Geographic Base: Japan, in the deepest forests

Appearance: 6" tall, looking like a hybrid of a human and a crow. Tengu have red hair, black eyes, long beaklike noses, human ears, clawed birdlike hands and feet, and feathered tiny wings that they can use to fly very quickly. They dress in long red robes and for special occasions paint their faces with elaborate red and black patterns. Most of the time Tengu carry with them either a Japanese style sword and/or a feather fan for doing magic (generally changing the length of their nose or their whole appearance, though usually not completely). While all Tengu are male, they do lay and hatch from eggs.

Lifestyle: While human myth claims the Tengu are haughty Samurai who have been reincarnated in this form as punishment for sins in their past life, the reality is rather the opposite. In actuality, many Samurai warriors were the byproduct of Tengu intermarriage with human populations (the Tengu would of course have taken on human form through magic for this). However, when it became clear that these children were more man than Tengu, having inherited only the master fighting skill and aloofness of the Tengu and none of their magic, and that these Samurai were too powerful for anyone's good (as they dominated man and encroached on isolated Tengu forests without apology), the Tengu generally withdrew from human contact. Nowadays, the Tengu form close-knit hierarchical societies in the most remote areas of Japan, where they practice ritual swordplay amongst themselves. This stylized form of fighting has deep spiritual import for the Tengu and is a key component of their intellectual discipline. Living within their own community and indeed largely within their own minds, the Tengu channel their great powers towards philosophical understanding.

Human Interaction: While human myth attributes all sorts of magical intervention in their lives to the Tengu - both good and bad - the vast majority of these incidents are nothing more than imagination run amok. While Tengu certainly do possess vast magical powers, they have little or no interest in using these gifts to either aid or harm humans. Though they do sometimes intervene to return lost children to their parents, they do so out of a wish for privacy, as wandering humans in their forest detract from their single-minded practice of intellectual discipline.