“You investigate the scarecrow’s garments and you see in some places they have been held together with a silver thread…or is it hair? The more you spend touching it and ripping it from its seams, the more convinced you are that it is hair.“
“Fucking hags” my players chorused as I grinned at them.
This isn’t the first time I’ve used hags as a mouthpiece to harry my players with. In fact, I’ve done it so much that they might not know what form of psychological torture is about to befall them but they know that it’s coming. Hags are just so effective at being memorable bad actors.
What makes a villain memorable? They make it personal. They directly cause stress to the characters by forcing them to make unideal choices. A character must leave their lover in a demiplane to keep them safe from a villain. A character flees a battle, leaving their companions behind, because of a threat the villain made. The villain defeated them in battle once (or maybe several times) before and the characters have a vendetta. The memorable villains make themselves known early and go out of their way to interact with the characters. We all have DnD stories that we swap with other players. A lot of those stories are about creative ways that we foiled the villains. Or maybe it’s an intense role-play moment that happened because the villain put too much stress on one aspect of a character. We need villains in order to have an adventure, but I think that hags are an excellent vessel to make the adventure memorable. Hags make it personal. It’s difficult for DMs who are plotting a high-level campaign to make a villain who will challenge their players at the campaign’s end, while not murdering all the characters in early level and keep it personal.
Let’s imagine a coven of night hags who want to summon a tarrasque. They are going to need some pretty choice ingredients for their spell and the adventurers keep stumbling in and foiling their plans. Frustrated, the hags do what they do best. Harass, annoy, and psychologically torture. Remember that you don’t have to stick to the DMG, PHB, or MM until the moment initiative is rolled. Be creative!
- The characters find a doll that has a trapped child’s soul inside. At night, the doll will exclaim the last things the child heard before the hag ate it. Your PCs will remember being kept up all night long listening to “DELICIOUS.”
- The characters follow a stray puppy into an alley where it dissolves into a swarm of ants and climbs under their clothing, biting them. Even if the swarm doesn’t do damage, they will remember the itchy uncomfortable feeling they felt at the table.
- Night hags can hang out in the ethereal plane. One of the coven follows the characters to a battle and waits until the battle is over. She then appears in the material plane, steals some blood that was spilled in the battle, and vanishes. What’s she going to do with that blood? Later, in the hag’s lair that character finds a perfect replica of themselves has been built and the hags have been using it to look through their eyes.
- A beautiful young woman appears at their camp site, upset. Begging the character on watch for help, she gets them slightly away from camp. She drops the illusion and attempts to strangle the character before they can call for help.
- One of your characters dies and the player wants to roll up a new character? The ethereal night hag now has that character’s soul in her soul bag and any attempts the players make to revive their fallen friend are rebuffed.
The hags continue to harass the characters away from ingredients they need. Every time the characters get close, they know they have to brace for interference. The hags will avoid confrontation, preferring their scare tactics.
If your players kill one hag- no problem, you have an entire coven to harass them with. Worried about high level characters having a show down with CR5 creatures and calling it a fair fight? Oh, hey look, they did summon that tarrasque!
Tell me in the comments below about a memorable villain you’ve met in your adventures! What made them memorable?