The Known History of Hags

Written by Raveneye

Night Hags

Etymology

The phrase Night Hag is the common language interpretation of the sylvan name Naitohagu. The elves that are from the Feywild has called them Naitohagu. The Eladrin and other residents of the Feywild have several other denominations for their fallen kinswomen. The dryads and nymphs tend to refer to them as the Soruita Nojosei. The sylvan to common translation is the lady that devours souls. A few Archfey of the Seelie and Unseelie court have once called them Yorunoninfu. Yorunoninfu means Night Fairy or Night Nymph.

Origin Myths

Nymph Corruption Theory

The nymph that the Night Hags branched from was known as Hesperides. The Hesperide were nymphs of the evening and golden light. The Feywild has a way of creating creatures that juxtapose another. They say that there was a triad of Hesperides. These three nymphs of eternal sunshine morphed into a being known as a Yorunoninfu . The Yorunoninfu became nymphs of darkness and slumber.
The legend differs on the cause of the corruption. Several stories mention that it is the natural order of the Feywild. Other accounts say it was water from the river Styx given to them as a gift from a jealous entity. The Queen of the Unseelie court had been mentioned as the cause of the metamorphosis.

The Nymph Theory

Night Hags were nymphs of twilight and dreams. Please see Origin of Hags on page xxx.
These nymphs enjoyed entering the slumbering minds of the inhabitants of the realm. They even made it a game. The goal was to change a person by just manipulating their dreams. They took euphoric pleasure in changing the personality of people in the Feywild. Especially with the beings that visited the realm of fairies.

The Shades of Slay Theory

The Shades of Slay is an ancient order of women. This order was composed of some of the most powerful sorcerers and wizards. The magi that study divination and necromancy were the ones that changed into Night Hags. Please see Origin of Hags on page xxx for more information.

Description

The Night Hag has the physique of an elderly woman. Their body is thin and frail. Don’t let that fool you. They are deceptively strong. Their skin is an ashy purple color and gripping tight around the muscles. The majority of Night Hag faces are gaunt. They have a wide mouth with rows of golden yellow canine teeth. Their noses tend to be beak-like. Night Hags are one of two hags that have horns. These horns tend to be a golden merrow color. The horns are slightly curved like a goat. The eyes of the Night Hags are of a sickly yellow. They do tend to glow in the dark like animals. Their hair tends to differ from silky smooth to dreadlock matte, but the color is always as black as night.
Night Hags have a taste for the most elegant attire and decoration. They outfit themselves in fine clothing. These garments have wear and tear from years of being worn. The craftsmanship of that attire is still exquisite in its damaged state. They enjoy decorating themselves with trophies of conquest. Mostly the skulls of stimulating humanoids that gave them the challenge to convert to evil. The hags enhance the heads with gold inlays, and the eye sockets have exotic gems embedded.
They don’t keep any exotic magical weapons on their person. Those items tend to be in their lair. There are two items that they keep on themselves at all times. The first item is known as a Heartstone. The black onyx gem has several magical properties. One of those abilities is to be able to enter the ethereal realm. The other item is a patchwork bag known as the Soul Bag. They use the flayed flesh of several humanoids to fashion this item. The Night Hags use this patchwork bag to capture the souls they have corrupted.

Distribution and Habitat

Night Hags live isolated or in covens across the material plane and the lower planes.
On the material plane, they prefer to live in forests or wetlands. They like to live in the heart of these environments. They try to stay away from populated settlements. Some of them will live near small settlements and act as a healer. In reality, the hag is probably cursing the villagers and using it as a source of information. The general area around their lair eventually grows tainted by their presence. The trees will be rotted to the core and become twisted. The grasses in the forest will be dried out husks. The wetlands reeds tend to be limp and lifeless. The vegetation turns rotten. This cursed soil creates a perfect habitat for various fungi, such as mushrooms. There are many properties of the spores and the fleshy fruiting bodies of the fungi. Other plants and insects will become more poisonous. The wildlife in the region will slowly develop into vile and violent animals. The Night Hags will cast a massive illusion around the territory to give it the appearance of a healthy environment.
The lower planes are the realms of hell and the underworld. Vile fiends of the Eternal War continuously fight each other. The fiends of law are in a never-ending conflict with the fiends of chaos. There are seven known lower planes. They are Acheron, Baator, Gehenna, Hades, Carceri, Abyss, and Pandemonium. The Eternal War between Baator and the Abyss has caught the attention of most scholars. The inhabitants of these two realms have the most activity among the lower planes. Baator is the realm of fascist fiends of law and order. The Abyss is pure chaos. The fiends there seek to destroy everything. The Night Hags live and thrive in these planes.
Hades has the largest known density of these foul creatures. This plane is also known as the Gray Waste. Not only can they be found in the Gray Waste, but they are also the lords of it. Hades is a colorless wasteland full of disease and despair. The river Styx flows through the land. Rumors are that the hags run a massive market near the river.

Historical Range

Night Hags originally came from the Feywilds, an imitation of the material realm. It is full of potent magic and mystical creatures. The magic there is wild and chaotic. The beast is whimsical and inquisitive. The land is an embodiment of living emotion. It was an amusement park of corruption for the Night Hags until they did something so horrible that it got them expelled.

