By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
- The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe The Stygous Bird
The Stygous Bird
On the far shore of the River Styx, spirits pick at the refuse that washes up at their feet. Forgotten thingschurn out from the waters, and on rare occasion, so do lost souls. The unheroic and mean souls cast into the Styx, which cannot bear the grinding tumult and lose themselves entirely. They wash up on the far shore of the Styx like a worn pebble on a foreign beach. Their human form is diminished to that of a pitiful long-beaked bird, most like a plucked chicken with the stature of a man. Without fur nor fat to ward away the gnawing cold of the underworld, these desperate remnants of people cluster and shiver together. They appear in threes, never more.
These Stygous Birds can be called back across the borders of the underworld, being beneath the notice of the infernal bureaucracy. They can be bound with a blood offering. A long cloak and a basket of raven feathers for warmth buys their service on this side of the veil. These servitors are guardians of abandoned treasures, and hunt down intruders in many a catacomb.
Their bodies are oily feathers over a wire-thin body, and a spear-sharp beak jutting out from between dead black eyes. From far away, they might be confused for a trio plague doctors. You will never see one from far away. They are ambush predators, laying deathly still in the perfect dark, without moving or sounding, until they launch themselves upon their prey with terrific speed. If one is incautious, their long beaks may pierce straight through one's ribs and pluck out the heart.
Stygous Birds are original to Gabor Lux's Castle Xyntillan, and you can find their statblock there.
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