Hag

Because who can resist adding a cannibalistic old witch to their setting, right?

Hags are a kind of monster from Dungeons & Dragons. At their root, they are based in the stereotypical Western beliefs about witches - namely, that they are hideously ugly old women who use their dark magical skills to cause suffering amongst mortals for kicks -- mingled with assorted European mythology about ugly but powerful and magical female giants and trolls, from the Nordic Jarnvidjar to British boogeywomen like the river-dwelling child-drowning Jenny Greenteeth and the iron-clawed man-flaying Black Annis.

Because of this, they initially began as a kind of Giant, or at least Monstrous Humanoid, only to be redesigned in fourth edition as being a kind of fae embodying nature's capacity for cruelty and ugliness.

Hags come in many, many varieties, from water-dwelling sea hags to brutishly powerful annis hags to seductive green hags to the fiendish night hags and more besides. They all have a love for evil and specialize in using magic, most notably innate affinities for illusion spells and physically shapechanging, to interact with mortals undetected, when they don't just enslave armies of goblins, ogres, orcs and other evil humanoids and rule them openly.

As an all-female race, hags need to mate with humanoid men in order to propagate. In older editions, in fact, hags grow up believing themselves to be normal human women, only transforming into hags when they reach about their 40s or 50s. The exception to these are Night Hags, at least according to Dragon Magazine, whose children are normal (if often cambions or Half-Fiends, due to the night hag propensity for breeding with fiends), but must be deliberately transformed into new night hags before they hit puberty. In the Pathfinder setting, hags give birth to more human-like daughters called Changelings, who they must "persuade" to be magically transformed into more of their own kind. In 5e Hags actually kidnap and eat babies, giving birth to a daughter a week later. They then either raise the child or return it to its parents and watch her grow up. At her 13th birthday the girl transforms into a spitting image of her hag mother.

It hasn't seemed to occur to WotC yet that an origin story explaining where hags came from, why they always look old no matter their age, and why they're all female would be warranted.

Publication History

In the original Dungeons & Dragons, the sea hag first appeared in the Blackmoor supplement by Dave Arneson (1975). The Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set included its own version of the hag. The sea hag and the black hag appeared in the Dungeons & Dragons Master Rules (1985), and the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia (1991).

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition, the sea hag appears in the 1977 Monster Manual, where it is described as inhabiting thickly vegetated shallows, and hates beauty and is so ghastly in appearance that it makes other creatures weak with fright. The night hag also appears in the Monster Manual, where it is described as the ruler of the convoluted planes of Hades. The book states that night hags form larvae (the most selfishly evil of all souls who sink to lower planes after death) from evil persons they slay, and sell them to demons and devils. The Monster Manual was reviewed by Don Turnbull in the British magazine White Dwarf #8 (August/September 1978). As part of his review, Turnbull comments on several new monsters introduced in the book, referring to the night hag as "splendid" and notes that the illustration of the night hag is the best drawing in the book. The annis, a type of hag, first appeared in the module The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (1982). The annis appeared in the Monster Manual II (1983) along with the greenhag, which was detailed in Dragon #125 (September 1987), in "The Ecology of the Greenhag." The fresh water sea hag appears in Dragon #68 (December 1982).

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, the annis hag, the green hag, and the sea hag appear first in the Monstrous Compendium Volume Two (1989), while the night hag appears in the Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix (1991), and all are reprinted in the Monstrous Manual (1993),. The spectral annis, the spectral green hag, the spectral sea hag and the unique night hag Sytrix appeared in Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendix III: Creatures of Darkness (1994). The night hag was further detailed in the first Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix (1994). The bheur hag for the Forgotten Realms setting first appears in Spellbound (1995), and then in Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Three (1996). The article "Pox of the Planes" in Dragon Annual #2 (1997) described the night hags as the creators of the altraloths, powerful unique yugoloths.

In Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, the annis, the green hag, and the sea hag appear in the Monster Manual for this edition (2000). The bog hag appears in Oriental Adventures (2001). Savage Species (2003) presented the annis hag, the green hag, and the sea hag as both races and playable classes. The bheur hag, the shrieking hag, and the hagspawn for the Forgotten Realms appear in Unapproachable East (2003).

In Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition, the annis, the green hag, the sea hag and the night hag appear in the revised Monster Manual for this edition (2003). The dusk hag for the Eberron campaign setting appears in the Eberron Campaign Setting book (2004). The Xtabay, a hag inspired by Mayan legend, appeared in Dragon issue 317. The dune hag appears in Sandstorm: Mastering the Perils of Fire and Sand (2005). The marzanna appears in Frostburn: Mastering the Perils of Ice and Snow (2005). The green hag is further detailed in Dragon #331 (May 2005), in "The Ecology of the Green Hag,", and the annis hag is further detailed in Dragon #345 (July 2006), in "The Ecology of the Annis."

The hag appears in the 2008 Monster Manual for Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, including the howling hag, the bog hag, the night hag and the death hag. The pact hag, the dream hag and the mist hag appeared in Monster Manual 3. The article "Realmslore: Auril's Hall" in Dragon #367 introduced the winter hag, an updated version of the Bheur. The Book of Vile Darkness introduced the filth hag and her "son". The Monster Vault featured expanded hag lore and revised stats for the bog hag, green hag and night hag.

In 5th edition, the hag appears in the Monster Manual for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, consisting of the Night Hag, Green Hag and Sea Hag. The Annis Hag and Bheur Hag appeared in the subsequent Volo's Guide to Monsters

Subspecies

Hags in D&D come in many different species, as touched upon in their Publication History section above. But, as far as D&D is concerned, there are four species that are particularly iconic; the Annis Hag, the Green Hag, the Sea Hag, and the Night Hag.

Annis Hags

Annis hags are the largest and strongest of their species. They tend to associate the most with giant-kin, such as ogres and trolls. They may not be particularly magically adept, but they're hard to kill and well-suited for rending victims limb from limb. They especially love to corrupt children; they do this by given them tokens formed from bits of the Annis Hag's own body, which they then use to whisper things to the kid, slowly manipulating them into becoming utter sociopaths.

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  5e saw the Annis take a whole new level in Jesus-Christ-What-the-fuck!?
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  Pathfinder's Annis.

Green Hags

Green hags are the most "stereotypical" of the hags, with the general focus on spellcasting and shapeshifting. Their abilities often tend towards either the obvious enchanter route, or towards evil druidism, and they have a particular focus on using their powers of shapechanging and illusions to make lives miserable.

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  1e
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  3e
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  5e went back to its roots for the Green Hag.
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  Pathfinder

Sea Hags

Sea hags are the weakest of their ilk, antisocial fishy loners who live along coastlines. They're generally considered to be the most hideously ugly of their ilk, to the point of being able to scare people to death with their faces in AD&D.

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  1e
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  2e
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  3e
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  The Sea Hag from 5e is... weirdly less a crone and more a fish-woman.
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  Pathfinder

Night Hags

The fiendish Night Hags are an extraplanar branch of the family tree, who specialize in harvesting larvae, the souls of evil humanoids, and trading them in infernal markets.

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  1e
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  2e
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  Planescape
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  Ravenloft
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  3e gave them horns
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  5e
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  Pathfinder

Hannya

The Hannya are a species of hag introduced in Oriental Adventures, and are basically the hideously ugly bastard daughters of a hag and a lamia.

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  2e
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  3e

Bheur Hags

Bheur Hags are native to the Forgotten Realms region of Rasheman, and not quite as evil as most hags. They are elementalists with an affinity for ice, and considered by the natives to be spirits of winter. At the very least, they often worship Auril. A similar icy hag, the Marzanna, appears in the Frostburn sourcebook. They appeared in 4e under the name of "Winter Hags".

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  The original artwork for the Bheur in AD&D's Spellbound boxed set.
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  ... yeah, apparently, this is the face of voracious winter incarnate.
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  The Winter Hag, a renamed Bheur, appeared in Dragon Magazine #367 for 4e.
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  5e made the Bheur a lot more monstrous-looking.

