Characteristics
Physical features
She is a short, gaunt woman wearing layers of tattered dresses, resembling doll's clothes. She wears heavy painted-on makeup that doesn't fully cover her skin, which resembles cracked wood. Being partly a toy, she has a wind-up key in her back that is permanently attached as much as a limb; it turns quickly when she is happy and slows or even stops when she is sad or angry. Her left eye socket is empty, and the other holds a wooden eye that she can remove at will. Her left hand is missing.
When interacting with strangers, she takes the appearance of a childish elf with a wind-up key in her back, pretending it is a curse that her "mother" is working on removing.
Mental traits
When interacting with strangers, Skabatha interact as an innocent childish elf, taking care of her brother and sisters in the orphanage and offering candy to strangers she find trustworthy.
She is fascinated by memories of the past and is willing to trade memories for information or power, however, she is adamant that her victim must lose said memories and any traces of it. She makes large tapestry with the stolen memories and offer her rewards in the form of moving tapestry her guests can watch only once.
Abilities
Despite their shared enmity, the crones each gained significant powers when all three were within close proximity of one another.
She can shrink herself down to the size of a toy, which she uses each night to fit into the dollhouse in which she sleep.
Relationship
Skabatha despises her two biological sisters. Bavlorna holds an especially strong disdain for Skabatha and seeks to recover the tapistry of her childhood memories that remains within Skabatha orphanage in
Vecna's Domain of Dread.
Activities
She spends the first few hours of her day in her candy mill tending to cogs, making sure it is smoothly working. She spends most of the rest of her day in with the children, occasionally spending time in her sewing workshop. In the evening, she makes the rounds, inspecting her sewing workshop, candy mill and orphanage. Finally, she shrinks down into her dollhouse where she sleeps within the sewing workshop.
Lair
Skabatha lair is within Vecna's Domain of Dread and consists of three wooden buildings in an ancient grove in the middle of a dark forest. The large tree surrounding the buildings anchors them despite the Spatial tides of the shadowfell.
Wealth
Skabatha possess a wooden chest in which she stores her toys hidden in her tapistry factory. The chest contains the following items:
- 132 cp, 57 sp, and 210 gp
- 3 minuscule sapphires (worth 25 gp each)
- 3 minuscule emeralds (worth 30 gp each)
- 3 minuscule diamonds (worth 50 gp each)
- 3 gold bars (worth 75 gp each)
- 3 Potion of greater healing
- 7 bags of Candy Xorn
- Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location
- Alchemy Jug (in the shape of a headless bat)
- Backpack containing a set of traveler’s clothes, a crowbar, a hammer, 7 pitons, a bedroll, 3 days’ rations, and a set of jeweler’s tools
- Broom of flying
- Chime of Opening (in the shape of a spider whose legs pick locks, and each one breaks off upon use until all uses are expended)
- Delicate platinum bracelet set with three diamonds (worth 400 gp)
- Longbow
- Quiver with 40 arrows
- Sparkling purple and green stone that bards, sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards can use as a spellcasting focus (worth 10 gp)
- Treasure rat in a wire cage
- Vial of oil of slipperiness
Skabatha also rides upon a black flying rocking horse, which was once the unicorn Elidon until she and Vecna removed its horn and transformed it.
She possesses a magic mirror just like her sisters' that, when given the command word "bandersnatch," becomes a swirling mist that acts as a portal to the Murkendraw swamps.
She has a jar of moths that she keeps near the dollhouse. Because of her curse that causes her to forget the first creature she sees each morning, she purposefully looks into the jar each morning so that her curse causes her to forget one of the moths for the day rather than a more threatening creature.
History
Crones
Isolated in the Murkendraw swamps, the crones are old creatures, it is believed that the three sisters have existed since the reign of the first Fey Kings. The crones are such creatures. No one knows what breed of monstrosity they, in fact, are. People believe them to be primal hags. Folk say they were four at first. The Mother, the Lady of the Wood, suffered terribly from loneliness, she made daughters out of dirt and water.
They were the first daughters of the Lady of the Wood, a fearsome archfey and the supposed mother of all witches. Each sister became bound to an aspect of time—past, present, and future.
A long, long Time ago the Mother was sole ruler of the spring court. Her daughters brought her the people's requests and served as her voice. Each spring, sacrifices of grain, animals, and men were made to the Lady of the Wood on her special night.
Their mother later adopted a dragon named Tasmiira, raising her as her own. As Tasmiira matured, so did her power, and the Crones grew resentful. Their jealousy only deepened when the Lady of the Wood chose Tasmiira as her successor, granting her the title of Archfey of the Spring Court.
Feigning loyalty, the sisters embraced their new sibling, hiding their envy behind honeyed words and false smiles while secretly plotting her downfall. They waited for the perfect moment to strike.
When Tasmiira returned from her travels, their trap was sprung—the sisters sealed her in temporal stasis, freezing her in time.
