Annis Hag nightmare fuel for a horror campaign

[HoboKnight]

I have a mature horror plot on my hands with Annis Hag being an antagonist. These hags are rather disturbing, but I'm more interested in descriptions/plot then visual art.

What is a good source to find nightmare fuel inspiration, connected to corruption of creatures which I can use for my campaign?

It is mostly to flesh out the hag, not to attack the PCs.

Thanks

[Ionathus]

What kind of horror are you going for? It sounds like you're looking for body horror (torture, disfiguration, mutilation, etc) rather than something like psychological horror, is that correct?

If so, the SCP Foundation is pretty good for clinical-sounding descriptions of some really nasty body horror. Just paging around on random articles for 10-15 minutes will probably give you several examples to play with.

Blair Witch stuff is probably also going to be pretty good, especially given the "witch" vibes of the Annis Hag. The 2016 film has several scenes that you might find useful.

[HoboKnight]

Thank you! Psychological horror is also my interest in this case. And the source you suggested is exactly what I am looking for.

[Bad Wolf]

If you have access to Dragon Magazine, issue 345 has an article on Annis hag flavor that you might find interesting.

[Mastikator]

You could try an urban setting where the annis hag is basically a serial killer who strangles people at night. Anyone who wanders alone in the streets at night is in extreme danger. Nobody knows who the annis hag is due to its magical disguise, creating a sense of distrust.
You could also have the annis hag be a manifestation of a force, such that killing the annis hag is only one of the many steps the players would have to go through to kill it fully. Maybe it's empowered by the fear of the townsfolk. The players should be at the level where 1v1 the annis hag almost definitely kills the PC, but together (with the power of friendship) they can kill it, but ultimately it will take the courage of the townsfolk to actually prevent the hag from reforming.

[Segev]

Body horror: slow transformations as curses. First, a weird hiccup. Then, slime (mucous) oozes from the skin. They find themselves eating insects. And turning green. And shrinking.

And that's a benign one!

Still-living victims with no bones, oozing desperately about, wheezing for every breath, in constant pain.

The hag twists trees into vaguely people-like shapes, wracked and screaming silently. She also twists people into trees that are still vaguely humanoid. And animates both as treant servants that groan wooden y as they move. Was that tree there a minute ago?

Oh, and the hag herself has branches growing from her back and head like horns, with greg skin and a rotten moss dress that makes her look like a tree, herself, when she holds still in dim lighting.

Did the PC just cough up dry leaves?

Psychological horror: the hag uses her shape shifting to commit gruesome murders, and set people against each other.

The Oath of Ancients paladin discovers that the hag is punishing the town for its mistreatment of the wilderness. As long as this torments his conscience, she keep playing this up. When he resolves it in some way, though, she just keeps making up more excuses to torment them; she never actually cared about the wilds, herself, save as a tool and an excuse to hurt people.

the twisted tree curse? It actually is placed on a lonely person in town that nobody acknowledges. This seems cruel, but speaking of him brings on a coughing fit that is choked with dry leaves, and addressing him directly in any way brings on the full painful transformation.

Maybe the hag is in love with him and wants only herself to be able to provide him company.

A number of people around town have twig blights following them around. They treat them lije they're their children. They ignore any evidence to the contrary. Even if the blights rip apart a beloved pet.

[awa]

Body horror: slow transformations as curses. First, a weird hiccup. Then, slime (mucous) oozes from the skin. They find themselves eating insects. And turning green. And shrinking.

And that's a benign one!

Still-living victims with no bones, oozing desperately about, wheezing for every breath, in constant pain.

The hag twists trees into vaguely people-like shapes, wracked and screaming silently. She also twists people into trees that are still vaguely humanoid. And animates both as treant servants that groan wooden y as they move. Was that tree there a minute ago?

Oh, and the hag herself has branches growing from her back and head like horns, with greg skin and a rotten moss dress that makes her look like a tree, herself, when she holds still in dim lighting.

Did the PC just cough up dry leaves?

Psychological horror: the hag uses her shape shifting to commit gruesome murders, and set people against each other.

The Oath of Ancients paladin discovers that the hag is punishing the town for its mistreatment of the wilderness. As long as this torments his conscience, she keep playing this up. When he resolves it in some way, though, she just keeps making up more excuses to torment them; she never actually cared about the wilds, herself, save as a tool and an excuse to hurt people.

the twisted tree curse? It actually is placed on a lonely person in town that nobody acknowledges. This seems cruel, but speaking of him brings on a coughing fit that is choked with dry leaves, and addressing him directly in any way brings on the full painful transformation.

