Werewolf

We saved the most classic lycanthrope for last.  (Thank God there are no werezebu.)

Werewolves got their own adventure during the Carrion Crown Adventure Path.  They got their own chapter in Classic Horrors Revisited.  And that’s just Paizo—that doesn't even touch werewolves in the world’s oldest role-playing game (particularly in Ravenloft, Eberron, and the Forgotten Realms) or White Wolf, where they got their own entire freakin’ game (called, appropriately enough, Werewolf, and which comes in The Apocalypse and The Forsaken vintages).

So you don't need my help making your werewolves cool.  (Not that I ever assumed you did—I’m just sayin’ there’s plenty of material out there to work with.)

However, I will add this: Because of their low CR, werewolves might be the first truly savage creatures a party encounters.  Unlike, say, goblins, they're wise hunters and opponents.  Unlike low-level undead, they're not so distracted by their own compulsions and hungers that they can’t suss out your habits and weaknesses.  Unlike orcs or hobgoblins, they don’t take slaves who can be rescued later—a bite or two creates all the allies they need.  Unlike lawful evil kobolds, they don’t play by any rules—a kobold’s a devious little blighter, but he won’t steal your child from the nursery unless you come and crush his tribe’s eggs.  But a werewolf?  A werewolf will murder that child right in its crib and leave it for you to find.  If you come at it with ordinary weapons, a werewolf will let you think you killed it, play dead, and then go for your throat when you try to claim its pelt.  A werewolf will afflict your best friends with lycanthropy just to get to you.  And if it can’t beat you fair and square, a werewolf will bring a whole pack to hound you until you are tired, then disembowel you and start eating your intestines while you’re still alive. 

Also, werewolves give you a nice opportunity to make adventures in town really matter, and get players to really pay attention to folklore and folk remedies.  When a werewolf is on the loose, silver coins get taxed or confiscated and every weapon and armor purchase costs dearly.  Wolfsbane and other remedies become highly sought after, and locals might use other charms to keep the wolf-man from their door.  I say if a player works in some hedge wizard’s remedy from folklore (or even another game system), let it work as a reward for getting into the role-playing...unless you decide to let it fail in the most inopportune and amusing way possible…

High in the Icehowl Mountains a werewolf infects a party member with lycanthropy.  Wolfsbane offers a cure, but only if the adventurers can reach a fresh batch in time, and they are high above the tree line.  They will only make it back in time if they get creative, especially as the rest of the werewolf pack is closing in.  And then in a miner’s shed they find a sled, some skis, and several boxes of Lung rockets…

Most people have heard tell of Northern berserkers and sea raiders who turn into wolves.  Yet Southerners have their own, less-storied lycanthropic traditions.  The knights templar of the Order of the Claw wear iron cilices under their shirts to keep them always on the threshold of frenzy.  Many are even full-blooded werewolves…though how keenly they hold to their vows in hybrid form is an open question.

An archivist needs help destroying a cursed tome.  Unfortunately, the magical field generated by the foul codex is the only thing keeping his lycanthropy in check.  For every page burned in silver fire he gets closer and closer to his change.  The adventurers face the unenviable challenge of trying to remove one evil from the world without unleashing another…

—Pathfinder Bestiary 198

As mentioned above, there’s more on werewolves in Classic Horrors Revisited, courtesy of Rob McCreary.  And Blood of the Moon features werewolf-kin known as witchwolves. 

I don't know why I’m so anti-werewolf.  Thriller was formative to my kindergarten years, and I’m indebted to the media teacher whose after-school movie class introduced me to Universal Pictures’ The Wolf Man.  Also, here’s to Wilford B. Wolf, who gave all us nerds hope (though for terrible reasons) and Warren Zevon.

Lots of reader comments: syringesin torments players…filbypott has questions about werehyenas…demiurge1138 dredged up one of pop culture’s grossest abominations… smilelikeyougotnothingtolose is playing some Werewolf…and titleknown really needs to tell us more about Oinkbane(?!?)…

Like a werewolf gnawing on a cavalier’s thighbone, dr-archeville has been diving deep into lycanthropes.  Check out his in-depth explorations of the werebat, the wereboar (with a nice Snatch reference), the werecrocodile, the wererat, the *ahem* “Jawsome” wereshark, and the weretiger.

