On the origins of lycanthropy....

[Rasyr]

Yesterday, while working on the spells for the Shaman, I had a bit of an epiphany.

For the Shaman, they get a totem spirit animal, which grants them a few abilities. This is a spell that takes 5 minutes to cast (like a minor ritual), and once cast, the effects are permanent.

One of the Abilities is that they can transform into that animal. One of the reasons for this is that the totem spirit lives within the Shaman (and is thus how it grants abilities).

Now imagine a Shaman, or perhaps somebody not a Shaman, who is trying to duplicate the Shaman's spell, but they fumble it, very very very badly.

The end result could be that they get an animal spirit, where the strength of the animal spirit is  tied to teh call of the moon, thus it gains more power the closer to the full moon, until it can force the  shape change  on the person.

One of the side effects of this botched spell is that the saliva of the spirit, when mixed with the blood of a victim, can act like a spell performed using blood magic, to call a like spirit to come inhabity the body of the victim (of course, this presumes that there is such a spirit nearby, that the victim is not able to resist the spirit invading its body, and that they survive the attack as well. (thus why lycanthropes do not multiply like rabbits).

This also helps explain why all lycanthropes are predators of one type or another

Just a few thoughts......

[Fidoric]

That's a very good idea I think.
You could even elaborate on that and consider that all monsters are either corrupted spirits or possessed animals/plants/whatever.
I did that a long time ago in a homebrew campaign but nowadays it may be dangerously close to the precept from the Dragon Age serie where many monsters and all undeads are possessed by demons who in turn are (reputedly) corrupted spirit.

[Rasyr]

or created creatures -- remember, the magical creation rules include creation homonculi, which if made full size could be a new creature (and add in of of the Matthew Brodrick Godzilla movie) and you could end up with almost anything.

plus on other worlds, things may have progressed differently  -- for example, on Tolkien's Middle Earth,  Orcs were bred, on other worlds, it may have been Goblins....

On another world, the humanoid races may have been reptiloids, with halfling-sized versions being the Kobolds, etc...

Remember, Anwyn has lots of creatures and beings (even other races sometimes) from other worlds..... and other times....