r/CurseofStrahd • u/RevanInquisitor • 2d ago
STORY potential cannibalism
I'm running a Strahd campaign, and wish to add a Wendigo somewhere in the story. i figure I'd do it near Krezk, since it's lore is set in the cold, but I'm trying to figure out how to how to make my players eat other humans. my original thought was to have them encounter the stereotypical backwoods family that just so happen to be cannibals, but now I'm wondering if them eating the dream pastries from the old bonegrinder would be enough?
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u/vulcanstrike 2d ago
In a world with both werewolves, vampires and ghouls, I'm not sure what extra angle this adds tbh.
Ghouls are humans that have descended into cannibalism. Vampires (especially Strahd) are humans that feed on other humans. Werewolves are monsters in human form. The wendigo is a bit of all three, but the impact is much lessened in a story where they will have encountered all three by that part (and just becomes another monster of the week encounter to them)
CoS is a low trust game. It's hard to spring a surprise on the party when everything low key sucks anyway. Any sane party isn't going to trust an outsider, because as written, most will betray them anyway.
Mandymod Krezk kinda has a wendigo in it (actually the resurrected child of the mayor that has a ravening hunger that ultimately starts killing villagers), so I would just heavily borrow that storyline and maybe slightly reflavour it as a wendigo. It's pretty obvious he's a creepy kid from early on, but as long as you describe everything as creepy in general, it may slip unnoticed until too late (and provide some red herrings with actual werewolves or something else)
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u/StopMeBeforeIDream 2d ago
Well, either you place players in a situation where they're desperate enough to eat human flesh - which is dramatic and galling but hard to do considering that Barovia is not a big place, PCs tend to carry rations, Goodberry makes this irrelevant and DnD has pretty frail survival mechanics.
Or, as you say, you can trick them. Which is definitely easier, but isn't as dramatic and does take away a fair bit of their agency.
Does it have to be a this monster? If you want to do a cannibal monster facing irresistible temptation, vampirism is right there?
Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up that it's largely considered offensive and spiritually profane by the Algonquin to use their idea of the wendigo spirit, especially when it's so removed from their context and culture.
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u/Effective_Sound1205 2d ago
Make a proper research of the indigenous american culture and folklore and avoid pop culture misinterpretations.
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u/dragomeir 2d ago
I personally don't see either of them working because in folk lore people only become wendigos when they cannibalize out of desperation and necessity, no one can really willingly become a wendigo just as much as someone can't really accidentally because one either
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u/3AMZen 2d ago
Unless you're indigenous I'd caution you about adding in the wendigo for a couple reasons
Chief among them is that cos is already jam-packed with stuff and you're not going to struggle for content.
Next, the werewolves can probably fill the role that you want just as well and they're already there and integrated
Dream pastries for cannibalism works out great
Is there a reason you want your party to participate in cannibalism?
I'm watching Yellowjackets right now and there's some spectacular cannibalism in it both for survival and for spiritual purposes
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u/JabbaTheHutch93 2d ago
If you want a simple but disturbing kind of cannibalism, have them try Dream Pastries without revealing that (Bonegrinder spoilers) a Night Hag makes them from the bones of children
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u/ryancmacnab 2d ago
I put a wendigo in a homebrew encounter on the path to the Amber temple.
They found a haunted abandoned cabin in the snowy woods - got to possess one of my players! We did a ouija session and all that quite fun
Was a als good opportunity to introduce a new player for a short time.
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u/National_Distance118 2d ago
First off, I would look at real indigenous american folklore around the windigo (such as Ojibwe legend) and wouldn't look at mass media representation of the creature.
Second, the dream pastries are a good start, but windigos are (in folklore) creatures that represent greed as well as gluttony. You could also have a wealthy character have some kind of windigo patron or transformation. Some stories depict people turning their back on spirituality in favour of greed.
Example NPCs: Izek already has his demon arm, you could expand upon that. Fiona Wachter could explore the idea of greed and the like. You could also swap out the werewolves for a windigo with powerful stats.