And fortooate writes:

Today on The Daily Bestiary, we have Moon-Moses leading his people across a magically parted sea…and then the freed slaves begin to turn into weresharks!

I love this blog.

No, this blog loves you, fortooate.

Finally, Will Staples (don't tell anyone, but he is also filbypott) writes something I’ve gotta respond to:

A long time ago I saw a cartoon (maybe Scooby-Doo) with a monster that was a humanoid shark, described as some kind of Polynesian god.  Ever since I've associated weresharks with spirituality and the Pacific islands. (IIRC, Aquaman had an enemy called “King Shark” who had a similar origin, and White Wolf's Rokea also have a strong presence in the Pacific.) If Paizo ever does a fantasy Oceania (doubtful, but I can dream), I hope weresharks have a place of honor there.

It’s not fantasy Oceania, but I should at least mention that (assuming you don’t already have it) Pathfinder Adventure Path #56: Raiders of the Fever Sea has a big article on the oceans of Golarion and all the races therein.  But you of all my readers would probably get the most out of Razor Coast.  It definitely draws inspiration from Hawaiian Polynesian myths—heck, Pele is mentioned by name!

That said, it’s a jerk move of me to recommend a book that expensive (even the PDF is $40) that I haven’t even read all of yet.  Instead I propose this: Pick up Razor Coast: Heart of the Razor.  It’s composed of four adventures set along the Razor Coast, and it should give you a good a feel for the setting.  If you dig RC:HotR, you’ll know the full RC tome is for you.

While we’re on the subject, I am super psyched to say that after several frenzied bouts of reading—seriously, I set alarms to get up early and everything—that I have finally finished the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path issues!  That means I’m all caught up!  I start reading The Mummy’s Mask tonight!

Weretiger

Shere Khan.  That’s the weretiger in a nutshell.  Smug, dominating, and evil.  Willing to toy with intelligent prey, but only to a point, and always alert for threats.  And while other shapeshifters in their home regions may have more natural power, weretigers lack the sybaritic vices that tend to trip up rakshasas and oni.  A weretiger is born to lead, and once he attains that lofty perch he doesn’t intend to lose it be being sloppy.

Also—I don't know that this would ever come up in an adventure that wasn’t heavily lycanthrope-themed, but it intrigues me nonetheless—I'd be interested to see how weretigers and werewolves manage when they share turf.  I imagine it would be a constant power struggle: feline vs. canine, the stronger but solitary stalker vs. the weaker but pack-protected hunter.  I imagine both sides would constantly strive to earn class levels and magic items to stay ahead of their rivals…

The Safari Lodge is both a social club and a private museum, featuring artful dioramas that display Lodge members’ stuffed kills to best effect.  The president and curator, Baron Villenz, is actually a weretiger who occasionally uses the Lodge as a discreet place to dispose of his rivals.  His favorite technique is to pose as a stuffed tiger, then take his foes by surprise, stalking them through the Lodge’s twisting exhibit halls.

Drow revile lycanthropy as a corruption of elven blood...with the exception of weretigers, whose grace, beauty, and deadliness flatter the drow ego.  Typically appearing as black panthers with blue or purple stripes, these weretigers range farther afield than most drow and are often found near the surface.

A wayang puppeteer is the only person left alive who knows the entire Isandrine Cycle, the final stanzas of which reveal where the Bowl of the Monsoon is buried.  Unfortunately, he also knows the full lyrics to The Weretiger, the Nagaji & the Ass, a bawdy tune that humiliated a weretiger mayor out of office.  Just as adventures track the wayang down, his traveling stage is attacked by the enraged lycanthrope.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 183

Back in “basic” D&D, weretigers could paralyze enemies with a magic roar—a good special ability option should you choose to advance your weretigers with Hit Dice rather than class levels.

Blood of the Moon features weretiger-kin known as fanglords. 

(I also should have mentioned yesterday that BotM features wereshark-kin known as seascarred.  And it portrays weresharks as somewhat more tyrannical than the Bestiary 4 characterization.)

Still need to get to your awesome reader comments, but ended up snagging tickets to Red Sox/O’s game at the last minute, so I’m running late tonight and had best post this before the clock strikes midnight.

New video!  Hard to believe it’s been 10 years this month since I first saw these guys play a show.

