Mutated Lycanthrope

"They howl, but not the howl of the wild. It's the howl of the lost, the howl of something calling to a home that doesn't exist. They are broken. Jagged. They are living nightmares."

— Unknown

Primal Darkness

There are werewolves, and then there are the others. The ones whispered about in hushed tones even among the cursed. Mutated lycanthropes are what happens when the transformation goes wrong, or perhaps too far. They are not a blending of beast and human, but a collision, a breaking apart and reassembling into something that was never meant to be. An experiment meant to tame the beast, a spell cast with shaky hands, a bite from a wolf whose sickness ran deeper than the bone; whatever the cause, the result is the same. A creature, neither man nor wolf, but something far worse.
Their transformations are violent, grotesque things. Where ordinary lycanthropes change with a savage grace, these beings unravel. Bones twist into impossible shapes, joints crackle and groan, and fur sprouts in patchy, uneven tufts. The end result is not a wolf, nor even a monstrous imitation of one, but a shambling nightmare, a thing of mismatched limbs and jagged, unfinished edges.
They are stronger than their brethren, but it is a strength without control. Their movements are erratic, their instincts chaotic. A regular lycanthrope can fight the wolf within or learn to live with it, but the mutated have no such luxury. The beast and the man wage a constant war, and their bodies are the battlefield.

Primeval Menace

Mutated lycanthropes are hunted by all; people, wolves, and even their own kind. To the people of the Eight Lands, they are abominations, a warning of what happens when boundaries are crossed. To wolves, they are a taint, a disruption of the natural order. Even the call of Mato, the moon that calls to all lycanthropes, seems hesitant in its gaze, as if unsure whether these creatures belong beneath its light.
They are not without minds, though their thoughts are fractured and strange. Echoes of their human lives remain, tangled in a web of primal instinct and distorted memories. Some seek solitude, hiding deep in the wilderness where their howls blend with the wind. Others, driven mad by pain and rejection, lash out, leaving paths of destruction in their wake.
No one knows exactly why some become mutated. Some say it is the result of a failed curse, magic gone awry. Others blame bloodlines stretched too line or tainted with something unnatural. There are darker whispers still, of experiments in secret, of alchemists and sorcerers trying to bend the curse to their will and creating monsters instead.
They wander the edges of forests, the outskirts of towns, hiding their disfigured forms from those who would hunt them. But in their isolation, they are dangerous. Starving. Desperate.