Wereswine [Lycanthrope]

Wereswine lurk at the edges of towns as either enormous tusked hogs or hugely obese people. They might seem laughable, were it not for their hunger for human meat and the murderous savagery they bring to feeding it. The fat is deliberate: a soft, jolly bulk makes victims careless. Males in human form are bald and beardless. Some can stretch out piggish ears and tusks at will, a party trick no rarer than ear-wiggling among humans.

The hog shape is a big, smooth, pink pig, and prey usually notices the fangs only when it is close to the snout. There is no hybrid shape. At night wereswine change freely, regardless of the moon, but during the day they must hold a single form, usually the human one.

Wereswine like to win through ambush and indirection. One that has gone two days without food forgets all tactics and charges straight at prey.

In either form a wereswine can cast charm person three times per day, and targets save vs. spell at -2. It uses the spell to grab prey quickly, and each typically keeps 1d4-1 charmed humans at a time.

Its bulk makes the human form a poor fighter, so it prefers trickery or poison. Cornered, it uses clubs, daggers and similar light weapons that need neither skill nor power. As a hog it tears with its tusks, often lying flat in thick brush and attacking as someone walks past.

Wereswine are the classic greedy, filthy, idle pig: slow, slovenly, grasping and always hungry. Many were merchants or farmers before being attacked on a town's outskirts or at home and infected. Former merchants often keep trading, with charmed thralls as faithful servants and spies.

They are obsessed with comfort: rich meals, plenty of wine, soft beds, fine furniture. Lairs are cozy cabins or manor houses just far enough from town to be private and near enough to keep them fed. They wallow in decadence and stay human except to hunt or breed.

Mating happens only in hog form, producing litters of 2d4 piglets that can change at six months into chubby teenage humans. An infected (not born) wereswine also has a personal trigger, such as watching someone eat a big meal, that forces it into hog shape unless it passes an Intelligence check.

Wereswine and wereboars are bitter enemies. In animal form they fight on sight, each can sense the other even in human guise and tends to turn hostile, and both enjoy hunting the other for meat.