Night hag

Night hags were incredibly evil creatures that lived in the Lower Planes. They were known for their mercilessness and ability to walk in the dreams of others. In the Fiendish planes, they were powerful creatures and the developers of the process that created altraloths, powerful unique yugoloths, but much more commonly known for being able to harvest larvae, which were used as currency in the Abyss, Blood Rift, and Nine Hells. They also had an affinity for nightmares.

Description
Night hags were horrendously hideous beings, unrivaled in their repulsiveness even among other hags and much more so when compared to ordinary crones. To describe them as merely ugly was an immeasurable understatement and comparing them to human women at all could be seen as an affront to the gender. Whether sickly and stout, of average build, or gaunt and bony, night hags were most visually similar to small female trolls, complete with a strange strength hidden behind their decrepit frames and a deadly set of long, night-black nails. Their gait was slow and their bodies ungainly despite their similarity in height and weight to human females, a problem caused by the uncanny ways their joints moved.

Their sickening skin tone made their entire forms seem awfully bruised, with a blue-violet hue that could be fairly light or so dark they seemed completely black. They self-augmented their flesh with tattoo-like scars to enhance their eeriness, although it was often already marred with grotesque warts, open sores, and diseased blisters brought on by planar plagues.

Like an unkempt coif, pitch-black hair often hid most of a night hag's horrid visage and unbearable body, although not without compensating for the lost terror that came from doing so. Bones, fingers and other heinous accessories were typically woven into their manes in ways the night hag in question found especially bloodcurdling and thin, curved horns made their way through the ebony locks. Behind the veil of hair laid a pair of light, hellish eyes with pinprick pupils radiating a rage-filled red and a jaw that reached out like a fearsome hook from underneath their sharply pointed noses. Rows of jagged, yellow fangs coated in foul saliva rocked unfirmly in their gums and awkwardly jutted out from their festering, wizened lips.

Combat
A night hag had an array of magical powers, and could transmit a disease called demon fever by biting a victim. Night hags were also able to torment individuals by invading their dreams, inserting fear and doubt into their minds night after night, until they expired. They did so by going into the Ethereal plane using a special item called a heartstone. If this process led the victim to perform evil deeds, it eventually transformed the victim into a larva unless some force capable of affecting ethereal beings put a stop to it.

Society
Like all hags, night hags reproduced by devouring human infants that they stole from their cradles or from their mothers' wombs. After one week they gave birth to a seemingly human girl, whom the hag sometimes even returned to the original human for foster care. On the girl's thirteenth birthday, she transformed into a hag with identical features to the original hag who spawned her.

Religion
The mother and goddess of hags, Cegilune, dwelt within the Gray Wastes along with the majority of night hags and was rumored to be a supremely powerful night hag herself. She tyrannically commanded the night hags to procure soul larvae for her to use in trades with tanar'ri and liches, although she wouldn't take the souls of those that other night hags had corrupted due to her greed and mistrust for her own servitors. She was paradoxically worshiped and reviled by all night hags and in turn showed only callous disregard for the wellbeing of her daughters, maintaining her position through overwhelming power.

History
Night hags were once native to the Feywild, but their extreme evil led to their exile to Hades, from where they spread throughout the Lower Planes.

Notable Night Hags

 * Mad Maggie, a night hag who commanded Fort Knucklebone in Avernus.
 * The Sewn Sisters, a coven of night hags who helped Acererak build the Soulmonger in Chult, triggering the death curse.

Appearances

 * Curse of Strahd
 * Tomb of Annihilation
 * Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus