Hag

Hags are horrible creatures with origins in the Feywild whose love of evil shape their very physical image into a horrible ugliness. All hags have the appearance of old female humanoids, at least in form. Some hags usually have a strong resistance to magic.
Hags resemble withered and emaciated crones, with long ragged hair, spotty skin covered in warts and moles, and long and thin fingers tipped with razor-sharp claws. Their teeth are blackened and their breath is foul. They wear simple clothing that is always worn out and filthy.
Despite their decrepit appearance, they are surprisingly agile and supernaturally strong.
The very personification of evil, hags are extremely selfish and arrogant. They see their magic as a challenge to the gods themselves and view themselves as the world's most cunning creatures, treating everyone else with disdain.
Despite their arrogance, they are not above selling the experience and knowledge they accumulate over their long lives, as long as the customers shows proper deference. Striking a bargain with a hag is always dangerous, since the prices they charge usually include corrupting one's ideals or giving up something held dear, often diminishing the value of the piece of knowledge for sale.
Hags' taste for the macabre show in their decoration and self-grooming preferences. They often adorn their houses and clothing with dead animals and pick on their own wounds to inflict festering infections. They are naturally disgusted by beauty and often disfigured and deformed attractive creatures under the pretence of helping them. Hags take great pleasure in seeing the reactions their gruesome creations evoke in other creatures.
Different types of hags have different abilities, but all share their supernatural strength and some resistance against magic. All hags possess innate magical abilities, while some hags actively study spellcasting. They are all capable of hiding their true appearance, either through illusion magic or by polymorphing into a new shape, and are capable of inflicting horrible curses upon their opponents. Their extremely sharp claws are capable of rending flesh open with a mere touch.
Hags can be most frequently found alone or working in covens if they share a common purpose. The number of hags in a coven is always three, so that disputes between two members can be settled by the third. All hags in a coven are equal in the organisation, although they constantly strive for more personal power. With their combined powers in a coven, hags gain access to additional magical capabilities and can craft scrying devices known as hag eyes.
Although hags usually dislike each other, they maintain a vast and complex social network that spans their entire species. They frequently keep in contact with each other, sharing news and knowledge. Through this vast network, it is conceivable that every hag is aware of all hags in existence.
Hags deal with each other through a complex code of conduct that they all honour, although those practices do not apply to outsiders. They always announce their presence and bring gifts when entering other hags' territories. Promises made to other hags are always kept, as long as they were not made with crossed fingers.
Their typical dwelling locations consisted of bleak and oppressive landscapes, such as dark swamps, dark forests, and stormy seas. Often, the hags' presence turns the vicinity of their dwellings into an aggressive and virulent environment.

Annis Hag

Annis hags lair in mountains or hills. Despite being hunchbacked and hump-shouldered, they are the largest and most physically imposing of their kind, standing eight feet tall.

Tormenting the Weak

Although annis hags can easily tear a grown man apart, they love hunting children, preferring their flesh above all others. They use the flayed skin of such victims to make supple leather, and a hag's lair often shows the signs of this industry.
Annis hags leave tokens of their cruelty at the edges of forests and other areas they claim. In this way, they provoke fear and paranoia in nearby villages and settlements. To an annis hag, nothing is sweeter than turning a vibrant community into a place paralyzed with terror, where folk never venture out at night, strangers are met with suspicion and anger, and parents warn their children to "be good, or the annis will get you."

Child Corrupter

When an annis feels especially cruel, she disguises herself as a kindly-looking elderly woman, approaches a child in a remote place, and gives it an iron token that it can use to confide in her. Over time, "Granny" convinces the child that it's okay to have bad thoughts and do bad deeds-starting with breaking things or wandering outside without permission, then graduating to pushing someone down the stairs or setting a house on fire. Sooner or later, the child's family and community become terrified of the "bad seed" and must face the awful decision of whether the child should be punished or exiled.

Tribe Mother

Much in the way that they befriend children in order to corrupt them, annis hags have a tendency for adopting a group of ogres, trolls, or other loutish creatures, ruling them through brute strength, verbal abuse, and superstition.

Iron Token

An annis hag can pull out one of her iron teeth or nails and spend 1 minute shaping and polishing it into the form of a coin, a ring, or a tiny mirror. Thereafter, any creature that holds this iron token can have a whispered conversation with the hag, provided the creature and the hag are on the same plane of existence and within 10 miles of each other. The holder of the token can hear only the hag's voice, not those of any other creatures or any ambient noise around the hag. Similarly, the hag can hear the holder of the token and not the noise around it.
A hag can have up to three iron tokens active at one time. As an action, she can discern the direction and approximate distance to all of her active tokens. She can instantaneously deactivate any of her tokens at any distance (no action required), whereupon the token retains its current form but loses its magical properties.

Basic Information

Genetics and Reproduction

Hags reproduced by a horrid ritual that involved capturing and devouring a human infant. Within one week, the hag gave birth to a seemingly normal human daughter. The offspring retained her human appearance until her thirteenth birthday, when she suddenly transformed into a hag identical to the one who birthed her. Some hags raised their offspring personally, while others returned the child to their parents and sadistically watched her growth and horrific transformation

Ecology and Habitats

Hags originated in the Feywild and later migrated into the Prime Material plane, with the exception of night hags, who were exiled from the Feywild and relocated to Hades, from where they later spread to all the Lower planes.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Fey
• Humanoid
• Monstrosity

Geographic Distribution

• Great Breantian Forest
• Swamphold
• Wild Woods