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.

Personality
Both diabolical and destructive, night hags combined the most despicable traits from fiends throughout the lower planes with the insidious nature of their sinister sisterhood. From their hag side they adopted the desire to sow misery and malcontent in the hearts of mortals everywhere, particularly through the method of bargaining. Like devils, they harbored an indomitable megalomania and unbreakable ambition, crossed with the overpowering need for carnage more typically found in demons. However, the common thread running through their various hateful heritages was the utter glee with which they approached the act of corruption. Night hags were perversely subversive and took delight in turning virtues into vices, either by amplifying positive traits until they became unhealthy or by simply turning ideals into their diametric opposites. Corrupting mortals was both business and pleasure for them as doing so was not only innately satisfying but, like demons and devils, also granted them the victim's soul upon death which they could use as a commodity later on. No bond was too sacred, tactic too low, or act too mercilessly for the soul-hungry merchants of Hades.

Tempering a night hag's compulsion to inflict suffering was their love of learning and need to maintain their livelihoods. They were gripped by the desire to acquire new knowledge and possessed perfect memories, making them highly informative, if incredibly dangerous, sources of lost secrets, ancient wisdom and forbidden lore. Despite not caring about the opinions of others regarding their activities, night hags typically kept their promises once made since stains on their reputations, such as being backstabbers or having poor wares, would negatively impact their business. The safest ways to deal with night hags often included bribing them with information and offers of arcane power, as they prized them about as much as souls.

At the same time, trying to bargain with night hags was still an unthinkably terrible idea as they were vindictive manipulators that would track down and turn their weaker customers into larvae after concluding business. An even worse idea would be to attempt to trick them since they were immortal, petty, and potentially the most stubborn residents of the Gray Wastes, always taking revenge no matter how slight the slight. As expert con merchants themselves they were incredibly difficult to fool, but after discovering they were deceived could waste years, potentially forever, crafting evermore intricate schemes to outsmart their target. Insults and altruistic acts were both remembered but they were quicker to repay the former as opposed to the latter. They were psychopaths that classified all other beings in terms of usefulness: the weak were branded as food or slaves, with slave often being a temporary position until the subject was turned into food, and the strong served as targets for subtle extortion until they were weak enough to be classified as food or slaves.

Perhaps the only positive trait of the night hags was their lack of bias on the basis of race or class. They were thought to view the multiverse as a constant power struggle where the roles of master and servant were in a state of constant flux. It was due to this view that they never made permanent alliances, possibly the one thing preventing them from further controlling the Lower Planes. Racial privilege was viewed as a worthless concept and regardless of where one came from or what they were, they could expect fair treatment from night hags, the same competitive, predatory malice they displayed to everyone else. They retained no particular loyalty or hatred for other night hags and covens were only formed occasionally when one powerful night hag dominated her sisters, although such indifference was sometimes attributed to the Gray Wastes. Material hags were sometimes contended with but always haughtily looked down on, subjugated either as individuals or in preestablished coveys and never joined as equals.

Abilities
Night hags had an array of magical powers at their disposal, including the ability to cast ray of enfeeblement, sleep and magic missile as spell-like abilities. They could magically discern the alignment of most beings detect magic and polymorph in order to take on the guise of a female member of other races, typically in the form of a crone. Like most hags, the frail, elderly exterior of night hags belied their raw, physical strength, which wasn't diminished even when they took on other forms. Their hideous maws could transmit a disease called demon fever via bite and when not polymorphed they retained their wicked sharp claws.

Night hags could only be properly harmed by weapons that had undergone powerful enchantment or that had been constructed from silver or cold iron. Heat and cold barely phased them, magic typically had little effect, and they were entirely immune to magic designed to charm, frighten or put them to sleep.

Dream Haunting
Night hags normally kept two powerful magic items with them at all time, the first of which was a special periapt known as a heartstone. Also called 'charms of blackness', heartstones were lustrous and magically potent black jewels worn as amulets by night hags. When in their possession, they allowed night hags to activate their ability to become ethereal and to cure any disease simply by touching it, a tool of incredible importance for any resident of the plague-ridden plane of Oinos. They were, particularly when used by good-aligned beings, substantially less useful out of a night hag's hands, shattering after ten uses and incapable of granting non-night hags the ability to travel to the Ethereal Plane. To craft a new heartstone required a month's worth of work and the sacrifice of several larvae in the process, making the retrieval of a lost heartstone of paramount importance to them.

Night hags could use their spectral state to haunt the dreams of those on the Material Plane. They would ride on a victim's back, filling their sleeping minds with mind-bending visions, crippling anxieties and dread-inducing nightmares until the break of dawn. Through this method, night hags could gradually wear down their prey both physically and mentally, sapping their vitality while driving them mad in the hopes that they would grow even more depraved. Visits from a night hag in such a fashion only had to last an hour before all benefits of a night's rest was lost and powerful restoration magic was normally required to help victims recover. If unimpeded in their mental invasions, night hags would continue straddling their marks until they died in their sleep. It was at this point that a night hag's other powerful item, her soul bag, came into use. Crafted over the course of a week from the flesh of a sacrificed humanoid, soul bags were black sacks that could hold a single soul that had been killed by a night hag's dream haunting ability, although unlike heartstones only the specific creator could use them.

Night hags could immediately determine soul larva quality, which souls became larvae upon death and possibly even the specific, malicious acts necessary for a wicked mortal to become a soul larvae. With this knowledge, night hags caught the larval life essence of those they had corrupted in their soul bags before dragging them down into Hades where they would become an especially powerful kind of soul larva. The entire process of dream haunting had several flaws interwoven throughout the various stages, such as the fact that it only worked on sufficiently selfish beings. The sleep-related powers of night hags had reportedly different levels of effectiveness on those that were not evil, or at the very least chaotic, such as their sleep spell-like ability not functioning or the bag being unable to entrap the soul. Other weaknesses included the use of truesight to detect their presence, protection from evil and good and magic circle to block a night hag's intrusions, or techniques that affected the ethereal in order to interrupt the process.

Combat
Cruel and devious in the extreme, night hags had access to unique and deadly magical items, arrays of minions and a willingness to sacrifice all of them to protect herself if need be. When they believed themselves to have reasonable chances of success they would quickly murder any goodly being they came across, favoring the use of sleep to render their prey unconscious before cheerfully choking them to death, although some reports claimed they could literally enter and tear apart their target's mind from the inside. Allies typically prevented any other parties from interfering while they killed. However, night hags were rarely direct in their tactics, and often adopted other forms to spy on trespassers or lure them in before rendering them all unconscious.

It was necessary to take all precautions possible when confronting a night hag as they would do the same against any threats to themselves, watching and slowly murdering enemies from the ethereal plane if able to move there unseen. Multiple hostages were often kept on the ethereal plane and would be ruthlessly murdered and made examples of in order to ward off hunters that cared about them. They might also kidnap spellcasters, those most likely to be nuisances but incapable of withstanding direct assault, taking them to the ethereal plane by ambushing and grabbing them, necessitating spells like grease or blur to escape their grasp. It was no surprise that they preferred the use of traps and guardians that made use of poisons and diseases given their heartstone's ability to cure them whenever needed and they often employed lower-planar diseases. Breaking a night hag's heartstone was one of the best tactics when fighting them since it weakened them and prevented them from moving to other planes without assistance. Failing that, spells such as forcecage were tremendously useful in limiting their movements and tactical options while etherealness allowed them to be fought on equal terms.

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.

Ecology
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.

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