Hangmaiden

Hangmaidens, also known as Nos, Hunter Spiders or Trapweavers,<ref>HANGMAIDENS
Also Nos, Hunter Spiders, Trapweavers - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref> are carnivorous Anima based around entanglement and conspiracy<ref name=":5">Hangmaidens are carnivorous creatures of anima that eat once every few years, emerging from the fabric of the spirit world in response to conspiracy and entangled ties.  Noble lineages, high business, incestuous families and the rarest extremes of high school drama can provide the necessary context for Hangmaidens to emerge. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref> which can shift between three maiden-mother-crone forms - two human forms to tempt and ensnare, one monstrous and spiderlike to feed.<ref name=":0">“One Other, three forms,” Alexander explained.  “They hew close to Fate.  The maiden, the matron, the crone.  Each form has different abilities.  One to do the luring, one to trap, one to reveal the spider and do the devouring.”

“They often hang around clubs,” Larry said.  “Or anywhere people go to find dates.  Always glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, taking a lot of time to pick their targets.  They get in close and then ensnare.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x</ref><ref name=":1">Appearance: Each has three individual forms, with a common thread tying between them- the forms are divided into two feminine, humanlike ones and one monstrous one.  Attention is often paid to hair and clothing.  A spider or gossamer motif is common. [...] As creatures of fate, they borrow from the Clothos, Lachesis, Atropos dynamic, transforming between three physical states of being.  Each may have powers or techniques of its own, but one is always capable of turning into a physical embodiment of the Hangmaiden’ spiritual body, a half-woman spider, a spider of monstrous size, or something that resembles a spider in only the loosest sense, like a mass of wet, meaty, spindly legs with the main body always out of sight. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens
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Abilities

Their powers and abilities, aside from transformation, vary both between forms and between individuals.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /> In general, their powers play into relationships, connections, and/or Fate<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /> and often involve silk or hair.<ref>Many of the abilities or techniques employed will involve items bound in silk, or hair or silk worked into belongings. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

In the course of entrapping their victim, they will repeatedly expose them to fearful "omens" - strange, inexplicable phenomena or hints. Each omen dismissed serves to strengthen their hold.<ref>“And signs, I’d guess?” Luisa asked.

Alexander nodded.  “Every hint she can give you without you pulling away is another tether, tying you to the fate she wants to hand you.  Dreams about being bound, for example.  Or they’ll even unnerve or reveal glimpses of their true self to neighbors, family, and friends, with the intent that you’ll ignore those hints and be drawn deeper into it.  In the end, she reveals her third form, and it’s half-woman, half-spider, and you look around, realize you haven’t eaten in five days, you’re weak, and you couldn’t go in your kitchen if you did have the strength, because your apartment is filled with dense webs and small biting spiders.” - excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x</ref><ref name=":4" /> Although they can be fearful combatants in their monstrous form, the final kill is usually by strangulation, being kept bound and slowly eaten, or similar means that play into the motif.<ref>The fight is usually violent, and is often a prolonged and losing contest of strength against a predator much more able than the victim.  Though victims may be clawed or speared with spider legs longer than a man is tall, victims are always killed by strangulation, by being bound in silk like razor wire and left to die slowly, or carted into the spirit world and kept in bondage for a long time while being eaten piecemeal over the course of months. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

Weaknesses

Hangmaidens may be bound using their own omens, blades, feathers, bird feet, or fire.<ref>Once they start to spin a web around a potential feeding, the omens and items they use can be targeted, collected, and turned against them.  As they catch on that their workings are being undone, they tend to turn aggressive and set traps against their binder.  Blades, feathers, and/or bird feet are common binding elements for circles, wards, and barriers, though fire will do in a pinch. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

