Difference between revisions of "Night hag"

Latest revision as of 21:57, 16 September 2026

Night hags inhabit the Gray Waste and, practically speaking, rule it. They are wretched females with hideous dark blue-violet skin, jet black hair, and glowing red eyes; long, wicked claws on their hands and feet; and foul rotting fangs protruding from their dry, festering lips.

Night hags, thoroughly evil, attack any good creature without cause if they feel they have a reasonable chance of victory. While the bite of a night hag brings disease, they prefer to attack with their bewildering variety of spell-like abilities. Their sleep spell is especially powerful, affecting selfishly evil monsters or characters and allowing the hag to strangle her sleeping victim and takes its spirit to the Gray Waste as a larva.

If the sleep spell fails, the night hag visits the evil victim nightly in ethereal form, which it can assume at will, intruding on the victim's dreams and riding on the victim's back until dawn. In this way the night hag hopes to drive the victim mad. The victim cannot remove the night hag, and each nightly ride permanently drains the victim's vitality until they die, and the night hag returns to the Waste with the larval life force. The only way to defeat a riding night hag is to destroy it either in its normal or ethereal form. Both the sleep and dream intrusion work only against a mortal who displays selfish evil.

Night hags rule the Waste by default. They round up and herd larvae for barter with fiends of all types. Tanar'ri and baatezu alike require larvae for their quasits and imps, and some liches use larvae to maintain their undead condition.

Night hags are said to see the multiverse as a place of eternal conflict. They believe it is unwise to form permanent alliances, for those who rule today are apt to be slaves tomorrow. Nevertheless, their keen minds and perfect memories cause many to seek the hags for wisdom and counsel.

Night hags are always willing to trade for knowledge, magical items, and spirits. However, if those trading with them do not match or exceed the hags in strength, the hags later track them down and make them into larvae.

Some lords of the Lower Planes take night hags for wives. From such unions are only born more night hags, equal to others of their race and not partaking of the characteristics of their sire. It is said that occasionally hags travel to other planes, assume the forms of beautiful women, and become wives of powerful wizards, that they might thereby gain further secrets of the universe.

Hags have no particular hatred for any one race or type of beings, even their own. Their inability to form permanent alliances is probably the only thing that has kept them from wielding greater power on the Lower Planes. Likewise, the only thing that keeps a hag's cruelty in check is her burning desire to know all things. Certain human colleges were founded by night hags, and some research projects – even those carried out by the most moral of wizards - have been ultimately found to be financed by hag gold.

Very few beings have ever outwitted a hag. In such cases the hag spends years coming up with an intricate plot to out-trick the trickster. Night hags do remember any kindness shown to them, as well, but they appear less motivated to repay it.

Note: The night hag originally appeared in this form in the Planescape Monstrous Compendium for the AD&D game from TSR. Their use here is for the purposes of providing context for the campaign only.