String, Green Hag Hair

Ultimate Equipment Guide II

Author Greg Lynch, J. C. Alvarez
Publisher Mongoose Publishing
Publish date 2005

Strings woven of green hag hair are extremely popular among bards who enjoy performing pieces of music that call for more than one instrument. However, the expense of obtaining and properly preparing the hair of a green hag is such that these strings are usually only used by wealthy bards, or those with a more nefarious purpose in mind than merely creating beautiful music.

The hair must be subjected to a long and complex alchemical process in order to leech away all vestiges of the green hag’s weakness ability. Failure to do so results in a Strength loss of 1d3 points when the instrument is played, a loss which can be prevented with a successful Fortitude save (DC 16). The real difficulty of the alchemical process is to remove the green hag’s weakness attack without destroying the hag’s mimicry ability, for that is where the real value of green hag hair strings lies.

With a successful Perform skill check (DC 15), the bard can make an instrument strung with green hag hair sound like an entirely different instrument (for example, a fiddle can sound like a bass). While all bards appreciate this ability, those with less honest and forthright goals prefer these strings for the other kind of mimicry they offer.

By playing the instrument at a high pitch and low volume, inaudible more than ten feet away, the bard can use the green hag hair strings to alter the sound of his own voice, allowing him to effectively mimic any other individual. This can be used to simply change the voice of the bard, or to let the bard sound like another individual with whose voice he is familiar. Using the green hag hair strings in this manner requires a Perform skill check (DC 20), and provides the bard with a +6 circumstance bonus to Disguise skill checks that involve sound.

Green Hag Hair: 40 gp per string