Nightbeast
Nightbeasts are humans that transform into monstrous animals when darkness falls.
Basic Information
Anatomy
During the day, nightbeasts are fully human. When night falls, they twist into a bestial form and lose control of themselves, with only the strongest waking connections capable of overriding the instinctive behavior of the nightbeast's animal aspect.
Nightbeast forms are often just humanoid enough that they can't be mistaken for a normal animal, and besides that, their animal traits are skewed toward a higher capacity for violence — larger claws or teeth than the animal they resemble, more potent venom, and so on.
As day breaks, the transformation wears off and the nightbeast returns to their fully human form.
Genetics and Reproduction
Nightbeasts are still human enough for human activities. However, the buried animal aspect is passed down and the nocturnal transformation cycle is not. This results in humans who always have animal traits, day and night, which are consequently called daybeasts.
Behaviour
Nightbeasts arose from the Soul Crisis, meaning that they were humans who lost their souls, and thus they lost the protection against ambient magic that a soul provides. In a nightbeast's case, the ambient magic picked up on internal corruption, and specifically on very repressed vices or other dark secrets. This explains the transformation cycle. The specifics of how animal aspects arose are less easy to determine.
Civilization and Culture
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
In their human forms, nightbeasts are simply regarded as human by anyone who doesn't know their nature.
In their beast forms, nightbeasts are difficult to manage and will often lash out violently regardless of how their human mind would feel about the act.
People who know a nightbeast are most on edge around them in the twilight hours, knowing that the transformation is imminent. The nightbeast may find this mistrust hurtful, encourage it, or both.
