Dreamthief Hag

To me, night hags are sort of the be-all and end-all of hags.  I mean, these are creatures of the planes, monstrous women who regularly haggle with much more powerful outsiders over the going rate on souls.  These are not creatures to be taken lightly.

So I was amazed to find that dreamthief hags are even more monstrous than night hags—CR 11 and packing a host of psychic abilities.  Dreamthief hags don’t waste time in ethereal form hovering over creatures waiting for them to fall asleep.  Instead they can literally drag a creature into a dreamscape just by touching(!) it, after which they can force the creature’s mind into their dreamstone to be used as a psychic battery.  (PS: Don’t let one bite you either, if you’re a spellcaster.)

So what are dreamthief hags?  Are they their own unique species?  Night hags who have achieved some fell apotheosis?  Or who long ago gave up on the endless pursuit of souls in favor of the more esoteric mysteries of the mind?  Whatever their origin, they have the potential to be major adversaries if your PCs get too casual about strolling through the Ethereal Plane or the Dimension of Dreams.  Ordinary hags may be all about snatching up children and lost travelers; dreamthief hags are after much bigger game…

A dreamthief hag steals an adventurers’ mind, rendering her comatose.  Fortunately, she returns it in a day, (mostly) unharmed—and with the memory of an offer tucked away inside.  The dreamthief hag has a demon problem (a painajai demon, to be precise), and she promises quite a boon should the adventurers deal with the interloper.

In a gothic, fog-shrouded land where the local lord is as likely to be a vampire or weretiger as he is a mortal, the Carstonheld family stands apart as being utterly, almost defiantly human and noble-hearted.  So sad, then, that no Carstonheld has ever reached 50 without falling comatose, and some are ensnared by the disease as young as 16.  Many Carstonheld scions never wake up; the others wake irrevocably changed into nervous, fidgety wrecks.  What no one in the great family knows is that the entire family line is haunted by a dreamthief hag who once happened to be a Carstonheld herself.  Her palace in the Dimension of Dreams is lined with the bottled minds of her clan—indeed, some of the vintages date back centuries.  Meanwhile, despite their curse the Carstonhelds are nonetheless an influential family.  What might they accomplish if the dreamthief hag threat was discovered and dealt with?

A king empties his treasury trying to find a cure for his son, a promising lad who has fallen mysteriously comatose.  Finally, some adventurers find him an almost-expended ring of three wishes.  When the king wishes for the cure, he is whisked away to the lair of the coma’s real culprit, a dreamthief hag who dwells on the shore of the Land of Dreams where it meets the gorynych-haunted Gray Misery.  Now the adventurers have a quandary: do they rush off to rescue the king?  Defend his empty throne from usurpers?  Or claim the high seat for themselves?

—Occult Bestiary 22

Even when I try to get posts out in a timely manner I am foiled!  (My ISP crapped out earlier this week.)  Also, no radio show this week—I had to help with a hospital discharge at the very last minute.  But I’m excited about the playlist I had ready so I’ll be sure to save it for next Tuesday.  (Also, apologies to any Blogger readers who didn’t get the link for last week’s radio show.  That’s also my bad.)

Alter Ego

I never really got into psionics.  To a vanilla D&D player like me, they were a complicated sci-fi system bolted onto a fantasy game that was already more Overcomplicated than Advanced.  And even when they did work and were coherently fit into a setting (like in Dark Sun and…um…Dark Sun), the point management and clinical language of the powers definitely felt alien in Vancian AD&D.

That said…sometimes some of that language—especially the terms borrowed from Georgian and Victorian-era psychology—transform concepts we take for granted into honest-to-God monsters.  So in Pathfinder, an alter ego isn’t just a concept—it’s Mr. Hyde sprung to life!  And with a strong dash of OCD providing drive and motivation, an alter ego can have a big effect on its real counterpart’s reputation in a short time…and that’s assuming it doesn't just kill the original first.

