Werebeast
Urist McBitten, Cheesemaker has transformed into a werelizard!
Werebeasts are night creatures that are procedurally created during worldgen. Deities may curse sapient creatures (humans, dwarves, elves, goblins or animal people) to transform into an animal form on the night of a full moon. Sapient creatures bitten by werebeasts are cursed to become werebeasts themselves.
Werebeasts may take the form of mammals or reptiles, ranging from the classic werewolf to more exotic things like weregiraffes, werelizards, weresloths or weregila monsters. Also included are some creatures not normally present in the game (wereloris, weremammoth).
Characteristics
A number of different types of werebeast curses are procedurally generated at every world creation. While intelligent, werebeasts are locked in a berserk state and will behave appropriately, attacking anything that's not another werebeast of the same species as themselves.
When transforming to wereform, all health regenerates, including missing limbs, and thirsty dwarves will have their thirst removed. The same happens when transforming back.
The size of the werebeast is dependent of its curse, but they are all significantly larger than a dwarf. All werebeasts possess Talented skill in wrestling, biting, fighting, striking, kicking, dodging and observing, as well as Legendary skill in ambusher and may receive augmented (or reduced) strength, agility, recuperation and disease resistance while in monster form, while possessing slightly lower than average toughness and endurance.
Additionally, they can breathe underwater, feel no exertion, cannot be stunned and are immune to pain, nausea, dizziness and fevers. Werebeasts need no food, water or sleep to survive, nor do they need to breathe, meaning they cannot be drowned or strangled.
Werebeasts are Level 2 building destroyers and are almost completely immune to traps while transformed, safely bypassing any sort of trap set in their way.
All werebeasts have damage resistance against most weapon-grade metals which will halve the damage taken during combat, except for one randomly chosen metal which the werebeast will instead be 10 times weaker against, however it is not possible to learn which metal it is.
It is possible to infect and transform your entire fortress into werebeasts.
Transformation dates
There are exactly thirteen full moons in a Dwarven year, so werebeasts transform on exactly the same dates every year:
25th Granite · 23rd Slate · 21st Felsite · 19th Hematite · 17th Malachite · 15th Galena · 13th Limestone · 10th Sandstone · 8th Timber · 6th Moonstone · 4th Opal · 2nd Obsidian · 28th Obsidian