Wereshark

Weresharks have been swimming around gaming on and off since the 1e Monster Manual II.  But now that our hobby is in love with pirates—thank you Freeport and Pirates of the Caribbean (not to mention the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path)—they’re much more likely to appear in your game.  In fact, if we didn’t already have two other sharklike monsters (sahuagin and adaros) I would have expected them to show up in print a lot sooner than Isles of the Shackles and the Bestiary 4.

Pathfinder’s weresharks stand out in their characterization: “crude and bullying”… “bloodthirsty and are very easy to anger”…“jump into fights they have no stake in just to snap bones and draw blood”…and they’re just as quick to flee if things go wrong.  Many lycanthropes are aggressive and/or predatory, but natural weresharks are the classic middle school bullies dressed up in pirate clothes. 

Recently afflicted weresharks, on the other hand…well, you’ve heard the term “feeding frenzy”…

This year the Black Carnival is even more deadly than usual.  Street toughs and imps have taken to tossing bladders full of blood from the rooftops onto revelers.  The blood itself is harmless, but the involuntary transformations it triggers among Knifeport’s many incognito weresharks is not.

Adventurers traveling in the cold northlands seek hospitality, but are rebuffed.  Finally one hunter offers a solution—they may stay in his ice-fishing shack.  The hunter is actually a wereshark, and he intends to swim up under the ice to the fishing hole and slay the adventurers in their sleep.

Slaves fleeing captivity follow their leader, a charismatic oracle who calls on the power of the full moon to part the waters of the ocean.  But there is danger in their midst.  A handful of slaves stole from the sheikh’s treasury as they fled, and the cursed objects trigger their transformation into weresharks.  The afflicted monsters begin savaging victims and hauling them off into the surf, causing a panic that threatens the integrity of the spell and the entire exodus.

—Isles of the Shackles 54 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 190

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I picked up the Razor Coast hardcover.  You wouldn’t be necessarily right to say I bought it for the amazing Wayne Reynolds wereshark cover…but you wouldn’t be wrong either.  In addition, a wereshark cleric is one of the two main antagonists in the book.

Speaking of which…I haven’t talked about it since, but I’m still pleased with the purchase.  While I’m still only a few pages in (I read a page or two of the PDF when I need a break at work) so far the writing is good, the setting feels quite alive, and I’m enjoying meeting the major and minor NPCs and villains.  Most importantly, it’s a third-party book that seems to have contracted the services of an actual page designer, not just some dude who did yearbook in high school and who really likes spiky headline fonts.

Don't consider this a final review.  I have not yet read it cover to cover and likely won’t for a while.  But I’m highly looking forward to the whole thing, wereshark and all.

Our time in Lycanthropeville has a bunch of readers commenting and sharing details of their home campaigns.  I’ll try to highlight some of them tomorrow.

Wererat

Wererats may or may not be inspired by Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar novels.  But even if they weren’t, it's pretty much a given that wererats (or some kind of intelligent rat creature) would be in the game.  Fantasy cities need urban monsters, shapechangers, thieves, plotters and schemers, and disease vectors—and wererats fit the bill on all counts.

Which is why you don’t see me sniffing all haughtily that wererats are trite and overdone.  Sure, the fact that they are pretty much always found in sewers and pretty much always associated with thieves’ guilds can get old fast.  But wererats are still the consummate urban dwellers, able to fit in both ecological and cultural niches that other monsters and the lawful citizenry overlook.  A city without wererats is actually suspicious—it forces the question: What drove them out?

If you’re trying to refresh wererats in your game, what if they were accepted members of society (provided they didn't pass on their curse)?  How might they compete or cooperate with ratfolk?  Do they spread their affliction carefully or indiscriminately?  What are they if not thieves.  (But they're probably still thieves.)

“The Scarlet Mouse” is a superhero of sorts to the citizens of Reven.  The masked wererat in the red half cloak is known for defending damsels in distress and foiling muggings, all while evading capture by the Night Watch.  In reality, though, the Scarlet Mouse is a criminal.  He and his guild are using his antics to study the Night Watch’s patrols and response tactics, with the added bonus of stirring public resentment against the hapless guardsmen.

The wererats of Tembril are fierce patriots—their clan founder having been saved by a kindly priest during the Revolution.  Now they spy for the Republic against the Monarchists and the xenophobic Bluecoats.  But wererats new to Tembril, including a cult of disease-spreading druids, have infiltrated Tembril’s back alleys and threaten to wipe out the natives.