But these obsessive ectoplasmic creatures don't just have to be the result of trauma.  Dungeon crawls, planar adventures, and even random treasure tables are always throwing magical looking glasses or mirror dimensions in the PCs’ way.  The alter ego gives you a quick way to stat up such a character while clearly answering all those thorny questions about “Does my double have my gear?” and “Why does it hate me so much?”, etc.  So the next time you’re GMing on the fly and a mirror of opposition comes up on the treasure table, you can roll with it instead of rerolling.

Annie Scythetooth is an annis hag known throughout the Lakelands…and that was almost her downfall.  Adventurers combed through the local folktales to track her down and nearly succeeded in exterminating her.  The trauma of that encounter caused an ectoplasmic double of herself to be born, bubbling out of her cauldron like stew coming to life.  A rejection of the brash and boastful nature that got the hag in such hot water, Annie’s alter ego is paranoid, fearful, and terrified of discovery.  Ironically, this makes her even more dangerous than Annie, who, as a child murderer, at least had reliable habits and diet.  Annie’s double, meanwhile, hides her existence by murdering nearly everyone she comes across and filling the woods with complex hedge mazes and deathtraps.

According to the scrolls, alter egos arise from moments if incapacitation.  In Sir Gerald’s case, it was decapitation.  Fortunately, the headsman botched the job, failing to sever the neck cleanly, allowing Sir Gerald’s own healing magic to sustain him as his friends rushed to his side.  (The trial and execution were a sham from start to finish, with the crooked judge, bailiffs, and barristers fleeing the scene rather than finishing the job.)  But the trauma was more than enough to leave a psychic residue, creating an alter ego of the paladin.  This version has no faith in the institutions of law, including the local constabulary and the church.  The resulting obsessive construct is a dull-eyed, puppet version of a freedom fighter, doing his best to make life miserable for the local institutions, but without any of the passion or derring-do of a true rebel.

A mesmerist has found a magical mirror that he believes can draw out the dark side of the viewer.  Happy to capitalize on his discovery, he has set up a clinic where those with troubled pasts and dark rages can literally confront their worse natures.  He even went so far as to have his patients room with their alter egos…until the murders started. Now the mesmerist is desperate to hide the evidence or lie his way out of his situation (all the while continuing to produce doubles to refine his technique) while alter egos of some of the most dangerous men and women in the city run free, committing all kind of out-of-character acts (some noble, some vile, some bizarre) while wearing their real counterparts’ faces.

—Occult Bestiary 4–5

I did not just cave into temptation and buy a bunch of Dark Sun books online.  I did not cave into temptation and buy a bunch of Dark Sun books online.  I did not…

Yes, this is last Thursday’s entry.  It is now Tuesday.  I kind of suck.

But hey, it says “most every weekday” on the masthead for a reason.  I’ve been pretty good about the “every,” but some weeks I need the “most.”  You guys feel me on that, right?

My absence caused Alex to ask:

A 15-day gap!? Are you doing okay?

Thanks, man!  (Or woman?  With Alexes you can never tell.)  I’m doing fine, thanks!  It’s just the usual—demanding career, a chronically ill loved one (who logged some more hospital time over the past three weeks), the radio show, and I’ve been refocusing on my fixing my sleep and exercise schedule.  For the past few weeks, that’s meant not typing blog posts past 11 PM and offering myself a little forgiveness when they get tardy.  I’m engaged in a project to return some sanity to my life, and part of that is giving myself the room to not always be so on point in every aspect of my life 24/7.

Also I was in Atlanta this weekend.  Not as hot as advertised.

While we’re on the subject of personal stuff: Michelle Panik was my classmate, then my roommate, then she regained her senses and moved to California.  She was just named the runner-up for Feminine Inquiry’s Fall Fiction Contest.  I don’t think the story is out yet, but you can find FI here and the rest of Michelle here.

