.

Curse of lycanthropy

The nature of lycanthropy has varied immensely across the past four or five editions of D&D. Here is my attempt at a framework which accounts for all of them at once. More information below the break...

So what do you call a female werewolf?

There are several gendered words for werewolves. Werewolf, he-werewolf, she-werewolf, werewolfess... but one feminine form that has caught on recently is "wifwolf." But why?