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Cynanthropes: Werehounds of the Eastlands
Cynanthropes are a race of Men who have been specially bred as kind of tame werewolf. In fact, these werehounds were bred from male hunting hounds and female werewolves in the lands of the Warlords. Their directability and keen senses of hearing and smell made them ideal hunting companions, often as handlers of the pack. Their affinity with both dogs and wolves ideally suited them to the task. Werehounds, unlike werewolves, are relatively docile folk and are also able to control their shapeshifting at will, whereas werewolves suffer a monthly round of nearly impossible to control shifting. Even so, cynanthropes are only rarely able to shift into full dog shape. They typically take on some number of characteristics while retaining a basically human shape. Some exhibit slightly elongated jaws & snout; elongated ears; elongated canine teeth; a tail; the ability to bark properly; elongated ears. Those few who can become full dogs, often take the opportunity to conceal themselves among the dog population of the city they inhabit.
Daine are able to detect the presence of either cynanthropes or lycanthropes. They seem to have a considerable affinity for animals in general, but dogs and wolves in particular and it is well known that Daine were the first to be chosen by wolves as domestic friends and partners.
It is not known how many werehounds were initially bred, nor how many came about due to the natural course of events in the lives of these werehounds, but there seems to have been a rather large population of these folk in Warlord ruled lands.
Over the years, many werehound men and women escaped the slavery of the Warlords' dog pens and most refugees of earlier ages ended up drifting towards either Auntimoany, old Hoopelle or else the wild country of the Arnal Mountains. In these places, they kept mostly to themselves, only very rarely divulging their true natures to any but the most trusted confidants. Given that Daine are able to detect a cynanthrope, many newly arrived werehound refugees naturally fear their Daine neighbors considerably. Yet they needn't worry, for the Daine are trustworthy and most careful with the secrets they know.
Most werehounds that came to the great empires took up honorable work as guards, soldiers, watchmen and the like. That is to say, work with a clearly defined social structures and hierarchy and where few questions are asked of the applicants. Even so, a few have taken to more intellectual pursuits: philosophy, medicine and literature being clear favorites.
Werehound Healers
The first known werehound healer lived for a while at Alixaundria in Iconia, taking the name Fidonicus, before moving on to Auntimoany. His treatise, The Canine Senses as Healing Modality, was never published among physicians in general, though it has widely circulated among his fellow werehounds, being lovingly passed from generation to generation in secret. An extract from the work reads:
While it is a well known fact to every man that our canine cousins possess superior senses of smell and hearing, with respect to those of Men or Daine, it is also true that they are ill equipped to communicate with their human Masters what they have learned thereby apart from the suggestive wagging of the tail or else the issuance of sugestive whining. We, my cynanthropic brothers and sisters, also possess superior senses of smell and hearing with respect to Men and Daine, but what is more, it is well known to us, even if we keep this gift a secret from other Men, we are fully able to rationally consider and communicate what our noses and ears are telling us... (I.i.)
Werehounds trained in the healing arts become adept at detecting various diseases suffered by Men and animals alike, and also many kinds of poisons or toxic sicknesses. They can also hear and appreciate the many sounds and rhythms of the body: the blood flowing through the veins, the greater and lesser sounds of the heart, the sounds of lungs and bowels. They can thus detect blood flow, blockages, stenoses, and vessel constriction all without laying a single hand on the patient.
A typical healing session with a werehound healer plays out with some similarities to a session with a faith healer or witch doctor (or even an ordinary physician in many parts of the civilized world!), to outward appearances anyway. Although the werehound healer will ask questions in order to gauge the patient's history and scope of his complaint, as often as not the werehound will simply stand in the presence of the patient, usually slightly behind and to one side or the other. He will pass his hands very close to the patient's head, face, torso and limbs, but will not at first touch the patient. Most folks don't pay this much mind, as they consider such shennanigans to be part of the schtick. But what differentiates the werehound from other healers is that he is using the examination time to evaluate the odors and sounds of the patient and reasoning through what they signify.
