Help me use a Green Hag to screw with my PCs

[randomodo]

So, in an out-of-the way (well, out of the way, except for that's where my PCs are going to be for a long while) chunk of northwest Karameikos, I've got a green hag living a couple days away from the base camp/village.

The villagers believe she's an "exiled fairy princess," and they have local legends about her (how she gave magic/info to a local hero that allowed him to beat on old baddie at cost to his own life, etc).

But basically, as a Green Hag, she's into messing with people. I've got two potential things for her to do with the PCs right now, one mechanical and one RP.

Mechanically, she can grant what she'll call "the ability to cause great harm in combat," which is a one-time boon by which a character can gain advantage on any one attack (the PCs won't know that this will also result in a balancing by which the next attack against them also gains advantage).

From a RP standpoint, she will ask them to drop off a handkerchief in the back yard of one of the village homes. This belongs to the wife of a jealous neighbor, and is intended to generate acrimony/violence between the villagers by making one man think his wife is cheating on him with a neighbor. I use this as an example of how seemingly innocent acts can cause adverse consequences.

So, let's brainstorm: hit me with some ideas for how to use the hag to manipulate the PCs. Her goal is not to destroy the local village (it's a source of amusement), but she's happy to cause the occasional death or mental/moral anquish to PCs or villagers.

[Lonely Tylenol]

So, in an out-of-the way (well, out of the way, except for that's where my PCs are going to be for a long while) chunk of northwest Karameikos, I've got a green hag living a couple days away from the base camp/village.

The villagers believe she's an "exiled fairy princess," and they have local legends about her (how she gave magic/info to a local hero that allowed him to beat on old baddie at cost to his own life, etc).

But basically, as a Green Hag, she's into messing with people. I've got two potential things for her to do with the PCs right now, one mechanical and one RP.

Mechanically, she can grant what she'll call "the ability to cause great harm in combat," which is a one-time boon by which a character can gain advantage on any one attack (the PCs won't know that this will also result in a balancing by which the next attack against them also gains advantage).

From a RP standpoint, she will ask them to drop off a handkerchief in the back yard of one of the village homes. This belongs to the wife of a jealous neighbor, and is intended to generate acrimony/violence between the villagers by making one man think his wife is cheating on him with a neighbor. I use this as an example of how seemingly innocent acts can cause adverse consequences.

So, let's brainstorm: hit me with some ideas for how to use the hag to manipulate the PCs. Her goal is not to destroy the local village (it's a source of amusement), but she's happy to cause the occasional death or mental/moral anquish to PCs or villagers.

Have you ever read the book Holes, by Louis Sachar?

The book's protagonist is a boy whose family has been beset by misfortune for five full generations, following a deal that his great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats, made with a gypsy which went sour. In order to win a beautiful young woman's hand in marriage, Elya had to make a deal to her father which was sweeter than the fattest pig that the village's pig farmer offered for her hand. The gypsy, Madame Zeroni, gives him a feeble piglet, and tells Elya that if you carry it up to this sacred spring and have it drink from its waters every day, the pig will grow large enough to be fatter than the pig farmer's fattest pig, but on the last day, he must also carry Madame Zeroni up to the sacred spring so she can drink from it as well.

Elya carries the pig up every day except for the very last day, when he is supposed to present the pig, and as a consequence, his pig and the pig farmer's pig are the exact same weight, and the woman he is wooing for cannot decide who to marry. Disheartened and disgusted, he sets off for a new life in America without ever carrying Madame Zeroni to the spring--thus incurring the gypsy's curse.

Now, picture an evil version of this. The Green Hag is willing to present herself as a boon for the party--at a price. She has a quest that she wants the party to complete in exchange for this boon. The quest is remarkably contrived and possibly self-defeating, in such a way that even though it seemed reasonable at the time to take up the offer, it quickly becomes apparently that it is either not worth the time or puts them in a lose/lose situation simply for trying. A trap option, if you will. If the party should fail in this quest (and really, they should, if conceived well enough), then they suffer the consequences of their failure--likely a curse which was initially vague in scope and didn't seem too harsh a punishment until incurred, when it turns out to be much worse than they thought.

Essentially, every old-world superstition about the gypsy's curse, but twisted and perverted in the most one-sided fashion, so as to best diminish the chances of the party's success, and provide one-sided benefit to the Hag--with punishment disproportionate to the failure--all while remaining in the letter of their original deal. A tall order, but a good conceptual starting point, I feel.

[Inevitability]

How about a classic: shapeshift into a PC-lookalike, attack a few villagers, rob a few banks, and then have the poor, poor PC's incur the villager's wrath.

[Shining Wrath]

The hag has an agenda, and you need to decide what it is. Merely making villagers angry seems awfully petty for a monster of this level of EEEEvul.

Perhaps the hag wants the villagers to rise up in rebellion against the local lady, so that when she rides in to quell the uprising the hag can murder her and take her place. Bonus points if she can get the PCs to take either side in the conflict; it doesn't matter which, as both sides are innocents being manipulated by the hag.