Lich-crow

This is a concept I came up with while trying to figure out what type of monsters you would find in a swamp. I did a search on D&D swamp monsters, and under this Pathfinder reference for temperate swamps, it listed the stirge.

In D&D, a stirge is described as a a type of cross between a mosquito, bird, and bat, and they live around swamps and drain your blood.



Of course, their appearance changed over editions of D&D. Not a totally useless critter, but the source of the idea is more interesting to me.

It comes from the strige, a bird creature in Roman and Greek legends which was also the name for the screech owl. In fact, one genus for owls is now Strix, and owls in general are Strigiformes and true owls are known as Strigidae. In legends they were demons or witches that had metamorphosed into birds, or part birds. Often they would have a body like a vulture, faces of ancient women, and breasts filled with poisonous milk. Often still even in this half form they still had beaks. They would come out at night when people slept, screech like owls and feed on human flesh and blood.



Ovid describes them as such, "There are ravenous birds, the huge head, staring eyes, sharp beak for robbery: their feathers are white and hooked claws. They say they tear the bowels of those who do are still fed on milk and they love to get drunk with their blood. They are called striges because of the disaster they cry terrify night." He speculates whether they were born as birds, or were originally old women who transformed into birds because of a spell. The poisoned milk from their breasts would be used to kill human children. They were said to have subsisted entirely on blood and come out during people's sleep for that purpose, and also spread plague and disease through the filth on their claws. It was debated whether they were more like bats or more like owls, which I guess gave rise to the D&D creature.

The idea of the strige survived into the Middle Ages, and into the Italian strega which became the word for witch, as well as the Romanian strigoi, troubled souls which rose from the dead, and who were capable of transforming into animals, turning invisible, and also had the same vampiric traits as the original striges. Striges were obviously similar to harpies, except more powerful, more demonic, more and linked with death.

The screech-owl on its own continued to have legends associated with it; it was also sometimes known in English as the lich-owl. Owls were connected with the underworld, and the lich-owl's screeches were supposed to foretell death. It was said to hang around graves and sepulchres. Lich comes from the Anglo-Saxon for corpse or carcass.

Ravens and crows are in the modern consciousness more associated with death because they're scavengers and eat from corpses.




In Medieval lore, it was said when a raven eats a corpse, it first pecks out the eyes so that it can reach the brain. That's where you get the iconic image of a raven with an eyeball hanging from its beak.



Crows were said to be able to foretell the future.



And you get this "crow demon" creature in Dark Souls, for instance, that's similar in some ways to the strige.



Inuyasha also features a demon crow named Shibugarasu ("dancing corpse crow"), who steals the Shikon Jewel, and is capable of possessing people's bodies after eating its way into their corpses.



It has three red eyes, a long tail, and also has a reptilian transformation.



So I was thinking it would be spooky if in swamp areas you would sometimes see single crows or groups of crows, sitting on dead branches. Eventually you would notice one was following you. Yes, like in Zelda.




You stop, it starts to rise, spread its wings and ruffle itself, and transforms into a large demonic bird several times your size, almost capable of picking you up, and with red glowing eyes, wild black feathers, and a long tail. While black, some of its feathers could be iridescent and shine in the moonlight.



As it fights you, pecking and you and piercing into your skin with its beak, and grabbing you with its claws, you notice a murmur in the bog waters around you. Bog-bodies, ghouls of long deceased men buried and preserved in the bogs, begin to rise from the waters, fight you and restrain you. The large bird is trying to use the dead to subdue and kill you so it can have its feast.

A quick illustration I drew,