A Shifter Introduction.
My first attempt as writing feel free to tell me honestly what you think.
Before I am able to tell you about my children. You must first understand the creature that is a shifter.
They are not the nicest of creatures. They are born with the instinct to eliminate the competition for the sake of their own survival and this is often their own siblings as they are born in litters of up to five at a time. Normally the largest of the litter would eat the others as it would be a waste to kill and leave the body to rot but It is not always the largest and strongest that live to be adults but sometimes it was the smartest, that one child quick to figure out its limits and uses that knowledge to trick the others into getting themselves killed. While to most this may seem cruel and even barbaric to a shifter it is just a means for survival. Once a shifter has gotten rid of the rest of the litter it is left in a village to be found and raised by the first creature they find but you must remember if said creatures already have their own offspring it is not uncommon for the creatures true offspring to be found dead soon after taken in the shifter. Taking this in to account most creature never realize the reasons behind the death of their own offspring. A shifter is always careful to make it seem like it was merely an accident as to make sure it is not shunned form it new home. On the rare occasion that the shifter is shunned it will become defensive and kill its foster family before moving on to find a new family in a different village. Shifters are the kind of creature where survival of the fittest very much applies.
Once a shifter is old enough to Breed and carry on its blood line, it will leave its new home and begin to wonder. Shifters will breed and go in to heat much like any other creature but their gestation period is only about a week before they give birth. Most female shifters will leave their new born litter shortly after they have arrived. While the males will also be sexually active they are in fact sterile and unable to have their own offspring and will take to choosing one form and staying with the home they made from the start. This is why it is very uncommon to find a male shifter that was born and not created in a lab. While some creatures other then shifter have been known to have the ability to change their form, they are in fact not shifters but it is possible they have shifter blood to a lesser extent. As on a rare occasion that a male shifter is able to have its own offspring the child only has a 50% chance of being able to shift and it will never able able to shift to the degree that is father can but it will take after what ever creature the mother happens to be which is why it is not known as a shifter.
While shifters may seem like they can shift into anything that is in fact only a rumour, They are limited to what they have from birth. The average shifter will not be able to fly or breath underwater. The shifters limits will in fact be dictated by the kind of creature their father was. For example if the father had wings or gills then the shifter would have a slight chance of inheriting the same. That being said if they are not born with either then they can not simple grow them as a shifters body can only change shape and not gender or the appendages and organs they already have. When a shifter changes they are only changing their size and outward appearance nothing more and nothing less. Another misunderstanding about shifters is their ability to heal. They can not heal immediately from being harmed in any physical way this rumour was in fact started because shifter do heal faster then most creatures at lest on the surface but an injury that was internal would take the same time to heal as any other creature.