The wererats of Janderholm are particularly aggressive in spreading their affliction.  Moreover, they often bear signs of mutagenic influence.  This is courtesy of their patron and mastermind, a legendarily long-lived awakened styracosaurus alchemist.  The sewer-dwelling dinosaur finds humans that turn into rats to be a proper correction to what he deems “the crime of mammalian evolution.”

—Pathfinder Bestiary 197

Blood of the Moon features wererat-kin known as nightskulks.

It's worth noting that in “basic” D&D, it was suggested more than once that wererats are not men who change into rats but rats who change into men.  (Why?  Because red box D&D could be cray-cray.)  This may also explain their resistance to normal weapons even in human form.

And speaking of “basic” D&D, moebiusloop blew my mind:

Don’t forget X8: Drums on Fire Mountain. A wereboar was the main villain of that module. He convinced the local Polynesian-esque orcs that he was their god and was using them to have revenge on his rivals.

From pretty much the moment I started playing D&D, I always wanted a copy of that module.  (And the fact that the kara-kara got reprinted in AC9 Creature Catalog just made me want it more.)  But I never bought it, and it disappeared off the hobby store shelf.  Now that I know that it had a devil swine, I’m going to have to track down a copy.

Meanwhile, evillordzog writes, “I quite liked the Werewolf take on werecrocs”—I don’t know much about Werewolf, so please tell us more!—and ohgodhesloose offers:

A great independent Ravenloft site came up with a great idea for werealligators, swamp dwelling loners who alternate between mellow and murderously sadistic: http://www.oocities.org/area51/dungeon/6102/monsters/weregatr.html

Plus filbypott and mordicaifeed (read his stuff!) weigh inon werebears.

My little brother took time out of his busy schedule to tell me that this show was not as good as last week's show.  Now who are you going to believe—me or my smarter, more charismatic sibling? 

...Don't answer that. 

But if you’re a board game fan, tune in—this show is directly inspired by Ticket to Ride!

(I was a hair late, so the music starts about two minutes into the file. If the feed skips, Save As an mp3 and listen in iTunes. Link good till Friday, 4/4, at midnight.)

Werecrocodile

The Wereboar entry is now up.  Give it some love!  Also, you’ve got until midnight U.S. Eastern to download last week’s radio show—which you should, because it was awesome.

You'd think—given my by-now-well-established suspicion of monster series that get overgrown and unruly (Does every material on Earth Oerth Golarion need a golem?  Does every terrain need a giant?)—that I’d hate the werecrocodile.  Because it totally falls into that familiar pattern:

“Okay, desert setting.  Needs a werecreature.  How about a were… *consults book on Egypt* crocodile?  Everyone good with that? Okay, let’s move on—how about a golem made of sandstone?  Because desert, amirite?”

But I don’t hate the werecrocodile, because werecrocodiles are awesome.  I mean, who doesn’t like bloodthirsty reptile-men?  Especially ones that can sprint 60 feet in a round and execute a death roll on a grappled foe?  Plus, as I mentioned on Tuesday, werecrocodiles tend to always get associated with evil desert cults, and evil desert cults are phenomenal.  If you send one of my characters into your Fantasy Cairo, you’ll never even get me near a pyramid—I’ll be too busy clearing cultists of Set out of the sewers and riverbanks, with a smile on my face the size of Indiana Jones’s after a particularly good day.

But maybe you’re bored of reptile cults.  As shapechangers, werecrocodiles are excellent low-level allies for rakshasas (who also often have croc heads).  As brawlers, they might show up in bareknuckle boxing rings, gladiatorial pits, or even one of the more martially minded monasteries.  They don't have to be underground terrors either—a City Watch made up of werecrocodiles would have a fearsome reputation…

The feud between the Vance and Mossbrood families has been terrifying the folk of the Semper Bayou for 15 years now.  By rights the werecrocodilian Mossbroods should have driven out the half-ogre Vances years ago, but the latter family’s rapacious (in every sense of the word) appetites and sheer martial ability have bred dozens of seasoned ogrekin warriors more than capable of gutting “them shifty gators.”

