Vashti

(To be organized later, this is basically a dumping grounds for lore from discord logs)

Basics

• Vashti was a spirit of the hunt who got corrupted by a ritual involving a human sacrifice, which turned her into a being of flesh, and a being who was cursed to crave flesh of humans, ultimately becoming a Wendigo.
• Vashti is a spirit originating from the Czech Republic.
• Vashti's base form can take on any shape of predator, but tends to keep to canines.
• Uses a sheep's skin to disguise herself as a humanoid. This sheep skin can be removed and set to the side when reverting back to a canine.
• Vashti is an unageing being with immortality, an immortality that's slowly becoming more of a curse due her sanity having an expiration date, since she's losing more and more of it as the centuries pass.
• Vashti is an unwilling cannibal, having to eat at least one human every 2 months in order to keep her sanity. 
• The longer she goes without eating a human, the less control she has over her own mind and autonomy as the 2 month time span progresses. 
• She tries her best to keep herself from going fully feral, but there are times when she cannot find a human in a timely manner, and shit gets dire.
• She lives in a house she built herself deep within the woodlands of North America.
• It takes about 30 minutes by car just to get to the nearest town.
• She's an omnivore thanks to her mortal form, and thus has a garden growing off to the side of her house.
• Currently has 12 dogs living with her, a number that increases the more dogs she finds within her stretch of the woods, be they abandoned or wild.
  • A good chunk of Vashti's pack have come from abusive households.
• Vashti is currently searching for a way to cure her Wendigoism. 
• Vashti is missing her left eye.

• Vashti has the air of someone who's getting close to her end, even though it's nowhere in sight.
• She's aloof and observant, choosing to keep to herself for the most part.

Lore

• She's originally a spirit of the hunt, people would bring her offerings at a designated spot within the woods in hopes of good hunting.
• Because people willed it and wanted it, she slowly came into being as a spirit of the hunt due to people making it a habit/ritual to bring things like pieces of prey animal, grain, drink, and what have you. That's what went down for several hundred years, and it eventually turned into sacred grounds as people gathered things for an altar of sorts. So large slabs of rock, old stumps, plenty of flowers and shrubbery were planted around this circle meant for rituals and all that. 
• Gradually over time, one spirit became two as people started to use the same sacred grounds for good harvest, as they tend to go hand in hand. Vashti made quick friends with this spirit of the harvest, and all was wonderful for quite some time.
  • A quick but important note; Vashti was originally a spirit that took on the form of a canine, while the spirit of the harvest took on the form of a sheep.
• The spirit of the harvest decided to walk alongside people as a mortal. 
  • They ended up getting killed and offered as a sacrifice, and Vashti had to consume someone they loved (because at the end of the day, flesh is flesh), leaving them empty and hollow, as consuming another spirit damaged their sanity irreparably. They became flesh, unaging flesh, with a great distain for humans. 
  • In order to avoid that happening again, she built a house on top of her own sacred grounds.
• She also craves knowledge like any other human, and hordes books (and eyes) to sate her curiosity. 
• Vashti tends to change the name she gives out to people once every few decades. This is because she gets tired of a name and moves on to another one, or changes names for the sake of keeping people off her tail.

Wendigo Lore

• For you to become a hollow spirit you would have had to consume the flesh of someone you loved, some people do this for horrible power and others do it to escape the pain of their lives, or for vengeance. Others are cursed due to bad circumstances or forcibly changed. Each tribe has a different name for them but it is pretty much the same creature, sometimes they are seen crying into the night because of the terrible things they have done, out of instinct only, they have very little emotion left, only hunger.
• Calling out to a wendigo in their true name is supposed to kill them, instantly releasing them from their curse. They cannot tell people their original names.
  • Only the spirit of the harvest knew Vashti's true name.

• Vashti's house is very, very deep in the woods. Anyone who stumbles upon it is either incredibly lost, or intentionally sought her out. Either way, she doesn't really like either option.
• Vashti lives with a pack of 12 dogs at her cabin, and the number rises to one or two each year.
• Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can hear her humming a lullaby to her pack.
• Vashti keeps a small garden of vegetables and fruits for her own consumption.
• Vashti frequently takes able bodied members of the pack out for a hunt, bringing back deer, birds, and rabbits back for them to feast upon. Small portions of these hunts are often dragged into the house to be used as offerings for Vashti's circle. 
• Any and all dogs are welcome to join the pack, regardless of age or size.
• Vashti is able to communicate with her pack like she could with another human, and frequently peels off her sheep skin to socialize with the pack in a more natural way.
• In Vashti's canine form, she's twice the size of a Great Dane, making her the biggest out of the whole pack.
• Is she ridable like a horse? Yes. Should you attempt to ride her as such? Well...
• It should go without saying that Vashti is the pack leader, but she has a designated second in command when she's away. A Belgian Tervuren who calls himself Jethro keeps watch of the pack in her stead.
• If and when Vashti comes upon a dog she suspects is living in an abusive household... She's not above dognapping. 
• Vashti enjoys the hunt when she's lucid enough to remember doing so. 
  • She enjoys the meticulous cutting and storing of the meat and finding new ways to cook different parts of the body (when they haven't lost most of it to wendigo urges). They've found that spinal cord fluid makes for an interesting broth.
• Vashti has mostly been romantically into her own kind (specifically canine and canine-like fae, but she's pretty open to more), but on occasion there have been a few humans here and there that have peaked in her interest in that regard. Knowing their life span, however, that interest doesn't stick around for long. Maybe a few months, tops.

• Vashti was part of a clan/pack of spirits that were much like her.
  • the pack was migrational, and they gathered more members to the pack by navigating the wilds, traveling by ley lines, as there seems to be pattern of sacred grounds being made where certain ones crossed over one another.
  • Eventually, as the witch trials started to kick up, Vashti's pack members were slowly hunted down. 
  • Like another stain on their already dark history, Vashti was not prepared for this kind of heart break. Or at least, not the first time it happened anyway. She grew angrier and more distraught each time it happened.
  • Maybe that is when they finally had enough of people and went back to their old shrine to make a home, not before taking revenge on the people who wronged her family, maybe losing an eye during a particularly bad fight, and taking the culprit's eye in return. That good ol saying of 'an eye for an eye'. They learn that they can see memories through eyes, getting even more distraught to learn that the reason they were killed in the first place was something petty that didn't even matter in the grand scheme of things, just people eating people, stabbing in the back, and humanity being complete monsters. 

• Wendigo Form;
  • The majority of the body should be a solid black, using silhouette to define the overall shape. Hip bones jut out to an extremely unhealthy and skeletal degree
  • The face should be bone-like, appearing more like a carved mask rather than outright being a skull
  • The face should look like hardened blood, with a semi see-through quality. Same thing goes for the claws
  • Perhaps adding to the creepy factor, the skull is a mask that opens to a humanoid face devoid of any skin, instead being teeth and muscle. The one functional eye is lidless and is unable to blink
  • Any and all bone, should Vashti's form be broken to this degree, should have the same hardened blood quality, with the core being solid iron
  • Perhaps mess around with a seal-like quality wrapped around their muzzle?
  • Maybe also mess around with a Quetzalcoatl-like design?
  • Adding to the 3 eye design, the eyes should be treated like skull sockets with only one glowing eye bouncing from socket to socket, almost like a Duskull
  • Also include a large collar with a broken chain hanging off of it, to further tie the humanoid design with the wendigo one