Wendigo

Wendigos were ravenous and mad man-eating natural spirits that could be found in cold tundras and forests.

Description
In their solid form, wendigos looked feral, with wild hateful eyes that glowed with cold radiance. Their overall shape was a twisted version of their bodies before the transformation into this creature. Wendigos' maws were filled with razor-sharp teeth and bodies covered in damaged and lifeless hair, yet others were completely bald. Wendigos were extremely fast, even though their most notable feature was their charred and mangled leg stumps. Wendigos, being flying spirits able to wind-walk, the feet were useless to these feral fey.

Abilities
Wendigos often stalked their prey, toying with their minds by using their maddening whispers ability. The creature could target a creature once a day within even while wind-walking in the incorporeal form. The only targeted future victim could hear the whispers, and if unable to resist, they followed the whispers that lured them to their ravenous doom. Creatures who resisted the whispers received mental damage. Wendigos often pursued and stalked their victims for days, slowly wearing down their psyche with the maddening whispers until the victim could not resist. Some lucky souls avoided demise by fighting the whispers for over three consecutive days, as the hungry spirit departed looking for another pray.

Wendigos had an innate magical ability that allowed them to use dancing lights, daze, detect magic, ray of frost, read magic, resistance, chill touch, magic missile, shield, and invisibility spells.

Additionally, wendigos were immune to cold and were vulnerable to fire and could regenerate their flesh at an alarming rate.

Their wind-walking ability allowed them to become incorporeal, as well as lurk just outside of their victims' eyesight. The creatures that were actively stalked by wendigos suffered decreased ability to perceive their surroundings just because of the sheer looming feeling of having something right at the corner of their eye.

Personality
Wendigos were creatures of pure loneliness, madness, cruelty, and unending hunger and cannibalism. Whatever languages the creature knew before transforming into a wendigo were forgotten and replaced by Sylvan.

Combat
Wendigos posed many dangers in combat. One of them was wendigos' ability to infect the targets of their attacks with the insatiable hunger. In a direct confrontation, they ended the victim with their ravenous bites. Upon a critically effective bite, their victim suffered triple normal damage, and the ripped flesh continued to bleed until healed. Wendigos tried to land as many rending bites as possible to allow their victims to bleed to death.

Society
Wendigos were exclusively solitary creatures who spent most of their lives wind-walking, staying in their incorporeal form, only turning solid to kill and eat.

Ecology
Even though many sages thought wendigos to be undead spirits or extraplanar demons, in reality, they were naturally occurring creatures born out of the dark and cruel side of nature.

Wendigos could infect others with insatiable hunger. The infection's incubation period was between one and three days, and with the disease spreading through the victim's body, they suffered wisdom drain and could succumb to the ravenous hunger that drove them insane. The hunger forced the infected to crave the flesh of creatures of their own race and devouring the closest prey. Upon feasting, the infected returned home, satiated and bearing no memory of the carnage. When the infection drained all of the victim's mental capacity, they immediately transformed into a wendigo. After turning, the newborn wendigo flew off into the night, so fast their feet broke and burnt off, leaving only charred and mangled stumps.

The wendigo hunger could infect animals, humanoids, monstrous humanoidss, giants, magical beasts, and the majority of wendigos in the wild were either beasts or humanoids. Transformed creatures retained most their abilities, and gained the deadly traits of the ravenous fey along with increased strength, drastically increased dexterity and speed, increased constitution, wisdom, and charisma.

History
In –2549 DR, the drow of Maerimydra, who occupied the forests that would eventually be known as Shadowdale, attempted to drive fey creatures out of the area. The dark elves unleashed the monstrous spider Susurrus onto the fey population. The Lolth-touched fiendish spider's bite carried the cannibalistic disease that created the horror of wendigos.

Notable Wendigos

 * Aveshthu: a frost giant wendigo who dwelt in the Iron Wastes circa late 14 century DR.
 * Susurrus: the wendigo spider who unleashed its curse on the fey inhabitants of Shadowdale.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land