Werebadger [Lycanthrope]

Werebadgers are dwarves who can become giant badgers or a hybrid of dwarf and badger. As dwarves they look ordinary apart from a silver streak in the hair or beard, which plenty of normal dwarves also have. The hybrid walks upright with dense fur, huge claws and a badger's head, and its claws are so big they clack against each other whenever they are not flexed or clenched. The full badger form looks like any giant badger, and the change shreds whatever the creature is wearing.

It strikes with its front claws and then bites. Unlike a true giant badger, its claws are the bigger danger, though only the bite can spread lycanthropy. Werebadgers happily use weapons, usually axes and war hammers, but their natural weapons are so strong that only a magic weapon really improves on them. Each has a 75% chance to own a weapon, and that weapon is magical 25% of the time. They cannot wield anything in badger form. Only silver or magical weapons hurt them, and poppy-seed oil is poisonous to them.

Check at the start of each combat round: there is a 25% chance the werebadger goes berserk. Foaming at the mouth, it gains +1 to hit with claws and +3 with its bite, and it will not stop until it dies or every foe has fled or fallen. While frenzied, its bite is twice as likely to transmit lycanthropy.

Werebadgers stay on the margins, if they live among others at all, choosing work that keeps them alone or excuses outbursts of rage; many serve dwarf armies as scouts or skirmishers. They dislike hard labor and seldom work stone or metal. Those that shun dwarf society live alone in caves and burrows, preying on the unwary. Other lycanthropes annoy rather than enrage them, and a werebadger fights another werebeast only over territory.

Now and then a werebadger keeps a mate and cubs; the cubs count as normal badgers with lycanthropic immunities. Any hostile move by intruders sends both parents into an immediate frenzy with no roll needed.

Dwarves catch this lycanthropy most easily. Other subterranean races such as gnomes, orcs and goblins catch it at half the dwarven rate, and humans, elves and other surface races only one quarter as likely. Werebadgers die young for dwarves, reaching 80 or 90 at most on the rare occasions they die naturally, and an infected dwarf or other long-lived victim loses half of its remaining lifespan. A dwarf or gnome who ages too fast may be suspected of the curse.