Editing Awnshegh (section)

==[[Hag|The Hag]]==
Once a beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious princess who was given away in a political marriage by her regent cousin, Fulda Geissen didn't mind since she was marrying up to the heir to the bigger neighboring realm. But then, her newlywed husband took ill and died shortly after the honeymoon, and Fulda managed to screw herself out of being named regent by her husband's ailing and aged father by being too quick, pushy, and ambitious about it.  (Which the text notes is suspicious, but we don't know if she ''actually'' murdered him.) This kicked off a chain of events that led the neighbors to end up going to war, and Fulda made everything worse ''again'' by kidnapping the six-year-old heir and running off with some followers into disputed territory, hoping to get her cousin on her side.  It backfired, and the horrified regent instead demanded she instead return to court to be punished for this crime.  Rather than do so, Fulda vanished into the mountains... and whatever else happened to the helpless child, her seething paranoia and hatred transformed her into the Hag.  

Now twisted into a hideously old woman with clawed hands, covered in open sores, whose lower half is a wriggling mass of venomous snakes, the Hag of Muden amuses herself by stoking wars between the two powers she's sandwiched between, who only manage to sign treaties in futile efforts to unite and destroy her.  She uses her powers to ensnare messengers, conjure up illusions, kidnap innocent people to send home half-mad with fear and stories of torture, and doing horrible things to any innocent children she can catch.  She's also quite powerful; despite lacking Invulnerability, she has a smorgasboard of strong blood powers, the spellcasting abilities of a 15th level wizard, can fight in melee with a combination of inhuman strength, a variety of weapons, and her claws and venomous snake-half (and the venom causes either a day-long coma full of night terrors or death), and even causes anyone looking at her to save or flee in terror.  

The Hag's domain, Korden (''not'' Muden, weirdly), is largely uninhabited due to the evil reputation of its dark master.  It has a potent magical Source within, as well as varieties of poisonous snakes that do the Hag's bidding and a small number of men she's somehow enslaved to her will under the former ranger Orin Hawk.  There're also theories that the Hag is actually a succession of different individuals, with Fulda Geissen merely being the first, but it's not particularly well-developed. Not especially deep or complex, but a good example of a dangerous and powerful awnshegh pure villain.