Use by Practitioners

A Hangmaiden and its variants are the type of other to prey on practitioners.<ref>Gone Ahead 7.x</ref> As Familiars, they bring with them their natural ability with Sympathetic magic, both potentially deployed on the Practitioner's behalf and usually bleeding over to the Practitioner. This makes them useful partners either for a Sympath who wishes to enhance their Practice, or someone clueless in the sympathetic arts who wishes to cover a weakness.<ref name=":6">As familiars, Hangmaidens act much as they normally would - they still need and want to feed, with months or years of languishing or idling, but the interim periods are spent in the practitioner’s company.  They are often flirtatious on the exterior and cold behind that surface.  They may have expectations of being given help when feeding, with the practitioner playing a role or selecting prey from the practitioner’s inner circle, and they may have expectations of a say in their master’s big choices.  A Hangmaiden familiar grants a passive knowledge of connections and interconnected relationships, as well as some limited combat ability in the above mentioned ‘leaf in the wind’ sense.

Hangmaidens are associated with sympathetic magic, with sympathetic mages having the resources to effectively counteract and undo a Hangmaiden’s work.  However, given their nature, a Hangmaiden is often an excellent choice as a summon or familiar (or as an Other a practitioner or family may go to to bargain for help on a task) if one focuses on something other than Sympathetic magic.  As a summon, they can sniff out connections and provide knowledge as a Sympathetic practitioner might.  As a familiar, they provide some limited ability as a sympathetic mage to their master. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

Formation

They form among exceptionally tangled connections and conspiracy. Noble lineages, high business, incestuous families and exceptionally intense high school drama are possible examples.<ref name=":5" />

Behavior

They need to feed only every few months or years.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6" /> When not actively preparing a victim to devour, they tend to lurk around bars and similar hookup spots, always a figure glimpsed in the corner of your eye.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":3">They will lurk in the periphery as a person glimpsed but rarely engaged, and use their innate mastery and relationship with sympathetic connections to stay out of reach.  If seen every week or so in a club, they will disappear into the crowd if an intrigued fellow tries to approach them, and if that fellow nudges a friend and tries to ask who the woman is, will be out of sight by the time the friend can turn around to look and see.  They may engage in idle, low-key activity, potentially building relationships with practitioners as finders or information brokers, or sadistically tormenting people- typically those with an intense sexual attraction to women.

As hunger grows, the Hangmaiden will shift modes, starting to lay the groundwork for a future meal. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

Unless newly-formed, they are generally very experienced manipulators. They tend to target significant but isolated people.<ref name=":4">As the web draws tighter, the victim will be given omens, in part because the motifs will eventually be so persistent and enveloping that stumbling onto the omens will be impossible to ignore. [...] Each omen or device employed provides a chance the victim has to recognize & escape the snare.  By the reverse side of the coin, each omen or portent that is ignored helps the Hangmaiden guarantee its kill.  Most Hangmaidens that have been around for multiple feedings are skilled manipulators.  The targets will be important ones, in terms of the general fabric of things, but will be isolated and tempted.  Often an outside party or friend recognizing what is going on, seeing the motifs or omens for themselves, and acting decisively will be the only chance a victim has. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

Variations

Coiled

Tied to Fortune instead of fate.<ref name=EWA>“[Hangmaidens are a]nimus tied to Fate, who spin their metaphorical webs, set up omens, and lure others in, before devouring them. Coiled are similar, but their focus is not on Fate,” Exult Wrought explained. “They are drawn to where there are games or competition, when there is enough corruption. Practitioner councils, churches, prisons, competitive businesses. Much as the Hangmaiden flirts with targets, disappearing and appearing where convenient, the Coiled will avoid the people who run these games or hierarchies as they prepare their greater schemes. [...] Coiled will appear as new prisoners with no clear paper trail, new students, new employees. They charm their way in, they play their small games, while they do their work. They expose secrets, they turn the tables, they trick, they lie, they scheme, and they turn a corrupt system where one person has power into utter chaos, bringing down lieutenants and champions, overturning competitions by exposing how hollow they are, turning games that are used to express power into a means of fighting back against that same power. Smiling as they slither away from the worst consequences. Then, when all is in shambles and the system is dismantled, they face down the person in charge. Then they devour them, in a fashion. The victim realizes the coils surround them, and have for a while, they are restrained, and they are taken to the den of the Coiled, where they take an excruciatingly long time to meet their end, often in an ironic manner.”

