#mexican folklore
Lechuza
“Alternate Harpy design” © FurAffinity user MsChoppington, accessed here
[Did I say one month per continent when I introduced the World Tour concept? I am altering the deal. It’s been expanded to two months per. I’m having too much fun with folkloric creatures! Although I am going to expand the purview a little bit. For North America, I already have two fearsome critters, one cryptid and a prehistoric animal in my sights.
“La lechuza” is Spanish for “barn owl”, but the name also refers to witches that assume owl form. I figured I’d use this as an excuse to flesh out lower level hags. Maybe your campaign isn’t near the sea for a sea hag. Maybe you think that the sea hag’s abilities are too much for a low level party (ability damage and a curse that staggers for days is pretty rough). Might I suggest the lechuza as an alternate?]
Lechuza
CR 4 LE Monstrous Humanoid
This creature resembles a feathered humanoid with wings and strong, clawed legs. Her face is set in a round disc of feathers.
Lechuzas, or owl hags, are shapeshifting creatures that can assume the form of an owl or humanoid from their natural, hybrid state. Of the hags, they are among the most likely to integrate themselves into society, disguising themselves as ordinary women. From this vantage point, they observe the comings and goings of the settlement, figuring ways to best hurt people and spread misery. Most lechuzas are greedy, and can be enticed to serve even goodly causes for sufficient coin—although they prefer that their job when on the side of righteousness involves hurting somebody.
Most lechuzas would rather avoid a fair fight, instead luring a single victim to a place where they can ambush them. Lechuzas are excellent mimics, and may disguise their voice to sound like a crying baby or a loved one calling for help. A lechuza is a powerful melee combatant in its natural form. Their teeth are sharp, but too small to maneuver to a bite attack. Their claws are powerful, however, and can carry away smaller enemies, like halflings, gnomes or children. When facing multiple opponents, they prefer to keep their distance and use spells and their evil eye to soften enemies up before diving into melee.
Lechuza CR 4
XP 1,200
LE Medium monstrous humanoid (shapechanger)
Init+3;Sensesdarkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, Perception +11
Defense
AC16, flat-footed 13, touch 13 (+3 Dex, +3 natural)
hp37 (5d10+10)
Fort+3,Ref+7,Will+5
Offense
Speed30 ft., fly 50 ft. (good)
Melee2 claws +7 (1d6+2 plus grab)
Special Attacks hex (evil eye -2, Will DC 13), rend (2 claws, 1d6+3)
Spell-like Abilities CL 5th, concentration +7 (+11 casting defensively)
At will—dancing lights, ghost sound (DC 12), misdirection(DC 14)
3/day—bane(DC 13), fog cloud,scare(DC 14)
1/day—dispel magic,invisibility, lightning bolt (DC 15)
Statistics
Str15,Dex17,Con14,Int13,Wis12,Cha15
Base Atk +5;CMB+7 (+11 grapple); CMD20
FeatsBlind-fight (B),Combat Casting, Deceitful,Hover
SkillsBluff +8, Disguise +8 (+16 using change shape), Fly +14, Intimidate +8, Knowledge (arcana) +5, Perception +11, Stealth +13; Racial Modifiers +8 Disguise when using change shape,+4 Perception, +4 Stealth
LanguagesCommon, Elven
SQchange shape (humanoid, Small or Tiny owl, polymorph), sound mimicry (voices)
Ecology
Environmenttemperate land or urban
Organizationsolitary or coven (3 mixed hags)
Treasurestandard
Special Abilities
Hex (Su) A lechuza gains the evil eye hex as a 5th level witch. Lechuza hit dice stack with witch levels for determining the effects of the evil eye hex, but not for other hexes. The save DC is Intelligence based.
Good evening. My name is Carl Engström. I am originally from Uppsala, Sweden, and on the recommendation of a friend who is a regular visitor to this page, I would like to share the following photograph of a document that I found among the belongings of my great-grandfather, Martin Engström.
My great-grandfather was born in 1895, and worked as a school teacher in Stockholm. In the 1940s, he travelled to Mexico with a British professor from his university, James Lewis Thomas Chalmers Spence.
Among the many articles he brought back from the country, this document was one of them, and from what my grandfather can remember, I know that he obtained it from a priest of a church located in a town called Yagul, Oaxaca, alluding to the fact that it was part of the evidence from a well-known case of the Spanish Inquisition against the Indians of the area during the 1650s.
I know that he came to acquire more documents of this kind, but one of his friends by profession, Elthon Kirowan, a scholar who had a shady reputation, asked him to examine them, without returning them. We know that he lived on a farm in Sussex, England, and if it is possible, attempt could be made to locate the family on the possibility that his relatives know the destiny of the other documents.
We do not want to give them to any museum, because they are part of our family legacy, but I have considered sharing a photograph of it, because apparently, it is a unique piece of Mexico’s past and it deserves to be shown to a wider public. I want also to avoid what I have heard are very long protocols in the investigatory process to expose such documents.
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