Male Changeling + Hag Transformation = ...Any Ideas?


Homebrew and House Rules


Anyway, an idea I've had for an antagonist pair is Old Middy and Young Meddy, a green hag and her transformed son, Middy leaving him to be raised as a changeling rather than eating him as a personal experiment of hers. She's a bit of a maverick, even by hag standards.

Thing is though, a male changeling who underwent the hag induction ritual, well, isn't a hag. Hags are all female, and while I can certainly see the comedic appeal of a male hag, that sounds like something from the Discworld, and I'm trying to be serious here.

I'm thinking he turns into a nokken, a malevolent water creature (and fiddler) from Scandinavian myth. This isn't a brains-and-brawn combo, this is an infiltrator-and-lair-guardian combo. They're both quite intelligent and cunning, it's just that Meddy can't go too far from the water (though he can cause havoc by playing his fiddle at people from a safe distance and hidden, and he's still a capable shapeshifter).

And yes, I know about hagspawn. I'm aiming for the folkloric here.


Um, if you are already houseruling male changelings, why not male hags?


Eh, no. I'm not going to deal with even more jokes about the male form of a hag being an "old coot" than there is already ("Beware his lawn!").

I like the idea of hags being similar to the smaller, more clever varieties of troll in Norwegian folklore, like the Hulda or the Skorgsa. Thus, it stands to reason that a male would be a different kind of smallish, clever troll.


Leliel the 12th wrote:

Eh, no. I'm not going to deal with even more jokes about the male form of a hag being an "old coot" than there is already ("Beware his lawn!").

I like the idea of hags being similar to the smaller, more clever varieties of troll in Norwegian folklore, like the Hulda or the Skorgsa. Thus, it stands to reason that a male would be a different kind of smallish, clever troll.

Can you recommend any links or books referencing the Skorgsa? I fancy myself a bit of a mythology nerd, but I've never heard of them before and I'd like to read more about them.


I have no idea what any of those things are, but ... if the ritual can turn him into a hag, why can't it change his gender to match?


Zhayne wrote:
I have no idea what any of those things are, but ... if the ritual can turn him into a hag, why can't it change his gender to match?

+1 there are already gender changing spells and items so why not. If she's conducting an experiment she wont really care if he objects to the hagification and maybe she'll even took him into it in exchange for power.

Old coot jokes . . . so tempting "Get outa my swamp you young adventurers."


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Tirisfal wrote:
Leliel the 12th wrote:

Eh, no. I'm not going to deal with even more jokes about the male form of a hag being an "old coot" than there is already ("Beware his lawn!").

I like the idea of hags being similar to the smaller, more clever varieties of troll in Norwegian folklore, like the Hulda or the Skorgsa. Thus, it stands to reason that a male would be a different kind of smallish, clever troll.

Can you recommend any links or books referencing the Skorgsa? I fancy myself a bit of a mythology nerd, but I've never heard of them before and I'd like to read more about them.

Actually, I misspelled that. It's skogsra - "forest lady."

Swedish forest spirit, a variety of Huldra. Known for replacing children with changelings and luring men into...indiscretions with them.

It's also said they are loving wives, but abusers will quickly discover they're string and tough enough to bend hot horseshoes into straight bars. Ironically for hag inspiration, they become nicer and more pleasant as they age.

Wikipedia link to Huldra, pretty much everything in there applies to skogsra.

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Bound to water and enchanting music? Sounds to me like you might want to reskin a Bestiary 4 fossegrim. Switch it from fey to monstrous humanoid, maybe swap out the treasure form ability for something more melee-focused, and you've got yourself a nokken.

Of course, Paizo hasn't put B4 into its rules archive quite yet, but I think d20pfsrd.com has.


Leliel the 12th wrote:
Tirisfal wrote:
Leliel the 12th wrote:

Eh, no. I'm not going to deal with even more jokes about the male form of a hag being an "old coot" than there is already ("Beware his lawn!").

I like the idea of hags being similar to the smaller, more clever varieties of troll in Norwegian folklore, like the Hulda or the Skorgsa. Thus, it stands to reason that a male would be a different kind of smallish, clever troll.

Can you recommend any links or books referencing the Skorgsa? I fancy myself a bit of a mythology nerd, but I've never heard of them before and I'd like to read more about them.

Actually, I misspelled that. It's skogsra - "forest lady."

Swedish forest spirit, a variety of Huldra. Known for replacing children with changelings and luring men into...indiscretions with them.

It's also said they are loving wives, but abusers will quickly discover they're string and tough enough to bend hot horseshoes into straight bars. Ironically for hag inspiration, they become nicer and more pleasant as they age.

Wikipedia link to Huldra, pretty much everything in there applies to skogsra.

Fantastic! Thank you!


I don't know if this is any help to you, but, the module "Tears at Bitter Manor" introduces stats for creatures called "Calibans", which are Monstrous Humanoids that are essentially created as male counterparts to Changelings. Perhaps Young Meddy could be a unique, more magically adept variant of the Caliban?


Perhaps male changelings become trolls, ie Grendel and his mother (a hag in some versions).

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