[5e] Ravenloft-useful monsters

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[5e] Ravenloft-useful monsters

Post by alhoon »

PART 1: Hags
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From the Monster Manual, I kid you not, this is how hags are said to propagate:
They steal infants, eat them and a week later they give birth to a girl that looks human till it reaches 13 years. Sometimes the hags raise their daughters, sometimes they return them to the grieving parents to watch them turn to horrors.
:shock:

Aside of the morbidity of this info, it presents a few logistical problems as of... a hag with can create like a dozen hags in a year if she bothers to do so with little trouble. Invisibility of the hag, combined with serfs that can't leave a place = hags for the win.
And then... how the child grows up? If it's a more-or-less normal child it would go mad by the sudden transition to evil fey hag. If it's a weird girl like horror movie spooky little girls wouldn't SOMEONE notice?
And this opens ANOTHER can of worms.
If there's a hag in the vicinity for some time, people would have caught on. So when a girl is "lost" for a week and then is found... chances are the inquisition would kill the hagspawn\unlucky girl.


To surmise... a hag can easily make a dozen hags per year which would probably not survive to adulthood and would just cost the lives of innocent girls.

Part 2: Medusas
This, I like best so far. Totally going to use it.
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So, in D&D next, we're done with medusas being a specific race. According to D&D next, not Ravenloft, but D&D next, people go to all kinds of evil trouble to get beauty... and pay a hefty price.
Some strike bargains with evil powers (fiends, liches, evil gods etc). They gain immortality, beauty, youth and the adoration of all who behold them. Quite realistically someone that's doing all kinds of bad stuff to get that, would abuse that power and live in luxury and comfort.
For a time.
And then the curse strikes and they turn to Medusas, and the people that adored them and bowed to their excellence turn to stone. So, their luxurious abodes fall to disrepair and eventually become ruins. The Medusas are still pretty in a way, but if they look at their reflection they may well turn to stone themselves.

I found that origin the best origin for Medusae, including the original myth.
Last edited by alhoon on Fri Dec 04, 2015 1:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: [5e] Hags and how they're made

Post by Dion of the Fraternity »

I don't see a problem with that at all. :)
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Re: [5e] Hags and how they're made

Post by alhoon »

I don't see a problem either, aside from the fact that it's too ... dark for me to go that way, with brutally explicit infanticide. It will be some time till I get out of the shellshock and can use hags without thinking "outside of my game, this one was born from a consumed kid".

I just put it there cause it's interesting and makes the Inquisition of Tepest seem more brutal, evil and necessary. They are now tasked with killing very young girls.
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Re: [5e] Hags and how they're made

Post by Aslan »

I really like this approach to Hags. That said, I think I would have to limit the number of Hags being able to be reproduced. The whole "infinite" number could simply be a superstitious myth that villagers tell and has propgated so fully that most consider it truth (ergo the Tempest witch hunts)
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Re: [5e] Hags and how they're made

Post by alhoon »

Well, the haggling has to SURVIVE for 13 years. That's not easy since the child would have to be found 1 week later. At this point, you're better off killing the poor creature. Sure a few desperate families will try to hide what happened and then some of them would try to hide the weird stuff of their daughters.
But I would say in Tepest, 1/100 hagglings would survive to adulthood. My main problem is... that for each haggling, 1-2 innocent weird kids would die. Hence you'd have like 20-30 children executed per year by the inquisition or something. That's a TON of dead kids in a place with a few thousand people. Changes the demographics.

And along with 30 dead kids/year... you have a paramilitary religious force that actually executes little girls at such a rate. I apply PChecks to NPCs to a small degree. 15-20 guys that have a job of killing little kids are CERTAINLY getting curses after 10+ such executions.

And hags being hags (not just the darklord hags, but all hags) you could have things like "I stole six of your kids, and I turned one. Could you kill them all, knowing that you'd kill 5 innocent ones, just to find the one that's tainted? MWAHAHAHA!"

All in all: It's not unattainable. It's just too dark for my tastes.
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Re: [5e] Hags and how they're made

Post by Aslan »

I can certainly see your point here, but the girls look human until 13 so survival wouldn't be that tough if the hags return them unannounced and the grief stricken parents, too happy to think about it, take the child back in without telling anyone.

Now as you pointed out, the cost of the human population is where things really get interesting. Because if the people of Tempest are set on eradicating the hags then they are going to be cutting off their own leg to save the rest of the body if they aren't careful.
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Re: [5e] Hags and how they're made

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Aslan wrote:I can certainly see your point here, but the girls look human until 13 so survival wouldn't be that tough if the hags return them unannounced and the grief stricken parents, too happy to think about it, take the child back in without telling anyone.
That would be true for the first years of a hag's presence. After people catch on, any infant that's lost from her crib and then found a week later would be too suspicious. Of course, the parents knowing that could hide the fact. And that's when the rough guys of the inquisition get in the equation, since they couldn't trust that parents would surrender the hagspawn.
"Your neighbor's girl has red hair and she's looking the other kids with a funny look. Has she been lost as kid?" kind of thing.

As I said, all viable, story material and all... but too dark for my tastes. I play the game to have fun.

Which reminds me... didn't S bought a girl from Tepest to give to Tristessa in Keening for passage? Well, now we have a better theory as for why someone sold his daughter to that weird stranger; better sell the maybe hagspawn, than have to deal with the inquisition burning her in front of them. Or the kid growing up and one day tearing the whole family to shreds with its claws.


ANOTHER THING ABOUT HAGS:
Night hags are the ONLY creatures I saw that cause permanent energy drain. Not that "hit points return after a long rest" kid-gloves stuff. Nooope. They are lost till greater restoration.
And the night hags put souls of evil people in their sacks. Sacks that are made from humanoids they sacrificed and used the skin to make the sack.
God, that would be great in Ravenloft. Having that night hag Azalin brought, in the Requiem helping with the daggers. Or bags. A bag takes a week. So, that hag could make like 8 bags and go suck the soul out of 8 baddies\day.
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