The Fae Encyclopedia
(For Curious Humans)
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Wendigoes
Stay the hell away from these things.
If I had my way that'd be the only thing printed on this page, but my editor insists people want more details. More details make people curious, and curious people don't stay the hell away from things, but trust me on this. Stay the hell away from these things.
Wendigoes are a curious sort of Winter Court Fae ("Winterfae" for short). They're spirits of cannibalistic hunger, without a form or shape of their own. Some of the books I've found indicate that the natives of what are now the Canadian wastes knew about Wendigoes even before the Pandora Event -- much in the way this world had myths of Faeries and so on well before the real thing came knocking on our door. Given our modern day Wendigoes just love the icy slopes of hell known as Canada, that's not a surprise.
As floating, malevolent spirits, the only way they can exist in our world and satisfy their ever-needy hunger is to possess a body... human or Fae, it doesn't matter. They have very little luck possessing some totally ordinary Joe Human or Jai Faerie, but if Joe or Jai was stupid and sick enough to eat the flesh of their own kind, they're open for the possession business. Cannibalism acts like a magnet and a funnel for these things. Once the Wendigo's in, they eat the mind of their host for lunch. Don't bother trying to exorcise them; there's nothing left in there of the original.
Alternatively Wendigoes can hop into a dead body -- any form of flesh without a soul works. But zombie-Wendigoes decay quickly, whereas living ones can go on and on until they die of old age or are killed. And once a Wendigo's got a living body, they are damned hard to kill.
Massively fatal damage will knock the spirit out and destroy the body, but we're talking MASSIVELY. Light them on fire, deliver a huge electrical shock, crush them completely, destroy the brain. Anything less and you risk just annoying the thing, especially since they can eat meat in order to heal themselves from any nonfatal injury.
Add on top of that the mutations that their hosts undergo, making them fast and strong and with teeth capable of cracking open a human skull like a walnut, and you've got near-invincible, near-unstoppable murder machines solely focused on finding their next snack.
So, let me reiterate: STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THESE THINGS.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Seconded. I've never seen one, since I'm down south and these things only exist up north, but they are bad news.