The Hag

Vampires dream while caught in Torpor. These dreams range from obsessive meditations on a single thought or emotion to entire morality plays that unfold in the Kindred’s mind night after night. The dreams can be peaceful, though usually not. More worrisome is that some vampires cannot easily distinguish the realities of a waking Requiem and the dreams of a torpid slumber. Both seem hyper-real; which is the true existence?
On rare occasions, however, some vampires — Acolytes in particular — experience a troublesome and often terrifying type of Torpor dream. While slumbering, the vampire will be able to see her surroundings as if she is awake. If servants watch over her, she will see them. If she’s trapped in a half-crushed garbage bin, she’ll see that. It feels to the vampire as if she has regained consciousness. She cannot, however, move or speak. Her Disciplines, similar to her voice, are untouchable. The torpid vampire can do nothing but look around.
Before too long, the vampire will see another creature coming toward her. This creature is a hag — a frightful witch with discolored skin, rotten teeth and dark inhuman eyes. Sometimes the hag stays in the periphery of the vampire’s vision, whereas other times the witch climbs atop the unmoving Kindred and perches like a vulture upon her chest.
From that point forward, the vampire is visited by a whole host of potential horrors during the “hag visitation.” She may feel as if her Vitae is bubbling up out of her mouth, choking her. She might hear any number of awful sounds: the screech of metal on metal, a howling wind or insects chewing the membranes of her dead flesh. The vampire may believe she is sweating blood, that something is crawling around inside of her heart or that the room is filled with a gut-wrenching odor (scalded blood, burning hair, vomit, urine, corpse flesh).
One symptom seems universal: fear. Whether the vampire is a neonate or elder, and has been slumbering for one day or one century, the vampire likely experiences irrational fear. Some tie this fear to evil, feeling as if they are in an overwhelmingly sinister presence. Others attribute this to the reality of reverence, claming that this is what it feels like to be visited by a profoundly powerful deity.
The visitations do not end. They may cease for a time, of course, but once they begin, they recur endlessly until the vampire awakens from her Torpor. The hag may come once a week, once a night, or every hour.

Hag Cults

Some Acolytes, when waking from a Torpor in which they were visited by the wretched hag, are able to deny the power of the experience. They accept that she was just a grotesque hallucination — one of the many ugly side effects of a long sleep. Others are not so sure. Why is the experience shared? Many vampires seem to have nearly identical visitations. Is it some kind of Hysteria? A primeval memory conjured up out of a Kindred’s mystic Vitae? Or are the vampires literally being visited by some kind of hag creature?
For some Acolytes, this has a profound effect. The dark Nightmare and the resultant fear become as inextirpable as the Requiem itself. These Acolytes feel as if they have been touched by something from beyond, defining the hag as anything from a possessing spirit to an actual goddess. The visitation becomes far more than mere hallucination — the vampire elevates it to a religious experience, a thing so sacred that it could only mean that the Kindred is either blessed or cursed.
From this, hag cults are born. They don’t happen overnight, of course, but the extreme feelings that come as a result of the visitations push the vampire to adapt her worship to this new “presence” in her unlife. It doesn’t matter that the hag does not visit the vampire outside of Torpor: when she awakens, her Requiem feels different, as if the strange visitor has left an invisible mark.
The visitation, however, provides no solid information. The hag doesn’t speak (some have admitted to hearing her whisper things, but this may be a true side effect of torpor), she doesn’t guide the vampire’s hand toward new faith. The Kindred is entirely on his own when it comes to deciding what he does as a result of the hag’s presence. Because of this, hag cults are rarely similar. They’ve hung their beliefs on the hook of a singular experience, true — but what they do with this experience can be as different as night and day, life and death. (Though, the targets of these hag visitations are sometimes subject to other unusual “effects,” ones that may not be shared collectively.)
What follows are a handful of the hag cults that have grown out of these visitations. Note that a hag cult doesn’t need to arise from such an experience — “the Hag” can be synonymous with “The Crone” in mythology, and thus, many Acolytes worship the hags by dint of simple association. (Alternately, some have heard of the torpid hag dreams, and find this to be enough of a reason to modify their beliefs and rituals.) The groups below, however, are specifically spawned from those Damned who have suffered contact with one of these nightmarish witches.

