Psychic Scream
Former Parrot
Pink Unicorn
Awakened Witch
Time Stop
Pregnant Moment
Swoop
Turtles All the Way Down
The Tale of When Grandmother Uzmah Decided Not To Die
Trigger warnings: infanticide, miscarriage, childbirth going wrong
An Al-Qadim adventure.
In the Land of Fate, the youngest hag in a coven is known as the Maiden, the middle one the Mother, and the eldest the Crone. Only the Mother may birth new hags, until one day when the Maiden bears a child, and on that day the child becomes Maiden, the Maiden becomes Mother, the Mother becomes Crone, and next sunset, the Crone finally dies.
On the small tropical island of Qalat, where a hag coven lives hidden among the villagers, the Crone Grandmother Uzmah knows her end is coming and seeks to
stop time and defy Fate. She has bargained with the turtle-demonlord Ghommolod - one hundred and one lives sacrificed every year, in exchange for help subverting the cycle of hag life, and a promise of 'Should you be slain, you shall not die but live again and again and again, like unto
turtles all the way down.'
Hook: the PCs arrive on Qalat (shipwrecked, or merely en route elsewhere). Once the locals realise a PC is a cleric or healer, they beg them to help Walidah, whose labor is going poorly.
As the PCs approach Qalat village, they feel a deep sense of unease. This gives disadvantage to Perception, Insight, and Initiative rolls for all non-hags on the island. Telepathic PCs (or Detect Thoughts etc) can hear the
psychic scream that causes this.
Walidah appears as a young woman in the climatic
pregnant moment before childbirth. She is semiconscious and in heavy labor, and the locals explain she has been like this for three days. Walidah (night hag) is the Maiden. Her child has been subject to a
time stop enchantment by Uzmah, halting the birth. There is no medical reason for her problem delivering. Magical detection reveals an aura of evil (inherent fiendish) and magic (shapechange) around her, and separate auras of magic around her abdomen (time stop) and around the stuffed
pink unicorn she clutches.
PCs who can detect the scream know it originates from Walidah in her agony. This is not a normal thing for a mortal to be capable of.
In attendance is Uzmah (advanced green hag) guised as an elderly village wisewoman. She explains the unicorn was a gift for the child and bears a healing enchantment (true - hags do not kill hags and Uzmah doesn't want to actively kill Walidah or her daughter, just ensure that the birth doesn't take place). This seems to be working - Walidah somehow is in no immediate danger of dying. Uzmah claims she examined Walidah and has never seen a case like this before (also literally true). She plans to wait until the pain drives Walidah to kill her own unborn child for respite, thus keeping Uzmah's hands technically clean. The stuffed unicorn is a real unicorn polymorphed into a child's toy, and compelled to use its healing abilities on Walidah to prevent the long labor killing her. Uzmah would settle for having a third party kill Walidah before childbirth, although this is a reluctant second preference as it would break the coven and deprive Uzmah of coven abilities.
Uzmah will darkly hint at a history of vanished children in Qalat, and imply that Nua'ir, a half-crazed hermit who lives in a dank swamp, might be responsible for those as well as for Walidah's misfortune. She is trying to send the PCs on a wild goose chase after a scapegoat to distract them from treating Walidah.
PCs asking around may learn:
- the blacksmith's baby son disappeared less than a year ago (devoured by Walidah to trigger the hag reproductive cycle and bring on her pregnancy)
- the two tweenage daughters of Ruqayah (the Mother, annis hag, guised as a brawny tattooed retired corsair) recently disappeared (both reached maturity as adult hags, and ventured off into the world)
- the father of Walidah's child is rumoured to be Nua'ir (false, a rumour started when villagers glimpsed them together on coven business late at night)
- Nua'ir is a keen Swooper. Other Swoopers find him odd but non-threatening
If PCs don't resolve Walidah's stalled pregnancy within 24 hours of arriving, her psychic scream intensifies. All non-hags on Qalat suffer 1 level of exhaustion and cannot benefit from long rests. 24 hours later, Walidah succumbs and turns her scream inward on her infant, killing it.
To save Walidah's life, the PCs must dispel the
Time Stop on her unborn infant. If this is done in Uzmah's presence, she will surreptitiously dispel Walidah's human guise in the hope the PCs kill Walidah once her true nature is revealed. If Dispel is cast on the unicorn, it immediately returns to its natural form and ferociously attacks Walidah (it knows what she is). It can only be stopped by force, but it can identify the three hags in the village and the location of their lair if not killed.
If Walidah and her child survive, Uzmah knows she is fated to die by sunset and resorts to desperate measures. She flees to her lair immediately, kidnapping a convenient villager on the way for sacrifice, and finalises her deal with Ghommolod, preventing her death. If Walidah's child dies, the deal is struck and Uzmah retires satisfied, after trying to fix blame on Nua'ir. However, once Walidah regains consciousness and the full situation is explained her eyes are opened to what really happened (
awakened witch). She knows Uzmah owns a Wand of Dispel Magic and could have dispelled the effect herself but chose not to. She invents a story about remembering Uzmah cursing her before her pregnancy went wrong, and begs the PCs to help her avenge her child (if asked whether she is capable so soon after giving birth, she will grimly gesture to the unicorn and say that she is completely healed). Ruqayah, Qalat's strongest warrior, will be tasked by the villagers to assist. If Walidah died, Ruqayah takes the role of the
awakened witch, realising what happened and, worried that Uzmah might turn on her next, attempts to use the PCs as cats-paws to kill her.
