Crone of Chaos

A crone of chaos is a cunning, wicked relative of hags, always female, who delights in causing pain through deceit. Unless caught off guard she always wears an illusion, usually of a beautiful young woman. Beneath it her skin is wrinkled and leathery, her wiry hair thin and sticking out at odd angles, and her long crooked arms end in huge clawed hands with old blood dried under the nails. Her fangs are sharp and crusted with tartar, and she reeks, since she hates water and never bathes. She speaks Common and any language that suits the form she usually wears.

Her sharp senses give her a +1 bonus to surprise rolls. Her powers are innate, but detect magic reveals them and dispel magic can counter them. Chief among them is the illusion that makes her look human or demihuman, which she can keep up while attacking.

From behind that disguise she uses animal control and daggers of sorcery, both with a range of 240 yards, though only one such magical attack per round. She reveals her real shape only when surprised or when her magic has failed; then she rakes twice with her clawed nails.

Crones dwell in any climate from steaming jungle to the edges of the tundra, typically in a cave deep in a dark forest or bleak wilderness. Each lives alone, shunning humans and other crones alike, though she may keep a few half-tamed animals.

A crone can breed with most humanoids but prefers humans, luring a man with illusion, then killing and eating him when he is no longer useful. She devours her male children, and since none has ever been seen, no one knows if they could survive. Daughters are abandoned.

Foster parents see a baby of the father's race. Then the girl seems to age quickly: by her late teens her skin is creased and blotchy, her joints knotted, her hair thin, and at the same time she gains a crone's powers, which help mask the change. Sooner or later she comes to despise the people around her, or they begin to suspect her, and she leaves for a hermit's life of wickedness.

Sages argue over whether this fate is unavoidable, and whether kindly crones might secretly live among people. No proof has turned up, and with a typical life span of three hundred years, such crones would be hard to miss.