Black Betty, Gnatmarsh Hag's page

Continued from the last post ....

Having finished scribbling on her slate board a hasty retort, Black Betty presented it to the blazing blue eyes of the wrathful White Queen:

"My Dear, Sweet Queen, I'll put it plain to ye as I can: Ye need me alive, and what's more, ye need me able to speak with me own words to me dear, precious son, Grimaldi. If I have no tongue, I cannot speak to him on yer behalf, My Queen. An' if'n ye chop off me hands, or any other part o' old Black Betty, I simply WON'T speak to him on yer behalf. On that, ye can wager. If ye would only TRUST me, Sweet Queen, I could be thy truest o' friends!' The glittering black coals beseeched the queen through the ghoulish iron eyeholes of the scold's bridle, pleading for her to heed Black Betty's "sincere" offer of alliance ....

Continued in the next post ....

Continued from above ....

Shaking her bedraggled head in objection, Black Betty erased her previous message from her slate board and began to scrawl a reply, which she presently thrust toward Xenia into the glow of her light cantrip. Xenia quickly scanned the message, her reading comprehension being akin to that of the most savant sages and scribes throughout the Flanaess, with a near eidetic memory of any text she'd even casually perused ....

"Yer fears be quite understandable, Sweet Queen o' Nyrond, for me dear, precious boy, Grimaldi, is indeed a black-hearted and cunning rogue, every bit as clever as the most scheming of yer courtly ilk, me fair-hide Suelii Queen! But what sets me clever, han'some Grimmy aside from yer courtly lot is that his cunning and ambition are not hobbled as ye n' yer ilk are by such precious notions as chivalry, piety, and what ye call 'fair play' .... Nay, me Grimmy loves only one accursed thing in all the rotten Oerth--his dear, beloved mum! I be the only one in all o' the Great Wheel that he gives a lemure's turd about--pardon my vulgar ways, Yer Highness. If ye kill me, there'd be nothing stopping me boyo from unleashin' the fury o' the Abyss upon yer pretty head. An' not just ye, My Queen .... I weep fulsome tears o' grief to think that by killing little old me, ye'd also bring about--Oh, the irony! The bitter tragedy!--the senseless slaughter, and likely in the most painful and horrific o' manners, o' yer own precious wee bairn, the sweet little Princess o' Nyrond! Oh! Cegilune forbid it! I could'na bear it, My Queen!" Black Betty's jet-black eyes glittered with keen cunning and calculating malice as she returned the White Queen of Nyrond's icy glare. This was her best hope. Both Lynwerd (as a paladin) and Xenia (as a wizard) had indomitable wills and were very difficult to manipulate. But Lynwerd was like an adamantine wall, neither bending nor breaking. He would never succumb to her subtle and insidious manipulations. But Xenia .... She was not so rigid in her ideologies, not so bound by piety, honor, and sacred oaths to a lawful good deity (Heironeous) or duty to a kingdom inherited from a long line of his father's fathers. She might be somewhat more malleable than the bull-headed paladin king. She might be more pliable .... more susceptible to Black Betty's influence ....

Continued in the next post ....

Continued from above ....

Black Betty at once scrawled a message on her slate board with her lump of chalk, and held it forth for the fair young Queen of Nyrond to read by her magical light cantrip:

"T'would be tragic folly for ye to burn me, My Sweet and Fair Young Queen of Nyrond. And most uncharitable of one who claims such quaint notions as yer precious chivalry, honor, and clemency, which ye 'n yer ilk moon on 'n on about, wouldn't it? After all, I'm but a lowly, helpless, pitiful old crone, bereft of me sisters and me poor, sweet Wamba and Lamb .... Murdered like dogs in the road by th'old geezer ye call the Grey Seer .... Would ye kill a harmless old crone out of petty spite? What, be ye jealous of scrawny, ancient, ugly old Black Betty?"

Continued ....

Continued from the previous post ....

In the damp and utter darkness of the oubliette huddled the green hag illusionist Black Betty, last surviving witch of the Gnatmarsh hags' coven after her "sisters" and "foster sons" had been slain by the powerful evocations of the Grey Seer on the road between Rel Mord and the Gnatmarsh. Her fingers were hampered by finger irons and her wrists bound together with cold iron manacles, which prevented the somatic components of spell-casting, but still allowed her to awkwardly scrawl messages on a slate board with a lump of chalk. This was necessary for her to communicate, for she was gagged by a cold iron scold's bridle that covered her face in a ghastly metallic mask, an uncomfortable cone of cold iron inserted into her gaping jaws that often gagged her and caused perpetual drooling. It was only removed by her gaolers twice per day--at dawn for breakfast, and just before dusk for supper--during which times a paladin swordsman or swordswoman of Heironeous was on hand with sword blade poised to smite her head from her neck should she speak a single word of an arcane incantation or a witch's hex.

