Is the Hag a Witch or a Wendigo?
I'm so confused. Her title, and ability to inscribe runes on the ground and magically teleport tell me she's a Witch, but her lore and general appearance tell me she's a Wendigo. I don't get it all all: Two iconic monsters, but when they're blended together, neither are really convincing.
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Definitely a witch
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Wendigo because a wendigo is a transformation after eating human fresh.
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Why can't she be both?
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Lol have you seen being both in movies/book. We never seen vampire zombies you see what i mean.
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Hag is based on the witch of the wood, horror troupe. That's why her realm is a swamp. Just like Haggis from Pumpkinhead lives in a Swamp.
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Ever hear of the Jiangshi? They are called hopping zombies and hopping vampires. The name literally translates to stiff corpse, and their movements are zombie like, but they need to drain lifeforce to survive.
Not saying they're common, but hybrids of these things exist.
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In German, she's called a Hexe, which translates to witch. However, I think that ultimately the Hag is just the Hag; she isn't a witch or a wendigo or a combination. She certainly has elements from both, but I'd say she's her own thing.
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neither, she was a human who was slowly eaten and left to rot, she learned witchcraft so i guess she could be a witch but she was first human.
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Both
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I think you can safely call her a Wendigo. She checks all the right boxes in that department.
Witch is more difficult; she's referred to as one, yet imo, it's kind of shaky. She uses charms, curses, hexes, but 'Witch' can mean many different things. But I'll easily agree that the choice to blend them together wasn't executed all that well. Worse, it seems to limit the options for a more traditional Witch-based killer in the future.
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That's very well said. It feels like in the future we'll run into problems of "well we already have a witch" or "we already have a wendigo", which would suck because Hag right now is both of those things watered down, not enough to satisfy either fantasy. So from that perspective, nobody is happy.
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The "both" answer crops up a lot. Imagine a zombie who wasn't undead and didn't eat brains, would it still be a zombie? Imagine a vampire who walks around in day and doesn't drink blood: is that still a vampire? No. No to both.
The Hag is in that weird in-between too, she's called a Hag (Witch) but she looks like a Wendigo. She uses magic runes, but her lore describes her behaving as a Wendigo: She isn't either of those things, she's something new: Something... lame. They missed the mark on her and I find her unsatisfying, it's reassuring to know that others also feel she doesn't satisfy any specific horror fantasy trope, hopefully they do something to solidify her identity with Archives lore and new cosmetics.
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I'm surprised but yes never heard of it.
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I have always seen the Wendigo aspect of the Hag only in her looks and way of feeding, but on the rest, she is much more of a Hag, a witch of some sort: Her lore links her with magic as is her knowledge of what the elders taught her what allows her to summon the entity to take revenge, to make a deal with a “Satan” of sort, like a lot of traditional witches did in legends; her add-ons show how she uses and wears elements of nature, life essence and symbols to augment her power and cause curses and mark people, like her perks describe:
A child's shoe, long lost in the bog's waters. The trapped life essence within unlocks tremendous potential in The Hag's power.
A rigid ornament worn around the neck made from dead plants adorned with withered orchid petals and leaves.
A handful of yellowish wings, dry and crisp. Devoured to increase stamina.
A handful of mud with veins of deep crimson. The bloody layers empower the mud.
A pale orange turtle egg, cracked and emptied of its content.
"She touched your skin, you bear the witch's mark!"
And yes, she eats people, but that is not an exclusive Wendigo thing, that is also a witch thing, even is mostly cooking people in cauldrons, they do it as well, like the Witch from Hansel and Gretel or the Crones from Witcher 3. The main difference is that she clearly prefers it raw.
She doesn’t really has a lot of wendigo to be honest, she didn’t become what she is because she ate human flesh, but because she made a deal, her transformation is also not the product of a curse nor eating changes her in any way. She is related to nature, but that connection is more on the form of hexes and curses, not in the more savage way of a wendigo.
Finally, her humanity may be forever lost, but she is not an animal, she is intelligent, uses dark magic, symbols and stuff that wendigos don’t do.
