12 Ch12 - Hags
Ch12 - The hag
It's been a month now under the hag, and my main comment to say about her is that she's a dick. Sure eating Mayrina's baby so she could birth a new green hag is one thing, but when I saw her go for a stroll outside and start tripping up the redcaps for a laugh I knew she was a dick.
On the bright side though, she's got about 150 years of experience under her belt. Which I plan to utilise on my next exam, because I've decided to specialise in hags. From what I've guessed or gathered, there's a good amount of hag variations, some with giant strength and others that aren't even fey. So by specialising in hags, I'll get a very wide variety in ability.
Contrarily though, because Ethel is a green hag, I could specialise further into green hags. I would probably get a higher level on the exam, but I would prefer a slightly lower score in a better topic.
Currently, I'm brewing a love potion for a man that came running in preaching to Ethel how his lover must have fallen under a curse, because she says stuff like "who are you? get out of my house!". So we agreed to give him a potion that he will drink, the next thing he sees he will love forever. Though we just told him to drink it and it'll solve his problems.
"Ethel! It's finished!" I recognise the bubbling in the corners of the cauldron as a sign it's finished. I poured a portion of it into a vial before sealing it with a cork.
Ethel teleported in front of me, hag body on display and snatched it from me, mumbling, "Lilac colours, 12% froth, smells like crushed pixies!" I've come to learn that if she doesn't cast vicious mockery on me then it's a good potion on her standards.
"Bring over the redcap! I've been wanting to see something funny for a while now!" Another thing we didn't tell the man is that we're gonna make sure the first the he sees is a confused redcap. It's why neither me or Ethel took payment, because we thought it would be a bit funny.
I went out and shouted for Grusk, a particularly annoying redcap, and brought him in. He didn't fight back because by now they know I'm working with Ethel. Inside the hut I see the man chugging a vial with a blindfold on, "Grusk take off his blondfold and make sure to look him in the eyes as you do it." I nearly couldn't stop giggling, me and Ethel were basically holding onto each other as we struggled to stand straight.
Grusk took off his blindfold and immediately was pulled into a long, tongue-filled kiss. We were HOWLING with laughter, it just got worse when Grusk started kicking him and running into the swamps being chased closely behind.
-
The night ended with the death of a pervert, laughing at a redcap and Ethel's homebrewed alcohol. There's not been many nights like this, so it's certainly something to remember. I went to my room, that Ethel made me create and sat down in my chair, leaned back and spoke.
"I would like to take an exam on hags"
['Hags' exam starting]
My mind traveled far, the usual vortex landing me in front of someone painfully familiar.
"Ethel?" I recognised my examiner, sporting a pair of half-crescent glasses and a cane.
"The one and only dearie, now you got 6 papers to do. Chop chop now!" She skulked away, in sight but doing what the real Ethel usually does, make acids and toxins.
I see the gnarled wood table and chair and sit down, the paper are yellow and cracked echoing with a different bold label on them. 'Green hags', 'Annis hags', 'Bheur hags', 'Sea hags', 'Night hags' and 'Dusk hags'. Ah I get it now, fortunately, Ethel was very VERY talkative about other hags, mainly insulting them. But she insulted them on their traits and characteristics.
I started with the hardest one, 'Dusk hags', not usually found in the usual spots but in Khorvaire. Divination inclined hags with a dislike of fighting, though they're more than happy to if push comes to shove.
I answer the questions quite easily on ecology, biology, repertoire of spells and nature.
The same follows for the other forms of hags, green hags I believe I did best in, for obvious reasons that is. But annis and night are the ones I would like the powers of the most.
Once I put my quill down, Ethel loomed over me and quickly snatched the papers off of me. She begun looking through them eyes blurring through, mumbling occasionally "even got hagspawns in there". But once she was done she tossed the papers down at me and said, "Yer done now, get out!"
[Exam completed! You earned:
lv1: Automatic wart counter
lv2: Vicious mockery damage doubled
lv3: Hag form - Fey member
lv4: Permanent hag passives - Hag summon
Exam cooldown for 29 days]
These are perfect and exactly what I need and want. But I can't help but think that the Cthulu rewards were just better, but that's probably because the knowledge itself was rarer and more impactful. After all, [The truth] can decimate an entire mind, I've experimented further and found unless the being is mindless, then it will kill all indiscriminately belaying them with madness and tentacles. Plus the other bonuses it gives.
Besides that, I need to have a look at what my new abilities do now.
[Automatic wart counter -
You ever looked at something and wondered, 'How many warts does it have?' Here's the ability with the answers!]
[Hag Form -
Due to your varied knowledge, you now can shift into any of the hag forms and enjoy their benefits!]
[Fey member -
Due to most fey not giving much friendliness to each other, there is no unspoken alliance. Instead fey's will simply recognise you as a fellow member, most likely reducing the chance of being targeted]
[Permanant hag passives -
No matter your form, or lack of, you will always have the passives of all the hag kind.
Green hag - Illusory appearance, invisible passage, mimicry, amphibious, deception proficiency.
Annis hag - Magic resistance, enhanced strength, communication tokens, grappling expert.
Sea hag - Horrific appearance (at will), swimming proficiency
Night hag - cold, fire and non-magical weapon attack resistance. Detect magic at will, magic resistance, change shape, nightmare haunting.
Bheur hag - cold immunity, graystaff magic, maddening feast.
Dusk hag - Immune to blind, charmed and frightened, blindsight 60ft, (1/day each legend lore & scrying), (3/day each dream, hypnotic patter and sleep). Nightmare touch and dream eater.]
[Hag conjure -
(1/day) Wanting a beautiful stunning woman to accompany and offer guidance? Too bad!
Instead you have the chance to conjure and bind a hag varient of your choice. The hag will have the appropriate knowledge and traits found in that kind. Only 1 hag allowed at a time and they last until death, summoning a new one replaces the current one]
"Holy shit"
