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Description

So, as my brain does, I thought of an idea for a story. I got really into it, and then I burned out. But that's normal at this point. This is a few months old, and I didn't want to upload it right away since I was thinking it would be spoilers for the book. But at this point I've sufficiently burned out on the idea, so I thought why not put this thing up. So, here it is.

The story's title is called "Of Beasts and Those who Make Them", following two different individuals struck by the same thing that made them into monsters, but at different time periods. As for the werewolf design itself, I strayed away from canines and more towards primates, namely baboons and apes. You can thank for that idea. It was supposed to be something that a European peasant, who has never seen a monkey or an ape before, would call a wolf.

The main characters:

Kian O'Leary: Patient Zero. A 15 year old Irish farm boy during the medieval times who contracted the werewoofiness first (ie saw the meteorite crash and made the stupid decision to touch the damn thing). Hyperempathetic, brimming with anxiety (three guesses as to what caused that), and the older of fraternal twins.

Hannah McAllister: The one who contracted the werewoofiness during modern times. A 35 year old geologist who went spelunking in the cave where the thing responsible for the werewolf stuff in the first place was hibernating in. Guess how that goes for her.

The Nanocites: Small, curious things that are an engineered mix between microorganism and nanobot. Their purpose was to take the genes of the one they've infected, learn what trait each of them express, and then make certain ones express themselves to make the best possible fighting machine. They don't regress you to a specific ancestor, but rather a mix of traits from as many ancestors as needed.

Backstory:

The nanocites are a remnant of an alien civilization, whose technological advancements were to be envied, and they were faced with extinction at the hands of a hostile invader. The invader was coming, expecting a soft and vulnerable population, entirely too dependent on their technology to survive. With a quick power-wiping move, they would be easy pickings.

But, they were not, these aliens theorized, expecting a primitive looking race fully willing to claw them all to pieces. They had to return to their roots, return to a pre-evolutionary form, to the fangs and claws and tough hide. So, they engineered an intelligent, atavism activating nanobot-parasite (the nanocites) that would not make them sick and die, but return them to a form that will win the fight for their lives, and to do it quickly since they don't have all the time in the world. The rock that crashed into Earth was a piece of their planet, so one can assume the war didn’t go very well. Who knows if the aliens survived the onslaught. Maybe it doesn’t matter now, seeing as it has been millennia since then.

These aliens were hyper-dependent on their technology to survive, far more than modern humans are. But humans, in the eyes of the nanocites (relatively speaking), are on the fast track to following in their shoes, so they carry out their original directive on this new species of life they've come across. They're also practically immune to the human immune response, so you can't really stop it once you're infected.

Features of the werewolf form:

They're still the same person, just with some new instincts
Can still talk, but it's a learning curve
No shifting. Once you're in this form you're stuck
Feet are made for both quadrupedal and bipedal locomotion. Mostly plantigrade, but easily and comfortably shifts to digitigrade as needed
Feet are longer and more like the classic primate “hands”. Just as dexterous as their actual hands too
Big, barrel chest with bigass heart and lungs
Strong as shit (think gorilla), but that also means their fine motor control is lessened
The senses are sharpened, hearing and smell most prominently
Fur isn't really soft and plush. It's prickly and waxy for the most part, but it also depends on your heritage.
Tails are more like a stiff extension of the tailbone than a tail, and is more or less the result of the expression of one gene that is connected to another. Sometimes that gene is a tail. An elongated coccyx of any length is super common, though
Big, nasty teeth, with the jaw strength to back it up
Claws. The keratin is constantly growing, so has to be trimmed on a regular basis
No need for shoes. It's not likely you'll find any that accommodate those stompers anyway
Can run pretty fast, on all fours or otherwise.
That's the long and short of it, I guess. Doing the research for this thing is what lead me to start becoming quite fond of baboons. I still have no idea why that is.