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I always refer to her as the Blair Witch killer. Just because she may have wendigo psychosis, but her form was a result of her torture in the living world, not in the Realm of the Entity. So, she's more a witch than anything else. One whose magic was given by the Entity.
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How about she was a witch and then she became a Wendigo after dying ?
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She has the power of a witch but acts like a wendigo, she immediately reminds me of the wendigos from until dawn when she performs her mori
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Twice
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She is definitely a Wendigo. That is cannon. As for a witch, I'm not sure about her powers. Great question!
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Who said it's canon?
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Ah, I made a mistake. I thought I remembered a tweet or something, but I was actually remember an entry in the DBD wiki, which reads "The Hag seems to be heavily based on the Wendigo, an Algonquian myth that says those who commit cannibalism will become possessed by spirits, deformed and eventually turn insane. This is suggested by The Hag's appearance, Memento Mori, backstory, and a few Hag-related Unlockables in the game which talk about cannibalism."
That being said, here are a few pieces of evidence from the game that may help this question:
1) One of her cosmetics is entitled, "Wood Witch," suggesting that indeed she is a witch. Also, her story mentions she was taught charms. This suggests that her "magic" and the fact that they respond (by causing a dark hunger) suggests that perhaps it is witchy and spirit related.
2) Her deep hunger is referenced in her cosmetics is definitely for human flesh (cannibalism) and when she escaped her shackles, the remains of the others were there. Assuming she ate some to survive and invoked spirits, it is possible she was infested with wild spirit and became a wendigo. Her elongated arms are also typical of the wendigo mythos.
However, thinking about it more, I suspect that she might be based on Haitan Voudoo, considering her English name Lisa, her story of drawing charms kept alive by the village elders, and then dark spirits possessing her. The use of clay might also align well with this interpretation.
Anyway, Wendigo is NOT cannon. My mistake.
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witchcraft - religion
wendigo - race
therefore hag o= wendigo witch, witch wendigo , witchigo, co-dwight..en....w😂ah dwight be praised
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Considering the Hag is African the voodoo witch theory makes the most sense.
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Wendigo or witch? yes
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Wendigos are traditionally from native american folklore and the hag is african.
Not to mention the witch terminology used in her power ('hexes', 'catalyst'). Then again wendigos are cannibals and so is the hag, so i'd consider her a derivation of the two.
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Or possibly just visual inspiration from a Wendigo, and she is just a witch.
Not sure though, it's hard to say. Her appearance and cannibalistic features really point towards Wendigo, while lore screams witch
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Lousiana vodoo.
Lisa sherwood is american african. And she's inspired by the wendigo myth too. Her backstory and general appearance are quite the deadringers.
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DBD is doing an AMA tomorrow at 11am Eastern US time. We should inquire about her place of origin and nationality. I don't think it's been stated, and that the wiki comment is fan supported and not coming from the game developers directly. A well done site, but it doesn't cite sources.
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A wendigo (or witigo) is not a transformation, it is a possession by an evil spirit that entered your body due to you committing the sin of cannibalism. The heart is made of ice, and the only way to kill them is by melting their heart with fire. They mimic voices of your loved ones to lure you to them, then they cook you alive before eating you. A wendigo also doesn't have a consistent appearance among all the tribes that believe in them, but they range from being a gigantic frozen corpse to being a mummified human with the skull of an elk. The one thing they all share is that the wendigo has no internal organs and an open ribcage so that everything they eat falls out and they can never get rid of their hunger.
Hag is definitely not a wendigo. I'm not sure I would call her a witch either because she is undead, but typically witches are described as being old hags in folk lore.
EDIT: Source of this information; I learned these stories straight from Cree elders. Tribes that live in the north, where winters are harsh, are where the wendigo stories came from. It is a spirit strongly associate with ice and snow. Hag has no references to frigid environments or ice either.
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I always thought she was inspired by pumpkinhead
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she is neither, she is a human being given power by the entity
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She's a pretty lady, ready for the ball
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She's a Swamp Witch.
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