#asklycanthropy

Well, that would probably change the culture and attitude surrounding lycanthropy for the better. People probably wouldn't be as afraid of them, so the werewolves would have more freedoms and wouldn't have to hide away in isolation or little packs of their own kind anymore.

On the other hand, what you're describing were basically gnolls, and we all know what happened to them...It's possible that the werewolves would also be enslaved, or genocided, or plagued to extinction.

That's an interesting question, I think there are a lot of different possibilities for these "civilized werewolves".

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Lore Masterpost

Yep! It's possible for mermaids to also contract lycanthropy, and when they do, they have a unique beast form that looks crocodile-like.

I don't have art of this currently but it's something I've had on the list for a long time. It will be added to the main lycanthropy article. I don't have names for these aquatic beast forms or a final design yet, just some very rough concepts so far.

Aquatic werewolves are particularly dangerous because water does not slow them down at all--in fact, they swim even faster than they run! This is not the case for terrestrial werewolves, who aren't very graceful swimmers.

Like other Aquarian creatures, aquatic werewolves dehydrate quickly. They tend to seek bodies of water as soon as they transform, hiding in creeks, ponds, even sewers and swimming pools to ambush their prey.

Aquarian peoples are mostly safe from terrestrial werewolves in the water, but aquatic werewolves remain a serious threat.

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This makes perfect sense to me! I like this idea much better, it subverts expectations and makes for a more unique story. Thank you for this!

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Lore Masterpost

That's a really good question. Could this be the "cure" to lycanthropy?

I think it highly depends on the skill of the transmutationist. Most transformations are just superficial, meaning they affect appearance, but everything "under the hood" stays the same.

I talked about this in more detail here and here.

Let's say a transmutationist transforms a human lycanthrope into an elf.

If this is a shallow, superficial transmutation: the patient looks totally indistinguishable from a natural-born elf, but they will still give birth to human babies and transform into a werewolf under the full moon. This is because they still resemble a human under the skin, and the disease still has not been cleared from their body. Just like cosmetic surgery won't cure diabetes, a superficial transformation won't cure lycanthropy.

If this is a deep, cellular-level transmutation: the patient is totally indistinguishable from an elf on an atomic level. The transformation is so thorough that they can even cast spells and give birth to elven children. Lycanthropy is not compatible with elven DNA, meaning the disease can't survive in an elven body. So, the patient would stop transforming under the full moon, and for all intents and purposes, would be "cured".

However, there is a possibility that the disease wouldn't be fully eradicated. Maybe the transformation just caused it to lie dormant in their system, and under the right conditions it could be passed on. If this elf were to bite someone--or otherwise make blood-to-saliva contact on the night of the full moon, it's possible they could infect a commoner with lycanthropy.

TL;DR: This might be a viable "cure" for lycanthropy, but it might also turn the patient into a Typhoid Mary.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

That's a really good question! I think there are multiple explanations for this.

(Green) elves have a natural connection with beasts. They can sense when an animal is nearby even if they can't see it, and they can understand what an animal is thinking and feeling.

Werewolves are beasts, but lycanthropes are something else--something between man and beast. They are often described as "a beast wearing a man-suit". In a sense, lycanthropes are like intelligent beasts who can operate as people.

Theoretically, the elven Dusks should have been able to sense the beast in Evan. Why didn't they?

Let's talk about vampirism for a second. It changes elves by dulling their natural abilities and replacing them with new ones. This effect becomes stronger the longer they live with vampirism. For example, their naturally sharp vision dulls in daylight but becomes stronger at night. Their natural connection to animals becomes dulled, but their connection to the moon becomes stronger.

Knowing all this, here's some explanations for your question...

Explanation 1: All of the Dusks (except Lilian) have been vampires for a very long time. I think they all lost their connection to nature ages ago. Lilian still may have had this connection, but she was so sheltered and uneducated, I doubt she even knew what lycanthropy was, so she wasn't able to identify it in Evan.

Explanation 2: It's mentioned in "Ghoul Beneath the Guise" that the Dusks didn't prey on big, strong people. They specifically hunted smaller, weaker individuals for their own safety. Lycanthropy turns people into huge, muscle-bound tanks...in other words, not the type of people the Dusks would have close contact with, so they had very little--if any--experience with lycanthropes and kind of forgot they existed.