Cynanthropic healers tend to "get the diagnosis right" far more often than other doctors, potion pushers and snake oil vendors. It should be noted that their reiki-esque assessment doesn't mean the patient will necessarily get better quicker, or even at all. Just because the healer can sniff out cancer or high blood sugar doesn't mean the patient will necessarily be cured. All it means is the patient is much more likely to get the right diagnosis -- and still be told to swill this or that potion or eat more kale and cabbage.
(Note to medical staff: Just be careful when opening a jar of potted meat for Dr. Rover's hearing is as good as his sense of smell and he's liable to come tearing into the staff lounge at the first hint of the jar opener being engaged!)




Is there any kind of specific feedback or discussion you're looking for with this?
Some questions I have out of curiosity and to maybe help you continue expanding your world if you haven't already considered these things:
It seems like a werewolf bred with a dog would bring out more canine aspects, not fewer, but you said that they're rarely able to shift into full dog shape. Why is that?
Are werehounds typically servants or slaves? You mentioned the slavery of the dog pens, but were they literally kept in dog pens, even though they looked and acted like humans who just had a few dog-like characteristics? If they were more servile, why not use them also as servants in general, in the household or whatever, as well as for hunting, rather than keeping them in dog pens?
Are werehounds able to breed with regular humans and dogs/wolves? What is the result of both of those pairings?
I love the idea of werehound healers—it totally makes sense with so many things I've heard about dogs being able to detect cancer or Alzheimer's or whatever else. Are there werehounds who basically just do diagnostics? They don't have the training to heal everyone, but they learn how to diagnose things and then people go elsewhere to get healed? Or maybe a werehound and a regular doctor would work together as a pair, diagnosing and healing?
What kind of lore/religion/culture do werehounds have as a result of their unique heritage?
How do werehounds and werewolves interact with/regard each other?
Some great questions here --- thanks!
Background
First, some background: In De Natura Lycanthropôn Ruodowulf tells us that the true nature of any were-beast is, basically, that of ordinary Men. Their origins, evolution, physical, moral & spiritual constituents are like those of any other kindred of Men who inhabit The World. The difference to note is that some Men have natural capacity for the dwimmery called "skin changing", which is a natural magic that allows a person to take the whole shape & form of a beast. Abilities run in families, and I'm pretty sure that all these families are, as we look back over the myriades of years of human existence, related to each other and descended from some common ancestor(s). So, a Werewolf is an ordinary Man who can become an ordinary wolf. A Werebear is an ordinary Man who can become an ordinary bear. And so forth for many other kinds of beast.
An interesting factoid: young skin changers don't just wake up one morning only to find themselves in a canine or ursine condition! Children start out small, often immitating and then acquiring traits of small animals like wrens or squirrels. As they pass through childhood and into adolescence, they experience a period of lability: a youngster may spend months or more than a year seemingly settled as a bear, only to rapidly switch between wolf and wildcat. By their mid-teens, they start to settle down and becomes increasingly difficult to change into anything other than one kind of beast. By the time they come of age, such youngsters will take new names, both human and beast (as their culture allows) and it will by then be practically impossible to change into anything other than their inner-beast.
Skin changers who can become birds are uncommon, and are almost always girls.
Skin changers who can master more than one kind of beast are exceedingly rare and are always girls. I wrote a story about such a girl here.
On the Nature of Canids
Another thing to note is that not all animals are, well, just animals. Some animals are people too. Obviously Men and Daine and others of the speaking races belong to what we might call
*here*the kingdom animalia, and are thus in some way related to other kindreds of animal & beast, all living things of the created order being so related. The canids are one such kindred that are rather more people-like than, say, the felids or bovids. Whether warg or wolf or coyote or fox or dhole or hyena or any of their (half-)domesticated relatives, these are all animals that exist somewhere between the "dumb animals" and the "speaking peoples". Of course, they're intelligent, inquisitive and so forth, but also aware of self and others and their place in the world to some extent.So, what really happens when a werewolf is bred with some kind of canine beast is a melding of two kinds of people, one human and one non-human. This is why were-hounds actually end up more human than canine. The curious alchemy of genetics and background dwimmery present in the atmosphere dance a curious waltz that results, in this case, in something rather unexpected.
As for why a were-hound can only rarely fully change into a dog probably has to do with what chromosomes code for shifting and where they're located. It may be that the specific codons are lacking; it may be that they're deactivated or perhaps overridden by some other genetic script.
