#shifter lore

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Heyo! SO fun question!

There will be an audio for it later in June hopefully and that will be a little more graphic of an explanation but essentially, if a shifter mainains their shifted form for too long, they end up losing themselves in the idea of the animal they've shifted into.

Balance is key in being a shifter, it is understanding what it means to walk as both the primal animal and civil person. It is holding back on the animal to be trusted by other humans and forgetting your humanity to survive amidst the wilderness. For ghoulish shifters, it's dfferent but maintaining these two sides of one's self is the key.

When you use your shifted form, it requires you to forget that you're operating as a human that is acting as an animal and that means it's easy to get lost in that facade. If you spend long enough in it then you can lose pieces of yourself, make yourself think that you have always been the animal and not the human. You slowly deteriorate as a human and the animal starts making more sense to you.

They can't turn people! It's very genetics based and uncommon I think, with most who hold the shifter genes having them be a recessive trait that's carried and potentially passed onto their children.

Most shifters have a "trigger event"- some life happening that caused the pathways in their brain to kick into autopilot and their abilities to show. There are ways to identify them before this of course, sharpened nails, elongated canine teeth, higher sensitivity to light and sound and of course there's genetic testing, but some shifters don't even realize what they are until later in life.

Christopher's trigger event happened when he was just a kid. One of his friends fell out of a treehouse he'd built with her, and suddenly he was big enough to break her fall <3

As for "new shifters", that more means shifters who are new to their powers. Think of a new superhero. They can't turn others, but they also don't exactly understand how their powers work or why, and to a creature that can be easily overwhelmed... let's just say the public opinion on shifters isn't good. If you were suddenly bigger than everything and everyone around you with people reacting in fear and you had the ability to not only lock in on heartbeats, but the innate desire to protect people by holding them as close to you as possible?

Depends on the shifter! Some shifters don’t care in the slightest and their clothes do get shredded. However, others do care and are able to keep their clothes intact. No one is quite sure why— some speculate it’s because the “other form” understands this and adjusts accordingly and others just think it’s latent magic within a shifters DNA, however minuscule it is, that makes the “charm” possible.

Text version in ID/ALT (first time doing that hope its okay/good 😬)

I’m so excited for you to meet them in game too! Especially since you’ll get the opportunity to interact with them while Blake can make comments in the background (like a tennis match). It’s something that’s been fun to go back to as I’m fleshing things out.

Koda: He has great control out of the shifters. Mainly because he’s a fairly laidback guy. Bear Shifters, unless actually threatened, tend to avoid conflict if it’s possible (as they don’t really want to deal with it). Koda is like that times 10– if he doesn’t have to cause a fight then he won’t. He’d much rather have everyone be happy and go their merry way.

Cyrus/Cyra: I’m including C because they can technically shift as well (although they’re not technically counted as a shifter). In extremely stressful situations, and I do mean extremely, you’ll see the signs of C beginning to shift: flames flickering on their fingers, their eyes beginning to flash more and more, some feathers potentially appearing along their arms or neck. Though they’d only fully shift if they needed a moment by themself and just needed to get away from everything.

Quinn: They have excellent control although their anger can get the best of them at times. It’s something they try to ignore, the complete opposite of Sloane, because of certain things they were exposed to growing up. Due to that Quinn tries to stay out of those types of situations wherein they could get explosively angry— as their wolf form is not something to mess with. Quinn, in most scenarios, even when it does come to mildly aggravating instances, is the epitome of a control. Exactly how they were trained but everyone has their breaking point.

Sloane: Anger doesn’t influence them like it does Quinn— it’s something they’ve come to know quite well, like an old friend. The only time they shift out of their own control is whenever their human side just shuts down and they need the reprieve that their wolf provides or whenever they’re heavily emotional (mainly when it involves sadness/grief) because it’s easier to process whenever they’re in their lupine form— it makes them not feel weak in the face of all the conflicting emotions.

When it comes to shifters it just truly depends on the circumstances involved— one situation could cause a huge reaction, probably because of other events that proceed it, and a similar one could cause no reaction; though there usually is a correlation to said episodes where they shift without wanting to. It’s their wolf protecting their human side or take the lead when they feel like the human side can’t continue forward.

It’s not a fun experience for a shifter during their first ever shift— as their body is getting used to going into another form, but as it’s something that both the human form (and whatever form said shifter goes into) begins to coalesce everything becomes smoother, seamless in a way.

Hello!!

So for shifters, they can’t change their shape. It’s more shorthand for size shifting. Shifters are marked as being able to grow to the size of a giant (leaving most people by comparison the height of most of the prey I draw), or as being able to shrink their prey for easy consumption.

Their “alternate form” as JUST a shifter is themselves, but bigger and toothier with the claws and appetite to match. If they stay in that form too long (days at a time), the aforementioned changes grow more and more prominent and harder to hide, even when they’re trying to pass for human.