Nightmare ladies

Will fill out dark and stats later.

The Moaning Lady

Not all the gray sisters are sharp, cutter. There's at least a few who're three jink short of the loony bin. Take the Moaning Lady, for instance.

No one knows who she is or how she got to be the Moaning Lady. All anyone knows is that if you see her, you best be running the other way. She looks just like any other night-hag--horrible, twisted skin, claws, teeth, wretched soiled clothes--except she's always moaning and weeping, wandering the Wastes like some Bleaker in desperate need for a sharp shot of bub.

Apparently, the dark on this barmy is that she'll steal other women's identities and try to live their lives for so long as she can. And just altering her shape and knocking out the poor victim ain't good enough--she has to skin her body and make herself a whole new woman-suit.

She's real good at it, too--apparently once she's made one of these things, she looks identical to the real person, sounds just like 'em, even smells like 'em--and she just completely gets lost in the role, you know? Until eventually, the poor berks who she's fooling figures out what's up, and then she goes back to being the Moaning Lady again--after she finishes eating the berks, that is.

Funny thing is, she doesn't do this out of spite or some desire to gather darks. She just hates being a hag. She always picks beautiful women who are richly loved, and just feeds off of all that love--like some sort of poor wretched vampire who needs to be fussed over and adored all day, y'know? She especially prefers women who are engaged to be married--Ha! What a surprise on the wedding night, eh?

Actually, let me throw this out right here and now:

I don't know the makeup of the Gray Wastes very well. I'm pretty good with game-mechanics, but have been known to make screw-ups. I'm also not very good with abiding by core.

With those three things in mind, if anyone wants to, feel free to rewrite the entries I'm supplying or the ideas I'm putting out here--mechanics-wise, flavor-wise, whatever--so it fits better in the campaign. Both under Hordlings and Gray Sisters.

Otherwise, I'll try and get these up to be appropriate for inclusion/etcetera.

@ The Great Hippo
Look´s like The Great Hippo has decided to write Greae story instead of me. (Whee, less job for me.)

Just litle sugestion about Greae/Grey Covey: Dont forget interchangable tooth, and in mythology Greae were also worsiped as minor sea gods: so giving them some weather control, water control, imunity to Styx. would be nice.

More of this later, boss is calling...

Merida the Senseless

Merida began her existance as a normal Night Hag, or as normal as one of the foul creatures can be. During an extended stay on Pandemonium she deafened herself to be rid of the annoyance of the wailing, and was amazed at how much her other senses improved to compensate for the loss. Over the course of the next several decades she carefully and permanantly destroyed her own eyes, ears, and nose, and covered her entire frame in a thick layer of callouses and scars that deaden all sensation of touch. The only thing she has left is taste, but she has refined it to something of legend.

Merida resembles other Night Hags for the most part, but her eyes, ears, and nose have been grown over by thick folds of skin and cartilage. The impressive levels of scarring she has subjected herself to have rendered her entire body hairless and without nails, and with skin the texture of dried tar. She dresses mostly in rags and things she finds, but she is rarely seen outside her hut anyway.

Through nothing more than taste, Merida seems to be able to determine the true nature of nearly anything, be it a food, a person, a city, a magical item, a spell, or anything else that has a taste. For simple tasks, like identifying a potion or detecting poison, Merida only charges a modest fee. However, for more daunting tasks, like determining the activation word of a powerful staff or finding out who killed the king from nothing more than the murder weapon, she requires that the customer pay her with something she has never tasted before, as well as a hefty fee. No matter what the transaction, she also demands a quick taste of the customer. No one is particularly sure why she demands this, although anyone who double-crosses Merida usually comes to a quick, decisive end soon after.

Merida is currently dwelling in a sparse hut on Bytopia. Hags rarely settle in such peaceful and, well, nice locations, but her reasoning seems to be no deeper than believing that one particular local wine is the best in the Multiverse. Her presence is tolerated by the locals of the closest settlement only because she seems relatively harmless, and the usefulness of her talent is undeniable.

The dark of things is, Merida can taste the True Name of an object. However, the hag would sooner die than reveal what she truly knows and only reveals details that she can infer from the name. By eating a small piece of the creature, object, or place that is requested of her, she can determine its True Name unerringly, as long as what is presented to her is relatively fresh. With things that cannot be eaten, or that the owner does not want to rip pieces off of, simply licking it a few times is enough to determine the name, although sometimes a full Name cannot be determined this way. She never forgets an object's Name, and after a few hundred years is starting to gather a staggering number.

Yeah, you're right. I was stuck halfway between trying to figure out statistics and making a good story. I'm changing it

Heya! Welcome to the Planes!

