Manitou

❌

Manitous were a type of loumara (disembodied demonic spirits) that possessed natural creatures and fey beings to corrupt the environment.

Description
In their true forms, manitous manifested as ghostly thickets of thin vines, each covered in thorn and tipped with a fanged maw filled with wood-like teeth.

Personality
Manitous were possessed by the singular desire to consume the souls of nature's defenders, the dryads. They took glee in the corruption of the wilderness, particularly in sylvan regions, and razed nature with terrible wrath.

Abilities
Manitous possessed the ability to summon a wide array of animals and plant monsters, could change the weather and affect the condition of nearby plants through their spell-like abilities. By inserting their phantasmal vines into the backs of creatures nearby, they could possess approximately eight animals, plants, and fey each. The vines could only be seen through truesight and linked their hosts together, requiring them to all stay within a mile of each other lest the manitou's connection be severed. Those under their control could be puppeteered, allowed to exercise their free will with the manitou's permission, or horrifically transformed.

The very presence of a manitou was frightening, especially to animals and fey, which tended to cower rather than run when within their supernatural aura. They could unleash their vines to rend the material world asunder by making them physical for brief intervals, with animals, elementals, fey and plants being the most affected.

Creation
Manitous originated in the 230 layer of the Abyss, the Dreaming Gulf from a pantheon of deities', dying dreams. The Demomicon of Iggwilv speculated that they in particular came from the corrupted echoes of a dead goddess of fertility and nature.