The Wendigo

An excerpt from Daniel Wraeden's The Divine Histories: A Study of the Pit and That Which Waits Beyond.

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The Wendigo is a singular creature. Two of its kind have never been observed at the same time, and those who interact with it multiple times report that it seems to remember previous meetings, i.e. it seems to be the same being.

"You seem to have made a mistake."

Physically, witnesses say it looks similar to a tall, emaciated corpse. Former exile Herrod Plume describes the creature in his autobiographical work, The Featherweight Adventures:

Its skin was stretched so tight and dry over bone that I thought it might tear if it brushed up against anything. Its lips were cracked and pulled back to show a human-looking, if exaggerated, grin. Extending from its head was a pair of antlers, spread maybe three feet from tip to tip. The air around it seemed to freeze, and I found myself shivering against both cold and fear.

It appears to have only three ways of interacting directly with the world. Primarily, it can speak. Its voice shakes like that of a hypothermic victim, but its body betrays none of the pain or panic that the voice often does, nor do its words. The tone seems to be entirely unlinked to the content of its speech.

The most obviously cosmic of its faculties is the incredible ability to open dimensional gates to apparently anywhere in the world. The Wendigo always makes it clear to the user what awaits them on the other side and allows them to choose whether or not to enter. No witness thus far has reported the Wendigo forcing them through the portals, nor indeed anything passing through the portal without being carried by a willing being.

Finally, the most ghastly of its abilities. The Wendigo can consume the corpse of a sentient being in an impossibly small space of time, so long as it is not observed. One particularly colorful witness described whirling around only a moment after turning to glimpse it “sucking down the last of my brother like a thick noodle.”

The Wendigo walks among us on a festival night.

Notably, witnesses have never reported seeing it physically interact with or directly harm anything aside from corpses. Instead, its first contact with a person is almost always nonviolent. It usually appears after the person performs some impactful act (saved or taken a life, started a war, won a battle, etc.) to inform them that things are not as the “should” be, though it does not elaborate on that point.

It will usually offer those it appears to the chance to in some way undo the act. The most famous example of this was Duke Jared Fontelle executing an injured man he had saved from a bear attack during a hunting trip the prior day. 

Sometimes, these people become its agents. It will appear to them again and request more help “fixing” causality, this time because of someone else’s mistake. Often, these agents are brought to bear on victims who refuse to follow its commands. 

Plume was one such agent, and he describes three encounters without much detail. Though the finer grain of his story may be suspect, he also attributes the exoneration ending his exile and subsequent return to Corvarus City to The Wendigo’s intervention.

Not much else is known of the being itself, though, nor the deity it presumably used to serve. It has never been captured, and no study of academic rigor has yet been made, beyond the interviews referenced in this work.

How it fits into a game

The Wendigo shouldn’t get a stat block. Unlike most monsters one might meet in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, The Wendigo is not meant to be a combat encounter. In fact, try not to think of it as a monster at all. If the players try and fight it, they will find it is incredibly fragile: its bones snap at a whisper, and it doesn’t hit back. It will just appear again, and eventually it may gate a psychopath into their tent while they sleep.

Instead, try to treat the Wendigo as a story catalyst. One part quest giver, one part game master’s fiat, all moral quandary. The deals it offers should be tough and interesting. It doesn’t care about morality, so this could be a chance to juxtapose the things it asks against those of whom it asks them.

You never feel like you're being watched, but you are.

For instance, maybe a prince has been bad. He kills his older brother to make himself the heir apparent, but things are falling apart. His brother managed to scream before he died, and now the guards are pounding down the corridor outside. The Wendigo stands hungrily next to the prince. There’s a young boy lost in the woods half a world away who isn’t supposed to die, and the Wendigo wants the prince to go fight off the monsters that are closing in on him. In exchange, it will take care of that body.

Alternatively, maybe the monsters were supposed to snack on that kid, but the players managed to save him. Later that night, after they dropped the boy off at a local church, a chill sweeps over the campfire. The Wendigo steps out of the flames and informs the party that they made a mistake. 

“Kill him,” it shivers. “He is supposed to die.”

It opens a portal to the sleeping child’s room at the church, and offers them something really tempting, like a second portal into the sleeping chambers of the evil wizard they have been hunting for months.

If the players do well, the Wendigo may call on them again. Offer another deal, another adventure.

But if they don’t, if they persist in wrecking fate, maybe soon they will be the ones on the other side of the portal. Maybe it’s their room the guilty princeling is sent to, holding the same knife that just made him the future king.