The Satrap of Ishuth disdains the pagan religion of his subjects, but he recognizes the expediency in appearing to have adopted the worship of their animal-headed idols.  Plus, inserting his werecrocodile servants into the priesthood has been a way to keep the troublesome clerics in line while appeasing the gullible masses.  However some of the werecrocodiles carry knowledge of blood magic from the Sea of Elephants, and the cursed arcana is beginning to taint the city in disturbing ways.

Treacherous reefs and the ever-present threat of bunyips make anchoring at Fort Tribulation a risky endeavor…and this gives the Local Order of Stevedores and Longshoremen surprising political and monetary clout.  In reality, Fort Tribulation’s last bunyip was driven off years ago, and any “incidents” are caused by the dockworkers themselves, many of whom are werecrocodiles.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 189

Blood of the Moon features werecrocodile-kin known as scalehearts.

Also, yeah, priests of Set and I have some history.  Specifically, my Vampire character (and therealkendrickdane) nearly burned down San Francisco trying to get rid of some of them.  I hate those guys.

Wereboar

As I noted on Tuesday, I like wereboars because they're just so bizarre.  Most other lycanthropes have some sort of clear mythological antecedent, but wereboars really don’t.  (The only likely candidate is Circe transforming Odysseus’s men into pigs, and that’s more like a straight-up polymorph than lycanthropy.)  My guess, as I already mentioned, is that they sprang from the same love of wordplay, happy accident, and malformed miniatures that gave us the ochre jelly, the owlbear, and the thoul in early editions of the world’s oldest role-playing game.

But wereboars still feel kind of right, don't they?  There’s something at once simultaneously storybook and gritty about them.  I could just as easily imagine them in an adventure based on Grimm’s fairy tales as I could on the streets of Thieves’ World’s Sanctuary.  (And boars are not to be sneezed at—Ian Frazier had a famous article in The New Yorker about what a problem feral pigs have become in the southern U.S., and Eurasian boars imported for hunting have become an invasive species in New York.)

I also want to give wereboars some love since I don't think I remember them playing a major role in any adventure ever.  They’re pretty much just random encounter fodder, or are used to spice up encounters with orcs (who tend to dig dire boars).  I think they deserve better.  What if they were the default (or only) lycanthrope in your campaign?  What if they filled the role of biker gang or crime family?  What if they were sought-after mercenaries or hated berserkers from a particular nation?

OH!  And let’s not forget devil swine!  Appearing in the D&D Expert Set (and in the Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix as “wereswine”) and possibly inspired by the Biblical story about demon-haunted pigs, devil swine were corpulent humans who could turn into giant pigs with potent charming gazes.  So cool.  And so easy to make with Pathfinder/3.5’s advancement rules!  Add the Advanced or Giant template and a 3/day charm person gaze attack with the DC bumped up by 2 and you’re good to go.

And it gets better: According to the mythology of D&D’s Known World/Mystara, the demon lord Orcus started out as a devil swine in his mortal life. 

ORCUS.

If that’s not a reason to dig wereboars, I don’t know what is.

The Cousins are an extended family of wereboar toughs who lurk in the narrows of Karse.  For a while they casually ran a protection racket, but the stress of city life is getting to the, and they are beginning to lose control of their transformations.  The Cousins are also known for attacking half-orcs on sight, as their grandfather was long the slave of the Broken Mace orc tribe.

Typically lording over only small fiefdoms and isolated villages, wereboar troupes are rarely more than glorified gangs.  At least one troupe, though, aspires to knighthood.  These cavaliers have found the Order of the Cockatrice suits their self-centered need for glory and domination nicely.

A devil swine and a ghast have entered into a particularly repulsive partnership.  Masquerading as an undertaker, the devil swine (treat as an Advanced wereboar) robs his charges of their wealth, then turns over the remains to his undead compatriot to devour.  So far the scheme has gone swimmingly, though the bard who runs the grave dancers’ society has begun to be suspicious.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 182

More on wereboars can be found in Blood of the Moon, which also features wereboar-kin known as ragebred.

Finally, thanks for your patience with the tardiness of this entry.  Original post: Post to come tomorrow.  I spent all day helping artisticlicensetokill discharge from the hospital.  Think good thoughts for her and we’ll tackle the wereboar and werecroc ASAP.

Werebear

Everyone knows that, when it comes to lycanthropes, werebears are the good ones.  Right?  Ever since Gandalf knocked on Beorn’s door in The Hobbit, werebears have been portrayed as the benevolent exception in a typically evil lot.  The one exception is if your GM is a Norse fan, in which case you’ve probably run into a shapechanging berserkr or two…and even they probably bought you a drink after the battle if anyone was still standing.

