No sparking werewolves, I assure you all. XD Here are the "rules" with the werewolves in my fic(s):
I'll say I'm very happy you're going ahead with a writing project. If you're open to comparisons, contrasts and suggestions, I might have a few:
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*If you are infected, the first transformation is the most excrutiating. It is an extremely slow process in which your body changes from a human to a wolf. It also takes a toll on the mind, like lordhowl said. It makes you violent, predatory, attracted to the scent of blood, and gives you poor impules. God help you if you transform a month where there is a full moon... look what happened to Ginger.
I'm just a little confused here. The moon has a cycle of 29.5 days, so thirty days can't go by without a full moon. Do you mean have a full moon that is synced with your first complete change? So, was her final change independent of the full moon? If you're going to write a werewolf story, for it to be good, you've got to get the moon thing right and consistent.
*Once you are fully transformed into your wolf body, you must learn to control yourself. Once you at least have mild control, you can change back and forth between forms at will. You must also be aware you can change back. If you are not aware, you cannot change back.
It does bring up the question of how the first werewolves discovered this? Same as, how did the first birds learn to fly? I would amend it to, you can, it just takes you a long time to discover it if you don't know its there and you don't know how to do it. Also, how does it feel to "trigger" it? Maybe popping their necks and back in a certain way triggers "the reflex" to change?
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*Once you are cured of the virus/curse, you will become immune to it. In other words, there are no chances that you will ever become a werewolf again.
Careful. It's better in a horror story to never entirely rule anything out that you don't have to.
*The full moon is when werewolves are at full power... and hardest to control. If you are a lycanthrope, this will speed up your transformation process. When the full moon is over, if you are a werewolf, you will regain control and lose your "full moon power" until the next one. If you are a lycanthrope... tough luck.
I always used werewolf and lycanthrope more or less interchangeably to refer to the creatures in human or werewolf form. I could tell you're using lycanthrope to refer to one in human form and werewolf to refer to one in animal form. Whereas, at least in my fanfic, the "expert" character refers to "fully-animalized" which is self-explanatory, and
intermediates to refer to ones infected for more than a week, who haven't changed yet but show clear symptoms. It isn't mentioned, but there are also "prodromals" who are definitely infected but haven't manifested blatant symptoms yet. There are also those who are bitten, but who never show signs of infection.
Now, of course you can choose whatever terms you want, just so its clear to the reader what you mean. I'm not sure if they would be on the same page with you about the difference between a lycanthrope and a werewolf, because they would think of them interchangeably.
Do you mean if you are infected five days before the full moon, that you will transform that full moon? And I don't quite know what you mean by "If you're a lycanthrope . . . tough luck." As in, you change, ready or not? Or, you change more painfully, ready or not?
*Stress on the body also increses the rate of transformation for lycanthropes. Why did Ginger transform in Sam's van the way she did? She was so confused and under so pressure, plus her instincts were out of control. She couldn't stop it.
Agreed that stress probably does this, but I thought Ginger changing in the van had to do with it being the full moon (before Sam knocked her out, she was saying, "I'm changing too fast." Fact is, fully-animalized, she probably had a terrific headache.)
*Even in human form you will still have wolf-like traits: retractable claws/fans, a short hairless tail, and superhuman strength/speed/agility.
You see, in mine, I tried to visualize how a human hand would look with retractable claws, and could not picture it without the hands looking noticeably different. In fact, it's a plot point that Brigitte's do not look quite human. You notice that once Ginger's claws became retractable, she no longer went to school. Before that, I guess she passed off the changes as Halloween costuming.
Of course, now it occurs to me, if they can shift back and forth at will, maybe they can "spot-shift" their hands to have retractable claws and shift them back to human. It might take a little time. I mean, since they are adapted to mimic full human beings, so why not?
*Fully-grown werewolves are the size of grizzly bears while in wolf form.
Full-grown over how many full moons? Or do full-grown people turn into full grow werewolves? The problem with something the size of a bear, remember, it can't hide, and human beings can still shoot guns, even bear rifles.
