Lythari [Lycanthrope]

Wood elves call them silver shadows. The lythari are good-hearted elves and true lycanthropes, able to become wolves; they have no hybrid shape. As wolves they are lovely animals with silver or pale gray coats and clever blue or brown eyes, giving off warmth rather than menace. An adult stands as large as a small pony and, in an emergency, can bear a man-sized friend.

They seldom take elf form, but when they do they look strikingly unearthly even by elven standards: tall, fair-skinned, silver-haired, with pale blue or green eyes, clad in furs and hides and decked with feathers and bone in a style older than any wood elf tribe. Wolf-shaped lythari talk as wolves do; in elf shape they speak elvish and sometimes Common.

Like other elves they glide through woodland almost unseen and unheard, imposing a -4 penalty on opponents' surprise rolls, and 75% of the time they simply avoid strangers. Violence revolts them. They would rather run, and in wartime they help only as scouts and couriers. Cornered, or protecting their own, they fight superbly and their morale rises to Elite (13). Elves in shape, they use elven weapons; wolves, which they prefer for fighting, they bite.

In wolf form, only silver or weapons of +1 or better harm them, and magic aimed at lycanthropes works on them. In either form they have 90% resistance to sleep and charm magic and immune to ghoul paralysis. They change freely, in about half a round, and one killed as a wolf becomes an elf again after one round.

Though they hunt like real wolves, lythari never kill for cruelty and never prey on thinking beings. Travelers usually meet a lone hunter or a pack; a full tribe may number up to 30, a dozen or so too young to hunt. Most live off the Prime Material plane altogether, in forests reachable only by secret gates they alone know, keeping far from cities and even from other elves. Bands are leaderless, communal and wholly equal.

They work no metal and build nothing grander than brush huts. Spellcasters are rare and usually specialty priests of woodland gods. They honor the elven forest god and the other wild deities of the elven pantheon, but their deepest devotion goes to the faerie king and queen, Oberon and Titania.

Lythari breed among themselves, and they can also make a normal elf into one of them through a bonding rite that leaves a lasting scar like a wolf bite; both parties must consent. Ordinary wolves welcome a lythari into the pack with respect while leaving it outside their pecking order. Evil wolves and their like, worgs, werewolves and most antherions (wolfweres, for example) among them, sense what it is and try to chase it off or kill it.

A few free bands roam the woods of a hidden elven island kingdom and perhaps the mainland of a prime world, but most dwell in enchanted faerie realms that barely brush the material world. They hunt deer, rabbits and wild boar in both forms, too few to dent the game. Wood elves glimpse them about as rarely as humans glimpse wood elves, and only twice in recorded history have lythari joined in the wider world's affairs. One celebrated half-elf adventurer of a secretive good-aligned network carries a magic whistle that can summon a particular lythari friend from enormous distances.