Wererats (alternately known as ratmen) were lycanthropes common in urban areas. Wererats could transform into giant rats.
Description
A wererat in humanoid form tended to be a thin, wiry individual of shorter than average height. The eyes constantly darted around, and the nose and mouth may have twitched if they were excited. Males often have thin, ragged mustaches. The animal form of a wererat was that of a dire rat two feet long from nose to rump. In hybrid form, the wererat was shorter than in its human form and its head, torso and tail were those of a rat while its limbs were a little more humanoid in appearance.
Abilities
While not as strong as other lycanthropes (being roughly as strong as humans), Wererats were nimble, intelligent, cunning, and adept at surprise attacks. Only silver, magical weapons, or poison ivy could harm them.
Wererats shared the animal instinctiveness of all lycanthropes and were markedly more dexterous than humans as well as a little more hardy. Any damage caused by a weapon not made of silver or coated in alchemical silver would be reduced. Wererats were often carriers of filth fever due to the environments that they lived in.
Society
A wererat never lived alone if they could help it, though they did not tend to form strong interpersonal relationships beyond a pack mentality - love and marriage were almost alien concepts to them. They delighted in pitting their superior cunning against surface-dwellers, seeing the cities that tended to be above their lairs as hunting grounds where they could steal food and wealth by killing its inhabitants in an almost parasitical manner.
Wererats would steal anything that they determined to have any value, resulting in accumulation of piles of junk that could however contain valuable treasures.
Wererats were noted to rarely mate with other wererats, instead mating with uninfected humans. The progeny of a male wererat and a human woman was human, but the child would inherit many of the physical characteristics of its father in his human form. The child of a female wererat and a human male were giant rats with paws that resembled human hands known as ratlings. These ratlings grew to maturity by the age of two and had the ability to transform themselves into human children who appeared to be roughly three times their real age.