Evergreen Monkey

Traits:

- Hazardous: Any contact with a Common Rot Pelt is guaranteed to result in sickness, even skin contact is dangerous.

-Follower: As it consumes carrion it tends to follow around predators so it can pick up and hide the scraps. If you spot it, know there may be a greater danger just around the corner.

-Territorial: It sets up borders by rubbing its putrid musk on surrounding trees. Its territory can also be identified by the lingering smell of rotting flesh it has tucked away and a noticeable increase in flies in the area. Its turf can change over time, so always be vigilant of your surroundings.

-Agile: While faster when swinging among the trees, it has no trouble running through the tangled greens that cover our woods. Able to move quickly and silently, know that running or keeping your eyes on it is not an option.

Description: Able to transform on a whim, this moribund macaque can take on a range of faces. When completely unaltered, its back is a washed-out sandy brown while the rest of its body is a mixture of grayed out fur with tufts of livelier brown coloration. Regardless of form, it has small sickly bald patches dotting its body that ooze a yellow grime. Small bumps plague its skin causing its fur to look uneven as the hairs fail to weave into one another. 

    The following is a description of the transformation as described by a trusted colleague:                                                                                                                                                                    “As it approaches the shape it has been gifted, its body extends to lanky proportions and its figure sharpens. It is as if its flesh is straining itself to contain another beast. Its ears rise and sharpen like horns, as the bald spots grow larger the tail stretches with a swift cracking noise and its fur puffs up as if hit by a wave of static. The snout begins to snap and churn as it reaches out to form a large and violent snout. A strange scraping sound becomes audible as its nails grow thicker and stronger till they begin to resemble hooks. When fully transformed, the monstrosity barely resembles its kin, and wields a strength not meant for mortals.”  

Our Lupusimian: By no means “one of a kind”, our local Macaque is the result of a rare although not unheard-of phenomenon that occurs when one of our cousins is infected by a therianthrope*. The Evergreen Monkey is believed to belong to the Common Rot Pelt subtype of lycanthropes, but it’s hard to know for sure since we can only compare it to human lycanthropes for reference. 

[*Therianthropy breakdown: Therianthropes are typically humans who are capable of turning into animals. Most famous among them are the lycanthropes, a subtype of therianthrope that transforms into members of the canis genus. Therianthropes are divided by genus, then species and furthermore by special subtypes like “The Common Rot Pelt” which have defining physical and behavioral characteristics.

Apes and monkeys can be afflicted by therianthropy but the transmission is not as effective cross species. There are even recorded cases of dogs and wolves contracting therianthropy, but outside of primates, its effects become wilder.]

The underground community widely believes that the Evergreen Monkey was not born out of pure chance. It is very rare for monkeys and apes to contract therianthropy*, and Common Rot Pelts are notorious for infecting their victims with a strange sickness, but rarely propagate their lycanthropy. The macaque's ability to shift forms at will implies it was turned during an annular or total eclipse. Eclipses are times of flux, and with therianthropy’s* ties to our stars and lunar cycles, the celestial convergence results in a merging of the beast and core being, closing the normal split between the two. For a Tibetan macaque to be brought alone to Washington, and not only infected with lycanthropy, but a hard-to-transmit strain, raises a lot of suspicion. The sheer unlikeliness of these odds caused even professionals to take the Lupusimian Shambler as a joke, and inevitably, so did the public. 

The current theory is that a local pack created it as an experiment; although to what ends we can only guess. Packs tend to be good at concealing their presence and larger ones tend to be nomadic to avoid drawing attention, but there are a few we have identified as living in the area over the years. We have a large collection of Den-less, who call our woods home, three mixed packs that live in or around the Olympia area, and there are rumors of a small purebred pack that has made a home among the waves. All this to say, there is no one party we can definitively point our proverbial finger at, despite the claims of some in the underground community.

Although deadly, it is not confrontational by nature. Both macaques and Common Rot Pelts are aggressive and territorial, but they don’t actively look for fights. Feeding purely off carrion, it tends to hide whatever remains it finds till they are aged to its liking. Many mistakenly believe our Lupusimian Shambler is a predator due to sightings of it being frequently accompanied with the sound of a train horn and nearby bloody massacres, but that noise and spilled blood is the work of an altogether different horror that lives in our woods. Unless you stumble onto the monkey's turf, remain respectful, keep your distance, and you should be safe from the so-called Goblin Monkey.