The Tormented

This cult of Acolytes, found in and around the rundown suburbs of Chicago, comprises a number of Eastern European immigrants who have long maintained connections to their mortal families’ pagan roots. These Acolytes’ worship, for a very long time, was secondary to their nightly activities — going into the city, hunting, attempting to clamber up the social food chain. Faith was rote, expressed through expected activities and rituals. They did not actually give a great deal of thought to their beliefs, barely lending it much credence in the first place.
All of that changed when the group’s “High Priest” was cast into Torpor from a brutal fight with a rival group of young but violent Acolytes a few towns over. His own cult rescued his slumbering form and brought him back to the communal Haven (ironically an old, burned-out Polish Catholic church). Night after night, cast against the trappings of the Catholic faith, the High Priest was visited by a hag so twisted it looked as if her bones were knotting in upon themselves. She came once a night for the two weeks that he was torpid. When he awoke, he could not shake his fear.
He told the others that he had been visited by the nocnitsa, or the “night-hag” from folklore. The night-hag is also called kriksy, plaksy or laume. The other Acolytes had heard the whispers from other Acolytes that one could be cursed by the night-hag, but such stories were easily dismissed. The High Priest became quickly obsessed with protecting himself and his cult mates from her visits. Even during their daily rest, he convinced them all to sleep with various folkloric “protections.” They drew circles of protection around their resting places at night, and each keeps a Knife or an axe upon his chest. Many also believe she fears iron, and so they adorn their resting corpses with horseshoes, fire-pokers, crowbars — any item that contains iron.
At first, the others were not so sure that the High Priest wasn’t merely convinced of a reality by his own hallucinations. Over time, however, his Paranoia spread to them. Even though none of them experienced a visit from the night-hag, they all began believing in her, and “seeing” her in windows and mirrors. They heard whispers before bed: mumbled promises of a visit from the nocnitsa. When a ritual or other endeavor failed, they blamed it upon the night-hag, claiming they were all cursed. Some in the cult even claimed that they could not always expend their mystical Vitae to gain those benefits granted to all the Damned. Whether this was true or merely a psychosomatic side effect of fear remains unclear.
Most accept her visits were an indictment against lax faith — with that in mind, they doubled their efforts to be “good” Acolytes. No longer concerned with the vanities of the Requiem, the Tormented are now obsessed with ritual and worship. They do not let a single holiday pass without diligent observation. They pray to the many gods of blood and earth that they will revoke their punishment and withdraw the nighthag. The cult sacrifices animals on rooftops, weeping blood and asking for some kind of sign that their appeasement has worked. So far, they’ve received no such sign. Their compulsive worship continues to grow maddeningly. Soon, they will become a danger to themselves and others.

