Sea Hag Motivation - No idea.

[Kaibis]

I am floundering, my brain is fried, so calling out to all my various sources. I am stuck with pretty much every aspect of this.

I am giving the group the option to travel upriver by boat.

The boat is a paddleboat (powered by an arcane crystal).
The party will be asleep in a shared cabin on the upper deck. (deck 1 = open, has crates and stuff. deck 2 = berths, deck 3 = just the wheelhouse + captain's quarters).
The captain is an old wizard, and can fight. The crew are unarmed.
I want to have a lone sea hag and her pet giant octopus climb onto the boat in the middle of the night.


Questions:
What options can I give the group for realising that this is happening?
What possible reason does the sea hag have for getting on the ship.

I mean the encounter sounds heaps fun, it's combat on a boat with some unusually creatures. However I am failiing in the small details.

I thought maybe a family was also travelling and the sea hag was trying to steal the child. The obvious call-to-arms would be the scream of the father or mother. I am a bit worried about how I deal with combat while the hag has a baby in its arms.

[DeTess]

Questions:
What options can I give the group for realising that this is happening?
What possible reason does the sea hag have for getting on the ship.

I mean the encounter sounds heaps fun, it's combat on a boat with some unusually creatures. However I am failiing in the small details.

I thought maybe a family was also travelling and the sea hag was trying to steal the child. The obvious call-to-arms would be the scream of the father or mother. I am a bit worried about how I deal with combat while the hag has a baby in its arms.

One of the options is that The sea-hag is just fairly territorial. She considers this stretch of the river her home, and any ships passing through need to pay tribute (she also likes shiny things, like coins). The captain is sick and tired of this monster forcing him to pay, so he is letting the adventurers come along for free/cheap, in the hope that they'll dispose of the creature. He knows approximately when the sea-hag will board the ship to demand payment, so he'll make sure to be in a position to wake up the adventurer and sic them on the hag. He obviously won't mention the 'I could just pay and there won't be any trouble' option, instead mentioning how horrible and cruel the creature is. He even might have told the adventurers some stories before they meet the sea-hag to get them in a proper killing mindset.

[Koo Rehtorb]

She there for some lovin'.

[Goaty14]

She there for some lovin'.

Only if the DM has told the players that's the type of game he's going to run (playing nice-nice with the monsters you're supposed to slaughter). Otherwise, No.

Perhaps the Sea Hag is there to take the arcane crystal that's powering the ship for something (I dunno, selling it on the black market, powering a laser that could obliterate the next town over, she just wants it, etc). The captain and others are fairly unaware of the sea hag in the area, but there are tales of other ships having their crystal disappear in the middle of the night. The PCs encounter the monster either by 1) Hearing the hag and the octopus climb up the ship and go to the boiler room (other passengers might hear this and check it out themselves, perhaps) or 2) They hear the engine running throughout the night, and at some point it abruptly stops. The captain sends the PCs to go check it out while he keeps watch. Depending on how fast the PCs are, the hag might be at varying points of her escape (I'd just roll 1d4 and select 4 different points along her way, like: 1: Engine Room 2: Hallway (Engine Room -> Deck) 3: Deck 4: Roll again, except the hag knows the PCs are coming, and prepares a surprise attack. If the PCs ever see her, she attacks, desperate to keep her attacks on boats a secret.

[Kaibis]

Yeh that is probably the best way. I have worked on boats, no one can sleep through an engine turning off - it's uncanny.

Thank you.

(And @Randuir, thanks for you idea too, it was a really good one, and got me thinking about the idea of sailors throwing a gold coin in the river as they round a particular bend to appease the sea witch.... no one actually believes in the sea witch, but they still do it anyway.)

[jayem]

Yeh that is probably the best way. I have worked on boats, no one can sleep through an engine turning off - it's uncanny.

Thank you.

(And @Randuir, thanks for you idea too, it was a really good one, and got me thinking about the idea of sailors throwing a gold coin in the river as they round a particular bend to appease the sea witch.... no one actually believes in the sea witch, but they still do it anyway.)
It gives you the option to after describing the difficulty of getting to sleep and used to the engines. And then when they wake up list the sounds they can hear and obvious explanations (and see how long they miss the silence).

[Wraith]

Questions:
What options can I give the group for realising that this is happening?

The Wizard-Captain is a miserly old goat; instead of paying someone to stay on watch all night, instead he casts the Alarm spell on his boat. It goes off not when an intruder crosses the handrail around the edge of the boat but when they step onto the deck proper; either he did it on purpose so that it wouldn't be set off by sea-birds and flying fish landing on the rail, or because he's so cheap it only has a small radius, to save on time and costs.

The party's religious character - Paladin or Cleric, whatever - is granted a vision of impending danger by their patron deity. You get bonus points if their deity can reasonably be defined as opposing a God of the Sea and their servants, and additional points if it's instead something pretending to be their deity in order to sow plot-hooks for later.

The party are awakened by a blood-curdling scream out of nowhere. The first mate woke up in the middle of the night and decided to go for a cigarette, then unfortunately tripped over a tentacle on his way back to his cabin.


What possible reason does the sea hag have for getting on the ship.

She's territorial and doesn't like interlopers sailing through her patch of ocean.

Her ocean-going/evil God has told her there's a rival cleric/paladin on board, and she's to slit 'em up good.

She desires treasure and is either going to extort a 'toll' from the crew, or otherwise take their valuables by force.

Her home on the ocean floor is a small town made up of sunken vessels, and she wants to capture and sink the PC's ship to expand her home with a new 'building'.

She's stuck in this particular area of the ocean - maybe her home is surrounded by thermal vents or a whirlpool that sucks things into an abyss, or is surrounded on all sides by vicious neighbouring Hags or Sahaguin or something - so she wants to steal the ship and use it to traverse the barrier that is keeping her trapped.

Just off the top of my head. Hope it helps. :smallsmile:

[Kami2awa]

I like the idea of the hag being out to steal the arcane crystal (or perhaps destroy it, if it interferes with her own magic).

For a potential twist, the crystal was hers to start with, and the ship's captain stole it. She wants it back, and to get revenge as well.

Another idea: The hag is an evil druidess (which would fit with the animal companion). Vibration from the paddleboat engines is wrecking the ecosystem of the river (as happens IRL on eg the Yangtze river) so she is attacking the paddleboat intending to leave a massacre as a warning.

[MintyNinja]

From my reading of the Sea Hag and my own usage, she could just be up here to f*** up someone's face! Too pretty? Claw your face off! The resulting screams could be enough to wake characters dramatically.

[Pleh]

I'm always a fan of making it personal.

The wizard captain and sea hag have a history together. Depending on how your mythology and setting works, she might have been a former lover before she was turned into a hag by her unethical use of magic.

If that doesn't work, you could say the Wizard and the Sea Hag have an antagonistic history, similar to Captain Ahab and the White Whale, but maybe not to that extreme (maybe more like Captain Hook and the Ticking Croc).

[Mastikator]

The sea hag and the wizard are old lovers.

A long time ago the wizard did the nasty to save his crew, then he snuck out while she was asleep. She believes he was taking advantage of her and wants revenge.

The wizard has a slight fear that she might one day find him so he has some mechanism for alerting him if she is near.