Monster of the Month - Hags
Now I know what you are thinking, oh great here comes the gingerbread candy house or the chicken legged dwelling. But this isn't going to be your typical dive into the realms of Hags. Honestly I debated this month what to do which challenged myself on what I wanted these Monster of the Month posts to be. I don't want to do them on just the "boring" monsters or those that lose their punch at higher levels. I want my focus with these to be about giving monsters the TLC they deserve to make them more approachable, more playable, fresher and interesting.
In that regard Hags are the perfect fit. The social and coven structure around Hags is so embedded into them as a monster that alot of my friends find them difficult to run, they feel intimidated to use one and instead fall back to a simple driven troll. Now the complexity can be rather daunting even for someone like myself who loves wheels in wheels in wheels in my games. So this month we are tackling a monster that doesn't need TLC in the terms of some new paint and a fresh take, but instead I'll be adding some groundwork to making these monsters some truly loved and well used foundations at your table. After all of my blabbing lets get started in the tried and true Monster of the Month way - what Hags exist in the 5e standard world?
And not to name drop but the lovely Wormriddle the Night Hag from Dungeon of the Mad Mage and Baba Lysaga because I find her to fall in the same vein.
Its not a bad list, not too overwhelming but has some nice diversity in it. Now as ya'll know about my information consuming self I always have suggestions so there is a great 'Lore that you should know' in the Dragon Talk podcast that I suggest you give a listen to if you have time. Other fun things to go over are from Talking20, Dael Kingsmill, Web DM, Dungeoncast, The Monsters Know, Sly Flourish, Eric Edwards, Crash Course, and American Folklore. Cause remember we can pull in so much stuff, not just strictly RP hot takes, when we tackle our games to help shape how we interpret and RP certain monsters.
Since this is a different flavor of MotM post I'm going to take a little longer then normal to discuss the existing Hags we have. They each have a nice distinctive flavoring that I think helps hightlight what RP with them would look like but the real dynamic comes in building a coven of them. Because ya'll personalities collide would be an understatement really. Now this should go without saying but the below is the way I see the Hags of 5e and how I have gone about RPing and building them in my lifetime as a DM, they aren't representative of everything and I in fact suggest finding a way to approach it that you are most comfortable with. That little PSA out of the way lets see about our first hag.
Spooky Night Hag. Once a Fey now a Fiend these Hags bring an interesting RP concept to the table. They are all about corruption and twisting of intentions. They don't want to see someone brought low in the same sense as a Green Hag does, they instead want to see good lose. A true love turned to jealous rage or a devoted follower turned from their god. They'd much rather deal with you while you are asleep and they have the power. To them subtly shifting a persons moral stance and alignment without them even realizing it is their life's work. Jumping into the dreams of their victims and making their mind the tool by which they are lead to moral corruption with only themselves to blame. With so much time spent in Hades having their very being corrupted and twisted themselves and this should be evident in their dwellings. You want it to be dark, scary, twisted holy symbols, depictions of depravity or tools of sin, etc. Night Hags are all about being the subtle influence that turns someone to evil things to claim their soul, they are sneaky and indirect. They are both fiend and fey and should reflect the worse characteristics in both.
Jealous Sea Hag. To see a Sea Hag is to see a terrifying monster that chills your very soul. They have been cursed to be the most hideous thing anyone has laid eyes upon. Even with their ability to change their appearance the most they can managed is an upgrade to a form that appears unwell, sickened, and haggard. Because of their curse they hate anything beautiful and go into a jealous fit of rage and anger. Beauty must be destroyed immediately and pretty things made ugly. If the object of their rage is an object that inspires courage, hope, or love she wants to make this twisted enough to illicit the opposite emotions till the original is forgotten. Her home reflects her with its polluted, murky, twisted underwater lair with all the dead ugly things collected all around her. Sea Hags also often have followings of Merrow and other aquatic monsters who revere her power. These followers are often used on attacks on the pretty coastal settlements nearby.
Hateful Green Hag. These are your behind the strings puppet masters. They have the best poker faces in the game as they just have so many layers of deception that often what you think is their true intention or the truth is just another lie. Green Hags love mind games and so they use mimicry, illusions and trickery to either ensnare someone or scare away unwanted guests. You will never find a more petty monster then a Hag and the Green Hag brings her A Game for this. No greater joy can be brought to a Green Hag then seeing someone lose hope, to have their life destroyed, and to be brought low. The bigger the scale of that the greater the thrill and happiness she receives. Her home reflects how she appears to others - death, decay, dying, creepy, isolating, and disorientating.