The Lilim

Hag visitations are not a new phenomenon. One particularly old Acolyte cult claims origins back many centuries, further maintaining that its members have experienced bizarre side effects from their torpid encounters that others have not. The results of this effect seem undeniable, and if it has truly been happening for hundreds of years (if not longer), then this cult is certainly unique.
The effect is this: whilst deeply slumbering, a vampire is visited by the hag. This hag in particular has skin as black as volcanic glass, and has dark avian eyes. Her hands and feet, similarly, are like the talons of a raptor bird, and she perches upon the victim’s chest, claws digging into the vampire’s flesh. The hag opens her mouth (jaw dislocating silently like a snake’s), and a long tubule tongue extends while the vampire lies in horrified paralysis. The tongue flicks out, and pierces the breastbone or the neck of the victim.
Those Acolytes who experience this claim with certainty that not only is she withdrawing a “draught of Vitae,” but also drinking part of the vampire’s own will. The hag only visits once. Upon awakening (one day or one decade later), the vampire finds that not only is his Vitae diminished more than it perhaps should be, but his strength of will is truly lessened (in system terms, a full Willpower dot).
This singular effect does not end there. What some have found is that, upon returning to the world from Torpor, they have a childe. The childe is rarely discovered immediately (if ever). If the childe is discovered, it’s often the result of blood sympathy (p. 163, Vampire: The Requiem). Odd flashes of sensation of the childe’s Requiem assault the vampire suddenly — the awareness that she has apparently sired a creature (an act she can’t recall) can be quite frightening.
While the percentage is relatively small, many Acolytes over the last five centuries or so have claimed to suffer this impossible theft of will, left with a childe who is at least as old as the Kindred’s length of slumber. Some vampires simply cannot handle this reality. They believe it a trick, and either ignore their progeny or attempt to destroy them outright (a fate that may befall lost childer regardless). Other vampires accept the cruel reality and accept responsibility for the offspring that seems likely to be theirs.
Some affected Acolytes have developed a theory as to what happened to them — or, more specifically, who visited them. The Sumerians called her Kiskil-lilla, while the Akkadians knew her as Lilitu. Her more common name, Lilith, ties her to various mythologies and cultures — Greek legend, Jewish folklore and Christian apocrypha.
Lilith, in her earliest incarnations, was a hybrid of a woman and an owl. She was a creature of wisdom, a shepherdess of women in childbirth — but time and tales corrupted her. She became an icon of death, not of life, a demon instead of a goddess. Wisdom gave way to vengeance. Her natural fertility withered, and she could not provide succor to those in childbirth. She could only curse them to have a womb as ruined as her own.
One of the grotesque legends associated with the wrathful demoness was that, because she could not sire normal children herself, she would steal the seed from men. While they slept, she could coax their dreams and bodies; the resultant emission was hers to steal. With their seed, she could produce vicious demon children — half-human, half-goddess. Partly alive, and partly dead.
To some Acolytes, the parallels were clear. The “demons” she spawned were vampires. A Kindred in Torpor who finds himself bereft of blood and will, but gifted with a childe upon awakening — Lilith’s touch seems the only answer. (Moreover, the hag’s physical form appears in line with the Lilitu strange avian features.)
Over time, those affected by Lilith found one another. Whispers and rumors connected them, even over great distances. Desperate to find others with shared experiences, they came together and stayed together. To this day, the self-proclaimed Lilim track down those who have been blessed by the demoness and bring them into the fold. The victim’s interest in joining the cult is irrelevant; she has been blessed, and she must be with her brothers and sisters regardless of her own desires.
The cult looks similarly upon those childer created from the union of hag and slumbering Kindred. The childer are doubly blessed, being the fruits born from primeval wisdom and power. They are obsessively protected, treated as holy predators and given permission to do as they wish — provided, of course, that they never stray far from the cult or its members.
Tracking down other Lilim is only part of what the cult does, however. Lilith was a creature of wrath, scorned by an increasingly patriarchal society, a goddess left barren and half-mad. So, too, are her children. The Lilim seek vengeance upon those who stand in the Lilim’s way. Any who dare to dictate laws and morals to the Lilim deserve bitter reproach.
The form this reproach takes is up to the local Lilim. Many gather Allies and knowledge and do their best to usurp power from their foes, leaving the fools cast out, much as Lilith once was. Others prefer more direct forms of opposition, potentially torturing or destroying those who cross them.
Some Lilim turn their wrath against entire cities of Kindred. This has not often been the case, but when it is, the cults have acted with patience and persistence. They wait in the shadows, never making their true affiliation known (for some know that the children of Lilith are troublesome fiends). They collect secrets and orchestrate betrayals, attempting to turn Allies into enemies. The Lilim uncover the locations of as many havens as they can, and spy on those in power to gain clues into what could leave them most vulnerable.
In truth, this has rarely worked to the full extent that the Lilim cults would prefer. Often, they are discovered in the midst of their orchestrations and run out of the city or destroyed. (Usually, though, by then some damage is already irreversible.) On a few occasions, though, the Lilim have been able to creep through the city like a plague, dismantling the power structure Kindred by Kindred until the Lilim can put themselves as Hierophants and Princes.
It’s worth noting that, despite the Lilim’s defiance of the patriarchy, their immediate enemies are not necessarily the Sanctified. Lilith is a figure in Judeo-Christian lore as much as she is a fallen pagan goddess — while some in The Lancea Sanctum vilify or deny her presence, some are willing to include her as a key figure in the myth and mysticism of the sect. This alone saves them from the sword — at least, at first. No, the larger target of the Lilim’s ire tends to be the vampires of the First Estate. The Lilim perceive the Kindred of The Invictus to be the true oppressors, with boot heels placed firmly upon everybody’s necks — even those of The Lancea Sanctum.