I drew this first, but this concept looks a lot better, honestly

Up close look at the main characters' beastly forms

Kian

Hannah

Description

So, as my brain does, I thought of an idea for a story. I got really into it, and then I burned out. But that's normal at this point. This is a few months old, and I didn't want to upload it right away since I was thinking it would be spoilers for the book. But at this point I've sufficiently burned out on the idea, so I thought why not put this thing up. So, here it is.

The story's title is called "Of Beasts and Those who Make Them", following two different individuals struck by the same thing that made them into monsters, but at different time periods. As for the werewolf design itself, I strayed away from canines and more towards primates, namely baboons and apes. You can thank for that idea. It was supposed to be something that a European peasant, who has never seen a monkey or an ape before, would call a wolf.

The main characters:

Kian O'Leary: Patient Zero. A 15 year old Irish farm boy during the medieval times who contracted the werewoofiness first (ie saw the meteorite crash and made the stupid decision to touch the damn thing). Hyperempathetic, brimming with anxiety (three guesses as to what caused that), and the older of fraternal twins.

Hannah McAllister: The one who contracted the werewoofiness during modern times. A 35 year old geologist who went spelunking in the cave where the thing responsible for the werewolf stuff in the first place was hibernating in. Guess how that goes for her.

The Nanocites: Small, curious things that are an engineered mix between microorganism and nanobot. Their purpose was to take the genes of the one they've infected, learn what trait each of them express, and then make certain ones express themselves to make the best possible fighting machine. They don't regress you to a specific ancestor, but rather a mix of traits from as many ancestors as needed.

Backstory:

The nanocites are a remnant of an alien civilization, whose technological advancements were to be envied, and they were faced with extinction at the hands of a hostile invader. The invader was coming, expecting a soft and vulnerable population, entirely too dependent on their technology to survive. With a quick power-wiping move, they would be easy pickings.

But, they were not, these aliens theorized, expecting a primitive looking race fully willing to claw them all to pieces. They had to return to their roots, return to a pre-evolutionary form, to the fangs and claws and tough hide. So, they engineered an intelligent, atavism activating nanobot-parasite (the nanocites) that would not make them sick and die, but return them to a form that will win the fight for their lives, and to do it quickly since they don't have all the time in the world. The rock that crashed into Earth was a piece of their planet, so one can assume the war didn’t go very well. Who knows if the aliens survived the onslaught. Maybe it doesn’t matter now, seeing as it has been millennia since then.

These aliens were hyper-dependent on their technology to survive, far more than modern humans are. But humans, in the eyes of the nanocites (relatively speaking), are on the fast track to following in their shoes, so they carry out their original directive on this new species of life they've come across. They're also practically immune to the human immune response, so you can't really stop it once you're infected.

Features of the werewolf form:

They're still the same person, just with some new instincts
Can still talk, but it's a learning curve
No shifting. Once you're in this form you're stuck
Feet are made for both quadrupedal and bipedal locomotion. Mostly plantigrade, but easily and comfortably shifts to digitigrade as needed
Feet are longer and more like the classic primate “hands”. Just as dexterous as their actual hands too
Big, barrel chest with bigass heart and lungs
Strong as shit (think gorilla), but that also means their fine motor control is lessened
The senses are sharpened, hearing and smell most prominently
Fur isn't really soft and plush. It's prickly and waxy for the most part, but it also depends on your heritage.
Tails are more like a stiff extension of the tailbone than a tail, and is more or less the result of the expression of one gene that is connected to another. Sometimes that gene is a tail. An elongated coccyx of any length is super common, though
Big, nasty teeth, with the jaw strength to back it up
Claws. The keratin is constantly growing, so has to be trimmed on a regular basis
No need for shoes. It's not likely you'll find any that accommodate those stompers anyway
Can run pretty fast, on all fours or otherwise.
That's the long and short of it, I guess. Doing the research for this thing is what lead me to start becoming quite fond of baboons. I still have no idea why that is.

I drew this first, but this concept looks a lot better, honestly

Up close look at the main characters' beastly forms

Kian

Hannah