Avery nodded. “I can see the resemblance to Hangmaidens.”

“The difference being, they focus on Fortune, not Fate. The Hangmaiden spins her threads and draws someone in to a fated end. The Coiled cheat. [...] Their animal? Not a spider, but a snake, typically. Or a centipede.” - Excerpt from In Absentia 21.14</ref> They are snake/centipede themed, all forms are the same age, forming in competitive environments like schools or corporate structures, churches, competitive private schools, even practitioner councils .<ref>

Coiled - Rooted in the motif of the snake or centipede, these spirits of sympathetic practice are drawn to metagames, especially the cultures of rules and pecking orders that surround gangs, very competitive or fucked up high schools, gambling rings, prisons, practitioner councils, and churches or institutions with enforced silence over wrongdoing.  Rather than child, maiden, and crone, will appear with three faces all around the same age.  Much in the same way the Hangmaiden is never glimpsed by those it doesn’t want to be glimpsed by, the Coiled will often skirt higher authority while wreaking havoc, exposing the worst sides and shames of targets, and baiting people into being their own doom in whatever arena they’ve entered.  They may reward or focus on taking out cheaters, and may focus on supporting and encouraging the intricate metagame systems (see above)... or ending them once and for all.  Will defeat and humiliate opponents, then if the victim is killed or exiled for the failure, will target the next person up the chain of succession.  If a loss or failure is forgiven and accepted, will visit the loser one last time, typically paralyzing and/or poisoning them before spiriting them away.   If the leader is defeated, will spirit them away instead.  Will seek to carry on for as long as possible (and thus target places and dynamics where the forgiveness for failure or exposure is unlikely or impossible), working their way slowly up a chain or through an arena.  The last victim (often the ‘head of the snake’) is taken to the domain of the Coiled where they are made to suffer a torture as prolonged and intense as the most skilled human torturers have ever devised.  Such victims and their ‘worst fates’ are the meal of the Coiled. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

The Aurum Coil is an admirer of them.

Fisherwoman

Differ in being fish and rot themed, more focused on those who prey on the weak, more mean-spirited. Emerge to reflect corruption and power imbalance. May act as urban legends, summoned by the desperate in exchange for a terrible cost.<ref>

Fisherwoman - Akin to Hangmaidens, they tend to occupy coastal areas, are associated with fish, not spiders, and tend to prey on those who would prey on others rather than on the easily tempted, turning the table on them.  May be foul (smelling of rotting fish), with each of their three forms a succession of horribleness going from old to young or vice versa.  Are more inclined to use curses and focus on doom, and are more mean spirited.  May pretend to be Hangmaidens (and vice versa) if aware of practitioners with binding in mind.  Death is often by drowning, by fishing line, or by hook.  Emerge as a reflection of societal rot and power imbalance.  May struggle to reach up past a certain level of predator unless power structures or roles are very set (a shifting or rotating gang structure or political structure may set them back each time, but in a banana republic or warlord state, they may continue forward).  Often urban legends summoned by the bitter and desperate, sometimes taking the summoner’s life as part of the price. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

History

They have weathered the Seal of Solomon well, as their subtle ways of feeding do little to disturb the Innocent.<ref name=":2">They are tied to fate and to relationships, and use these things to find prey, existing in a relatively comfortable equilibrium in the post-Solomon era, as they tend to clean up their messes neatly and avoid attention and danger. - Bestiary: Hangmaidens</ref>

Lawrence Bristow and Alexander Belanger both encountered these creatures early in their careers, and considered them fearful.<ref>“Share,” Alexander said.  “We’re open minded.  War stories, perhaps?  First big wake-up call.  First Other that was out of your league, or closest to being out of your league. [...] I’ll start.  Before our recent machine god, the blue heron on his throne, it would have been a Hangmaiden.  This would be your specialty, Larry.  Or Mrs. Crowe.”

“I’ve seen two,” Larry said, more serious.  “A Fisherwoman and a straight Aranaea Hangmaiden.  Yeah.”

Luisa Crowe shook her head.

“Lucky,” Larry said. - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x</ref>

References

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