Meanwhile, Kate Miltner and I were in a wedding party a few years ago, and we hit it off immediately, if mostly over Facebook.  Kate’s been looking at the history of Internet trolling, and her research got a big write-up over on Slate last week.  Here’s the link.

Back to monsters:

Adam Daigle—you know him as thedaigle—put up a post on the Paizo Blog about scary-movie-inspired Pathfinder monsters.  Check it out here.  There’s also buzz about the forthcoming Bestiary 5 here. 

And reader Alaizia took a look at the final adventure seed for Spring-Heeled Jack and wrote:

I really like that last one, wish there could be a game built around that ^_^ with more things for it.

I think there is, and it's called Pathfinder!  One of the reasons I do this blog is to highlight the fact that Pathfinder works for more than just Golarion…and even for more than just late-medieval/early-Renaissance-inspired fantasy.  You might need to tweak some skills and whatnot, but with a copy of the Core Rulebook, Ultimate Combat (for the gunslinger), and Ultimate Equipment (for some more modern weaponry) you can go pretty far in most eras.  For a private school campaign like the one above, I’d also go for the Advanced Player’s Guide (the school’s chemistry wiz could be an alchemist; inquisitors, witches, or oracles make good villains) and the Advanced Class Guide (for the brawler, swashbuckler, and investigator).  Try it, add some skills to reflect the modern era, and go nuts.  Or steal the idea and import it into d20 Modern or Monsterhearts or something.   I won't tell!

Blood Hag

Now this is more like it!  Blood + golem = no.  Blood + hag = hell to the yes!

What is a blood hag?  It's a soucouyant from Caribbean folklore. This is a hag that wears other women’s skins as her own (after days of torturing and bloodletting, of course)—even though she has to regrow the stolen skin every morning because she bursts out of it into her monstrous true self at night.  When she’s not flying around as a ball of fire, of course.  And blood hag covens?  They cast fire storm.  That’s a 7th or 8th-level spell in the clawed hands of CR 8 witch.

Hags don't get any tougher this side of the Ethereal Plane.  This is a monstrous humanoid that doesn’t waste time with necromancy—she simply sets you on fire.

If you want to stay true to the folklore, here’s a nice tidbit, though: Soucouyants seem a bit obsessive-compulsive—the common preventative measure being rice sprinkled around the house or at a crossroads, which the blood hag then feels compelled to count.  Having a weakness like that ties blood hags to similarly burdened monsters like divs and certain oni or fey.  GMs shouldn’t volunteer this information to players, but if a player brings that knowledge to the table, or her character asks the right questions and carefully observes local village customs, then I see no reason why spilling rice or grain or copper coins couldn't at least delay a blood hag…for a little while.  Her revenge will be all the more savage after the insult and frustration.

A blood hag lurks outside San Sirocco.  She is notable for three reasons: She has her green hag coven sisters absolutely petrified.  She was born freakishly short for a hag, and takes only the skins of dwarf, gnome, and especially halfling women.  And she once masqueraded as an ambassador’s daughter for more than three months.  The ambassador has sworn revenge and left his country’s service to pursue it.  Having found what may be her lair, but being too wounded from a duel gone wrong to seek satisfaction, the ambassador seeks adventurers to end her life.

Shipwrecked on the Burning Coast, adventurers are given hospitality only reluctantly by the local visitors.  They fear a soucouyant will be attracted by the foreign beauty of the party’s female members.  That night, the appearance of a fireball in the sky proves the villagers’ fears are well founded.

When a Missouri senator disappears journeying down the Mississippi, the list of suspects is long: secessionists, abolitionists, the zombie-raising Second Slavers, the resentful Dwarven Brotherhood of Steamship Engineers, the Niutachi-Veshanith nation (a conglomeration of First People and elven tribes), and the usual gnoll bandits.  In truth, the senator ran afoul of a blood hag who finds mystic uses for the blood of powerful men.  But with so many enemies to rule out, rescue parties may not find the senator in time.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 19

Work and family obligations have sadly ensured that no last minute Gen Con attendance miracles will happen for me.  Hope you all lucky enough to go have fun and say hi to any Pathfinder players and staff for me!