Towering Annis Hag. This Hag is a power house and all about control. They are physically imposing enough to be able to rule groups of ogres, trolls etc through brute strength, abuse and twisting the creatures superstitions. Which they often do and take great joy in it. While she could easy physically overpower most creatures for her prey she instead focuses on children as her victims. Seeing children as the weakest creature they delight in corrupting them as early as possible. Giving them a gift that lets the Hag influence them ever more towards the clif's edge of evil before snatching them away to gobble up right as they crest it. All an Annis Hag wants to do is bring ruin and misery to the world, using malevolence to shape all around her including herself. This is reflected where they live through the hard to reach barren mountain lairs and deep caves in desolate hills they reside in. What they keep should be as big and imposing as they are - bones of monsters, skeletons of victims, decaying things, dark magic components, and the deadly. To show the distance of their reach they also like to leave displays close to the nearest settlements to scare and insight paranoia in the local populace as another way of domineering their lives.
Frozen Bhuer Hag. The embodiment of cold and frozen visages of their chosen landscapes. They look like a frozen corpse taken in a blizzard after starvation, making them this gaunt and terrifying creature. Bhuer Hags are brutal in battle, feasting on the victims she takes down as if starving which freezes their companions in terror. She delights in driving all she can to selfish acts blamed on the deadly cold and uses her ability to manipulate ice and weather to create the circumstances to encourage it. Life isn't a struggle enough and must be added to with the coldest of calculations to insight despair, aggression, paranoia, and friend vs friend. Her home might be surrounded by the cruelest, coldest, and most deadly weather and terrain possible but the lair itself may horde an over abundance of all the things to make life in winter bearable. Horded and unused stacked of furs, molding mounds of food, partially eaten game left to rot. The inside of her lair someone even colder then the temperature outside and dropping as you approach the icy heart of the lair.
Now we have some differences in a little bit more detail between the Hags. We can see where they are separate creatures from each other and where their goals might align. All Hags want power. They all want to be a Grandmother in the hierarchy of Hags. They love gossip and rumors and secrets. They want to make deals that benefit only themselves and eventually destroy the life of the one who asked for it. Hags are stronger together and able to do bigger and better things, something they are all aware of even if they loathe it. They do team up for common goals but for their own selfish needs. As such if their needs change they can be quick to turn on each other. Hags also have weird magic that only they can access and the more of them they are the weirder things they can do with this magic. Mechanically they can grab spells from any list or class and the description of those spells should match the twisting nature of the Hag who is casting it.
To kind of show rather then just tell I'm going to give a few examples of Hag Covens, their kind of RP element notes. This by no means covers all of the combinations you can do to create a Hag Coven. Especially when you factor in that a powerful magic caster that is evil enough can actually become a member of the coven if they are seen to have enough power to be beneficial to their end goal. Which honestly is a whole can of worms that we can get into later. (Leave a comment down below if you'd like to see a post going over options for that)
By Sea and Tree at Night
Hags: Sea Hag (Granny Ethel), Night Hag (Gretchen Nightcrawler), Green Hag (Hilda Blacktooth)
Granny Ethel is a wretched creature to behold, part of her form sags as if melted by something gruesome as the long seaweed hair of hers twists around her gnarled old form. She has called together a coven for a single reason to destroy the Golden city of Illrosa. That shiny, pretty gem sitting so close to her shores whose pretty lights and laughter hurt her so. They mock her each day that they are allowed to live but she must move slow and tricky like. Granny must keep her temper in check, for now. So she called upon favors owed by Gretchen Nightcrawler, a slinking creature with chipped hours exposed by a head covered only in wisps of white hair whose cruelty suits the needs, and Hilda Blacktooth whose heart is as black and rotted as the single tooth she has left.
