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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 3426664" data-attributes="member: 18363">Actually, it worked both ways. There *were* ways to become a shape-shifter / werewolf, but the lycanthropes that resulted were not themselves infected, nor did they pass on lycanthropy. However, different areas had different beliefs, and some areas had the belief that lycanthropy was a terrible infectious curse. It only came from surviving a bite from another thus infected. Some believed that the church could cure it, others that the slaying of the one that bit them would remove the curse (from them and any others bitten by that particular werewolf). Still others thought that the curse could not be broken. Indeed, there were some that believed that if a person died while under such a curse, they were doomed to rise as a vampire after death. And yes, it did tend to suggest a situation whereby those infected should eventually take over the world with their numbers. At the time it was believed that they were held in check only because (1) those bitten were usually consumed / slain, and (2) as soon as one was discovered, it was swiftly hunted down and destroyed. Those infected during the hunt had various rituals, prayers, etc the church could put them through to remove the infection. If that failed, they too were destroyed - albeit while they were a monster, so that their death was not a stain upon the souls of those that slew him, as it was actually the possessing fiend / curse that was being killed (so as to free the entrapped soul from its torment of being trapped in a body doing such terrible things). Also, those that believed that slaying the infecter could cure all those infected by that werewolf were of the opinion that every now and then a werewolf was slain for infecting one, when in fact they had infected several others as well - all of which were then cured by the slaying of the one originator. And if any of those others now cured had been infecting others, then those too were now also cured, as their infecter was no longer a werewolf. Think of it like a tree (real or diagram). If you cut off one branch, all the lesser branches on it are also removed from the tree, as are all the twigs attached to those lesser branches. Somewhere out there is the original werewolf, or at least the most ancient werewolf currently living. Once it is slain most if not all of the werewolves currently alive would be cured, as they all derive from that one werewolf. Of course, the medieval peoples who were of this view tended to think that the devil was ultimately responsible, so upon day of the final judgement, when the devil, its legions of fiends, and all the souls sent to hell were finally destroyed, so too would all werewolves be cured, as the source of lycanthopy had itself finally been removed. Again, this was only the belief of some parts of europe. The idea of shifting into another form is ancient, found everywhere in every culture at some point in its most ancient legends. Vampires - and to a lesser extent werewolves - often had symbolism associated with disease. There is a very real possibility that the idea of werewolves being infectious was directly drawn from vampire mythos. And as with werewolves, vampires could be derived both from non-infection means and via infection by another vampire (although rare was the locale that believed that slaying the original infecting vampire would restore the infected to health, as the infected were nearly always already dead). Non infectious means of becoming a vampire were: being buried in unhallowed ground, dying via suicide, dying after a particularly horrific life of murder and other atrocities, and so forth.</blockquote>

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