Night Hag

Night hags hold the gray wasteland of despair, in practice if not by plan. They are hideous crones with dark blue-violet skin, jet hair, glowing red eyes, long cruel claws on hands and feet, and rotten fangs jutting from cracked, oozing lips. They speak many languages, chiefly those useful for bargaining with evil.

Wholly evil, a night hag attacks any good creature whenever she likes her odds. Her bite deals 2d6 and transmits disease unless the victim saves vs. poison. Once per turn, one at a time, she can use know alignment, polymorph self, sleep, ray of enfeeblement (3/day), and magic missile (4 missiles, 5/day).

Her sleep is unusually strong, reaching selfishly evil beings as strong as 12th level or 12 Hit Dice unless they save vs. spell. She strangles the sleeper and carries its spirit to the wasteland as a larva, a grim coin of the realm. If the sleep fails, she returns each night in ethereal form, which she can take at will, to invade the victim's dreams and ride their back until dawn, hoping to break their mind. The victim cannot dislodge her and loses 1 point of Constitution permanently per night; at zero they die and she claims the larva. Only destroying her, in either form, ends this. Both attacks work only on mortals who show selfish evil.

She is immune to fear, fire, cold, sleep, and charm, and weapons must be +3 or better, silver, or cold iron to wound her.

Hags herd larvae and sell them to every sort of fiend; tanar'ri and baatezu turn them into imps and quasits, and certain liches feed on them to stay undead. Viewing existence as endless conflict where today's rulers are tomorrow's slaves, they avoid lasting alliances, which alone may keep them from greater power. Their sharp wits and flawless recall draw many seekers of counsel. They trade for knowledge, magic, and spirits, but any partner weaker than they are is later hunted down and made a larva.

Some lower-planar lords marry hags, but the children are always pure hags. Hags may also pose as beauties on other planes to wed great wizards and learn their secrets. They hate no race in particular, and only a craving to know everything restrains their cruelty; some human colleges, and even research by virtuous wizards, have turned out to run on hag gold. The rare soul who outwits one faces years of plotting revenge. Kindness is remembered too, but seldom repaid.

They are the only lower-planar natives who actively hunt humans for their spirits, and they destroy any life they can overpower. Each wears a charm of blackness, a periapt, made deep in the wasteland's pits, which instantly cures any disease its wearer catches and grants +2 on all saves. A good creature can use one, but it shatters after ten uses. Without it a hag cannot turn ethereal, though the charm does not give that power to anyone else. Hags go to great lengths to recover lost ones, since making a new one takes a month and 100 larvae.