and lastly, we have our werecreatures lore, also an addition we made to the all souls universe!
Werecreatures are the result of a failed, Vampire-led experiment on Shifters. In an attempt to allow Shifters to take on enhanced abilities in human form, essentially allowing them to partially shift, a group of Shifters were put through the Vampires’ “rebirthing” process. This experiment did have the desired effect, but it further mutated the 24th chromosome as well. This altered the animal form’s appearance and drove it into a crazed, bloodthirsty state similar to Vampire blood rage.
When the Vampires discovered the repercussions of their actions, they enlisted the help of a group of Wix, who cursed the mutated Shifters to only shift once every full moon. This allowed the Shifters to avoid the insanity that stemmed from the inability to shift, and also protected the population for the majority of the month. Due to this curse, Werecreatuers cannot fight the shift like normal Shifters can, under any circumstance, and must instead find a place to shift in isolation, if they fear hurting loved ones.
Outside of the full moon, Werecreatures in their human form share some abilities with Vampires, and have others that are opposite to their supernatural cousins. Similarities include enhanced speed, strength, and senses, but unlike Vampires, Werecreatures run extremely warm, and their resting heart rate hovers around 120 bpm. They may also look more gruff or generally unapproachable than their near-perfect Vampire counterparts.
It was quickly discovered that, similar to Vampires, the newly-dubbed Werecreatures developed a type of blood rage in the days leading up to the full moon. Loss of coherence follows, but also the ability to create other werecreatures, both through transfer of saliva or through typical human reproduction. The werecreature gene is extremely dominant, as long as two conditions are met. Like Shifters, a chromosomal abnormality must already be present for the werecreature gene to take, and the gene’s dominance is directly correlated with the phase of the moon the conception happened under. The fuller the moon, the more likely it is for the werewolf gene to dominate other existing genes.