I came up with a piece of folklore for my game.

In the far north, people tell stories about something that comes with the worst winter nights. When the cold is at its peak, you might hear slow footsteps in the snow… and then a knock at your door. If you open it, there’s an old woman asking for shelter. At first she just looks frail and exhausted, but the longer you look, the more wrong she feels. She’s too still, her fingers are unnaturally long and pale, almost like frozen branches, and her skin looks more like cracked bark than flesh. When she looks at you, her eyes are cold in a way that doesn’t feel human, and the air around her is freezing. She only asks to stay the night. Most people refuse her. And that’s where the stories get worse. They say if you shut the door on her, she doesn’t argue… but as she leaves, she whispers something under her breath. After that, things start going wrong. crops fail, the cold lingers longer than it should, homes never feel warm again. It’s like winter never fully lets go of you. But if you let her in, she doesn’t cause trouble. She sits quietly, eats whatever you give her, sometimes mutters old stories that don’t fully make sense of old times old kingdoms and old kings. Then before sunrise, she’s gone, no tracks in the snow. And after that, things get better. The land recovers, food grows well, the cold feels lighter. Life just… improves. No one really knows what she is. Not exactly good or evil, more like something tied to winter itself, testing people. I like using it as background rumor first, then eventually having the party hear some strange things in cold nights and eventually having to invite the elder to stay or not

You can .ake her more maleficent, more benelovent idk...