alright, take two on a “fantasy world bleeding into the real world” setting, I’m using ‘dragonskin’ as a tag/title!
The fantasy world has no humans in it, and is instead populated by four races of human-adjacent people, each with their own sort of shapeshifting:
—Selkies, who generally lay claim to oceanside settlements to accommodate their in-born seal forms. Their ‘human’ forms tend to be sleekly muscled with dark, thick body hair, along with wide mouths full of dog-like teeth, and noses and ears they can close to keep water out. Their transformation relies on their sealskins, but they can also steal the transformations of other races by wearing the skins of people who died in their transformed state.
—Vampires, whose reputation wobbles between diligent farmers and extreme hedonists. The most human looking, with nothing but fangs and golden eyes to distinguish them, they can nonetheless transform into monstrous bats at night. Because they can live on unbalanced or scarce diets provided a blood source, they maintain treasured herds of livestock, fully capable of surviving a harsh winter on cow’s blood and the eggs from a couple chickens.
—Summerlings, or ‘the people of the earth’, as they call themselves. When the temperature dips below a certain threshold, they gain the ability to transform into bear-like creatures with enormous claws, gorging themselves on food before digging dens and sleeping through the winter. Naturally resilient to illness and difficult to seriously injure, their culture is a warm, friendly one centered around community. Their human forms are fat and strong, with fluffy ears, whiskery faces, and large, clawed hands and feet.
—Drakes, the odd ones out. The other three races are mammals and capable of having children together, although not easily, but drakes are reptiles that lay eggs. Their bodies are heated by their innate fire magic, and their transformations into huge dragons burn through this magic quickly. While they can transform at any time, it is rapidly exhausting and hard to control. They are the least human-looking in their ‘human’ form, with colorful scales, sharp teeth, lizard-like tails, cat eyes, and claws.
