Werebat [Lycanthrope]

As with other lycanthropes of the misty dread realm, werebats come in two kinds. True werebats are born of two werebat parents, whether those parents are true or infected. When only one parent is a werebat and the other human, the baby is a true werebat 50% of the time and an infected one 25% of the time.

A true werebat has three forms. As a human it shows bat-like quirks: discomfort in bright light, sharp night sight, a craving for blood or raw meat. As a vampire bat it is indistinguishable from the real thing. The hybrid is the one people fear: the body stays humanoid, but the arms stretch long and thin with leathery wings beneath, the face pushes out into a snout, the teeth become fangs, the nails grow into claws, and the eyes glow when light strikes them. An infected werebat gets just two forms, 75% of them human and hybrid, the rest human and bat.

In human form it relies on weapons, since its fists do only 1d2, and it avoids fighting if it can. As a bat it bites once a round for a single point, yet even that scratch can pass on the curse, and the little bat keeps its full human hit point total. The hybrid is too clumsy for weapons but needs none: it claws twice for 1d4 each, and if both hit it follows with a 2d4 bite. It can fly in this form and uses flight cleverly in battle.

Each point of damage its claws or fangs inflict carries a 2% chance of infection. Only silver or weapons of +1 or better harm it; other wounds close as fast as they open, a clue to what it really is.

Werebats make their homes in caves amid lightly forested temperate country, flying out to find prey whose blood will slake their thirst. A cave normally holds one family, two parents and 1d4 young. Youngsters stay in bat form until age three, then mature into adults within a year, and that growth brings ferocious hunger. A village near the cave can expect to lose many people during this time.

Each cave also houses 20d10 ordinary bats and 1d10 giant bats, all obeying the adult werebats as guards and companions.

People are their preferred food, but when humans and demihumans are scarce they will drink from cattle, horses and other mammals, which oddly never catch their lycanthropy. Werebats are not sadistic or wicked about killing. They simply consider humans lower on the food chain, and they like to call themselves predators of the night.