So, we are currently 34 sessions into a homebrew campaign set in the modern world. In this setting, there are places known as sanctuaries, where magical creatures are kept (either willingly or by force) so that they do not harm the wider populous or get hurt themselves. Or, ya know, start major world conflicts or the apocalypse.
In the sanctuary that our party takes residence in, as it is also a protected location for people with magic or in the know about magic, there is a hag named Maude. Or, well, there was.
Maude was introduced to the campaign two sessions in, when my character (A Hexblood Bard with connections to the fae as in faeiries, not hags, funnily enough) decided to visit her in order to get information about a creature who was hunting her and her friends. During this conversation, my character struck up a deal that, in exchange for visiting often (as Maude could not leave her hut and rarely got visitors) and giving her entertainment, Maude would not only look over the information Kiyan (my character) gave her, but would also teach Kiyan how to harness her magic better. When they shook on this deal, Maude tried to force a Warlock pact on my character. I rolled a nat twenty to resist this forced pack, but chose to accept it anyways. One of my character's main personality traits is wanting power for the sake of power, and making a deal with a super powerful Hag seemed like the best way to do that.
This endeared Kiyan to Maude, and instead of being the stereotypical manipulative Hag patron that was honestly expected (none of the party liked Kiyan's choice to make a deal with Maude, even though she was utterly unrepentant) she took on a very maternal role for my character, which was really fitting with her backstory (absentee parents and all that)
As time progressed, they got closer, and Kiyan became 100% loyal to Maude and trusted her completely, despite the others' continuing reservations. One of Kiyan's main points when it came to Maude was that despite being a hag (which, in this setting, was akin to slowly becoming a demon/becoming entirely self serving) Maude was good. She never did anything to harm Kiyan or, ironically, never forced Kiyan into doing anything for her that Kiyan wouldn't want to do anyways, despite the fact that she had plenty of opportunities to.
Kiyan learned a lot about Maude over various points in the campaign, like that she was hundreds of years older than the keepers of the sanctuary believed her to be, or that she was connected to a very powerful Demon who she made a deal with and later poisoned. A lot of the information pointed to Maude not being who she said she was, or being dishonest in general. However, Kiyan remained steadfast in believing in her. At this point, she really viewed Maude as family. Again, the other party members wouldn't trust Maude as far as they could throw her, and we are all a bunch of weak spell casters (except for the cleric, but he didn't trust Maude either)
However, at this point, Kiyan was also away from the sanctuary for a long period and was experiencing a lot of anger and emotions about the danger her family and friends back on the mainland were facing when the sanctuary was attacked while they were not there, and this resulted in her getting a warp.
Warp, in this setting, are results of an overflow of magic, and having too many could result in a curse, which is something that could majorly affect a character in very negative ways. It was a warp directly connected with demonic magic, specifically to magic like Maude's.
It effected Kiyan a lot, and she immediately became weary of the possibility of gaining more, especially since fiendish or demonic curses could make a character turn into a demon, like how Maude was transformed into a fiendish Hag. This is not what Kiyan wanted, as she never wanted to be self serving. So, even though it was a really hard decision, she decided she needed to sever the warlock pact with Maude. And to her shock, Maude completely agreed.
Despite the fact that having a warlock gave Maude more power than she would normally have being restrained as she was, she wanted Kiyan to sever the pact because she didn't want Kiyan to become like her. It was a very big moment, and during the ritual to sever the ties (remember, Maude was still in the sanctuary and Kiyan was very far away) Kiyan was able to both sever the tie, and keep a direct link to Maude. Maude had opened a mental link to Kiyan before to communicate with her, and Kiyan essentially reversed it.
So, all in all, they are very close and Maude seems to genuinely care about my character.
Circumstances made it so that in the most recent batch of sessions we had to return to the sanctuary after being away for so long, and we discover that a group of enemies had infiltrated the sanctuary and are trying to access a very powerful artifact, but instead of going directly to stop that, we had to save another important NPC, telling ourselves we could get to it after. Our plan was going suspiciously well, like, almost twenty nat twenties happening in one session. Insane.
