Wendigo
Wendigo%2001.png
Icon%20-%20Creature%20Type%20Outsider.png

Nature: Creature
Type: Outsider
Subtypes: Native

Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: Large
CR: 17

First Encountered: 29.1 "Dances with Dinosaurs"
Other Appearances:
30.1 "Hungry Hungry Hobbits"
31.1 "Wendigo? Wheredigo? Whodigo?"

Description: "This hideous shape has the head of a feral elk with jagged teeth and sharp antlers. Its humanoid legs end in blackened, burnt stumps."

Information: Beings of ancient evil, wendigos haunt the minds of mortals, driving them to desperation and, ultimately, cannibalistic madness.

The legends tell that the wendigo was once a living mortal, usually a great hunter, who eventually took up the practice of hunting down their own kind and eating of their flesh. Whatever their reason might be for turning to the forbidden act of cannibalism, whether it's the only hunt that will challenge their skill, or because there is a severe famine and they are hungry enough to violate this taboo, it matters not. For by doing so they not only absorb some of the power of their victims, but they are also cursed, transformed into a wendigo and doomed to roam the physical world and hunt for sentient flesh until the end of time.

They enjoy whittling down prey before they strike, trailing victims for days, even weeks, while plaguing their journeys with nightmares and foul weather. They run so fast that their feet have burned away, leaving only charred stumps. This is why the wendigo never stops moving, and why it can fly above and across the ground, and sprint across the skies. The most unfortunate of victims are sometimes snatched up and taken away into the heavens with the wendigo, leaving their loved ones to hope and pray that the abducted one will have a swift and painless death.

Those who have foght valiantly against a wendigo and lost may have suffered the grave fate of being eaten by a monster, but those who do battle with a wendigo and live often suffer an even worse fate: becoming a new wendigo themselves.

For this is perhaps the greatest terror of the wendigo: that it is contagious. It is a disease of the mind, or possibly of the soul, and the madness that drives someone to kill and eat the flesh of other people is a diseased thought that others can be infected with through interactions with a wendigo. As the insanity whittles away at the person's sanity, it eventually fills them with an overwhelming hunger, and once they succumb to this urge and consume their first victim, the transformation takes place. A new wendigo is born.

While this is bad enough, the fact that these monsters can invade dreams and torment their prey in their sleep, and that these nightmares can expose the victim to the "wendigo psychosis", just makes them an insidiously dangerous hazard to come into contact with.

Tribal humanoids sometimes worship wendigos as gods, bringing them live sacrifices or trying to appease the creatures by engaging in ritual cannibalism. They mark a wendigo’s territory with fetishes and dress in the furs and hides of whatever animal it most closely resembles.

Wendigos take little interest in the practices of their worshipers, and view them only as an ample supply of victims.

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