Bog Hags

Bog Hags are similar in many ways to Green Hags, but can't shapeshift; instead, they murder beautiful women and flay off their skins, which allows them to assume the form of their victims by wearing the hide. These hags are associated with the Oriental Adventures 3e sourcebook, and arguably are an immigrant from the Legend of the Five Rings game and its setting of Rokugan.

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  This art originates from the 3e Oriental Adventures sourcebook, and was later reused for its reappearance in 4e.

Pact Hags

Pact Hags are amongst the most diplomatic of the Feywild hags, specializing in using bargains and manipulation to corrupt and enslave others. They are often tutors for Warlocks.

Dream Hags

Dream Hags have the power to manipulate and control the dreams of mortals, which they use to goad them into fulfilling schemes and plans of their own without ever being aware of the hag pulling their strings.

Dusk Hag

From Eberron, Like the Dream hag but also see the future and prophecies. You know Macbeth, then never listen to a hag's prophecy. Unfortunately, most powerful royalty and wizards haven't seen the play or even a greek play, becoming indebted to a hag for the "privilege" of setting a tragedy in motion.

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  5e

Mist Hags

Mist Hags are amongst the most powerful of the Feywild hags; at a whopping level 27, a Mist Hag is mightier than some dragons! They are renowned collectors and hoarders of powerful magical items, with a somewhat tenuous relationship with the Archdevils; whilst the dukes and princes of the Nine Hells often recruit Mist Hags to watch over their more powerful magical items, the hags have a bad tendency to get sticky fingers and steal whatever they were supposed to be guarding.

Filth Hags

Filth Hags are amongst the most depraved and vile of all hags. They are always attended to by one or more "sons"; golem-like abominations made of muck, filth and the hag's excrement, animated by the tormented souls of men seduced by the hag's illusory guise and then devoured. The Filth Hag can drain the life-force from her "Sons" to heal herself in combat.

Dune Hag/Death Hag

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Shrieking Hag

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Fate Hag

Hags who wield magical shears and can see and manipulate the thread of fate to predict and change destinies. Unlike other hags, their alignment is typically neutral. They are usually found in the Feywild or the Shadowfell near crossings to the material plane. Those in the Feywild are attuned to good fortune while those in the Shadowfell are attuned to misfortune.

Hag Procreation

So, you might be wondering (if only out of morbid curiosity): how do new hags come into the world? Well, that's actually changed a little over the editions...

For most of D&D's history, hags have reproduced by assuming the forms of attractive women and mating with male humanoids (or at least human-shaped creatures), often killing and/or eating the father once they're done. But the specifics after that differ depending on your source.

In the original "Ecology of the Green Hag", for AD&D 1e in Dragon Magazine #125, we're told that Night Hags are the "original" strain of hag; these hags produce Green Hags (which are more powerful in this edition) by getting pregnant from human men and then giving birth in the Grey Wastes of Hades, where their daughter grows to maturity in 18 months and is then booted back to the material plane... no, we're not told where Night Hags come from. Green Hags can give birth to Annis Hags by mating with ogres and Hill Giants.

These particular details don't get mentioned anywhere in AD&D 2e, though it's implied that Night Hags often produce unique forms of Half-Fiend with their propensity to mate with powerful fiends. Instead, this lore gets overwritten by new lore hidden in Van Richten's Guide to the Witch, where hags of any kind reproduce in the "normal" manner and produce daughters of their own race - it's asserted that hags never have male kids, only daughters. Hags are reluctant to breed, partially because they are selfish, cruel bitches and partially because pregnancy is so draining that they enter a state of near hibernation until delivery, and may well cannibalize their own daughters after giving birth, but should it happen, regardless of her mom's race, the baby hag looks like an ordinary human girl. Now, most hags are pretty fucking shitty moms - as if the whole "eats their own kids" thing didn't clue you in - so they almost never want to raise their sprogs. Instead, they find women with newborn daughters, kidnap their baby (usually eating or sacrificing it) and leave their own daughter to be raised in its place. This has led to folklore that at least some hags can magically transpose infants, swapping their own unborn hag-dauighters for the unborn kids of pregnant women - a sidebar establishes that this is complete bullshit, but it serves as a "convenient excuse" for women disappointed with their daughters or when some asshole gets really pissed that his wife gave him a daughter and not a son.

