The Mantis God (us)

Mantis God. God of mantises. Has no true form of its own, but may possess any entity that "counts" as a mantis, using their bodies for its own goals. Possessees will remember little of the actions that they took under the Mantis God's influence, and may be disoriented and confused when the possession lets up - functionally, this is a full override of who gets to control the body, lasting however long the Mantis God may linger - which isn't long, on average, but losing a few hours out of your day is still disorienting. While possessed, two ethereal claws will spawn over the possessee's shoulders, and their eyes will turn gold. Possession-spawned limbs may shift between tangible and intangible - there's no actual object there, merely an abstraction, but they may still be able to manipulate objects at will. 

Mantises generally have four legs for walking and two legs for grabbing. Anthromorphization and the existence of things such as humanization and transmutation make this somewhat more complicated, however. Some mantises may have two legs for walking and two legs for grabbing, or no legs for walking and any number of legs for grabbing. It can get very complicated! Thankfully, we're here to provide a loose guide for what may count as a mantis.

A MANTIS IS LIKELY (but not required) TO HAVE:

• Four legs for walking, two claws for grabbing
• A carnivorous diet
• Insectoid anatomy
• Claws
• An exceptionally large amount of patience
• An appreciation or penchant for spilled blood
• Man-eating (or woman-eating) tendancies
• Sexy

Although some of these points may be very subjective, should you go with your heart, we are certain that you can reasonably figure out any potential mantis under the Mantis God's definitions.

Mantises may include actual praying mantises, anthromorphized praying mantises, mantids, slaver wasp drones from Girl Genius, some species of cockroach, centaurs, cervitaurs, dragontaurs, Lurantis from Pokemon, an unreasonably large chunk of the characters who fall into the femme fatale trope, a lot of wizards, any character in any niche or genre who can reasonably be anthromorphized as a praying mantis of some description, and anything else that you can either reasonably or unreasonably argue counts as a mantis.