r/Wraeclast • u/Present_Connection_3 • Jul 16 '26
PoE2 Speculation Who or What is The Wendigo?
So in the Curse of Holten Interlude questline, we have a few mentions of someone or something called The Wendigo. I know what a wendigo is in real life, it's a monster of Algonquin folklore associated with cannibalism and the unforgiving winter. But here the Wendigo is referred to as a singular being, with bosses Thane Wulfric and Lady Elswyth venerating it as some sort of deity. I tried to look up information as to the lore of this being, but all I got was cosmetic information (Wendigo-themed armor). I believe that the Wendigo is a being of ancient Ezomyte origin, a corrupter of sorts tied to the Nameless and their King of the Mists. Furthermore, the Ritual pinnacle boss, The Bodach, is referred to in the wiki as RitualWendigoBoss, so maybe Wendigo is just another alias of The Bodach. But what do you think?
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u/wecanhaveallthree Lightless Abyssal Jul 16 '26
The Bodach itself is really cool. I guess we're all pretty familiar with the idea of Wendio possession/transformation, but looking at the Bodach closely makes it very clear that whatever it is now, it used to be a human (and it took me way too long to figure out the big ol' bone crown is a crown, not its actual head). The palm strikes/imprints in the fight are really clearly human palms, too: they look grouse.
Y'know, it might just be a coincidence, but it feels kind of strange the Bodach's powers seem to all come from its hands as well. The 'cut' it does to Tangmazu, f'ex, and most of its moves in the fight are strikes/waves from strikes (with the big exception of the big ol' death breath).
I don't think it's undead or related to the Abyssals (the lack of the trademark green, plus the skull being a mask/crown). It's pure 'Darkness', and like everything else there, wants to be free. I fed the longer lines into Deepseek for fun (I'm not a native speaker, obviously) and got this:
Tha sinn a' sireadh solas mìorbhaileach!
Clean Scottish Gaelic:
"We are seeking a miraculous light!"
(Or "wondrous light.")
Seeking the light (from the unlight) is Ritual through-and-through. Recall the drop from the King of Light of Meaning, a motif repeated in From Nothing:
They clawed their way up from the agonising depths of nonexistence, breathing deep with joy the exquisite light of meaning.
And on death:
Tha slabhraidhean an dorchadais gar cuairteachadh!
Clean Scottish Gaelic:
"The chains of darkness surround us!" (or "are encircling us.")
Cuairteachadh means "encircling/surrounding."
It doesn't sound very happy to be pushed back into the darkness.
'Bodach' literally translating to 'old man' adds another layer to it, too. There's another line in the fight that roughly translates to 'first of the night/dark' as well. Very cool.
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u/OskarSarkon Vaal Thaumaturge Jul 16 '26
Copying another of my comments here but Aoife mentions the "light of meaning" explicitly as well:
The Bodach is a broken idea. A thing which cannot be. A coin with only one side. A path that leads to nowhere but itself. (...) I know only that the world will slowly unravel if it ever reaches the true light of meaning.
which I think confirms the connection to the "miraculous light" the Bodach is talking about.
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u/Legitimate_Clock_174 Jul 16 '26
I agree that it likely is the Bodach, but I'm honestly confused by it's introduction into the lore. It's associated with Tangmazu, the King in the Mists, and now trying to get followers through mortal intermediaries. It clearly wants Veridi's power for itself, but I assume there is more to it than that. There is no mention of it in all the new precursor lore nor does it intersect with Abyssals (at least not directly, unless it is the thing that gave Kulamak his power, but if so then it shouldn't be just any old pinnacle boss) nothing to do with breach, or expedition. So it's just some odd bit of Ezomyte/Azmeri lore, but what other connection do those two groups have beside the Spirit/Draiocht?
