So say you've got this high-powered executive type, in the oil business or something, and they head out to the Dakotas or Manitoba or someplace like that to arrange getting some land to drill on. And the locals, mostly Natives, don't want to sell, but he's got money on his side and eventually that means he's got the law and the establishment as well, and they get pushed off and some of them end up dying as a result - stress, or nowhere to go that they can reach, or whatever. He doesn't care. He got what he wanted, the people against him got what they didn't want, that tastes like victory. He goes home, back to Wall Street or wherever. He wants more things that taste like victory. He's successful, he's got money, he ends up with his own firm, not just working for someone. Gathers people around him who think ruining people to get their way tastes like victory, too. But the curse is on him, in him, he's consumed his fellow humans for his own good and enjoyed it, even if he didn't eat them he ate their lives. Starts changing. Has to get reclusive, pretty soon, but that's okay, he can stay at the office and keeping working on making things taste like victory. The people who report to him don't care, he's a winner and so are they. Some of them start to change a bit, too.
You know, I've thought about this before, having grown up in the Northwoods, and I think the best parallels come from the fact that Wendigos are a native legend about people who became monsters through starvation in the harsh Northwoods winters (and they are HARSH, you're covered in snow for half the year, blizzards come by the week, the wind is screaming and you can't get outside, and if I didn't have groceries...) but I don't think the Wendigos are native anymore. They invaded, they chopped down the woods, and they shut out the winter, but they are hungry for more, hungry for more land, hungry to eat up native lives; they can use voices like humans and trick you into following them, but are they? Nothing stops their hunger for land and flesh and MORE.
