Vendikar
The vendikar are creatures of legend that live in the mountain range of The Hundred Pillars, separating the Tevinter Imperium from the Free Marches. Few wish to travel up into the mountain ranges because even fewer return alive. All those who do manage to return home come home shaken and insane, unable to describe the terrible things that occur in that mountain range.
Summary
Few know exactly what a vendikar is. Some believe it to be a man-eating creature, others believe it is an evil demon. The handful of accounts are scattered at best, but few similarities can be found: that the vendikar has some characteristics of a human or as a demon who has possessed a human being and made them monstrous. Its proximity to someone allows it to invoke its influence upon others, driving them to murder, insatiable greed, cannibalism, and many other cultural taboos.
The creatures are believed to be supernatural and are strongly associated with winter, the north, coldness, loneliness, famine, and starvation.
Spread
In some traditions and retellings, humans overpowered by a vendikar's influence could turn into a vendikar. Others say vendikars were created when a person resorted to cannibalism to survive. Even more frighteningly, people can turn into vendikars by being in contact with them for too long. The true fear from this statement comes from the fact that they are incredibly stealthy and one may never know they're there until they already have become a vendikar.
In Literature
"The vendikar was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the vendikar looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody. Its body was unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, giving off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption." — Bastil Johnston, Tantervale-based author of Clue of the Demon's Creek.
"It was a large creature, as tall as a tree, with a lipless mouth and jagged teeth. Its breath was a strange hiss, its footprints full of blood. It ate any man, woman, or child who ventured into those mountains. And those were the lucky ones. Those who weren't so lucky? They're still up there. You can hear their screams amongst the blistering winds. Their still hunting, waiting for their family to grow." — Said by Ojibwa, hermit who lives near the base of the mountain range... or at least that's what many bards tend to claim.
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