The Hag-Touched

Anomalous aftereffects are not unknown among those visited by the hag. One cult in particular is together not out of any shared vision of The Crone or because of some unified belief system. These Acolytes are bound only by the mysteries left behind by the hag.
For these Kindred, the hag came as the stories have always told: she came to them nightly, crouching by their slumbering places or squatting upon their chests. During the visit they felt utter, inexplicable fear, heard the sound of wind through trees and felt blood well up and drip from their noses.
Upon awakening, however, the vampires discovered — differences. These anomalies did not become apparent at first, but over time each Kindred uncovered unusual physical changes. One found a black sliver of Bone — carved into a delicate triangle — shoved under one fingernail. Another discovered three red welts upon the back of his neck that he could not heal with any expenditure of Vitae.
Two others found unusual objects in the backs of their throats: one coughed up a fat, silken spider’s egg, and another loosed a small knot of still-living ivy. The hag marked each of them in different ways, but the reasoning behind these markings is as yet incomprehensible to the Kindred.
Over time, these Kindred also began experiencing strange nightmares while sleeping during the day. Such sleep was usually placid, literally a sleep of death. Now, however, their daily slumbers are filled with terrifying dreams, many of which seem to incorporate visions of the hag’s markings. Some dream of standing atop dead trees in a wretched forest, trying to cross from one treetop to another via bridges made of thin spider’s silk or of meandering shoots of ivy.
Other dreams feature the vampires being bitten on the backs of their necks by something unseen — and they can feel blood being drawn in great amounts from three tiny holes. In every dream the vampire always sees the hag in the distance, sitting next to a skeleton formed of black and moldering bones. The skeleton always seems to be carving something with a Knife or a stone. A sliver of his own Bone, perhaps?
The cult has since found a few others in the city who have had similar (though never exactly the same) experiences and nightmares. These self-proclaimed Hag-Touched have made it their goal to uncover the realities of whatever happened to them. The city’s Damned think them crazy, for the most part — others acknowledge that it must be some kind of Acolyte scheme to garner attention and interest. (Others whisper that such madness — mental and physical — is the cost of messing with primeval blood sorcery.) No matter what the accusation, this cult has earned the insulting moniker, “the Hag-Tagged” from dismissive vampires.
Still, by plumbing the depths of their conditions, the vampires have become unusually knowledgeable upon the subjects of the covenant. They devote all of their time and Resources toward diligent study of the Circle’s shattered history, attempting to uncover traces of the hag throughout the covenant’s chronicles and mythologies. Moreover, their Research has led them toward discoveries of information and power that has lain dormant for a long time. This cult knows a few rituals that others have only heard of, and has learned reams of bizarre information from mad spirits summoned from across the membrane between worlds. These Acolytes, by attempting to unravel their own mysteries, have inadvertently become somewhat powerful.
Of course, the irony is, they still have not answered their own questions, only the questions of others. Does the spider’s egg represent Arachne? Are the thin bridges between trees the bridges shown in shamanic journeys, or are they bridges of judgment like the Chinvat Bridge in Zoroastrian myth? Ivy represents life — are they supposed to cultivate life out of death? Alternately, the Bone must surely represent death, so what does that mean? Worst of all, are they simply being toyed with by another Kindred, or perhaps by some thing from the other side of reality?