Being the eldest and most powerful Hag, Granny Ethel will try to domineer the others. Most likely through verbal abuse and leveraging the fact that they owe her a debt. Sea Hags are as conniving as some of the other Hags but she isn't dull to knowing tricks when she sees them. There will be extreme boughts of rage in the lair as progress goes slower then wanted from Granny leading to many broken things. Gretchen Nightcrawler would act submissive to Granny while it suited her, taking her time moving through the power of the city to corrupt them. The fits of rage Gretchen would try to use to her advantage in an attempt to gain status. It is likely that the two would squabble as Gretchen's progress of corruption takes longer then Granny would like. Intially fully on board to bring the greatest shinning example of 'modern integrity' low Hilda Blacktooth will chafe the quickest under Granny's rule not liking being the one the orders are given to. In fact she may present a point of weakness in the coven if the players can get to her and turn her to their side, especially if they make a deal with her putting her back into control.
Green Mountains Cold
Hags: Green Hag (Rotten Rosey), Annis Hag (Agatha Thorngrasp), Bheur Hag (Polly Heartswallow)
Rotten Rosey looks like she sounds, a rotten mess of matter with long matted hair. She isn't strong enough yet to be called Auntie or Grandmother but she will be. In fact she's recruited herself a coven of new Haglings as her first step. Agatha Thorngraps lost an arm to some villagers before she even knew she was a Hag but when her 13th birthday came she swelled with the power into a mountain. Just like that mountain she has pitfalls and rocks along her skin as she hunches over from the new strange weight of the body. Polly Heartswallow is what you might expect the bully from your class to look like if left to starve on a mountain side in winter. Sunken in eyes, emaciated flesh and bones sticking at weird angles calls to mind a body of a corpse but a grotesque one that has been stretched and flayed.
Agatha Thorngrasp hasn't been fully realized into her powers for long but her single massive arm is the size of a large tree. What she severely lacks in brains or magic she makes up for in strength which is why Rosey chose her first. Though Agatha might not be as dumb as she appears she seems happy enough to watch and absorb for now. Around for longer the Agatha, Polly Hearswallow misses the cold mountains but has been promised she can make this swamp and the villages surrounding it an icy one. First though she has to learn her lessons and follow orders. Something she isn't the best at as random blizzards have started making adventurers seek the answer to the strange weather. Rotten Rosey while angry at each slip up of Polly's sees it as an opportunity to trick in some unwitting guests and make deals to further her power.
Cold Night at Sea
Hags: Bheur Hag (Dread Mathilda), Night Hag (Ursula Mindstalker), Sea Hag (May Waterwailer)
A cold has been spreading through the islands heading to the main land, a kind of cold that kills all in its wake. They say it drives men mad or else turns them wild. The sea is no longer safe for travel of any kind though some of the bigger trading companies roll the dice on it anyways instead of miss the pay. Whispers tell of a great and powerful spell causing all the world to freeze over. Dread Mathilda smiles when she hears this, her smile full of gaps so that the air wheezes through as she chuckles. She has been waiting a long time for this. A chance to turn the world white. Finally she found them the ones who could help her do it. Ursula Mindstalker whose current form resembles that of a many limbed nightmare which ironically is less scary then her true form. May Waterwailer whose cries that echo across the water come from the congealed fleshy mass of what use to be a head but now looks more like a sea creature.
Dread Mathilda has worked out a way to use May Waterwailer's sea magic to enhance and exponentially increase her ice storms. They had been working together for awhile when Ursula's audition caught their eyes as it seems the Hag has found a way to project the ice magic through into a victims mind to freeze them from the inside out. A whole knew definition of cold hearted, for as the victim becomes numb inside so do their morals drop. For now the Hag Coven is reveling in the new power boost they've all gotten with each other and high on the excitement caused by it. Its an explosive storm of a situation but it also makes it very combustible and precarious while its still new.
I hope the above examples three help give you a better idea of what RP with a Hag would look like in a group setting. They are each prideful, seeking, magical monsters with their own motivations and agendas. It would benefit you as DM to have those listed out with the monsters stats for the time that will come along when one of your players would like to RP them away from the dark side. (or at the very least RP them onto the players side) It also helps to use the loyalty stat that has often been applied to PC henchmen or pets but for the coven and each other. Should the whole sway the Hag to our thing happen it will make it a ton easier to figure out how easy that would be and to what extent a Hag is will to go for the player group. And it of course can't hurt to know on a scale how hard the Hag will screw them in the end with their deal to help.
With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.