She squinted painfully at the bright globe of pale magical light that radiated from the end of a silvery greater metamagic rod of quicken held forth like a torch by the slim and graceful feminine form that approached, brow crowned with glittering coronet and orbited by a trio of slightly luminous ioun stones, each a different color and shape, gossamer gown of silvery white silk fluttering in the damp subterranean drafts that endlessly circulated through the donjon levels .... The dolorous, piteous misery in the hag's black eyes was evident to the White Queen of Nyrond, and unmistakably genuine. There was no need for Black Betty to feign any greater pathos than she sincerely felt, languishing in despair, forgotten in the damp, rat-infested oubliette. She gave utterance to a stifled, mournful groan fraught with wretchedness and pleading, mixed with a slight metallic rattle of the cold iron bridle vibrating uncomfortably in her aching mouth: "GNUUUGHHHNN!"

Continued in the following post ...

Continued from above ....

"You killed them! My poor old sisters! My dear sweet boys! You .... You monster!," shrieked Black Betty. Falling to her knees inside the cage of magical force, she weeped and wailed, beating her saggy breast. "I only wanted what was my due!," groaned the green hag, and she slumped over onto her side, curling up in the fetal position and sobbing piteously.

Mayhaps ye should have first learnt the spell teleport afore trying so brazen an attack, hag," observed the Grey Seer dryly and without sympathy for the monstrous witch.

"A POX ON YE AND YOURN BLOODY ADVISE, GREY SEER!! RELEASE ME!!," screamed Black Betty, but when King Lynwerd drew his blue-steel holy avenger longsword, she quaked in fear. "Mercy, oh King! Have mercy on an old wretch bereaved of her kin!"

Continued ....

At an hour past noon on Earthday, 6th of Flocktime (the day after the party's return from White Plume Mountain with several potent magic items, including the Left Ear of Vecna) ....

A covered wagon rolls through the Duntide Gate into Rel Mord, capital of the Kingdom of Nyrond, its driver appearing as an incredibly large and fat oafish peat farmer. Inside the wagon, seated on "peat harvested from the Gnatmarsh for sale at the Goods Market" are four passengers -- an exceptionally tall and gangly half-orc simpleton with a severe underbite, and three venerable peasant crones. Under the glamers that disguise them, they are monstrous, and would never have been admitted by the guards at the gatehouse.

The driver is Wamba the ogre (one of Grimaldi's "big brothers"); the half-orc simpleton is Lamb the troll (Grimaldi's other "big brother"); and the trio of crones are Black Betty, the green hag illusionist (Grimaldi's mother by King Lynwerd); Molly Marrowgob, the annis hag witch (Grimaldi's abusive "auntie"), and Stygian Stella Backrider, the night hag (Grimaldi's doting "auntie").

The wagon rolls into the busy Goods Market, where a great throng of Nyrondese consumers browse the many colorful tents and stands of merchant vendors hawking a diversity of market wares. The Low Summer sun beats down on the sprawling market, but the crowd of buyers and sellers is undaunted by the heat. "The rest of ye keep that shambling mound--I mean 'peat'--from squirming until I give ye the signal," instructs Black Betty, "whilst I mingle and palaver a bit with these goodly folk! Heh heh hehhh...."

Black Betty hops down from the wagon with a spry agility that surprises several casual observers, and begins to feign interest in various vendors' wares, haggling and gossiping before moving on to the next stall or tent (without purchasing anything, of course) .... "Did ye know I once laid with King Lynwerd hisself? Aye! Hee-hee! He must've been well into his cups and feelin' lonesome indeed to bed an old crone like me-self! I ken ye don't believe me, but I swear it on Cegilune's warts, 'tis true! I even bore his bastard, my handsome son Grimaldi! Heee-hee-heeee!"

At this nasty rumor, most of the vendors scoff incredulously, which angers Black Betty. "By Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut, I swear it be truth! I wore the skin of a pretty young handmaid I snatched from His Majesty's court, and seduced him after drugging his wine-chalice! We laid together in the King's own chambers, we did! Then, afore the cock crowed, I awayed back to me hut in Gnatmarsh. This be eleven summers gone by, 'twas .... And now, my clever and handsome boy, Grimaldi, though he be a bastard, is the only heir to the throne of Nyrond! So go laugh at that, ye tongue-wagging strumpet!," she screeched at a woman selling bars of soap who'd laughed at her claim.

After making her way to nearly every cart, stand, and tent in the Goods Market, spreading her scandalous gossip throughout, the green hag illusionist waddled back to the wagon, cackling wickedly and wringing her arthritic-looking hands, which was "the signal" to her compatriots to release the shambling mound.

As the shambler began its rampage through the Goods Market, Black Betty sprung back into the wagon and barked at Wamba the ogre: "Well, stupid? Are ye waitin' for the King's knights to come and give you another lump or two on your lumpy head?? DRIVE!! Homeward, I say!" Wambo blinked stupidly, then snapped the reigns with brutish force, and the oxen pulled the wagon 'round, barreling through the panicked mob.

A dozen city guards had been closing in on the wagon, having been informed by several vendors of the green hag's "treasonous slandering of His Majesty," but the sudden appearance of the shambling mound distracted them, and they turned their attentions to stopping the bog-monster's rampage. This allowed the coven of hags and their giant "boys" to escape in their oxen-drawn wagon the way they'd come in -- by the Duntide Gate. They drove the beasts nigh to death in their flight along the bank of the Duntide, racing for their lair in the Gnatmarsh ....

Um .... Will they escape? See the next post ....