Hag

Hags are predators that prowl within the spectrum of human, practitioner and Other, having gained power from the sheer repetition of what secured them immortality.<ref name=":3">Night Hags were Others, sometimes Aware or Innocent, but most often Practitioners, who subsisted off of nightmares, prolonging their own life and well being. Hags of other types subsisted on different things, but they tended to be Heartless to start and became Other. As the Night Hag got stronger, it got better at crafting and magnifying nightmares, and more thoroughly destroying the victim to get a bigger meal. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.2</ref><ref name=":0">“I have not counted, but I can still be utterly confident in saying that I have woken up in the same place for more than nine million of your days.  I have gathered, hunted, cooked and eaten the same foods on those same days.  I have been born, bled for the first time, and been reborn on more than one thousand occasions.  The wheel of life and death turns forward and I am an indelible part of it, especially here.  This is a pattern, this is my ritual.  Now tell me, what is the truth of this.  What does it make me?”

“A hag,” Tiff murmured.  “A blood hag.” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.6</ref><ref name=":1">“Practice,” Tiff said.  “Simple actions, made into powerful ones with tens of thousands of years of repetition.  Train a bird, tune a sound…”

“This is how she operates?” Evan asked.

“No,” Tiff said.  Her voice came from another space, as if she were moving.  I hadn’t heard the footsteps.  “She’s a blood hag.  She’ll have Other powers, and practitioner powers.  This is just what someone can pull off if they just happen to be immortal and very patient.” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.6</ref> They sustain their immortality by taking the lives of others.<ref name=":2">“Blood Hags survive for as long as they do by taking the lives of others,” Tiff said.  “Not to be confused with sanguine hags, like Bathory.  From what Mara said, she took an immense number of young lives to live as long as she has.  Stepping into their shoes.  I don’t know about you guys, um, I’m really not feeling the mercy.” - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.8</ref> While the Innocent and the Aware can become Hags they're most likely to come from Heartless-type Practitioners.<ref name=":3"/>

The universe comes to accommodate Hags generally,<ref name=":4"/> which some take advantage of.^{[citation needed]} They are dreadfully hard to bind as they are originally human beings with Souls.<ref name=":5">“Is there anything on summoning and binding one?” Lucy asked.

Avery stood and walked around the table, reading over Verona’s shoulder, now that Verona had the book.

“It requires a lot of specifics to summon,” Avery noted. “Like, each one has a name you need to call, and specific objects in a specific order in a circle.”

“Because they start as an individual with a soul, that’s a lot of complexity and individual things you need,” Verona said. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.2</ref>

Varieties and examples

• Blood Hags that eat lives including that of their childen, Crone Mara is one of these.
• Sanguine Hags that bath in blood like the historical Bathory
• Night Hags - feed on nightmares.<ref name=":4">Night Hags had an initial uphill climb with their practice of consuming dreams, because it involved preying on innocents. They had to pick carefully, and once they started they had to continue, or they got sickly and died. As they continued, the universe came to accommodate them, which was said to be a common thing with Hags, especially when those Hags were disciplined about their patterns. They left their humanity further and further behind as they carried on. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.2</ref> Good at traversing dreams and other Realms. Immaterial, vulnerable to superstitions and many peculiar things; including symbols of civilization (technology), being sealed off from the forces that empower them, daytime and sun motifs, milk, displays of dominance and mockery, chalk, and general cleansing influences (salt etc.) Positive bindings might use soot, oil, old fat, dirty water, tangled string, moon and star motifs. The best bindings include the Practitioner as a part of them, close-up and focusing on the Hag, drawing on the creature's interpersonal nature.<ref>Bonus Material: Binding and Countermeasures</ref> May be related to Mares
• Kinder Hags - old women that exploit and use children, the cycle of life feeding on itself.<Ref>The Kinder Hag exists in opposition to childhood, disturbing the natural order to remove the matron from the crone-matron-maiden trinity, gathering children around her and exploiting the vulnerabilities and natures of childhood to extend the strengths and aspects of the aged. Fate, obviously, ties into this, with tropes, patterns, and setups that can be turned against her, but which also keep the children close and lure them into her grasp.
  
  More common in the old countries and poor areas, they surround themselves with children as slaves, servants, and livestock, oftentimes orphans or abandoned, and sometimes acquired from Fae markets. In some cases, they may make their prey younger or keep them young indefinitely. Those children who try to escape will find the fate-snare will bog them down and the hag will always catch them. The only way out is by defeating her and she is tough in a gnarled way, and possessed of ancient wisdom, some scattered homespun and hewn-together practices or crude glamours and often a few tricks touching on the themes of age and/or youth. - Wildbow on Discord</ref>

Trivia

• In Pactdice terms any School of Magic that could be categorized as 'price's could be considered a Hag.
• Magical women, old and otherwise, are a recurrent feature in the folklore of patriarchal societies.

References

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