With Tasmiira helpless, the Crones began carving out their own domain within the Spring Court. However, their mother refused to stand by idly and attempted to free her chosen heir. Declaring their mother mad, the sisters destroyed her body and imprisoned her soul into a bog, claiming it was the only way to "save" the court. Their mother blood and soul transformed the land forever, spawning the Murkendraw swamps.
The sisters, now rulers of the Spring Court, established their palace deep within the Murkendraw Swamps, guarding it fiercely while keeping Tasmiira locked in temporal stasis. Though they sometimes offer aid to desperate locals, their help always comes at a price.
Their ambition spread over the land—elves took to abandoning their homes and setting out into the bog, where they became food for beasts. Before long, the land was drowning in blood.
Endelyn Moongrave, the eldest, demands payment in the form of severed ears, which she strings across the swamps, using them as listening posts to hear every whispered secret. The people, fearful yet resigned, offer children as sacrifices, sending them into the swamp knowing they will never return—devoured by the Crones.
As their influence stretched beyond the Spring Court’s borders, the Summer Court took notice. Unwilling to let their corruption spread further, the Summer Fey launched an assault on the Murkendraw, igniting a brutal war against the Crones.
The war
The Summer Court, under the rule of King Dasmag, a Satyr Lord, was worried about the ever growing influence of the Murkendraw, a swamp belonging to the Crones, archfey of the spring court.
Driven by his determination to reclaim the Murkendraw from the clutches of the Crone, King Dasmag led an army to the crones. The first army sent to reclaim the Murkendraw consisted mainly of elves. Deceived by the cunning crones, they were banished to the moon Lúg emel (Kurt's Heart), becoming the moon elves.
The goblins offered their aid to King Dasmag after this incident in exchange for newfound powers. However, when they thought themselves unobserved, they callously reneged on their agreement, foolishly believing they could escape the consequences. Fate took a twisted turn when the battle shifted, pitting the goblins against the hags alone. Seizing the opportunity, the cunning hags offered a tantalizing proposition, fully aware that the goblins' betrayal would invoke a curse, effectively severing their ties with the summer court. Tempted by the hags' promises, the goblins succumbed to their deceit. As a result, they find themselves cursed and many were banished from the fey realm, forced to dwell once again in the material plane.
King Dasmag's army was annihilated in their bold endeavor.
Aftermath
The crones divided, and they decided to go their separate ways. With their power weakened, Tismara was able to get free from the temporal stasis, getting back the leadership of the spring court and the archfey title. Edelyn who stayed in the swamp kept rulership over it and neither the spring court nor the summer court tried to contest it.
Longing for the time before Tasmiira was adopted by their mother, Skabatha chose to leave the Feywild, seeking solace in the Material Plane. There, she established an orphanage, a refuge for lost children—though, in truth, it was nothing more than a larder, a place where the young and abandoned would become her prey.
Vecna
Among these children was a young elf named Vairae Vecna. Unlike the others, he was brilliant yet cruel, a child with a natural penchant for manipulation and power. Vairae was the only one who could pull Skabatha from her obsession with the past, and for the first time in centuries, she saw something worth fostering. Rather than devouring him, she spared his life, nurturing his potential. She arranged for him to study at the most prestigious academies of the
Kingdom of Lórien, where he became a formidable wizard.
To Vecna, Skabatha was a mother, the only one who had ever truly recognized his potential. Yet it was Skabatha herself who nurtured the darkest parts of him—his greed, his ambition, his thirst for knowledge and control. Using her knowledge of the past, she uncovered the location of the Book of Vile Darkness and manipulated Vecna into challenging the wizard who currently wielded it.
Empowered by his victory, Vecna set his sights on the throne of Lorien, and Skabatha, lulled by memories of her past rule over the Spring Court, reveled in the conquest. She believed she would once again hold dominion, as she once had in the Feywild.
But Vecna was defeated, and Skabatha ambitions shattered. And with Vecna's downfall, Skabatha too lost everything. She had sought to reclaim her past glory, but in the end, she had only ruined herself once more. Consumed by regret, she fled to the Shadowfell, retreating into isolation.
It was there, in her cottage of gloom and decay, that Vecna returned to her in her dreams. Now a god of undeath and secrets, ascended by the power of his worshippers, he offered her a domain of her own—a twisted reflection of her orphanage, a place where she could rule once more. But Skabatha saw it for what it was: a mockery, a prison, a cruel echo of her past failures. She despised Vecna for the false hope he had given her, for the kingdom she had dreamed of and lost.
Undeterred, Vecna continued to shape his Domain of Dread. And as his influence spread, so too did Skabatha’s. Her orphanage filled once more, this time with the forsaken and the damned, souls abandoned even by death. But with each passing day, her resentment for Vecna only grew.
Family tree
Comments
Author's Notes
Inspired by the hourglass coven from the wild beyond the witchlight (forgotten realms) and by the crones from the witcher.