Shapeshifting curses are highly varied, but there are five general types that scholars have identified, based on the commonalities they’ve been observed to have and the extraplanar beings responsible for inflicting them on mortals. All lycanthropic curses are communicable to others, usually but not always via the bite or claws of the afflicted. Most of them have an “onset period,” during which the curse hasn’t fully set its claws into the victim.
Breaking a lycanthropic curse can be done via the Unravel The Threads Of Malice ritual, though the amount of Ritual Power required to break a given curse varies significantly between curses; it’s almost always easier or cheaper to break the curse before its onset period has ended. Each curse has a specific ritual formula or set of requirements to break it that requires significantly less power, but the exact requirements are set by the creature who first placed the curse. Functionally, whenever a new outbreak of lycanthropy occurs, it requires either extensive effort to research the curse and find the counter-curse, or a concerted effort to find sufficient ritualists and Aether Crystals to break the curse by brute force.
Lycanthropy is never a blessing or a gift. It can be used strategically for military or personal purposes, but the victim of the curse is always rendered lesser for it. There are no heroes who have contracted lycanthropy and retained their bodies, minds, and souls; any lycanthropes who are remembered by history as anything other than monsters are hailed as heroes who sacrificed themselves to aid their people.
<aside> 🐺 OOC Note: It is possible for your character to contract a lycanthropic curse during play. If you do not get that curse broken, your character will become an NPC after the curse properly sets in, under the control of the GM team. While the positive effects of the curse may be worth it in the short term, the effects on your character will always render them into a monstrous or bestial creature in the long term.
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