Why would pigs turn into werepigs during full moon?

[Peasant]

Before you scroll all the way down to the bottom and typing "have u never heard of werewolfs?", I recommend you read this through.

Let's look at this werepig-transformation system. If you fed the pigmen 4 pieces of monster meat, or to say, any food that can provide 4 monster degrees in total, like 4 of woby's snacks, the pig turns into a werepig. After some 2 minutes it would turn back, if you didn't make it a hambat. Besides feeding a pig with enough monster foods, Haunting has a little chance to turn a pig into a werepig, and a pig turns into a werepig during full moon night if it's out of it's house.

Now let's look into monster meat. Where does it's "monsterity" come from? It's dropped by most of the game's monster creatures, one of them being hounds, which is created by Maxwell himself. Since Maxwell was the king of shadow, we can presume that he used shadow magic to create these creatures, so these creatures has shadow magic inside them, making their meat monster meat. Thus, we can come to the conclution that it's the shadow magic inside the monster foods that turned pigmen into werepigs.

Then something odd happens. As we all know the Lunar god is basically against shadow, and the full moon period is the time it's effect over the constant most powerful. And we would see...it did the same thing as shadow magic did to the pigmen? Why?

Another thing works similar to this is Woodie's transfomation. He can either eat some monster meats to randomly transform into one of his forms, or eat a figure made of monster meats to transform into a form he like, and...somehow also transforms randomly during the fullmoon?

One clue that can be found for this is the descriptions of the pig princess in Hamlet, saying she had inherited something from her father, and she could transform into werepig like pigmen in other worlds. She would call this ability a "curse", which is similar to Woodie's situation. 

So another question cames: If it's a curse behind all these transformations, why both shadow and lunar power triggers them?

[WilsonHiggs]

Interesting though 

I feel the same with shadow chester happening during full moon+NF... they should change it to new moon

[BezKa]

When the moon comes out, the curse is agitated and reacts to fight the moon magic, turning pigs into their violent versions.

Woodie's curse comes from the real world, but maybe he acquired it through shadows that we know are there. I'd love actual backstory from Klei, maybe just eating monster meat in the real world is enough to curse you.

[Bumber64]

I don't think monster meat is infused with shadow magic. That would make monsters incapable of lunar mutation, so no shattered spiders or horror hounds.

The meat probably triggers monsters transformations just because of the monster aspect.

The moon can trigger it either because the curse is lunar aligned, or because it's a hostile reaction to it. (I'm not sure what the actual retcon is, as lunar wasn't actually separate from shadow back in DS.)

[Ridley]

I assume the lunar magic makes shadow fuel have a volatile reaction. Maybe it is like a symbiotic relationship where the shadow fuel powers up its host as a fight/flight response. Lunar magic seems predominately about undeath and possession, so the shadow fuel could be reacting defensively to maintain residence in its host.

I believe that shadow fuel can contaminate meat, which is evident in the loot drops of rabbit creatures. I also think some creatures have an affinity for shadow transformations just like others do for lunar transformations.

[AliceShiki]

I think the most likely explanation is that Klei hadn't really thought about all that moon stuff when they made DS, so there is no real official lore explanation for it.

That's how I see it at least.

[mr. brj]

Moon and therefore moonlight "sees through" the creatures, exposing the monsters inside them in a literal manner.

Monster food, on the other hand, is just the usual trigger. One could interpret it as having magical properties, but I would say it's simply the taste/smell that awakens the monsterly instincts, causing the transformation.

[Ridley]

35 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

I think the most likely explanation is that Klei hadn't really thought about all that moon stuff when they made DS, so there is no real official lore explanation for it.

That's how I see it at least.

I think this is the case initially, but I would bet they fleshed out the "why" for a lot of things by now.

[Guille6785]

full moons were completely retconned, in DS they turned flowers into evil flowers but that obviously contradicted what they wanted to do with them

[Pig Princess]

Pigs actually transform from any meat that damages them, not from "monster" food, unlike Woodie and Woby. It just happens that most common meat with negative health is monster meat, but you can transform pigs with human meat (you have to use console to get it, since it's removed feature), but you can't transform them with durian, gummy cake (it's not meat) or jellyfish (counts as monster in crock pot). Wilba follows pigs model of curse consistently, except she needs less of it for the effect to take place, which makes sence since she is a child/adolescent. Edit: apparenly pigs in DS can't be transformed with beanbugs and gum slugs, even though Wilba can. Might be and oversight, since beanbugs and gum slugs are clearly meat logically, but they don't count as meat in crock pot, and beanbugs don't count as meat when given to pigs. Still, looks like developers intended pig curse on Wilba to trigger from those bugs as well.

I think it's interesting how different creatures have different curses. Hope they won't change that and make everything the same. 

And yes, full moons were retconned. Even in early DST they followed the old model with moon caller staff giving nightmare fuel upon deconstruction. 

By the way, about Maxwell being the shadow king and monster meat transforming properties - it's example of classic magical thinking to think that if something was made with object/situation X it should inherit properties of X or even object making properties that result in objects like X. It's not bad in itself and there are situations when it works like that (there is a reason it's common pattern of thinking after all), but it would be boring if both real life and games followed only this oversimplified logic. To name an examples: when I cook pancakes, they don't resemble flour, eggs or yeast both in taste and physical texture, they don't possess properties of fire either and bubbles in the dough are formed without any special machine that would provide stream of air or something. Or another example, this time from the game. Farm plants don't have anything in common with nutrients they consume (fortunally): potatoes, dragonfruits and pepper don't have anything in common with manure, and tomatoes don't inherit properties of rot, ash and kelp. So I think pig curse is fine as is, especially since gameplay is fine.

[Bumber64]

On 2/15/2025 at 12:45 AM, Pig Princess said:

To name an examples: when I cook pancakes, they don't resemble flour, eggs or yeast both in taste and physical texture

They do if they're undercooked. It's just that the delicious taste of fire overwhelms the other ingredients. (Willow informed me of this.)