Nua'ir is a servitor of the coven - a
former jungle
parrot polymorphed into a human. He lives in the hags' lair - the swampy grotto where they drop their human guises and gather to perform rituals - but prefers high places. He is miserable and depressed - as a parrot he wished he could experience human life, and the hags granted his desire on condition he serve them. But in their service he has seen (and done) all the worst that humanity has to offer, and he only wishes to return to simple parrotdom again. He relives his happier parrot days as best he can by playing
Swoop, a popular pastime with Qalat's younger residents. Swoop involves constructing of a set of glider wings (Nua'ir's are made of shed parrot feathers) and using them to glide from a high place, gain speed,
swoop close enough to the ground to pick up an item, then regain altitude and glide as far as possible. Swoopers gain kudos for targeting very small, heavy, or risky items, for stunting, and for gliding long distances or though obstacle-ridden areas. Nua'ir enjoys flying again, even temporarily. Qalat's Swoopers are the closest he has to friends, and the best way to gain his trust is for PCs join him in a daring Swoop.
Nua'ir is Charmed by the hags, much as he hates them, and will clam up abruptly (and attempt to Swoop away) if questioned about them. Uzmah has ordered him to 'act guilty', to be a more effective scapegoat. Nua'ir retains his parrot gift for memory and mimicry, and if freed from the coven's enchantment (dispel magic or the death of one of the hags), and if the PCs gain his trust and swear to turn him back into a parrot, can repeat, verbatim and in the hags' own voices, everything he heard the hags say. This includes the terms of Uzmah's bargain with Ghommolod.
Ghommolod is a minor demon lord associated with twisted, resentful old age, hatred of the young, and the selfish desire to live forever. Wizened and defensive, armoured in bitterness, turtles are sacred to him and he is portrayed as a ancient humanoid snapping turtle, wrinkled, gigantic and foul. Grandmother Uzmah has arrogantly underestimated him and overlooked that to him she too, despite all her years, is a despised youth. He will adhere to her bargain literally - she will live 'again and again and again' - avoiding death precisely three times, and rather than in her own form, she will live these lives as '
turtles all the way down'.
The PCs can find Uzmah in the lair. The awakened witch (whoever that is) will indirectly assist the PC fighting Uzmah (hag will still not attack hag directly), but once Uzmah is slain, any surviving hags will turn on the PCs to protect their identities. If multiple hags are present, the vicious accusations and curses going back and forth between them should give the PCs the gist of the backstory.
When Uzmah is slain, her body and magic items disappear leaving only a filthy robe. PCs hear a long dwindling scream as she dies, but another scream rises to harmonise with it. The second scream originates from Uzmah's snapping turtle familiar - now the body that she inhabits, with her wand clasped in one claw and Ghommolod's sigil glowing on its brow. The turtle curses the PCs and Ghommolod in Uzmah's voice, and slowly tries to flee. PCs can kill it easily. This time, as the body dissipates, the fading death-scream harmonises with a terrifying shrieking roar from somewhere deep in the swamp.
Uzmah's second body is an ancient titanic snapping turtle that has spent ages sleeping in stinking black marsh-mud. It has Ghommolod's sigil on its brow, and the wand wedged between its claws. Use advanced ankylosaur stats, with a t-rex's bite attack, a swim speed, and Uzmah's mental ability scores and special actions. Uzmah's new form will stalk the PCs monster-movie style as they retreat through the swamp from the hag's lair. She will fight with ruthless cunning, lay baits and traps, use the green hag's Invisible Passage ability to great effect, and retreat to the swamp depths to heal if seriously injured. If she survives, she will wage a hit-and-run war on Qalat village, seeking to slay the entire population in her rage and hate, striking at night or against lone people or small groups.
When Uzmah's second reincarnation is slain, it once again dissipates with a long scream, but this time the new awakening scream starts up as a slow subaudible rumble, and takes literally hours to reach a deafening crescendo. The island of Qalat is actually a zaratan (the Al-Qadim turtle zaratan, not the 5e elemental zaratan), and this is Uzmah's new and final body. Such a beast awakens slowly, so there is time, but once Uzmah awakens fully (
awakened witch) she will submerge and drown all of Qalat. If PCs somehow kill the zaratan, its body will dissipate and all of Qalat's inhabitants will fall into the sea. An Arcana check suggests Uzmah may be expelled from the zaratan by dispelling or purifying the sigil on the zaratan's brow, but if PCs come up with reasonable alternatives (perhaps using Magic Jar, for instance), the DM should be willing to cooperate. The zaratan's head forms a separate island from its body, and as it awakens the water between becomes turbulent and dangerous to navigate in watercraft. If PCs attempt magical flight to reach the head, Uzmah will dispel it with her wand (Nua'ir will tell/remind them about it, if they have allied with him). The best way to reach the head is using
Swoop gliders, fighting through charmed seabird swarms on the way, and giant demon-tainted zaratan-parasites (and Uzmah's magic, and the zaratan's vast bite) once they get there.
Once Uzmah is defeated, she screams one last time and doesn't return. It's
turtles all the way down to the Abyss, where Ghommolod, the final turtle, waits.