Weendigo

Weendigo, the Spirit of the Lonely Places

### Precepts

Avalanches, being trapped in the cold, cannibalism, famine, ghouls, self-loathing, starvation, survival, valleys, wraith wind

### Sacred Colour

Black

Weendigo's holy symbol

### Name of Day

6th of Frost's Fall: The Day of Starvation

### Alignment

Chaotic Evil

Weendigo is the god of cannibalism, self-loathing and survival.

## **Mythology**

Weendigo is a deity venerated (but mainly feared and loathed) within the pantheon of the South. He is the child of Tes'Ssyk and Nyshor, sibling to Tormnthur and the goddesses Yskalyss and Flamberge, and uncle to Fashoona.

Weendigo is best known for his desperate attempt to survive under harsh conditions at his brother's expense. mythology states that the dragon Aipaloovik, driven mad by the death of its primordial master, attacked Weendigo and his brother while they were travelling across the frozen wastes of Sifland. The two were buried under avalanches and the beast's frozen breath, and their food rapidly ran out. While Tormnthur sought to fight his way free from the snow that imprisoned them, Weendigo sought to slay his brother that he might consume his corpse and gain sustenance from them while simultaneously gaining heirship of the snows.

Despite Weendigo's treachery, Tormnthur triumphed over him and left him upon the tundra while he escaped the avalanche and returned to his mountain home. Nyshor and Tes'Ssyk, horrified at Weendigo's actions, his parents cast him from their grace and protection, and cursed him to wander the snows for eternity in loneliness and self-loathing. The god did so for cycles until his weakness and hunger led him to turn to autophagy to survive. As the deity tore off strips of his own flesh and devoured them, continuing the gruesome exercise even as his own belly was exposed and the consumed meat instantly spilled back out of him, Oblivion took notice of his agony and hopelessness, and in cruel jest transformed his face into that of a deer, for it knew that Weendigo was the prey and his own hunger the true predator. After witnessing his absurd and horrifying visage in a sheet of ice shortly after this transfiguration, Weendigo went irredeemably insane and has been a pawn of chaos ever since, eternally seeking to fill the frost-choked cavity in his stomach with the warmth of the living. This only leads to the subsumption of mortals into a similar condition to his own bottomless self-hatred and pitiful isolation.

Alongside Kraken, Yskalyss, Fashoona and the dragon Aipaloovik, Weendigo is one of the shunned deities of the frozen lands.

## **The Creation of the Ghouls**

Weendigo finds worship primarily amongst the bestial ghouls, a people who owe their existence to his perverse intervention in the material plane. Long ago, a dorogar expedition became trapped by heavy snows within a frozen valley, and lost all hope of survival. While many of the explorers accepted their fate with honour and stoicism, many more heard the whispers of this abominable god upon the winds and ravenously murdered their friends and family members in order to perversely gorge on their warm flesh as a respite from the cold. Pleased with the new company his insanity had birthed, Weendigo fashioned the cannibals over the next chains into beasts in his own image. Their bodies became grey and deathly, their eyes glazed and pupil-less, and their hands became strong and claw-like. Their feet became wide and hoofed and their jaws elongated into semi-canine muzzles filled with powerful teeth suited for shearing flesh and cracking bone. These first ghouls fled the sunlight and took up residency within the buried city of Okaleth, where their kind remain to this day, if certain horrid tales are to be believed.

While his new children retained the ability to procreate biologically despite their corpse-like appearance, they also transmitted a horrid disease to those they injured in their attacks. This malady, named "wendigo psychosis" after their dark patron, initiates the infected in the transformation into a grotesque servitor called a ghast. Ghasts are awful beings, often half-consumed by their soon-to-be masters before their transmogrification is compete, and as such resemble mutilated and mangled humanoid corpses. They have the same hunger for flesh as their masters, and also retain a dim intellect which, although not as keen as the wily ghoul's, is sufficient to allow them to hunt and serve their lords within the buried city. Many common folk do not know the difference between the ghoul overlords and their ghastly slaves, and conflate the term "ghoul" to mean any form of creature which consumes the dead. Many ghasts have regained full intellect through the consumption of brains, and escaped bondage to roam free in lands abroad, far from the frozen tundras of Sifland. These creatures often also offer veneration to the Spirit of the Lonely Places, and he accepts such worship.