My brain randomly latched onto Lycanthropes recently, and it occurred to me; I can't recall Paizo mentioning the origins of them at any point, which doesn't feel right. Do you know of any? and if so, what it was? or at least what book it was in?
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No, you're right. Nowhere actually talks about their origins in absolutes, not even Blood of the Moon, the book that's ALL ABOUT them. The closest we get to a concrete answer is Jezelda's article in Book of the Damned, where she's credited as the first werewolf... a fact that's debated and denied in-universe, by her own minions. Her article in the BotD frustratingly taunts me with "the original source of lycanthropy has long fascinated scholars and philosophers, for it is an affliction that has plagued civilization from the very beginning" before launching into "yeah not even Jezelda's faith considers her the first one." I suppose it does make her unique when among her peers Kabriri "The First Ghoul" Gnawingone and Zura "The First Vampire" Vampqueen (who is also only debatably the first vampire, but she openly claims to be).
I think the most tantalizing hint to the origins of therianthropy is actually in 2e's Howl of the Wild, snuck in via two sentences on page 194: "It could be the curse exists on its own, to be filtered through any type of beast. Or it began as a curse for one animal, and some influence of other animal magic caused the malady to splinter to other species."
The implications there are fascinating and more than a little horrifying; that the curse spreads almost like a prion disease. leaping from species to species until it makes its way into a host who expresses the symptoms obviously and violently. It's easy for someone (me) to come to the conclusion that there may be swaths of Golarion's wildlife who are infected by this transformative illness, but humanity largely doesn't notice because the rabid transformed animals either keep to the wilds or are slain in the dead of night before anyone got a good look at what they actually were.
There's a nonzero chance that werewolves WERE the first therianthropes, but they spread the curse to other creatures via nonfatal bites (or into scavengers consuming their corpses), who went on to create their own variants of the polymorphic curse in anything they bit or anything that bit them.
There's no solid origin, though I'm willing to bet druids had something to do with it. The fact that therianthropy has existed since the beginning of recorded history is certainly something to think about! Researching an answer for it made my brain spin up a horrifying theory, so hopefully you may be able to make your own equally terrifying conclusions!
