Monstrous Mondays: Old Annie, the Mauvaisterre Hag

 Everyone in Jackson, IL knows about "Old Annie" though not everyone agrees on what or who she is. The most popular story is that "years ago," Annie was a local woman who lived near the river. She had three (maybe four, maybe two) children. Her husband left her, and she drowned her children. Then, in a fit of grief, she drowned herself. At least that is the most common story. Everyone has a story about seeing her, or someone who has seen her, or heard her wails at night when she is supposedly out looking for her drowned children.

Others include an escaped patient from the Illinois State Hospital who fell into the river and drowned, and now her ghost is trying to find her way out.  Others claim the whole thing is a hoax and point to a 1967 Jackson Gazette story of faternity pranks at MacAlister College where pledges were forced to dress up as Old Annie to scare people.

“Don’t go near Mauvaisterre River, Old Annie will snatch you.”

Everyone has a theory of who Annie was, including a woman named Anne Sullivan from the 1870s.  

The trouble is, everyone is wrong. Not about Old Annie as such, just who she is and what she is. Annie is not the ghost of a guilty mother. Old Annie is really the Mauvaisterre Hag.

The Mauvaisterre Hag

The land that was settled and later became Jackson, IL originally had a different name. When Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet first came through this area in the late 1600s, they went to places of local importance. Like the Dixon and Cahokia Mounds, the bluffs over the Mississippi River are where the Piasa was said to have lived. And north of that was a land that all the locals avoided. A place they called "The Bad Land."  This translated into "Mauvaise Terre" and eventually became "Mauvaisterre".  Today it is the name of the county where Jackson sits, a lake, and a river that runs through the town.

Even then, legends of a hag-like creature haunting the waterways were old.

The Mauvaisterre Hag is a corrupt spirit of the land, a water spirit similar in many ways to a nymph or nixie, but something evil happened, and this balanced nature spirit became twisted and evil. 

If the members of the Peoria tribes had a name for this creature, they never told anyone, least of all the white explorers to their lands.

THE MAUVAISTERRE HAG, "OLD ANNIE" (AD&D 1st Edition)

Frequency: Very rare (Unique ?)
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 5
Move: 9” / 12” in mud, swamp, or shallow water
Hit Dice: 3+3
% in Lair: 60%
Treasure Type: None
No. of Attacks: 2 or 1
Damage/Attack: 1-6/1-6 or by weapon
Special Attacks: Horrific appearance, drown
Special Defenses: Camouflage, surprise, half damage from cold
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: High
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: M
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
Level/X.P. Value: IV / 165 + 4 per hit point

Mauvaisterre Hag (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 1
DV: 5
Move: 45 ft. / 60 ft. in mud, swamp, or shallow water
Vitality Dice: 3
Special: 2 claw attacks or by weapon; horrific appearance, drown, camouflage, surprise, half damage from cold
XP Value: 

The Mauvaisterre Hag, also known as "Old Annie," appears as a bent and sodden crone with long trailing hair like river weeds, pale eyes, and skin the color of wet clay. Her garments are formed of rotted cloth, moss, mud, and reeds. She is most often encountered near creeks, riverbanks, marshes, drowned groves, or low ground where the earth has become soft and treacherous. Though related to the sea hag in nature and malignancy, Old Annie is a thing of bad earth and black water rather than salt sea and storm tide.

It is said by those who can read these signs that Annie used to be something more akin to a nymph or a nixie, a water creature of nature and balance, but something happened. Something that changed the land and corrupted it and the spirits that lived there. Some of these spirits have gone to darker, deeper places in the earth, but Old Annie remains. She is ancient beyond reckoning, and her age has done nothing but deepen her malignancy. 

Old Annie attacks with filthy claws, striking twice per round for 1-6 hit points each. She may also wield a crude knife, broken oar, driftwood club, or similar object if it suits the encounter. She prefers ambush, isolation, and terror to open battle.

Special Abilities

Horrific Appearance: Any creature beholding Old Annie for the first time must save vs. paralysis/petrification (Wits based for NIGHT SHIFT). Those failing suffer a -2 penalty on attack rolls against her for 1-4 rounds due to revulsion and dread. If the victim fails the saving throw by 5 or more, they must also flee in panic for 1-3 rounds. This is less potent than the deadly gaze of a true sea hag, but no less hideous in its own fashion. Creatures accustomed to hags, swamp spirits, or similar horrors may receive a +2 bonus to the saving throw at the GM’s discretion.

Drown: If Old Annie successfully strikes the same man-sized or smaller victim with both claws in one round while in shallow water, mud, or slime, she may, on the following round, attempt to drag the victim beneath the surface. The victim must save vs. death magic or be pinned and begin drowning. On subsequent rounds, the victim may attempt to break free with a successful bend bars/lift gates roll or by Old Annie being driven off, slain, or taking 6 or more points of damage in a single round.

Camouflage: When standing motionless in reeds, mud, shallow water, or against a creek bank, Old Annie is 75% likely to be mistaken for driftwood, roots, a patch of reeds, or some other natural feature unless closely examined. She surprises opponents on 1-4 on 1d6 in such terrain.

Half Damage from Cold: As a creature of chill muck and black water, Old Annie suffers only half damage from cold-based attacks, with fractions rounded down.

Old Annie is not a true hag, but a corrupted nature spirit. As such, she does not have access to witch magic or form a covey with other hags. Though she shares no love for hags either and will avoid the Urban Hags of Jackson. 

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"Mauvaisterre" is a real place name in Central Illinois. The rough translation does mean "bad earth" or "bad land." It is the real name of a creek and a lake, but not a river or county. I also thought it was appropriate for a place I have been calling "a sinkhole of evil."

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