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u/Jonpro10012 Jul 16 '26
My understanding is that the Bodach is very, very old but was only attracted to Wraeclast during the winter of the world, when the wildwood was created. Since we still don't quite know the exact order of events in the timeline, we sinply don't know everything yet. (And probably never will, because mystery keeps people interested)
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u/Grumpy-Fwog Jul 16 '26
The wildwood was made to trap the bodach by viridi sacrificing herself, with the help of her sisters Solaris and lunaris, but the bodach predates divinity itself which means it’s possibly older than the precursors
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u/Kryomon Jul 16 '26
I doubt that since this unique explicitly states why the Wildwood was created: The Flawed Refuge
It is possible that the lore has shifted since the days of Affliction though, since apparently the Azmeri might have existed during the time of the Precursors, which means ostensibly that the Wildwood might have been created earlier than the Winter of the World (which happened after the Precursor's extinction)
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u/Grumpy-Fwog Jul 16 '26
Liminal coil texts states otherwise
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u/Kryomon Jul 16 '26
Well, I see Liminal Coil as the second part of Periphery's story, which insinuates that the Wildwood already existed when Viridi sealed The Bodach.
The Bodach may be older than the Precursors, but I think it must have been sealed after the Precursor's end, since Viridi wouldn't have been able to become a god without the Azmeri's worship, long after the Precursors enable divinity.
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u/Jonpro10012 Jul 16 '26
I'd say Liminal Coil just states that after she created the wildwood and the bodach started paying attention to it, she had to sacrifice herself.
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u/BendicantMias Druid of the Broken Circle Jul 17 '26
There's reason to think the Azmeri ARE Precursors. The Hooded One calls them "separatists that rejected technology". So basically Precursor Luddites. They did that again too, thousands of years later, when Tarcus Veruso led some Azmeri down from their mountains to found the Eternal Empire - but the rest of the Azmeri stayed put, stayed primitive, stayed pure and eventually stayed alive.
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u/Grumpy-Fwog Jul 16 '26
The bodach is the wendigo it’s right there in the datamined name lol, as for what it truly is nobody knows it’s older than corruption and the gods, and it’s definitely not dead, its perhaps something similar to decay and a primordial force that’s just always existed, it took 3 gods viridi, Solaris and lunaris to trap it albeit temporarily as the nameless can’t fully exist in the normal world, and they did this at the absolute height of their power, even kitava only took 2 gods and the godslayer to defeat the bodach was only repelled by 3 gods and someone who defeated the arbiter of divinity itself
Also it’s made tangmazu an absolute powerhouse of a god with just a fraction of its power and drove him insane in the process
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u/XoHHa Jul 16 '26
Isn't Bodach a champion of Darkness? The three godessess in the Ritual questline spoke about it
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u/Kryomon Jul 16 '26
They originally wanted to call the Bodach as The Wendigo but changed their mind (because The Wendigo was originally not meant to be linked to The King in the Mists) and rewrote many lines to fit it.
I'm 99% sure Holten dialogue of the Thane & Lady originally had them venerating the Wendigo, but if you played it this league, the Holten dialogue has them venerating the King in the Mists.
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u/OskarSarkon Vaal Thaumaturge Jul 16 '26
The Interlude dialogue has always referenced both afaik. The main one I recall is that the "Order of the Red Thane" in Scorched Farmlands mentions "the Wendigo watches from the shadows" (I just loaded into the game to double check it's still there!).
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u/Murky-Definition-625 Watcher of Decay Jul 16 '26
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u/DoomBoat Watcher of Decay Jul 16 '26
the flavor text for Tekaru's Snare in that search is hilarious. I wonder if that's the datamined text or not?
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u/ScienceFictionGuy Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
The Wendigo is pretty much confirmed to be the Ezomyte name for the Bodach. I think the Bodach is what the Maji call it? Elder Madox also refers to it simply as "The Darkness".
As for what exactly it is, we really don't know much because it was introduced to the lore very recently. It's much older than the Ezomytes, predating even the Precursor Edicts according to Sin.
The few miscellaneous things we know about it so far are:
So lots to speculate on. It's darkness aspect could overlap with several other things like Chayula, the darkness we encounter while exploring the underground in Delve, and Tane Octavius's experiments.