Werebaboon [Lycanthrope]

As humans, werebaboons look like people of hot southern lands, with dark skin, tightly curled hair and bold, handsome features, though most have unusual olive-green eyes. They wear light, practical clothing woven and dyed in rich earth tones. The beast is a burly, thick-furred baboon with formidable jaws. The hybrid is an uncanny mix of ape and person: ruddy pink skin under a coat of olive-brown fur, a tail it cannot grip with, feet that can handle objects a little, and a baboon head with a long, vicious dog-like snout full of razor fangs. Males usually sport a long gray mane.

They typically speak local dialects and old, dead languages, along with their own guttural, barking speech.

Werebaboons like weapons, even in hybrid form, falling back on a 2d6 bite only when they must. Steel bastard swords and polearms are common, along with short bows, and any with a free hand carries a shield. Males do the fighting while females and young escape, though a trapped mother will defend her child. Hybrids climb superbly (85%) and exploit it in battle; in truth, no cowardly trick is beneath them.

Once per day each can let out a deafening shriek that works like a shout spell on all who hear it. Whole troops often scream at once, because the damage stacks, to a maximum of six screams. Only bronze weapons or magic weapons of +1 or better can harm them, and each hit point their bite deals adds a 2% chance of passing on lycanthropy.

Werebaboons love hot climates and busy cities, which are scarce in the misty dread realm; most recent sightings come from a cluster of desert domains. They hide in plain sight among the citizens, usually in remarkable human roles: rich merchants, famed warriors, master thieves, shamans, even monarchs. Through politics, society and money they work to secretly control a city's wealth and future.

All the werebaboons of one city, interrelated, form a troop that convenes in secret. Members share resources, compare notes on enemies and divide citywide duties, but the meetings also host vicious power struggles among males, settled not by clever maneuvering but by ritual combat to the death.

They consider themselves a mighty supernatural race entitled to rule humanity, which they call 'carrion'. Ruthless and pragmatic, they have no use for honor or mercy; neither vain nor modest, they rip apart anyone who defies them. Yet they are frighteningly clever and capable of intricate deceptions. Beyond the troop, the family is the core unit, carried over into their human lives: usually a single male with one or two mates and a baby, sometimes with an older youngster too, living in luxurious city homes.

Other lycanthropes barely interest them, whether werelions, werejackals, werecheetahs or werecrocodiles. A few loners may pass unbothered so long as they do not threaten the masquerade; troublemakers are wiped out by the whole troop. Their one deadly enemy is the vasshari, the serpent folk. Even a whisper that vasshari are near sends a troop into a paranoid frenzy.

They feast on human flesh, bird eggs, fruit, nuts and tubers. As social parasites they are legendary, feared by tropical peoples yet endlessly fascinating to them.