This template is a vex common in the colder (temperate and arctic) climates and can afflict those that suffer with famine and practice cannibalism as a means to survive. Every time a playable species eats the flesh of one of its own they runs an increased risk of acquiring the curse and transforming into a Wendigo (+10% per meal). Once the character fails in the roll they gain the template within 3 nights and lose all past knowledge of their former lives, all skills are lost except for any melee, any simple skills and those for tracking, also racial powers are still known and used. The body changes too as the skin become pale and is tight against the ribs and threatening to poke through. The hands enlarge and grow sickle like claws. Any hair or feathers is mostly lost and what little remains will lay in lifeless clumps. The character also gains an insatiable appetite for the flesh of his, or her, own people and will travel great distances to find it. You can use the scent, blood power but for smelling the presence of your own people. Another power the Wendigo gains is a aura of cold and they will increase in size (and the stats that come with it) from eating more victims. To gain a size category requires 4 to the power of the size difference from the starting size. So a medium would have to eat 4 of its own kind to gain the size of large and then it would need to eat 16 to gain the size of huge and so on. Victims do not have to be limited to normal versions of its own kind for a Wendigo can also consume any templated version of its own kind, provided the body is fully consumed. As an example a human can consume any other human, human vampires, human werewolves, or even human zombies. But a human skeleton offers little to interest the Wendigo.

The Vexed Template is a type of curse one can bring on themselves for breaking certain taboos. The nature of the vex is based on the type of taboo broken. The one presented first for the Red Ash World System is the Wendigo Vex that a character receives as a punishment for cannibalism. A vex template is earn as a random percentage roll that grows larger every time the character repeatedly breaks taboo. The base roll is 10 % and it grows by 10% for each infraction. Once a character gains a vex it can not be removed, save for death.