That sounds like an excellent idea. I was considering mentioning something about Baba Yaga and her Chicken legged hut, but decided I didn't have the resources or knowledge to do it.

I say go for it

Excellent! I'll start putting it together tonight.

Oh my... First, let me apologize for my tardiness in completing this project; it's just been an intensely busy week Anyway, it's finished now (at least as far as my input is concerned; I hereby welcome any changes or additions that the collective agrees upon ).

Iggwilv on the Waste
In recent years – “recent,” of course, in the reckoning of such beings as are effectively immortal – the Witch Queen of Oerth, known to most who know such things by the name Iggwilv, has established a modest manse on the banks of the river Styx in Niflheim, where she retains four arcanaloth apprentices. To the uninitiated, this state of affairs may appear well-nigh incomprehensible; a quartet of the Lower Planes’ foremost manipulators willingly calling Iggwilv, infamous for binding powerful fiends – Graz’zt himself was once her coerced consort – their schoolmarm? But indeed, it is her history with the Dark Prince that has brought about this odd alliance. The circuitous windings of that history unravel as follows…

At the outset of a great war upon the world where she then made her home, Iggwilv attempted to bind Graz’zt to her will. For the second time, no less! Graz’zt, however, had well learned the lesson of his previous subjugation, and not only resisted his former mistress’s compulsion, but managed to make her his prisoner in the Abyss. Hence, she vanishes from the record for a time, before reestablishing herself on the Gray Waste. How did she effect her release? It is unlikely that her captor was struck by a sudden pang of mercy for his one-time lover. No, the answer takes us back to the very earliest mention of the woman who would be Mother of Witches – and the “Little Grandmother” who nurtured the seeds of darkness and power that would blossom within her.

Baba Yaga – paragon of Hags, cannibal witch, itinerant sower of nightmares across countless Prime worlds – long ago took a young girl named Natasha under her wing. That girl, who would be called Natasha the Dark, Tasha, and finally Iggwilv, in successive chapters of her centuries-spanning career, was her mentor’s constant companion as she made her way from plane to plane via the magic of her bird-legged hut. Settling down like a great carrion bird, seemingly always in the bleak heaths, dusk-lit forests, and hungry swamps that resonate with the environs of the Gray Waste itself, this mobile home served not only as a locus for the corrupting influence of this wicked pair, but as a veritable revolving-door for visiting Hags, Yugoloth associates and servants, and other ambassadors from Hades.

Even after striking out to build her own legend, Iggwilv, knowingly or not, continued to receive Baba Yaga’s maternal attention. And so, when Graz’zt took the overweening Witch as his prisoner, little did he realize he was calling down upon himself the full savagery of a protective mother. The Hag, utilizing the significant powers of planar transport at her disposal, mounted a small but concentrated assault within Azzagrat itself, having called in favors and debts owed her by various minor Yugoloth lords, as well as her lesser sisters – or so the chant goes; neither the ‘loths nor the Hags are wont to brag of their successes, though the strike bore the characteristic savage efficiency of ‘loth tacticians. So, Iggwilv found herself back in the home of her youth, face to face with the leering monster she had called “mother.” But family reunions are rarely free of contention, and this is hardly less the case among fiends. For Baba Yaga’s aid, when she deigns to grant it, never comes without a price, and she had a task for her daughter.

The Hags and the ‘loths have long had a mutually lucrative relationship thanks to the Blood War. The ‘loths procure soul-larvae for both sides, ensuring that the war-machine is never short of fuel, and the Hags are recognized as premier cultivators of those oh-so-useful spawn of the Waste. And the ‘loths gladly host some of the War’s most intense fighting on the first layer of their home plane – all the better to ensure the perpetual deadlock they desire – but neither they nor the Hags want to see their pet bloodbath encroach further upon their own territory.

Thus, Baba Yaga has appointed her now-indebted dark daughter as a bulwark against incursions into Niflheim from the layer above, or anywhere else for that matter; the threat posed by a wizardess who once made Graz’zt her plaything will certainly have that effect on potential visitors. The Yugoloth hierarchy eagerly approved of this measure, and promptly supplied four arcanaloth “assistants” as a show of goodwill (which, for fiends, must be understood to indicate nothing less than a profound degree of anxiety).

For her part, Iggwilv is less than pleased with her current lot. The slight degree of vigilance required of her post, though mostly delegated to her four apprentices, is an intolerable imposition upon her own machinations. She bides her time for now, surreptitiously seeking to gain ascendance over her dear mother, and awaiting the inevitable moment when the tables of fortune are turned, and the old Hag is the one in need of a boon…

Partially based upon: Dragon #83, 225; Dungeon #149