So if you’re looking to refresh werebears in your game, maybe the best thing to do is make them flat-out evil like the rest of their kin.  Or refresh who becomes werebears.  Maybe it's not rangers, northmen, and tribal braves.  Maybe it's witch skinshifters who physically climb into bearskin suits.  Maybe it’s bugbears or hill dwarves.  Maybe werebears are dark creatures that serve hags and changelings exclusively.  And, of course, you can change the species of bear: polar bears, sun bears, moon bears, and even spectacled bears or pandas are all up for grabs.  The Beorn model is an option…but not the only option.

Cursed after an affair with a river spirit, a samurai turns into a giant moon bear on the full moon.  So far he has hidden the affliction from even his wife and family—he claims to be fulfilling a religious obligation—though it has meant killing a witness in at least one case.  His heart grieves for the man he slew, but the honor of his family and his daimyo come first.

Adventurers travel to Hochheim, the High Home of the Gods, seeking a rogue ice troll witch.  They spend a night in one of the Halls of the Valorous, one of the great longhouses where warriors who died in battle on the mortal plane are reborn to fight again.  While there the adventurers must best one of the reincarnated warriors in a feat of strength or bravery.  During the competition, they soon find out that the warriors have all been reborn as werebears—and since anyone they slay will join them as a werebear brother, they are not gentle combatants.

Spriggans aren't the only foul shapechanging fey.  Exiled sidhe (treat as elves with the fey creature template) are stripped of their rank, their names, and even their fey natures.  This last is accomplished by sewing them into enchanted bearskins.  They spend years inside the cursed and rotting hides in bear form, and their only option for escape is to become humanoid—surrendering every last bit of their fey power not tied to the shapeshift in the process.  Travelers in the pine forests are advised to beware any hirsute half-elves, for they are bloodthirsty killers who hate the limited mortal beings they have become.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 181

Blood of the Moon features werebear-kin known as coldborn.

Comments!  Our Ravenloft expert ohgodhesloose weighs in on a werebat from that setting, and filbypott is already excited about weretigers.  Readers masahiro-the-zero and speculativeartisan, just go for it!

Also, in regards to werebats yesterday I probably should have given a nod to Golarion’s (and the Mayans’) evil bat-god Camazotz.  And while I only have a little familiarity with Wofgang Baur’s Midgard setting, I seem to remember a Kobold Quarterly article that focused on an evil bat-god/demon for that world, too…

Speaking of which, knightdiscipline took me to task for my offhand joke about werebats being blind as a bat (I promise I know they're not blind; I subscribed Zoobooks as a kid!) and offers an epic post on neutral or good fruit bat-inspired varieties.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I love bats.  I love the Bronx Zoo bat house.  And one of the coolest things about my trip to Sydney was looking up and seeing wild m----f---ing flying foxes hanging like gourds right above me and using their own wings as sleeping bags!  Pardon me while I squee.

BUT.  I also think there’s some virtue (bad word choice…maybe some iniquity?) in having some evil things just stay evil.  We fans tend to want to glorify/redeem the things we love, whether or not they deserve it.  *coughHarleyQuinnisstillamassmurderercough*  *dittoDeadpoolcough*  The Forgotten Realms setting in particular was really bad about turning every evil thing good (and we can’t blame Drizzt for it all—there are more than enough baelnorns and lythari and worshippers of Eilistraee and tieflings to go around).  But a little of that can go a long way.  That’s part of why I like Pathfinder’s goblins and drow—they are evil, full stop.  So even if we are doing an injustice to real-world bats (who I think need to be protected and given as much habitat and space and pesticide-free food as possible), I’m okay with my fantasy werebats being creatures of the night/darkness/vampires/wickedness/sin/etc.

That said, knightdiscipline has thrown down the gauntlet, so if you want more subtle, nuanced, or even straight-up benevolent werebats in your game, go check out his comments.

Speaking of Beorn, I just discovered the column Advanced Readings in Dungeons & Dragons by Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode.  I will definitely be reading these articles in the days to come.  Also this.  And hopefully the books in the future…?