*All werewolves and lycanthropes hate dogs. It is an uncontrollable instinct that cannot be prevented, no matter how great your willpower.
Now-- I'm sorry, I advise against this. It is not a good idea, MissFireFly. Given how common dogs are, you're giving werewolves a huge vulnerability, something that's guaranteed to give them away, and either you're going to give yourself headaches writing around it or stretch believability with your readers by not writing around it.
I mean, I could look out my window now and see five dogs. Ginger wasn't depicted as being that out-of-control with dogs (well, no more than anything else), and she had a good reason to hate them: they could recognize her, or at least know something was terribly amiss about her. If they bark, trying to draw attention to the werewolf, and/or challenge it, I could see werewolves killing them. (BTW, not every dog will do this. Some might cower.) It might also be a convenient thing to sate a werewolf's desire for prey and meat, in lieu of being able to hunt humans freely, which is probably their preferred prey, and prey otherwise is really in short supply in this overpopulated urbanized world. A good reason for werewolves to hate human beings.
*There is only one alpha werewolf. It can be either male or female. Alpha wolves are chosen by their ancestors, sometimes before they are so much as conceived. If the alpha dies, a new one will be activated.
This is good, in abstract, but why is it so fixed? Humans have fights over who's the alpha all the time. I suggest attaching it in some way to the sense of smell since that's kind of a no-brainer with canine-type creatures. In mine, the one who infects is superior to the one infected, and it's scent that carries this effect from one to the other. Maybe there's some way the ancestor alpha bites its successor that makes it always carry the dominant scent? Or maybe the alpha invites its successor to bite it, in wolf form, and after drinking its blood, the successor carries the scent?
Off topic: dominance is usually shown in some way within an animal community. For example, for wasps, the most dominant wasp has the most and largest dark spots on its face. Of course, scientists wanted to find out what would happen if they put larger spots on a low status wasp, so yes, they painted a wasps face. They found that the lowly wasp with the alpha markings received non-stop harassment from the other wasps.
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*Monkshood can hold back the curse/infection for about four years until it becomes obsolete.
The virus builds up a tolerance.
*The cure for werewolfism/lycanthropy is silver oxide.
I was a little broader with mine. Silver ions in low doses immediately disrupts healing and takes away much of the werewolf's speed and stamina. In higher doses it cures. Silver ions as in the chemicals silver chloride, silver floride, silver sulfate, just not elemental silver. In mine, they hadn't determined which one was the most effective.
I'll admit lordhowl helped me out quite a bit with some of these.
I look forward to reading your story.
I could say that one problem with a story like yours and mine where werewolves are so strong, fast and out of control, and in fact, more contagious than AIDS, is that people would have noticed it by now. I solved that problem in my story by doing several things:
1) Werewolfism was extinct for more than 300 years. It began to spread again five years prior to Bailey Downs, seven years before the opening of The Feral Bond.
2) It's rise and spread of werewolfism are dependent on-- dark matter. In fact, everything supernatural in the story's universe is tied to dark matter phenomenon that a couple of scientists just discovered.
3) The virus isn't contagious at all times. In fact, it's not contagious that often. It, too, can only spread during certain dark matter events.
4) A person infected with the virus will invariably begin to try to hide the fact that they were attacked (and the wounds heal making the story less believable anyway) and are paranoid of anybody finding out about their changes.
5) After the second week of infection, the infected person will run away. Usually go wild and disappear without a trace and go feral. They'd be found in abandoned buildings or in woods hunting for their food. Ginger was the sole exception to this-- and what kept her there was the pact with Brigitte. And, as it turns out, a bit of serendipitous, but powerful magic.
You'll have to come up with your own solutions to that problem. But, the need for it also depends on the length of your story. The length of mine being 160,000, I needed some good solutions.
Also: In mine, werewolfism is depicted as similar to a mental illness. During times that her body changes, Brigitte hallucinates, and usually, the hallucinations involve frightening visions of Ginger.