According to this lore, baby hags spend a human lifespan utterly ignorant of their true monstrous nature. They look and to all appearances are just regular human girls - assholes, maybe, depending partially on circumstances and prtially on subspecies and partially on just random personality draw, but still nothing strange. The only really odd thing is their infertility; no matter how much they may want to, proto-hags can't have kids. That all changes on their 50th birthday. Hags call it "The Change"; it's a kind of second puberty, where the physical and mystical attributes of their true hag selves materialize. No matter how pretty the hag may have been before, she gets real ugly, real quick, and rapidly manifests her physical traits. This almost inevitably gets them chased out of wherever they may have lived, leaving them vulnerable to the machinations of an older hag, as one (usually, but not always, their real mom) is almost certain to show up to act as a tutor in their new mystical powers and will certainly do everything they can to make the newly fledged hag as bitter, misanthropic and cruel as possible.

You will note a bit of a plot hole with this angle, in that if somebody in D&D got ugly that fast, their family is almost certainly going to call for some murder hobos or try the magical healing that exists in setting rather than just jump right to torches and pitchforks. And there should at least be some chance of a hag not being rejected by the community so you should get at least a few friendly old village 'babushkas' - Baba Yaga is not evil in every one of her stories. In fairness, this lore was based in Ravenloft, which in 2e leaned hard on the Low Fantasy "most humans are ignorant superstitious country bumpkins who think all magic is inherently evil and have probably never seen it (and lived to tell the tale)" angle, which D&D in any edition really hasn't supported much on a mechanical level (outside of maybe 4e, ironically).

It's left ambiguous as to how bruja reproduce, or even if they can do so, but theoretically it would be just like hags, only without murdering the dads or making somebody else do the child-rearing. They absolutely would probably try to do the "benevolent village babushka" thing, though even bruja can be kind of arrogant... which, fair enough, if you were a super-strong nigh-invulnerable high level mage surrounded by sheep-fucking inbred ignorant peasants, you'd probably think you were the biggest shit around too.

3rd edition largely preserves the lore established in Van Richten's Guide to the Witch, with it being reiterated (in drastically abrieved form) in the Ecologies of both the Annis Hag (Dragon #324) and the Green Hag (Dragon #331). A new wrinkle comes into play with the Night Hag, as detailed in its Ecology article (Dragon #345). The same basic idea is preserved - night hags mate with human men then leave their apparently human daughters to be raised by human parents. But the change is that infant night hags don't automatically become night hags in turn; instead, their mother has to deliberately turn them into a night hag, which requires a ritual that can only take place when the child is aged between 1 year old and puberty. In this ritual, the mother hag visits the hagling and spends an hour ceremonially suckling them and feeding them the flesh of a living larva; this ritual must be repeated three times, with the second visit taking place no more and no less than 13 days after the first, and the third visit likewise taking place 13 days after the second. Once the third and final ritual nursing is completed, the girl transforms into a fully grown night hag, regardless of her original age, over the course of an hour. If any ritual is interrupted or missed, or the girl just reaches puberty first, then it's a complete wash: the girl can never become a fully fledged night hag.

This idea would later be revisited by Paizo to create their Changeling race.

3e introduced a second new wrinkle in the form of giving hags male offspring, called Hagspawn, in the Forgotten Realms splat "Unapproachable East".

4th edition doesn't really talk about hags reproducing.

5e completely reworks the hag spawning by requiring hags to consume human infants in order to rebirth them as baby hags. They still spend their formative years as apparently normal human girls, but now they might be raised by hag-mom instead of an adoptive set of human parents, and the Change from human to hag happens at 13 years old rather than 50 years old.

Related Species

• Hagspawn
• Changeling
• Bruja

Gallery

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  This creature was called the Dune Hag in 3e and the Death Hag in 4e.
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  3e artwork for the Bheur and Shrieking Hag, with a Hagspawn in the center.
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  Hag Coven
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  Hageye
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  Hag pimp Ride