Winter Hag

The Tupilaq entry is now up!  That one’s got some personal resonance for me, so be sure to check it out.

Winter hags are the frosty branch of the hag family tree, and the most powerful (aside from the outsider night hags).  They are the ice queens of fairy tales and Narnia, only more deadly—as if carved from black ice rather than snow, wielding frost quarterstaves and belching gouts of blinding cold. 

They are also hungry.  If one thing sets winter hags apart, it’s that their appetites are barely held in check.  Even their own troops have as much to fear from them as their enemies.  Had Hansel and Gretel been captured by one of these creatures, it's doubtful either one would have lasted long enough to see Hansel fattened…

The party travels to an isolated wizard’s tower, only to discover the man is long gone, replaced by a simulacrum.  Now for once they need to fight their way out of a mage’s sanctum, rather than into it—but the layout has suddenly utterly changed, the house’s guardians have turned against them, and the winter hag coven responsible for it all is hunting them…

The drow scouts were delighted with the arctic at first—the sun never rose, and in a winter hag they found an ally whose jet skin and magic and ruthlessness seemed to match their own.  But now they realize to their horror that they are trapped as the vassals of a creature who may also regard them as meat for her larder.  Worse yet, they have come to understand that six months of daylight is fast approaching.  The desperate drow will fight adventurers at the winter hag’s command, but can be easily coerced into turning on her…but only if the sellswords seem strong enough to win.

An army of humanoids digs through the permafrost, unearthing frozen megaloceros carcasses, mammoth bones, stone obelisks, and a large something else that defies description.  A winter hag and her yuki-onna aide oversee the work…which would be going faster, if the hag didn't keep eating the foremen.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 279

It’s a radio show!  Music is involved—much of it new, all of it good.  Check it out, won’t you?  I won’t be on air next week (Easter), so get your fix now.

(If the feed skips, Save As an mp3 and enjoy in iTunes.  Link good till Friday, 4/18, at midnight.)

Sea Hag

Sea Week continues here on The Daily Bestiary!  Somehow, I’d gotten it into my head that sea hags were the heavies of the terrestrial hag family, but I was dead wrong on that—at CR 4, they’re actually quite weak.  Even the brutish annis hag has more spell-like abilities.  Aside from their evil eye abaility, sea hags are mostly just ugly.  Really, really ugly.

Still, Grendel’s mother didn’t have spell-like abilities, and she took out a decent number of Danes, so there’s no reason your sea hags can’t scare the bejeezus out of a low-level party.  And if you want your very own Ursula (yes, I went there), levels in any of the spellcasting classes will certainly do the trick to boost your hag’s encounter level.

That evil eye attack can be a doozy though.  The hag only gets it three times per day and it takes a series of failed saves to make it stick…but still: direct gaze + possible death = bad news for characters with low Will and Fortitude saves.  I can imagine a sea hag husbanding her gaze attacks very carefully, carefully plotting to catch her prey alone and by surprise, leaving comatose, dying victims in her wake.  She’s probably not going to waste it on the average fisherman who crosses her path—she has claw attacks for that—but if she has a vendetta against a particular family or wants to torment a beautiful woman by killing all the men who find her attractive, the evil eye is definitely the way to go.

Plus, even players who feel confident in their characters’ chances against a single sea hag should still beware them in groups of three.  A coven of three sea hags is just as powerful as any other coven, and the ability to cast baleful polymorph, bestow curse, or forcecage should terrify most 4th-level PCs.  When you’re in a water-based adventure without access to water breathing, one well-placed forcecage or a few rounds spent polymorphed into a mouse will have you rolling up a new character pronto.

