Creature: Bone Hag
The hut was empty and silent, aside from the scratching of rat claws against cage bars and the distant cawing of a crow. Still, it looked like something lived there, with decaying remnants of food scattered across the floor and a distinct, strange collection of bones that were seemingly arranged randomly. A scratchy voice broke through the silence. “Oh, my dearies. We have an intruder.”
Trigger warning: death.
Obsessed with death. Bone hags are a distant relative of the bheur and night hags who have taken a particular interest in death. Their dark magic and dabbling in necromancy has allowed them to raise the dead to fight for them, but most bone hags use their skeletal or zombified servants to do simple jobs or to guard their homes. Bone hags live near settlements, but keep their living space separated from humanoids through natural barricades such as rocky cliffs, brambles, or deep running water. Their proximity is for one reason only: to help themselves to whatever they desire in the settlement’s graveyard, and to feed off the pain and suffering of those who lost a friend, family member, or pet.
Bone hag coven. Bone hags rarely convene to form a coven, but their presence is detrimental for the surrounding area. Because each hag in a bone hag coven continues her own cursed necromantic practising, any plant or animal life near a bone hag coven quickly turns undead or cursed. Plants wither, animals die and are revived as undead, zombies appear in the local graveyards and pests of locusts, birds and rats plague the nearby towns. Large, aggressive plants unroot from the ground and haunt forests, and the waters become infested with sharp-toothed fish and rotting diseases. Ghostly faces appear in the mist, and those who venture too close to the hags’ home risk becoming an undead servant themselves.
Necromantic nature. A bone hag doesn’t need sleep, and she can go up to 8 weeks without food.
