Session 12: When I grow up, I want to be a Hag
An ongoing adventure of the Mary Lin D&D Club
Returning to the village of Great Bear Lake with their rescued friend, Warwick, felt like a triumph for Minnie, Mia, Faerun, and Indigo. Doing so with three new friends, Avani, Alex, and Amanda in good shape to renegotiate the fishing rights treaty felt like everything was going to be okay. The only two wrinkles were that Warwick was not beloved by the village, and there was the revelation that a sea hag, who had escaped the party, called the lake her home.
The first problem was easily fixed — through a combination of magic and costuming, the party disguised Warwick as Indigo’s slightly green little sister and snuck her through the village to Indigo’s home. The second would take more work.
After secreting Warwick away with the shrunk dragon turtle shell, the party went to the village market to meet with Mayor Finn. After updating him on their progress — that they found the Momota and were ready to resume negotiations, and that they found a sea hag, the Mayor and First Assistant got shifty, suddenly needing to be elsewhere. Confused, curious, and very suspicious, the party left the Tabaxi and Momota representatives to get to know each other while they went to consult with the village librarian. Quickly, the party learned that among the tales and lore related to hags is that they often abduct babies and young children to substitute their own offspring in their places. Those offspring, when they reach maturity, break out of their shells, becoming hags in their own right. The party started reflecting on their school years, realizing that after sixth grade, there were way fewer children in the village school than there should be. As they started listing the names of the kids who they knew when they were little but were no longer around, they became convinced that something nefarious was going on, and that the sea hag was to blame.
The party tracked down the Mayor and presented their theory. Getting angry, he argued back, saying how paranoid they all sounded. As they talked with him, Faerun remembered something. Years ago, when his daughter was very young, she remembered hearing about how the girl and her mother had gone rowing on the lake, but only the daughter returned. The Mayor’s daughter was among the kids that had been missing. Confronting the Mayor, Faerun asked, “aren’t you worried that your daughter is a sea hag?” Irate, the Mayor turned away, saying he was going to have them all exiled from the village for even suggesting that and spreading rumors about her just days before her 13th birthday.
The birthday that the stories say is when an abducted child would turn into a sea hag.