Werehounds as Slaves
Yes, werehounds were typically kept in a servile role of some sort. Anyone who's ever kept dogs knows a little about pack structure & hierarchy. Werehounds are kind of slammed by a double whammy here: not only are they bred & born into the condition of slavery, and are thus inculcated into its culture, but they've also got that "doggy" nature that expresses itself as a strong desire to abase oneself before the Alpha and serve the needs of the Alpha's "pack".
Werehounds employed as huntmasters almost always live with or near their assigned pack(s) of hounds. But this is also true of huntmasters who are ordinary Men as well. The hounds need exercise and training and routine care. Huntmasters attached to a large household may be responsible for fort or eighty hunting hounds and to a lesser extent perhaps a couple hundred fighting warhounds. They are also responsible for the sad lives of the pithounds, those poor beasts whose sole function is to either fight other pithounds or else to rip to shreds some poor sod being punished for some infraction against the Warlord.
I can not think of any reason why a werehound couldn't be employed in other areas of servitude. As I mentioned, they do make excellent guardsmen. I suspect that they don't get many "inside" assignments for the simple fact that what great lord would want a table servant who will spill the soup tureen in hand because he's spied some tasty morsel dropped onto the floor, and like all the other dogs in the hall, feels compelled to scrabble around on all fours to get at it? Or who, while helping to hold a ladder for the decorater in the great hall, will, with a yelp! of surprise, dash instantly into the kitchens when once the food jar opener has been engaged, hoping for a bit of a treat? Werehounds also have a habit of panting. And while the Warlords themselves are pretty low-class low-brows, they do have some standards when it comes to in house servants!
Matters of the Heart and Other Amatory Organs
Werehounds, like their werewolf ancestors, are Men and are thus able to mate with and produce human children in the ordinary fashion. Things do get a little complicated when it comes to mating with actual canids, however. A male werewolf pairing with a female wolf or dog will probably not yield viable offspring. If any offspring are conceived, they will almost certainly be canid in nature. So, basically a wolf that kind takes after daddy. These can not change into Men and may or may not behave somewhat like Men. Such are kind of doomed to existence on the edge of both worlds, neither accepted by their canine kin nor recognised by their human kin. These hybrids are sterile.
A male wolf or dog mating with a female werewolf in her human shape results in a werehound. If the female werewolf is in her wolf shape, then the result will be a werewolf. The results of a werewolf pairing with a werehound tend to favor the werehound, though such one may be better able to change into hounds entirely.
Werehounds and werewolves do actually get along fairly well together, whenever they chance to meet. They are both wrought by the same dwimmery and share many of the same concerns with respect to non-skinchanger folk.
Werehound Healers
There is no reason why a werehound physician couldn't join up with a non-werehound physician. I think it's just in their secretive nature and fear of being abused into slavery again that keeps them somewhat aloof from other humans.
The medical arts, among Men, are a completely different topic, but I would say that your likelihood of being healed of any malady is about the same either way. I.e., not so good. Werehounds may be superior diagnosticians, but when medicine itself largely consists of a doctor rummaging in his cabinets for some random bottle of icky green goo and telling the patient "you will feel better after taking this", most patients do indeed recover. And almost miraculously! If only because they no longer have to spoon down the icky green goo. Especially the one that burbles from time to time and seems to have wee things swimming in its murky depths.
Werehound Culture
For the most part, werehounds and werewolves alike participate in the broader culture of other Men around them. They do venerate their own peculiar saints and divinities, though. The Western god Anubis is known among them, as is the Kristian Mar Roccus, whose affliction (probably some kind of terminal infection) was healed by a werehound as he went about his charitable work. They also venerate certain hunting deities, as they have canine connections as well.
It is not uncommon for werehounds to take names they consider to have positive atributes (such as Fidonicus or Alkes or Dromas).
They never wear necklaces because they remind one too much of the collars placed on some dogs.
Nothing specific. Questions, of course, are always welcome! I find that questions always point me in new, and almost invariably wonderful directions.
Feedback / critique is also welcome. Spelling errors, things that could be made clearer, things I've forgotten to explain entirely, things that don't make sense.
Will respond more fully later, but thanks for the questions!!