Asha'Bellanar

The infamous Witch of Double Bay, a pseudo-immortal plight on Double Bay who strikes bargains with the unwary and has foiled the efforts of the The Hunters of Double Bay for centuries. It is common knowledge that the jungles of Double Bay are her eyes and ears.

According to Riga, she is either one of the first or the first Night Hag. Exiled on the Material Plane and cursed with mortality of the flesh, she has survived for centuries by adopting daughters and possessing their bodies whenever her own started to fail.

Keothi Diram and his clique may have been involved in her exile. A prophecy passed down in Double Bay says that only the The Child of Hag's Blood may break her curse - an impossibility, given that Hags are sterile.

Possibly "related" to Vraz-Uruth.

Her known, current daughters are Yelena and Riga.

She very likely wove the Malachite clusters into Riga's tattoos as a way to bring about the prophecy, despite the limitations of the Hexblood.

Lore

Hags are creatures that date back from the first time spellcasting became truly understood as an art. They represent that fear of hidden power, the facade standing between oneself and a horrible, dissimulated creature, and like most fey, they embody their stories well.

The tale of an old lady in the woods, secluded from most and offering gifts for costs unnamed, is common far and wide. Not always do they hold a shred of truth, but when they do, a Hag is often there to be found. These tales tend to be as old as the settlements near them, sometimes sparked by a meeting or cooked up to educate children.

Either way, the Witch of Double Bay is a curious case, because its origin is both late and unknown. Like fire spreading in a dry forest, mentions of the Witch popped up all throughout Double Bay at the same time, sightings both contradictory and eerily aligned. Double Bay was in a state of pain and destruction at the time, surviving the effects of the Draconic Wars, and still suffered from many of the scales tyrants hiding out amongst its jungles and swamps.

One of the oldest and most retold tale narrates a young hero's journey into the forest. He sought aid from the old spirits that inhabited it, fragile now, to slay a Black Dragon that had made its nest and terrorized his village. In a glade, surrounded by a circle of mushrooms, she found the Witch.

The dragon was slain. The hero ran into the jungle one month later, stripping naked and yelling nonsense.

The Witch is many and one all at once— stories vary over the years, and you may assume it is something closer to an inherited title than a single entity, like Warlocks being sponsored by the same Patron. The Witch is always a woman, however, and accompanied by other women. She is never still, always changing locations before trouble appears— some say she knows where her bargains will be needed. Others say she fabricates them.

Many efforts have been taken to slay the Witch. The Hunters of Double Bay constantly dispel any notions of her benevolence, organizing multiple incursions with the goal to slay her. The Witch has died many times, but she always returns. One of her Own always survives, the slain Witch was a fake who had eluded the true one's horrible judgement... And revenge comes.

Some Hunters have been driven mad in wait of their penance, and stories say that was the punishment. Others die in mysterious ways— poisoned by a substance they are immune to, turned undead in spite of many radiant artifacts on their person, made to slay their own families in a daze of uncontrolled lycanthropy. Despite it all, the Hunters have not given up, but the Witch is only one of many entities that plague Double Bay.

If the Hunters are Double Bay's protectors, she is its true owner.