Children's stories tell of big bad wolves lurking in dark woods, creatures that can disguise themselves as older women, blow houses down with a breath, and swallow prey whole in one gulp. The children might not know it, but they are unknowingly speaking of the ever-hungry fey monsters called wolfen.

Most people who see a wolfen never know it. Wolfen can shapeshift into the form of a regular wolf with extra-large fangs and a particularly menacing posture, which they use to roam their territories inconspicuously. Their true form is a massive werewolf-like hybrid monster: the traits of a wolf upon the body of a humanoid. When they stand straight-up, they usually reach almost twenty feet tall, and their jaws are so large that they can fit an entire person inside their mouth, especially using their huge claws to shovel in the food.

Cursed Sons of Hags. Wolfen are born when a hag is ready to give birth to a daughter. Normally, a hag can only give birth to daughters. Yet if her time comes due at midnight when the moon is full, a mother hag can suffer from the ancient Curse of the Wolfen. Her unborn child is transformed into a wolfen while still within her, and the wolfen child is driven by wild hunger to tear his way out of the hag's belly, devouring her as his first victim.

All wolfen are born as sons in a cursed inversion of the hag's natural traits. Most wolfen spend their first few years of life in a feral state, living as normal wolves and growing larger, faster, and stronger as they do. After a year or two as an adult wolf, the wolfen awakens again to his full personality, intelligence, and abilities, finally assuming his huge true form for the first time. Just like hags, they can live so long that they seem ageless.

Some wolfen, after consuming their birth mother, are adopted by other hags and raised as hounds, kept loyal only by the daily promise of more terrified people to eat.

Shapeshifting Tricksters. In addition to being able to transform into a regular wolf, a wolfen can use his shapeshifting ability to take the form of a ragged old woman just like his hag mother could. This transformation has its limitations: the wolfen can't fully hide his massive jaws or claws. Still, most wolfen take the place of their mother hag after eating her by assuming the same forms that she used. Others hunt down new hags to take their places. Some wolfen even learn to shapeshift into sheep or other beasts to lurk among livestock, still unable to fully conceal their fangs and claws.

Monstrously Hungry. No matter how much he eats, a wolfen will never stop being ravenously hungry. Wolfen digest anything they eat almost immediately, and once they begin eating, they feel an uncontrollable urge to devour anything and everything they can get their claws upon. Wolfen love to eat raw meat, and they will only eat other food if they are actually starving.

Wolfen are generally just as evil as the hags they are born from, and they relish the memories of their first matricidal meal. Though a wolfen will eat nearly any prey that he can catch, most of them prefer to consume humanoids whenever possible. Wolfen love eating prey that scream, cry, and beg for mercy, and they will taunt their meals before eating them just for cruelty's sake.

Lords of Lycanthropes. Most legends claim that the Curse of the Wolfen was started long ago when an elder hag stole and devoured the son of a powerful werewolf lord. When the lord heard the fate that had befallen his son, he marshalled his entire pack and every dark force that he could call to his side to take revenge on the hag.

The werewolf's forces made it to the ancient crone's lair on a night of the full moon, but the old hag had also prepared for the encounter, and her machinations were much longer in the making. The werewolf's forces were completely routed in the chaos of the hag's enchanted forest, and the lycanthrope lord himself was mortally wounded by the hag and her minions.

As the werewolf lay dying, with the hag still cackling in the distance, he called upon the dark forces he still had remaining, presenting them with his blood to curse the hag forever. Some claim that he allied with corvian warlocks who summoned the Dread Wind itself, using its dark power to curse the hag and all her fellows. They point to the wolfen's ability to breath dark and powerful wind as evidence of this connection. Others believe that, because of the wolfen's Abyssal language, the werewolf must have relied upon the aid of Demon Lords to lay his blood curse upon the hag. There are even those who say that he had allied with a different coven of hags to take down the target of his revenge, and that the coven's hex backfired and spread to all other hags accidentally.

Whatever the true cause was, the curse fell upon the hag, traveling from the werewolf's blood to the blood of his devoured son that still swirled within her belly. The son's blood was transformed into a wolflike monster: the first wolfen, who tore his way out from the hag and gleefully devoured her. From that night on, unlucky hags that gave birth under a full moon began to experience the Curse of the Wolfen.

Some claim that this legend is apocryphal, but there is no debating that wolfen have a strange connection to lycanthropy. Lycanthropes, especially werewolves, are supernaturally drawn to wolfen. Even the frightful howl of a wolfen does not faze lycanthropes. Wolfen are weak to silvered weapons just as lycanthropes are, and they're often mistaken for werewolves by novice adventurers, who rarely survive the experience.