The Dusks didn't go out looking for Evan. They only imprisoned him because he came to them and practically threw himself onto their plates. The possibility of lycanthropy didn't cross their minds because as mentioned above, that disease had become out of sight, out of mind for them; probably for centuries.

Explanation 3: The Dusks already had their hands full when Evan showed up. They were trying to recruit Zeffer and prepare for his wedding with Lilian. Weddings are a huge deal to vampires because it's one of the few ways they can expand their clan size, and adding a new member to the clan is not something they take lightly.

This event was an especially big deal to Dario, considering how he felt about Lilian. Evan was the last thing on his mind; just another bloodbag to be thrown in the dungeon and forgotten about.

Explanation 4: Dimitri was a bad dungeon-tender. Dimitri was Dario's "nephew" and put in charge of keeping the Dusk's prisoners alive. As we saw in "Ghoul Beneath the Guise", the guy was a total sadist who enjoyed hurting and killing the prisoners, even though this got him in trouble with the clan. The more the prisoners suffered, the more Dimitri thrived.

Dimitri had a lot of responsibilities, and one of them was reporting sick, dead, or unsuitable prisoners to Dario. Dimitri should have noticed something was up with Evan's blood, and maybe he actually did...but in "Ghoul Beneath the Guise", we learn that Dimitri is terrified of Dario and tries to cover up problems whenever he can. Because whenever he reports a problem, even if it's not his fault, Dario gets angry and beats him.

It's possible that Dimitri did notice the tainted lycanthrope blood and either didn't report it, or just denied it to himself because psychologically he couldn't deal with it.

In conclusion, there was a perfect storm of factors that led to Evan's disease going undetected. And what's funny is that all of them were actually Dario's fault if you think about it...

Dario was the clan master, his job was to oversee the whole clan and its culture. He refused to educate Lilian, he chose who his clan preyed upon, he was too preoccupied with Lilian's wedding because of his own bad deeds against her, and he kept punishing Dimitri just for doing his job.

Evan's lycanthropy wasn't to blame for the Dusk's downfall. Ultimately Dario was to blame. The incompetent way he managed his clan finally came to a head and bit them all in the ass. Evan's disease was just a random spark that lit the fuse Dario left trailing behind them.

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No one really knows, and they don't want to find out! Isaac is basically Reaper's science experiment. There may be others like him, but they have not been discovered by the World Athenaeum, so nothing is known. Isaac is one of the pioneers of his kind.

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I think this could turn out really bad for lycanthropes and the world as a whole. Now you have a disease that basically turns commoners into Superman with few drawbacks, so tons of people would rush to get infected on purpose. These people would include criminals, and suddenly law enforcement would have a much harder time trying to keep the peace.

Cue social and political unrest worldwide as the World Athenaeum scrambles to develop a cure ASAP. This cure would not be optional. If you're a lycanthrope, you're getting jabbed, like it or not. I could see rebel groups of lycanthropes forming over this, plus certain elites interfering because they want a hoard of supersoldiers at their disposal. Capitalists would try to capitalize on the situation. Politicians would try to politicize it.

Of course that's just one possibility. I think realistically this scenario could go many different ways.

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There are a few. The most popular theory is that Cerno created lycanthropy on purpose to get revenge on commoner kind. This belief is so popular that it's even made its way into some academic books. In some regions, lycanthropy is commonly called "Cerno's revenge" because of this.

The truth is, Cerno created a single werewolf to help him escape Evangelite enslavement. He didn't know that it would go on to infect a bunch of commoners with a disease and create an epidemic.

Some people believe that the disease was not created by Cerno, and that it instead evolved naturally. They don't believe that there was ever a "master werewolf" to begin with, and that the disease simply jumped from animal to man.

Some believe that lycanthropy was created by the Mogdiri government, so that they could infect commoners and have a "justified" reason to commit genocide against them. Others think it was instead made in a Zareenite lab, and it was a botched experiment to create super soldiers.

There are many other wacky beliefs about lycanthropy and werewolves. Since Cerno is so secretive, it's hard for researchers to get information about its true origins, and this makes it a hot topic for conspiracy theorists to spin their own stories.

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