Hag

A Hag is one of the Wanderers. It let its core go in some earlier Unsealing, and a heart demon moved into the empty place. It comes out of the Mist each Turning and serves in Umbra, the affinity of death and its aftermath that Deopa, the Deep holds.

Umbra raises the restless dead on life borrowed from the living, and the kingdom pays in people. Sealborn say its brews are steeped in the same borrowed life, so a hag costs people as well as geld and mana. All three rise as it grows.

It strikes with poison from a distance. It is easily wounded, but it grows stronger the longer it serves. In time, before battle, it hexes one enemy company, selected by chance, so that its blows land less truly. Later it can kill part of one company of ordinary enemy troops outright, and Toad fill their places until the battle ends. Later still it helps the kingdom's artisans turn up more works. The card shows what each stage does.

Guild artisans make lesser works with the method of Tellan, the Keeper of Tallies. The works hold no Core, most are used up in use, and some are a gamble. Hags claim that much of what the stationers sell began as one of their recipes, and that no artisan will admit it.

When the pay stops, it leaves. Kill one, and its service ends for the Turning, but its soul goes on, and so does its kind.

Those of its kind say the demon wants to brew itself out of the hag who carries it and into a bottle, and has not yet found the recipe. Whether a hag can be freed is not known.

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