Werecheetah [Lycanthrope]

In human form a werecheetah is slender, long-limbed and remarkably graceful, with dark hair, copper-toned skin and an almost sexless beauty. It dresses in the costliest silks and linens suited to hot lands and drapes itself in exquisite gold jewelry. The beast form is simply a cheetah. The hybrid has a dangerous allure: a lean, whiplike body, sandy fur dappled with dark brown spots, digitigrade cat legs, a lively tail, clawed hands that keep their thumbs, and a cheetah's head with glittering green eyes.

Werecheetahs are brilliant and often speak many languages, including old and obscure ones, plus their own hushed, breathy tongue.

Though they love hunting, werecheetahs hate risking themselves and avoid open fights, preferring to let servants hold off attackers while they slip away. Cornered, they are lethal. The hybrid claws twice for 1d4 each and bites for 1d8. As humans they favor bronze bastard swords, wielded with startling nimbleness, and most are also skilled with polearms, whips and bows.

In human or hybrid form it can call up a burst of magical speed lasting three rounds: movement triples to 45, Armor Class improves to 2, and its attacks per round triple (nine in hybrid form). Then fatigue sets in for a whole turn, during which its AC slips to 8 and it suffers -2 on attack rolls.

Only cedar-wood weapons or magical weapons of +2 or better can strike it. Each hit point of damage from its claws or fangs gives a 2% chance of infection.

They lair anywhere from ruined hilltop temples to lavish estates, and have turned up in places as different as a starving, fanatical domain and a sun-baked desert one. A werecheetah wants a grand, isolated home where it can enjoy pampered seclusion, stuffed with fine furnishings and laced with hidden passages.

Fiercely territorial, they cannot abide their own kind except during courtship, an elaborate ritual in which the male must ask leave to enter a female's range and win her over with lavish gifts. If accepted, he stays a year to help raise the 3-4 cubs, which grow up fast and move far away.

At heart every werecheetah is a megalomaniac, living for luxury and power over others and believing itself nearly divine. Many gather cults of zealots who worship them as cat lords, supplying endless wealth and comfort and willing to die defending their 'god'.

Nothing hunts them, but they detest other werecreatures they meet, such as werebaboons and werejackals, and are said to particularly loathe the undead, vampires most of all. They are decadent parasites who live on other thinking beings' lives, labor and riches, and they eat only meat, preferably that of intelligent creatures. Lately many matings have failed; each sex blames the other, though rumors whisper of an old curse.