[Index]

WERESHARK6 (18)

Cypher Bestiary

A horrific fusion of human and shark when transformed, the 15-foot (4.5 m) tall wereshark is equally deadly on land and in the water.

Health: 33

Damage Inflicted: Major wound

Movement: Short; swims a long distance each round

Combat: A transformed wereshark bites. A transformed wereshark also has one or more of the following traits.

• Toothed Torpedo: Once every few hours, the wereshark can swim for a very long distance on their turn and make one attack.
  
• No Fear: Weresharks are impossible to frighten and will fight to the last.
• Clamping Bite: When a target takes damage from a bite, they must also succeed on a Might defense roll, or one of their limbs is clamped in the wereshark's mouth, and they take damage each round (light, medium, and heavy armor reduce the wound's severity by one, two, or three, respectively) they are caught until they can escape with a successful Might roll as their action.

GM Intrusion: A character is grabbed in a wereshark's maw and pulled into deep water.

THE ESSENCE OF WEREBEASTS

Most of the time a werebeast is a human, with human thoughts, goals, emotions, and abilities. The brutal transformation can be brought on by moon phases, changes in season, or intense feelings such as anger and fear; in the span of under a minute, the werebeast's bones break and rearrange into new shapes, leaving an animal that acts only on instinct. They remain aware of their actions and may feel horrified remorse once they resume their human form, but their higher cognition is forced into the backseat. In fact, the most disturbing thing about werebeasts is that they reveal what a human is capable of under the right (or wrong) conditions.

Werebeasts tend to live in isolation, or accompanied by werebeasts with the same beast form. This reduces the risk that they'll harm a loved one in their beast form; it also means that characters who stumble upon their hideout may be set upon by a bevy of enraged werebeasts.

In human form, werebeasts are usually level 2 humans.

WEREBEAST NAMES

Werebeasts usually have human names appropriate to the setting and time period, such as: Embry, Lucian, Rusty, Frankie, Beau, Dash, Teddy, Libby, Max, Hunter, Luna, Ari, Barry, Dot, Kira, Finley, Rex, Juniper, Boris, Lowell, Tala, Morgan

A "transformed" werebeast is one that appears either as a huge creature, or a huge human/creature hybrid.

Adventure Seed: Beasts are preying on families in a small town. When hunters follow their trail into the woods, the beast tracks turn to human footprints.

WEREBEAST ORIGINS

How did the werebeast develop the ability to shapeshift?

d6	Origin
1	Heritable trait (that may have skipped generations)
2	Bitten by the same kind of werebeast
3	Cursed
4	Summoning ritual gone wrong
5	Inherited trinket that keeps reappearing
6	Intentionally, by seeking arcane knowledge

TRANSFORMATION CAUSES

What causes a particular werebeast to transform, if not the full moon?

d6	Trigger
1	Rare tide
2	Unexpected pain, such as a stubbed toe, or damage
3	Taking an amount of damage that would normally kill them
4	Intoxication
5	The sound of an approaching storm
6	Entering a holy place