Werebat

Werebats are creatures of contradiction.  Resembling vampires but loathing them (especially because they are so often forced to serve them).  Social creatures by day and savage by night.  Communally minded and ordered in their dealings with each other, but chaotic and unpredictable in combat and in their dealings with outsiders (for an overall net neutral evil alignment).  And to top it off, many are as blind as…well, you know.

So maybe your werebats are the go-to henchmen for a vampire…or maybe they’re the unpredictable allies who might team up with the PCs to take him down.  But if you’re good at creating an atmosphere of mystery and paranoia, where werebats really shine is in “Everyone’s a monster but us!” adventures—where the PCs suddenly realize that everyone, quite literally everyone around them is a lycanthrope…that the townsfolk are all in on the ruse together…and that the jig is now up and moonrise is coming…

By the way, more on werebats can be found in Pathfinder Adventure Path #45: Broken Moon, where they were introduced to Pathfinder, and Blood of the Moon, which also delivers their bloodmarked werebat-kin.

A crucial bridge lies between the territories of a werebat clan and a strix aerie.  Both groups resent travelers passing through their domains, often exacting tolls in the form of gold, magic items, or blood.  Notable encounters include the Siphus, the bloodmarked toll agent who marks likely victims for his clanliege, and Vermizus, a strix newly afflicted by lycanthropy who bitterly fights the change.

Adventurers are well paid to escort their wealthy patron’s daughter to her new school, an academy for the blind.  But they are still in town making preparations to leave when the daughter’s fox familiar (that she typically uses as a guide animal) arrives with a note tucked into his collar.  The school for the blind is not what it seems: All faculty and students, save for the very newest enrollees, are werebats in service to the vile headmaster.

Their most recent army having disbanded, wereboar mercenaries move into town and begin wreaking havoc among the locals.  The burgomaster asks adventurers to help bring the wereboars to justice.  But in the course of the investigation, the party discovers that the attacks suffered by the sizable Paleck population in town are quite different in nature from the harassment and assaults being inflicted by the wereboars.  It turns out every Alatian in town—more than half the citizens, including the burgomaster and the town council—are werebats who resent the wereboars moving into their territory.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #45 88–89 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 188

First off, holy crap.  I hit send on the Wendigo entry right before bed last night, and woke up to a wave of support.  Thanks everyone!  Special mention to the comments of ohgodhesloose and majingojira for pointing us to more great wendigo stories and Native American tales.  Meanwhile fortooate was surprised I didn't say more about the whole legs-burning-into-stumps transformation (that’s what I meant by “creepy”, I promise!) and posits a kinship between wendigos and oni.

And now on to today’s entry: 

Truthfully I’ve been dreading this section of the alphabet.  Because werecreatures…guh.  Sure, they're a crucial part of modern folklore, but for me they’re just…whatever. 

Actually, a lot of my antipathy may be reserved for werewolves.  I like wererats because they’re the quintessential urban monster (and a nice stand-in for Skaven), werebears because of their connection to Norse berserkers, and wereboars just because they're so weird (I’m guessing they arose more from Gygax & Friends’ love of wordplay (bear → boar) than any mythological foundation) and because Expert Rules-era D&D’s devil swine were awesome.  Weresharks and werecrocodiles seem appropriate in the right settings, especially since they tend to have ties to cool evil gods/cults.  But werebats/weretigers/werewolves/wereimpalas/werethree-toed sloths…?  Meh.

Then again, overcoming that antipathy—giving every monster its moment in the sun (or full moon)—is the point of this blog, right?  So we shall forge ahead.

(Interestingly, I dug werewolves back when I was playing Vampire.  A werewolf showing up always meant s--- had gotten real.)

I also have to give a shout-out to Ann Dupuis’s Night Howlers, the only D&D Creature Crucible supplement I didn’t own as a kid (somehow it never showed up in my hobby shop) and finally got a hold of a few years ago.  It even had werebats! (So did the Master Rules, which I never did get around to getting…yet.)

Speaking of which, if any my readers are from Baltimore there’s an incomplete copy of the first Creature Crucible, Tall Tales of the Wee Folk, sitting over at Collectors Corner right now.  (Yes, it’s missing the cover and the DM book, but you should go buy the hell out of anyway as a salute to Awesomeness in Supplements.  (That’s a real Oscar Category.  I just created it.  Neil Patrick Harris will sing about it next year, you just watch.)