Kaitie O’Tyr is a foundling who grew into a great beauty.  Actually a sea hag’s changeling, she has so far resisted the strange voice she has heard calling her to the sea.  In response, her sea hag mother has upped her efforts, vowing to slay all the young men in Kaitie’s isolated parish.  She hopes to drive the despairing girl to embrace the sea and her destiny as a hag…or drive her mad trying.

The sea hag Rozmerta is enamored by jellyfishes—she marvels that something so beautiful can be such a casual killing machine.  She cultivates jellyfish swarms near her grotto (use the Young creature template) and has begun the study of mundane and magical venoms and poisons.  She wants to eventually become as beautiful and deadly as a jellyfish herself…though in all likelihood her crude research is far more likely to turn her into an ooze or gibbering mouther.

The Sisters of Emerald Night are a sea hag coven nestled in the stews of the canal city of Martine.  Agunda and Permella are haruspices and seers, selling their services to the desperate in exchange for wealth and servitude.  They use the many spell powers of their coven to uncover answers when their usual divinations fall flat.  But Gillyblood, their youngest sister, has little interest such fortune telling.  Recently she has been skipping her sisters’ rites in order to murder lone gondoliers and trysting couples in the night, devouring them with shark-like hunger.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 243

Yet again we visit Martine!  I like that place.

Also, this takes us back a ways, but I once again want to give props to Rob McCreary’s take on hags in Classic Horrors Revisited—really good stuff.

I’m sure there have been awesome hag encounters in the current Reign of Winter Adventure Path, too, buuuuuuuuuuutttt…YES I’M STILL BEHIND.  I JUST GOT AN EMAIL THAT ISSUE #72 IS BEING MAILED TO ME AND I’M STILL ON #68.  I AM DROWNING IN PATHFINDER BOOKS AND I GOT ZERO PAGES READ DURING MY VACATION BECAUSE STUFF AND PEOPLE AND THINGS.  AUGHHHH.

Man, I need a sick day.  Someone with the summer flu please cough on me so I can stay home and read.

Night Hag

There was a bone with 28 marks on it that was considered Man’s first attempt at a calendar.  Until a woman said, “What man needs to mark 28 days?”

For years, scholars have assumed the complicated hairstyles worn by vestal virgins and other Classical women were wigs.  A Baltimore hair stylist just proved the looks could be achieved with a needle and thread.

And let’s not forget Cain and Abel—just where did their wives come from anyway?

For every system Man constructs, there is a woman outside of it. 

Archon vs. demon, agathion vs. daemon, azata vs. devil, genies holding the elements in balance…and then there are the night hags.

And if hags represent a fear of the feminine other, night hags are that fear engorged with fears of nightmares, the dark, and the fate of souls.

Night hags ride the backs of dreaming creatures, sapping their vitality and strength.  Night hags haunt the Ethereal Plane like foul hunched shepherdesses, harvesting souls for sale.  If there is a deal to be brokered or a market to be exploited in the multiverse, a night hag will be there.

Every warrior has to sleep.  Every room can’t be warded against ethereal creatures.  After you die, your soul may not be your own.  Everyone sometimes lets his or her guard down…and that’s when a night hag strikes.

Young men in the village keep dying in their sleep after debilitating nightmares and exhaustion.  All made the mistake of paying attention to the same girl, a changeling who has no idea that her night hag mother watches her from beyond the Veil of Mist.

An animate dream flees a night hag’s service and takes the shape of a noted adventurer.  Soon the adventurer finds herself the subject of rumor and whisper as this monstrous version of her invades both the dreams and real lives of her neighbors and friends.  Meanwhile, the night hag begins riding the adventurer in a dream haunting, trying to piece together why the dream should have taken this particular woman’s shape.

