Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Ecology of Hags

Hags are a mainstay of fairy tales across the world, not just the Brothers Grimm. As a trope hags have been called sexist for demonizing traditions of village wise women, although others would argue that they are intended to be malicious counterparts of said wise women. In D&D much of this subtlety and symbolism is lost in translation.

Hags in popular culture

I am sure many of us have fond memories of our own grandmothers, seeing them as sources of knowledge, wisdom and love. Plenty of fairy tales featured beloved grandmothers, such as Little Red Riding Hood. The Italian Befana is a distaff counterpart of Santa Claus, who delivers presents to nice children and coal to naughty children. The children's book character Strega Nona ("Grandma Witch") is a kindly old woman who serves as a fairy godmother.

The hag (fairy tales don't distinguish hags, witches and ogres) is the exact opposite of a loving grandmother or fairy godmother: she typically eats or enslaves children she encounters and when she is depicted with family she is often cruel and abusive to them. In the Indian fairy tale Son of Seven Mothers, a hag who seems to be minding her own business is at the mercy of her evil and beautiful daughter (a hag in all but appearance).

Even hags being ugly (at least without disguise) isn't an ironclad rule, as some may be as beautiful as they are evil and in Snow White the beautiful evil queen disguises herself as a kindly old women (taking advantage of our typical sympathy for grandmothers). In The Wife of Bath's Tale, a knight marries a hag only for her to become a beautiful maiden after he consents to marry her. In Goblins in the Castle, parents tell children stories about "Granny Pinchbottom" to make them behave, but the hag herself plays the role of a fairy godmother to the hero.

Baba Yaga is probably the most famous fairy tale hag, and one of the few with an actual name. She appears throughout Russian fairy tales, myths, and songs. She is famous for having iron teeth and claws, living in a hut that walks on huge chicken legs, and flying around in a mortar and pestle while using a broom to clear her tracks behind her.

The adventure video game King's Quest featured a hag named Dahlia that combined features of the blind witch from Hansel & Gretel and the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz. This hag had green skin, dressed in black, rode a flying broomstick, lived in a house made of gingerbread, and killed people by turning them into candy statues for her garden. According to supplementary materials, she plays a fairly larger role in the backstory of the games.

The movie Legend featured a memorable portrayal of a hag named Meg Mucklebones by actor Robert Picardo of Star Trek: Voyager fame. The hero jack manages to distract her by appealing to her vanity and then chops off her head with his sword when she tries to eat him. Meg lacks a backstory, but some fans have interpreted her as being a discarded ex-lover of the Lord of Darkness.

In Doctor Who, fairy tale hags are actually a race of aliens called carrionites. They resemble vultures dressed in flowing robes, but may disguise themselves as old women. In the show a carrionite named Lilith referred to her two compatriots as her "mothers," suggesting that carrionites do have the same gender norms as humans do. Their appearance is actually a result of how effective their human disguise is, not a fixed part of their nature.



A list of some famous hags:

From folklore and fiction:
  • Sorceress Thaegan, Deltora Quest
  • Granny Pinchbottom, Goblins in the Castle
  • Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz
  • Sanderson Sisters, Hocus Pocus
  • Blind Witch, Hansel & Gretel
  • Baba Yaga, Russian folklore
  • Evil Queen, Snow White
  • Befana, Italian folklore
  • Strega Nona, Strega Nona
  • Yeshmiyek, Ed, Edd n Eddy

In fantasy gaming

D&D seemingly invented the absurd idea that hags are an all-female race who are essentially born evil, which was loosely referenced by J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter series, and slavishly adopted by Pathfinder. 5e changed their type to fey, ostensibly because they originate from fairy tales; this places hags in the same type as dryads and blink dogs.

By contrast, the Scarred Lands campaign setting posited that hags are a created through transmogrification of women who meet the criteria set by the mythical queen of witches. The same process is also applied to children and animals to create "haglings" and "hex creatures" to fulfill the hags' desire for family and pets. Hags are not a race and are not born evil: any woman who takes the opportunity may transform herself into a hag to gain power.

13th Age Bestiary generated hags using a toolkit, rather than writing a statblock for every imaginable variety. It posited that every hag has a death curse. When the adventurers' kill her, the curse is released and makes their lives miserable until they break it.

The 3.x/d20/OGL era featured a dizzying variety of hags, which continue to this day.

Varieties

Here is a long but by no means exhaustive list of hag variants:

Related creatures

There are also a number of creatures related to or created by hags (any inconsistencies are the result of differing sources):
  • Hex creature/Hexenbiest (Monsters of Porphyra 3): other creatures turned into hag-like creatures with the same potion/ritual, used as servants by covens
  • Caliban/hagspawn: "male" hags, birthed by coupling with mortals or brewed as monstrous homunculus creations, used as servants and substitute offspring
  • Changeling/hagborn: mortal (and invariably female) spawn of hags, sometimes eaten or exchanged
  • Hagling: children turned into hags, often eaten
  • Hag eye ooze: oozes created by witchcraft as servants and spies

Hags in my campaign

As with 5e my hags are typed as fey. My cosmology uses The Complete Guide to Fey's definition of fey as bound spirits, which applies wonderfully here.

Taking cues from Scarred Lands, hags in my cosmology are not a race but the result of a mystical transformation. This may be the result of consuming a ritual concoction, casting a curse, etc. This was passed down from the Queen of the Witches, so only they know the secret. The transformation may be applied to women, men, children, animals, etc. This results in both the iconic hags and related creatures like haglings and hex-beasts.

Regardless of their actual gender, hags resemble women whenever they assume humanoid forms. Their appearance may vary wildly, as with the original myths.

Sometimes, their attractiveness is determined by how much effort they put into the disguise. Since humanoid disguises are difficult to maintain for long, a hag's day-to-day appearance suggests how powerful they are. A hag without a disguise appears as a hideous vulture-like creature, a merely sufficient disguise appears as an extremely unhealthy old woman (not unlike an actor in bad aging makeup, or a giant vulture or crow in a human suit), and a nearly perfect disguise appears as a supermodel with occasional inhuman but not technically ugly features (such as the gorgeous beak-nosed Wicked Witch of the West in Oz: The Great and Powerful).

Other times, a hag's appearance relates to their vanity. A vain hag will be ugly and disguised, while a humble hag will change with mood. For example: the Sorceress Thaegan appears quite comely, but this is merely a disguise for something much darker. Another example: Granny Pinchbottom often appears as a comely young woman, but when told that she is supposed to look old and ugly like in the stories... she assumes that exact appearance to spite the speaker.

It is common among the fey to kidnap mortal children and exchange them with their own children. As a race, these "changelings" or "hagborn" exist in a limbo between mortal and fey: at some point they may choose to live as one or the other. Wicked hags practice the changeling way, typically eating the children they exchange (before or after transforming them into haglings). Sometimes hags may adopt changelings and transform them into hags, creating the myth that they are a hereditary race (as seen in Pathfinder).

Research links

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