The Witch of the Woods

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Among the people of Bree-land, stories are like another kind of currency. The commonfolk trade them back and forth the same way they exchange money and ale after a hard day's work. Both can serve a similar purpose; they soothe away the unpleasantness of the day in one way or another. But stories, they work on a higher level than any intoxicant of the body, and with greater scope. The practical Bree-landers understand this well.

As with any space great enough, there are regional preferences to these tales, and in the northern reaches of the territory, there circulates word of our subject. Told by many voices, the story could almost be mistaken for several, but all agree on enough to see that there is a common source. Somewhere within the depths of Far Chetwood, amidst towering trees encrusted with moss, there lives a mysterious crone.

Children know this story well, as it is often spun by mothers to keep their young close to home. They are told that she lurks just past the trees, never visible until she chooses to show herself. She loves little more, they say, than stealing unwatched children away and taking them to her moldering home. What happens to them varies from mother to mother.

One story tells that when the child is caught by the woman, it is brought back to be boiled for stew. There is another similar version of the child's fate where they are transformed into a piglet by the use of her foul magic and the farm animal raised to be fattened and eaten as her Yule feast.

While these stories are accessible means to frighten rowdy children, to keep from the woods or spook them to think that if they do not behave the crone shall come and take them, there are others who have shared a different story of the odd woman over a campfire or a drink at the tavern.

A woman who had started to age poorly and her youthful beauty had started to wither away decided to tell one such tale. She was proud, and the truth of her aging did not sit well with her, and so she spun a story of the witch she once met in the woods who had taken away her youth and beauty to give to herself.
This tale like many others have passed between people, and it is not unheard of that a few gullible women believe that this witch could steal away their youth.

As the stories of this strange woman grew between people, passing blame on her became commonplace, and she slowly became a scapegoat when reality did not want to sit in with some.
Women would blame this witch for their men leaving, telling that they had been charmed away by her or their minds possessed using witchcraft. When the harvest was poor, or the livestock became ill there would be those who made claims that it was a curse placed on their land by the foul woman that lives in jealousy and spite in her solitude.

 When the Hobbits that live near the Old Forest heard the tale of this mysterious woman, it was not long until someone weaved a story of their own. The Hobbits saying that she and the crazed old man they claim as living in their woods were related, one of the more interesting one suggesting that the witch was the one who gave life to the odd man that roams the cursed woods.

Through the stories, the age of this woman has varied from her being an old crone, a middle-aged woman, to a young lass or even a child. The difference in the age has some of the more creative minds thinking that she may be some kind of shapeshifter, able to take on the desired form to fool her unsuspecting victims.

Where the imagination of people runs wild, there has been more than one story that describes her as an evil woman, brewing potions, making curses, stealing and even eating children. However, among these tale-spinners, there are those that have gone to claim that the woman is a kind soul that has offered aid to the unfortunate, mending wounds and illnesses that had people would bring to her attention. A hunter once admitting that he had been aided by a strange woman to find his way back out of the woods after having gotten lost in the unfamiliar place when the evening came.

With the mystery of this woman growing so to did the tales, the stranger of which turning the witch in the woods into an entity within the forest that sprouted from its roots to act as a caretaker or even a protector of the surrounding land.
However, the oddest of stories might be the one told by young, adventurous men, that began to believe or at least claim that if they were able to snatch a lock of the woman's hair and brew into tea that they would become powerful fighters and their bravery unmatched. Where or how this tale came to be is still a mystery on its own though it is believed to have branched out from the idea that one should never look the witch in the eyes for she would peer deep into your soul and pry into your mind to bind it by a spell.

The most recent of the stories surrounding this strange woman is one of the people who bravely ventured into the woods and found her home, burning it to the ground and thus ridding the land of the cursed witch in the woods.

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