When an adventurer falls in battle and loses his soul to a night hag, his friends vow to rescue him.  Determined to avoid her pursuers and get the highest price, the night hag eschews the Hag Market and the Dis Exchange in favor of a new bazaar run by asuras, where moon-beasts and caulborn rub shoulders with nues and half-constructs (see the Advanced Race Guide).  It is soon clear to both the night hag and the adventurers that they are in over their heads, and that new players with strange motives have entered the soul racket.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 215

Green Hag

Of all the hags, green hags offer the most variety in terms of plots.  There are many reasons for this: They live closer to their victims and intrude in their affairs.  They are more likely to hide their identities and take human lovers.  They are more likely to spawn changeling (Pathfinder Adventure Path 43) offspring or create manikins such as leshys or soulbound dolls.  They often team up with ogre or giant thralls.  And they are the most likely to form covens.

For players new to fantasy, the discovery that hags gain more power when they form a coven is novel in and of itself.  But if your players have fought hags before—or if they’re big folklore buffs—feel free to explore the coven aspect further.  You might play up the maiden/mother/crone roles (see the annis hag entry for an idea in this vein), explore vile (from Monte Cook’s 3.0 Book of Vile Darkness) or sin magic (from the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path), or invite other species to join the trio.  As long as at least one hag is present, nagas, powerful fey, select oni, and witches of any race may have the necessary malevolence and chthonic female energy needed to complete the circle.

Raven is said to have once plucked the sun out of the sky.  Two green hags and a tengu witch emulate the act, plucking out the eyes of a lurker in light in order to gain more power over light and darkness.

When a changeling refuses the dark call of her mother, the green hag strikes back—in court, suing for custody.  She uses mimicry and disguise self at first, but even if exposed will pursue her practically airtight case in full view of the horrified town.

A green hag has been a thorn in the side of adventuring friends since before they slew their first goblin.  Now powerful enough to retaliate, they find their own community stands in their way.  The green hag is part of a coven that has offered dark aid to the surrounding countryside for generations, trading spells like control weather, speak with dead, commune, and even reincarnate for silence, loyalty, and protection.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 167

Hey, new reddit folk!  Thanks for sticking around. 

Hat tip to deathkraiser for suggesting I link to the SRD.

As mentioned before, Classic Horrors Revisited is worth a look if you want to customize your green hag covens a bit more.

Annis Hag

Most hags are schemers and plot-weavers.  Annis hags are not.  They spread terror through abject cruelty, gleeful appetites, and sheer physical power.

A hag known only as the Slicer lives in the moors of Leech Hollow.  Once a season, she skins a man and leaves him in the village green of one of the nearby hamlets.  She is known for wearing the skin of a manticore she killed with her bare hands, and she wears his iron teeth to complement her own in a set of braces that give her a second bite attack.

A hag coven needs a new maiden.  The annis hag crone, Tessa Flint-Tooth, cannot abide the thought of another annis hag joining her company.  Nor does she want Jenniver, the green hag mother, to gain a fellow green hag for an ally.  They settle on a human, the future duchess of Kenmore, who secretly dabbles in witchcraft—and who is still a month away from her wedding day.

Though hags venerate both dark goddesses and witch patrons, they also have a progenitor mother: the original annis hag, Black Annis.  Though not divine—at least, she does not answer prayers or grant spells—she is presumed alive and hale, still clad in the skins of all the children she has devoured over the years.  She likely lives on either the Ethereal Plane or some demiplane (she almost certainly knows create greater demiplane (Ultimate Magic 213–214)).  In terms of power, she is at least as strong as the famed Baba Yaga and has demonstrated both the aforementioned sorcerous abilities as well as witch powers from the Strength (Advanced Player’s Guide 70) and Vengeance (Ultimate Magic 83) themes.  Approach with caution.

—Pathfinder Bonus Bestiary 11 & Bestiary 3 16

My middle school had a fair number of the Time Life Books’ Enchanted World series.  I can’t recall which title had the description and image of Black Annis, but they were chilling.

In Classic Horrors Revisited, Rob McCreary has an excellent chapter on hags; of particular interest is how annis hags’ covens and powers differ from their sisters.  He also deserves special props for nailing exactly why hags exist in the first place: men and women’s mutual fear of women outside the social order—by age, by accident, and by choice in particular.