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The atlas
34 / 84LCANWerewolves

Clinical lycanthropy. Panic under the moon. A man who thought he was an animal.

Most never complete the change. The partial versions are worse, because the person is present for them.

Engine primer

Failed-shift Types I–IV

The objection
The folklore recorded the monster. The clinic recorded the incomplete ones.
The distinction
Type I abortive; Type II partial somatic; Type III locked; Type IV catastrophic. Clinical taxonomy, not a mood.
Yield
The engine can fail. The failures are evidence.

Failed shifts, Types I–IV

Vulnerability · Cascade

Copperplate · LCAN · Plate XI · Taxonomy of failed shifts

Mythology recorded the complete shift. The clinic sees the incomplete ones, and they leave more damage.

Type I: fires, CRH dumps, the adrenal bypass does not reach the norepinephrine surge. From outside it is a severe panic attack with a fugue edge — two to four hours of aggression, sensory sensitisation, no physical shift. This is the most likely source of psychiatric 'clinical lycanthropy'. Type II: the surge arrives, the body only half-complies. Muscle pump partial, olfaction two or three times baseline, face incomplete. The prefrontal is down enough to strip control and not down enough to hand the night to a coherent subcortical agent. Subjective suffering is worse than the full shift. The person is present for it.

Type III prolongs the transition until thermoregulation and cardiac load become the emergency. Type IV completes the physical shift with an amnestic break so clean that the autobiographer never receives the tape. None of these are the Hollywood transformation. They are the clinical majority. The complete shift is the minority report.