The jiangshi (pronounced chyahng-shr, with both syllables in level high tone) is a reanimated corpse from Chinese folklore, nicknamed the “hopping vampire” because of how it struggles to move within the limits of rigor mortis (translated literally, the name means “stiff corpse”). It makes me think of the pantheon of ancient Egypt-which is probably just my brain conflating Osybus with Osiris. You don’t even need to keep the name “Osybus” if you don’t want to, although I think it has a neat ring to it. Take the first three paragraphs of flavor text as written, and make up whatever you want from there. These players have clearly given the matter a lot more thought than I have, and I can find neither compelling evidence that they’re wrong nor a tidy workaround, other than severing Osybus from the Ravenloft story altogether. They also note that it makes little sense that Osybus’s followers now seek to set his former enemy free to ravage the multiverse when it was he who helped imprison Strahd in the first place. Specifically, players argue that they’re incompatible with the storyline of Curse of Strahd, in which the name “Osybus” first appears, and that the flavor text in Ezmerelda’s Guide to Ravenloft, which stipulates that Strahd von Zarovich took an active role in the defeat of Osybus the lich, is inconsistent with both Strahd’s personality and the difference in their respective power levels. Digging into fan theories about the priests of Osybus leads to a lot of complaints that they make no sense and don’t fit into canon lore.
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