#sufficientomniscience

For the most part, I follow a lot of werewolf lore (with exceptions) but not necessarily in the way you’d think? If that makes sense. Like, for example, werewolves turn during the full moon, but not necessarily bc the moon is full, but because their hormones follow very strict patterns of fluctuation that just... happen to coincide with the lunar cycle (its correlation not causation, thus the myth was associated with the lunar cycle for convenience rather than actual fact). 

Silver has no special affect on werewolves, u can just stab ‘em with whatever. Werewolves do have a special kind of bacteria in their stomachs and livers that metabolize certain toxins differently than humans (so theyre better at consuming raw meat and other gross shit as well as making certain poison completely ineffective) but this special bacteria breaks down the poison in wolfsbane in such a way that it uhhhhhh basically gets werewolves High As Shit (early werewolves were the ones that spread the rumor that wolfsbane was poisonous to them specifically cause early werewolves really loved weed apparently). 

Lycanthropy can only be contracted by a bite where saliva mixes with the bloodstream (so scratches don’t do anything). The virus takes about 3 days to spread entirely and involves the complete mutation of every cell in the host body as well as the virus taking over the central nervous system and eventually spreading to the brain. The survival rate of infection is about 50% (though with proper care, survival rates have gone up) due to how violently it shuts down the hosts internal organs, making it hard to breath, digest, and sometimes the brain will simply forget to tell the heart to beat, thus killing the host. If the host survives, the brain will “learn” to produce certain chemical reactions that will eventually go on to trigger the monthly changes (though the brain can be tricked w/ emotions or drugs to release these neurotransmitters more frequently resulting in more changes). 

Werewolves also don’t “lose their consciousness” during their changes, though it will often appear like that and all licensed werewolves are legally obligated to comply with government mandated safety regulations for that reason. What actually happens is basically uh...... you know when something pisses you off real bad but you cant do anything about it and you really just wanna punch a wall or hit something but when you do it doesn’t make it better? Like everything is grating your nerves and then you stub your toe or something and you wanna murder someone for a hot second? Yeah its like that for werewolves on full moons except wayyyy worse and thus theyre much easier to aggravate and much more likely to lash out over literally nothing (they will genuinely try not to hurt people it just happens). Werewolves also need to eat a lot to keep up with all the calories they burn through so theyre even more agitated when hungry.