The Covey of the Three Roads

Nobody wants to visit — or be visited by — an Acolyte of the Three Roads. They are unpleasant creatures, singularly disturbing to look upon, but worse for what they always seem to know (which is, of course, nearly everything). These odd prophets always seem to appear at the most appropriate or inappropriate times in a vampire’s Requiem. Just as he has a burning question or a maddening decision, they make their presence known. They offer their help — if it can be called that — and then leave. If he wants to follow up and ask them for their aid, so be it. He must pay the cost and be done. If he rebuffs their offer, they will never offer it again. The offer’s withdrawal can be both a curse and a blessing.
Who are the vampires of this enigmatic cult? They are a cult of Acolytes long-devoted to worshipping The Crone of the Crossroads, the witch-goddess Hecate. The elder vampires in the cult (those who believe themselves gods, or Crones) claim to have been visited by Hecate while sleeping in Torpor. She came to them, the hag with yellow eyes and rotten fangs, and whispered the mandate to become like her — gods who wait at the juncture between the roads, ready to help the lost find their way at whatever cost.
This juncture is, to them, metaphorical. One’s Requiem is endless and filled with damning questions — making the wrong decision or moving in the improper direction can cut a vampire’s unlife suddenly short. So, the Covey offers its members as guides, ready to usher other vampires toward truth. The cult members stand, ready to offer a hand to those who need it. Should a vampire humiliate the Sheriff during Elysium? What is the local Hierophant hiding in his garden? If the Kindred makes a move to become the Prince’s Whip, what will happen?
The witches have ways of knowing things. Not only are these Acolytes particularly adept at spying upon and studying others (they value Auspex above all other Disciplines), but they are the practitioners of several Devotions that help them discern the questions in a vampire’s mind before that vampire even asks them. This Devotion, called the Hekau (see p. 193), allows the witch to know who will best be served by her commitment. The Acolyte can sense those with difficult decisions or burning questions, and he will approach them and offer his services — or bait them into approaching him.
Again, a witch’s help is not without cost. These costs are by no means concretized; it is up to the individual Acolyte to determine what would make suitable payment. This decision is the confluence of many personal factors: Does the Acolyte feel pity for the questioner, or does he perhaps feel some kind of admiration? Is there something that the questioner has that the Acolyte wants? Is the witch feeling particularly cruel tonight?
The associated cost to the questioner often ends up falling into one of two categories. The first is worship. The vampires of the Three Roads think themselves divine, and so they ask that others show them the respect they “deserve.” Worship may mean that a Kindred tithes blood (his or a ghoul’s) once a week to the Covey, often in a ritual bowl or cruet. (If the vampire pays with his own blood, it isn’t used as food. No, the witches use Kindred blood in various secret rituals, ceremonies that remain hidden to this day.)
Alternately, perhaps the questioner must meet with the witch once a month and offer her prayer or poetry or strips of flesh from his own body. Sometimes the Acolyte asks not for worship from the questioner directly, but from one closely associated with him: a childe or other ally, perhaps. The ultimate worship comes when the witch asks for the vampire to become bound — in part or full — to her. This often doesn’t happen the first time, but once a vampire gets a taste of the Acolyte’s capabilities, the vampire often comes back to seek her aid again. When this happens, the cost is always higher.
The second form of recompense comes as action. The Acolyte may need something done. Perhaps an enemy stands in his way. Maybe a ghoul has managed to go rogue, and the Acolyte does not wish to expend the effort to hunt it down himself. Sometimes, these actions are inscrutable to all but the witch who demanded them. He may ask the vampire to go to Elysium and make a fool of himself in front of the Harpies, or perhaps insult the Prince’s Hound outside a local nightclub.
Some suggestions are truly bizarre: climb atop a water tower and spill blood upon those below, smear all the street signs within a two-block radius with vampiric Vitae, pretend for a single evening to be human once again. Are these ideas just whimsy meant to embarrass the vampire, or is there some kind of clandestine purpose?
All of this is, of course, contingent upon a vampire asking for the Acolyte’s help (or conceding to it) in the first place. Few are comfortable with the idea. Not only is there a cost, but the witches don’t make it easy with honeyed tongues and sweet smiles. These Acolytes model themselves after the hag, Hecate. They do not wash. They often smell of rotten blood (an odor disturbing to most Kindred, for it both appalls them and stirs their hungers) and stare out through stringy, filthy hair. They cover their faces with masks of blood, mud or soot. (Though, some prefer real masks: demon masks, medieval plague masks, even gas masks.) They are horrifying to behold, made ugly by their own hands. Woe to any other vampire who has experienced a hag visit during sleep or Torpor, for the witch may appear the spitting image of that very being.
Still, should a vampire decide to enlist the witch’s services, he gets what he pays for. The witch, already very knowledgeable about the social and political circles of the city’s Kindred, can generally make highly educated guesses as to which way the wind will blow, so to speak. A witch’s prediction thus looks like prophecy. During those times when things do not seem to go according to her “insight,” she will do her best to make them go that way. (If this means tasking others to help her guide the situation, so be it. A witch often has a long list of those who owe her favors big and small.)
Can this backfire? Absolutely. The Crones are wrong often enough, and sometimes their seemingly limitless powers are not so boundless after all. On occasion, the Covey has been exiled temporarily or kept to the margins of the city’s Kindred for five, maybe 10 years at a time.
It doesn’t often get to that stage, however. For as many enemies as these Acolytes may earn, they have an equal or larger number of Allies (or servants) who cover their tracks and clean up their messes and misses.
When something goes awry, the Acolyte generally needs to snap her fingers, and one of her adherents will take to the task like a hungry maggot. Sometimes, though, the tide simply turns against the Acolytes, and their Allies turn their backs or go missing altogether. When this happens, it is fate, and (so far) never permanent. Someone will always come to them, asking for their favor. When that happens, the road is once again clear, and they may again approach the crossroads.

