Oni, Yamabushi Tengu

This humanoid creature has a fearsome mien, with a cruel red face, glaring yellow eyes, a prodigious nose, and large raven-like wings.

DESCRIPTION

Environment temperate mountains
Organization solitary, pair, or patrol (1–2 plus 3–8 tengus or dire corbies)
Treasure double (leather armor, +1 kusarigama, composite longbow [+2 Str] with 20 arrows, other treasure)

Yamabushi tengus are oni with a predilection toward thievery and trickery, wearing the flesh of wicked, fiendish tengus. When a yamabushi tengu first appears, its first course of action is invariably to seek out a well-hidden nest or other nook to serve as a lair. Despite their ability to fly, most yamabushi tengus are nervous in open areas, since it’s easy to be seen in such environs. A yamabushi tengu is more at home indoors or at night, where it can skulk in the shadows when it’s unsure of its surroundings. A yamabushi tengu is 5 feet tall and weighs 120 pounds.

Ecology

While most yamabushi tengus look like normal tengus, they can actually manifest in a number of humanoid bird shapes. Ravens and crows are the most common model which these creatures take their appearance from, yet tales exist of yamabushi tengus with features more akin to cranes, eagles, peacocks, gulls, vultures, and even pelicans. Only the features of ducks and other billed avians (like geese) are notably absent from yamabushi tengus. In fact, yamabushi tengus have a strange loathing for ducks—they find these birds to be a mix of comic tragedy and pitiful hideousness, from the blunt shape of their bills to their distinctive gait and their warbling quacks. The presence of a duck can often provoke even the most restrained and crafty yamabushi tengu into making poor choices: faced with choosing between attacking a truly dangerous foe or using their weapons and magic against a nearby duck, most yamabushi tengus make the choice to kill the duck, even if such an act might compromise their position to their actual enemy.

Habitat & Society

Yamabushi tengus are driven by greed, particularly for shiny treasures like coins, jewels, gems, and polished weapons. Many extend this obsession to clothing (favoring brightly colored silks) and armor (preferring light armor over medium or heavy armor). Most of what a yamabushi tengu plots or plans can be traced to a desire to gather as much shiny treasure as possible, but they are also especially entranced and intrigued by avian humanoids—particularly tengus, dire corbies and garudas. Yamabushi tengus share the most in common with tengus, of course, for it is from these creatures that the oni take their forms. Dire corbies and garudas, being non-humanoid monsters (monstrous humanoids and outsiders respectively) are in strange ways both similar and quite different from tengus, and as such yamabushi tengus find them endlessly fascinating. In the case of dire corbies, the creatures’ feral natures, xenophobic personalities, and overall lack of civilization make them ideal groups for a yamabushi tengu to infiltrate and take control of—although in most cases, a yamabushi tengu who infiltrates a dire corby flock eventually grows tired of the crude creatures and moves on. Garudas are more difficult for yamabushi tengus to interact with, for these outsiders are generally good. Encounters between garudas and yamabushi tengus almost always end in combat, typically with the more powerful garuda the victor. As a result, when confronted by a garuda, most yamabushi tengus choose subtlety over direct confrontation. In a best-case scenario, a yamabushi tengu’s minions or allies capture and restrain the garuda, giving the yamabushi tengu ample opportunity to interrogate or even vivisect the garuda prisoner.

Most yamabushi tengus, though, find greatest comfort dwelling among thieves’ guilds—particularly among those populated by tengus, in which case a yamabushi tengu appears in its natural form, using its wings as an obvious badge of superiority over its flightless tengu kin. Among thieves of other races (such as humans), a yamabushi tengu prefers to stay in its humanoid form. However, when a yamabushi tengu assumes the form of anything other than a tengu, its true nature is difficult for it to hide, for invariably the shapechanged oni’s nose remains quite prodigious, usually to an almost comical degree. Strangely enough, however, yamabushi tengus generally don’t think of their unusual noses as flaws in their magical disguises. A yamabushi tengu can also retain its wings when using its change shape ability, and these pinions, as well as its beaklike nose, are a sure way to tell a disguised yamabushi tengu apart from others.