Hag

Basic Information

Anatomy

Hags are technically fiends, having no stable Pneuma, but predate the Severing by millennia. They do, however, possess a central, stable core of numena kept stable by Phantasmal Numena. This means, like undead, they require Pneuma to sustain themselves. Without quarry, the destablization of their numena means they will meet an irrevocably grisly end.
As natural shapeshifters, Hags typically appear as a member of whatever society they were created from, but typically horribly aged and bearing all manner of nightmarish deformities.
Despite this, hags breathe, eat, and sleep much as a living organism does.

Genetics and Reproduction

Despite affiliation with femininity, hags technically have no gender, and do not reproduce sexually. They instead make a new hag through a grisly and arcane process which requires killing and ritually preparing a corpse, and then providing a supply of the hag's own numena. Oftentimes, this is a reward for a Hag-Ridden at the end of their life, or a final affront laid upon an enemy, meaning Hags are sometimes mistaken for ghosts.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Hags have a Phantasmal Pneuma, meaning they experience constant hunger for the living.

Civilization and Culture

Culture and Cultural Heritage

Hag culture is disparate and integrated into the society to which they belong. Where the more nascent succubi and incubi are content to be roving predators, Hags prefer permanent settlement and form covens with both other hags and supplicants. This is for both security and to accumulate knowledge.

History

Mortalkind has forgotten the origins of the hags, and their largely oral history leaves much to be desired for specificity.
If they're to be believed, they date back to the age of Wyrms at least, and were created out of "riven flesh" during Mortalkind's period of earliest permanent settlement, where they were keepers of wisdom which would have otherwise perished, and punishers of the wicked, wyrm or mortal alike, and are without hubris. To their mortal hosts, they were to represent equal parts titillation and fear. When the Demiorgos rose, hagkind bowed, and offered wisdom, but like they were with the Wyrms, they were spurned. The Demiorgos fell, and Hagkind remained, doing as they have always done, protecting wisdom that would otherwise be forgotten.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Hags are predators upon the heavened races.

Scientific Name

Mare Erinyes

Origin/Ancestry

Fiend (It's complicated)

Lifespan

100+ Years