Outside the Covenant

Generally, the hag — whatever she may be — visits only Acolytes. Whether this is because she is truly some fallen goddess speaking to her children or because she is part of some kind of mass Hysteria conjured from the minds of believers remains unclear. Nine times out of 10, she appears only to those who give her power and credence.
That said, Kindred from other covenants have experienced her visits during Torpor. The visits are generally the same as what an Acolyte experiences, as described above. While the visitation itself is the same, the effects of the visit are often quite unique. For instance, when a vampire of The Lancea Sanctum finds himself suddenly awake in the middle of Torpor, plagued by the presence of a vile hag, his instinct is likely to explain this in the context of his own beliefs. Is it some infernal succubus, tormenting the Kindred or testing his faith?
Perhaps, as whispers suggest, this is a ruse by the local pagans, a cruel curse levied against the vampire for his adherence to a patriarchal religion. More than one Sanctified have come out of such an experience with a newfound (or renewed) distrust of the city’s Acolytes. Some Kindred take this to the next step, getting help from the local Damned to exile the blood-soaked sorcerers.
Members of other covenants don’t necessarily have the religious connotations to their organizations, and hence don’t ascribe any kind of greater meaning to a hag visit. Some have witnessed the hag and fled the arms of The Invictus or their Carthian Allies and attempted to learn more from the Acolytes, but most ignore it or manage their fear silently. The Ordo Dracul has interest in the hag visits, or so the rumors suggest. They certainly don’t admit to such an interest, but whispers persist. One hushhush tale suggests that Dragons somewhere on the West Coast have actually managed to capture a hag — whether this means by shackling her spirit or by confining a very real and physical entity, nobody knows.