Maybe the hag is in love with him and wants only herself to be able to provide him company.

A number of people around town have twig blights following them around. They treat them lije they're their children. They ignore any evidence to the contrary. Even if the blights rip apart a beloved pet.

those are good real good I might steal them, but you forgot one classic hag behavior is the eating of children, the hag is stealing the children and replacing them with the blights. You can have the party see the children disappearing one by one, introduce a family with children next time they see them boom twig blights. Depending on how dark you want it to be the children's remains can be found or she could have them all locked up being fattened up for some feast allowing them to be saved, for extra darkness when they try and rescue the children they turn out to just be more twig blights.

[Segev]

those are good real good I might steal them, but you forgot one classic hag behavior is the eating of children, the hag is stealing the children and replacing them with the blights. You can have the party see the children disappearing one by one, introduce a family with children next time they see them boom twig blights. Depending on how dark you want it to be the children's remains can be found or she could have them all locked up being fattened up for some feast allowing them to be saved, for extra darkness when they try and rescue the children they turn out to just be more twig blights.

The hag in question is first introduced as always having a toothpick in her mouth. In fact, it is a bit of a tell when she's in a disguise; she can't que shake the habit and seeing a character with a toothpick poking out of his or her mouth is a worrisome sign that he or she might be the hag.

So when you find that the only things to rescue are twig blights, and that she gets her toothpocks by splintering twig blights...

[Bohandas]

The writings of Junji Ito are what spi\ring immediately to my mind regarding body horror and psychological horror

The novel Whargoul [sic] by shock rock icon Dave Brockie also comes to mind.

Other things that might be of interest are The Twilight Zone, the webcomic Deep Rise (which sadly is currently missing half of its pages), heavy metal lyrics (particularly by Cannibal Corpse), the Marquis de Sade wrote a novel where the entire last chapter is just a numbered list of messed up ways to kill people, the Human Centipede movies, the Hellraiser movies, the film adaptation of From Beyond, the tv series The Heart, She Holler from Adult Swim, Let's Visit the World of the Future by Ivan Stang, also, look up historical serial killers

[Segev]

The hag has cursed the town (maybe via its water supply, maybe some other way). A plague is ... plaguing them. A nasty, enervating, ultimately-lethal fever. The only cure is eating some of the flesh of somebody who's died of this illness, and that only protects you until the next sundown, when you are once again possibly able to contract it.

When somebody who's taken the 'cure' dies, especially if they die of the disease, they rise as a ghoul.

[Bohandas]

There is visceral horror and revulsion in living things being made out of things that they're not supposed to be made out of.

While trying to think of good examples of this, I've realized that it seems to come up most often in things that are attempting to be both funny and horiffic at the same time. The best example of this is in the Discworld novels, when characters travel to fairyland, which is unfinished and unreal, or to the tooth fairy's castle, which is based on a children's drawings, and realize that - for example - the trees aren't trees, where there should be leaves there's just a long tangled vine becayse the foliage was scribbled in, or that the fish are misshapen and seem to be both in and out of the water at the same time. Another example is at the end of Nightmare Before Christmas
where the bogeyman turns out to be made out of bugs, none of which appear to be sapient or even eusocial and a third example is the old Simpsons halloween special (The Devil and Homer Simpson) wherein the devil, having failed to obtain Homer Simpson's soul, curses homer to have a donut for a head, which compels Homer to start eating his own head and comes off much more disturbingly (as well as funnier) than the various more mundane halloween episodes where characters resort to ordinary cannibalism (Nightmare Cafeteria and MMM Homer)

[Grim Portent]

To propose a variation of an idea I have for something else, what about changing up the whole kid-eating thing to be a bit more... mystical I suppose is the word? A grimdark version of Hobbes from Fable more or less.

The Hag steals children, as is normal, but rather than eating them in gory fashion, she uses blood magic to replace their soul with that of beasts or evil spirits, turning them into monstrous half-humans while trapping the soul to live out the rest of it's days as a plant or animal or something. A pack of wendigo-esque feral children, with perhaps a few grown up ones who were turned many years ago, with quadrupedal locomotion and a hunger for flesh, while a herd of deer or flock of crows feel an unusual longing to be near the local village because of a half-remembered connection to their families.

The beast-souled children bodies are hunting travellers, abusing their childlike appearance to lure them in, and worship the hag with effigies and sacrifices of meat and valuables taken from their victims.