Moonlight Fever

Transmission & Vectors

Moonlight Fever is both hereditary disease and transferable. Those who come into contact with the wound fluids trapped in the boils have a high chance of becoming infected themselves, even more so if the fluids come into contact with open wounds or mucous membranes.

Symptoms

A Lycan who has contracted Moonlight Fever will feel an almost irresistible urge to go out and dance in the moonlight.
However, afflicted Lycans exposed to the light of the moon will suffer from hallucinations. Often these hallucinations involve either hurting or being hurt by a loved one. There have been many cases where an inflicted individual has gone into a rage-induced killing spree. Those often end in mindlessly killing and destroying all and anything in their path.
In rarer cases, individuals who had contracted the disease danced until they collapsed and finally died from exhaustion.
Those who resist the call of the moonlight will be in agonizing pain until the moon has set. If they, willingly or unwillingly, avoid the moonlight for more than a tenday, they develop ugly and painful boils filled with puss. Even though werewolves are immune to most diseases and infections, those boils quickly get infected and inevitably burst.

Treatment

The only known way to break this curse is for an infected Lycan to kill someone they love with their own hands and to then bathe in their blood. Werewolves who suffer from Moonlight fever cannot be cured of it or their lycanthropy with a Remove Curse spell.

Prognosis

TW: mentions of suicide

Those infected with Moonlight Fever typically have a lower than average life expectancy. Sometimes they get killed by their packmates or adventurers if they go rampant. Others decide they would rather be dead than potentially kill someone near and dear to them, and commit suicide. Either way, there rarely, if ever, is a happy ending for those who end up with Moonlight Fever.

History

Moonlight Fever is a curse affecting Lycans. Like many things great and terrible, a love story turned tragedy stands at the beginning of this curse.
TW: miscarriage, death

In Ages past, there were two elves, soon to be three. On one of their nightly strolls through the moonlit woods, they got ambushed by a pack of werewolves. Although they killed some of the wolves who had attacked them, scaring the rest of the pack, the female elf was heavily injured, causing her to miscarry.
The male elf also suffered injuries, and while they were mostly superficial, he contracted Lycanthropy. When he came to the night after the next full moon, he was covered in the blood of his beloved. Enraged and driven mad by the loss of his lover and their unborn child, he tracked down the remainder of the werewolves that had attacked them a few nights prior, cursing them so they might suffer as he had suffered.

Cultural Reception

Some werewolf pack exile those who get infected with Moonlight Fever. A few even go as far as killing those afflicted with it. Generally, those who have it are avoided by their pack mates and left to fend for themselves.

Written for Spooktober
Prompt 01: Moon

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Type

Magical

Origin

Magical

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired & Congenital

Rarity

Rare

Affected Species

• Werewolf

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Just wanna be
Wanna bewitch you in the moonlight
Just wanna be
I wanna bewitch you all night

— Dance Macabre by Ghost

^{I got the idea for this article from the chorus of this song. I originally misheard the lyrics as 'be with' instead of 'bewitch' and ended up going in a pretty different direction with this than I had planned. I like the way it turned out either way.}