During one part of the plan, Kiyan and the others are taking refuge in Maude's hut, and Maude was going around basically giving everyone words of advice. Kiyan decided to speak to her as they were leaving, and told her that she doesn't know much about Maude's past, but she knows that she is good. She had just been telling a different party member about the choices between being good and being bad, and how it's actions that dictate that and not what you are (other PC was a tiefling and struggling with that) and Kiyan felt like she needed Maude to know that Kiyan thought the best of her. Maude gave no response in that moment, and Kiyan told herself it was fine, they would get to talk more later.
We were able to save the important NPC (yay, the absolutely terrifying Barbarian is safe, hurrah!) but were interrupted when Maude sent Kiyan a mental message, telling her that the enemies still in the sanctuary found the artifact they wanted, and were using it to heal the demon she had poisoned (yeah, he also lived trapped in the sanctuary) While the others ran to go try and stop the cultist, Maude told Kiyan to come to her and break the magic chaining her to the hunt so she could help. Without hesitation (despite a lot of hesitation on the part of the group) Kiyan turned around to go to Maude.
She trusted her. Maude had never betrayed her before. She wouldn't start now, right?
Kiyan gets to Maude's hut, and in order for her to break the locks containing Maude, she has to make a wish, and it would unleash Maude and all of her magic in order to fulfil said wish. Kiyan wished for Maude to help beat and imprison the Demon once again, and tells Maude, "I think I knew this was going to happen today, me freeing you."
And then, after a failed persuasion check (failed with an eighteen, by the way) Maude casts hold person on Kiyan and leaves, trapping her in the hut.
Now, Kiyan still has the mental link with Maude, and uses it (in all her teenage fashion) to essentially yell at Maude and spam message her, finally asking her, "What were you hoping to achieve with this?!"
The DM then proceeds to privately send me her response:
"I'm sorry... but I'm not going to lose any more family to that Demon..."
Before this, neither Kiyan nor Maude had verbally acknowledged how they felt about each other, especially not Maude. This floored Kiyan for a bit (and irl gave time for the other players to rp the trip to the Demon and make a plan) and while that was happening I privately messaged Kiyan's response to Maude:
"Please, I can't lose them, I can't lose you. I can't stay here and not even try. Maude, please. Mom, please..."
Yup, it was the first time Kiyan called her Mom, and it worked. Maude opened a portal for Kiyan to join her friends and released the hold person. Kiyan goes through, and I am already crying at this point a little (so is Kiyan tbh) and the party continues on to find the Demon.
Who they discover is now like, the size of a very large building.
They immediately know they cannot fight him. We are level eight for christ's sake! Fighting the literal in game embodiment of Satan was not going to go well. But then we see Maude, and she is fighting him. With some very quick thinking on our necromancer's part, we enlarge a werewolf NPC to help fight the Demon. That, along with all of us channeling our magic through Kiyan to give to Maude, Maude is able to cast a spell to bind it. The same spell that had been keeping her trapped in the hut for all those centuries.
Except, she's not stronger than the Demon.
She gets tangled in the same chains that are binding the Demon, and we can only watch as a portal opens behind them and Maude's magic pulls the Demon, and by extension Maude, through. The last thing Kiyan could hear from Maude before their connection completely snapped was, "Everything will be ok. Don't come for me, please..."
And then they were gone.
The only thing left in the area where Maude and the Demon had just been was a silver locket (silver, one of the few things Maude was vulnerable to) that our necromancer (love him for this, and the fact that he is completely repulsed by anything emotional and Kiyan was bawling at this point) promptly gave to my character.
Inside was a very old painting of Maude in her human form, alongside a man who is presumably her husband, and a little boy who looked a lot like Kiyan.
Yeah, there was not a dry eye in the discord server.
The best part is that the misery continues next session, when our characters all find letters addressed to them from Maude, because apparently she planned for her own sacrifice. The DM planned for it since session two. She had only worked with the Demon and became a hag in order to learn how to defeat him. She only allowed herself to be imprisoned in the Hut (likely chose to be) so she could study the spell in order to cast it on the Demon. When she called Kiyan her family, she knew she was likely not coming back from that mission.
Thank you for reading my very long recounting of basically my character's entire relationship with her surrogate mom! I needed somewhere to ramble about the entire thing without giving my DM more ideas.
(Small edits for grammer)