Behavior and Ecology

The Organization

Night Hag organizes themselves in covens. The mother and two of her daughters make up the power of a coven. There may be more children that are part of the organization. Those children never went through the defiling ceremony to become a hag. They become the coven's foot soldiers and spies. Other evil entities will be employed or enslave to work within the coven. The coven will include other hags such as Green Hags, Dusk Hags, and Annis Hags. They treat them as independent contractors.
They don’t take too kindly to people interfering in their business. They will seek retribution on those entities that interrupt their operation. They take their business of corrupting souls seriously. Those that do interfere will find themselves in a cat and mouse game. The hags will exercise their many tricks to get revenge on those that wrong the coven.

Diet

The only other thing that Night Hags enjoy more than their business is the consumption of freshly corrupted flesh of a mortal. They take the time to slow-cook a creature through their dreams. Once that creature has entered the darkness, the hag will take the soul and dine on the flesh. They will also consume the dreams of newborns and young children.

Reproduction

The reproduction theory of Night Hags involves the consumption of a newborn and the birth of a newborn. A Night Hag will polymorph into a wife of an unsuspected family that just had a child. She will seduce the husband. After reproduction, she will consume the family newborn. An hour after the consumption, the hag will give birth to an identical baby. Except the baby will have jet black hair.
After the first year, the Night Hag will return. The yearling will suckle on the Night Hag tits for an hour. She will do this for thirteen days. On the thirteenth day, the Night Hag will spoon-feed the babe a single soul larva and sing a spell.
On the baby girl’s thirteenth birthday, the hag will return. The mother hag will watch her child’s painful transition into a Night Hag. The newly formed hag will consume her parents before the mother Hag takes her back to her lair.
Generally, the Night Hag will create two daughters this way. It does not mean she won’t have any other offspring. She will make a small army of women this way. Those offspring she doesn’t employ into her services will eventually be used for future reproduction. They become forever linked. The hag will be able to trace her bloodline.

Economics

Night Hags are the greediest out of all the other hags. Creating new spells, items, and secrets all cost money. They made their joyful hobby into an economic gold mine. The fiends of law and chaos both need souls for their armies. The Night Hags provide souls of the best souls of the lower planes.

Larva Farming

Across the lower planes, lost souls materialize in the shape of a larva. These souls are the people that had no god or lived a selfish life. The Night Hags travel around the lower planes harvesting these larvae. They will place the found souls into cells on larva ranches. The gathering of larvae in the cells tend to attract new souls. They sell these souls in a grande market in Hades.

The Soul Trade

The best souls are the souls that coalesce in Hades. The souls are like clay. It can be sculpted to fit any form that the buyer wants. The Night Hags are surprisingly resistant to Hade’s otherworldly effects. Other creatures will change if they stay long enough in the realm. Due to their resistance, the Night Hags cornered the market on souls.
The Night Hags can gather souls from the material realms. They can enter the dreams of sleeping creatures and will slowly corrupt those creatures. The hags take sadistic pleasure in gathering souls through this method. It is challenging to convert a good person to do evil deeds. It is this challenge that will make those souls the best. The souls that are collecting this way are the best souls on the market. Fiends will pay top billing for those souls. They can manipulate the soul into almost anything. Most of the time, the hags will keep those souls to themselves.
There is an enormous bazaar that the hags run in Hades. The river Styx runs through the market. The market is open to all types of creatures. The fiends and evil creatures shop at this market for souls. Visitors can find more than just souls. The market contains some of the rarest magic and weapons in the multiverse.

General Abilities

Night Hags are innate spellcasters. They can cast multiple spells at will. Most of the hags will have the ability to cast arrows of force. These arrows will automatically hit any opponent that they target. They can also taste others’ magical powers, giving them the option of adjusting their behavior to those opponents. They can stream a sickly green ray from their fingertips. The beam can make the strongest man into a feeble man.
Night Hags can polymorph at will. They mostly use this ability for reproduction, but they will use it for other vile things. Hags will infiltrate cities to gather information. Look for details on potential friendly folks to corrupt or devour.
One of the hag's most impressive abilities is the ability to enter somebody’s dream. That is an ability that they had during their time as a fey. They would enter somebody’s subconscious and manipulate them as they sleep. Scholars believe they travel through the Ethereal realm to activate this ability. They cause their prey to have dreadful nightmares. Dreams are telling them to do horrible things to others. The hag will eventually turn the target to do an evil act and after the deed. They will consume the prey.

The Realm

There have been several known incidents of Night Hags in the realm. Here are some of those incidents.

Incident Report: Cumowac, Clotho

Cumowac was a small tranquil town surrounded by luscious wetlands. The healthy moors provide economic growth and natural defense within the heart of Clotho. The people of the town harvest rice and cranberry crops. They had years of bountiful harvests. The town prospered for many of those years.
The ruling family of Cumowac was the Von Symanski family. They were a loving family and devoted worshippers of Karametra. Under their rulership, they treated everyone like family. Lord Petra Von Symanski was the head of the family. He was married to Lady Anya Von Symanski. They have been married for years but have no children. Karametra was essential for them and the people of the town. They regularly held ceremonies, secretly hoping that the goddess would bless them with a child. The people of the township became their children.
Suddenly the moors turned sour. It was no longer yielding the same amount of crops that it once had, and various amounts of new insects began plaguing the people. Disease infested the township. Groups of gangs started causing trouble. Vermin were swarming and eating the stores. Whispering among the villagers secretly blames the Von Symanski. They believe the Von Symanski infertility is causing the land to go sour. The citizens organized a harvest festival to help the Von Symanski family get back into the goddess's favor. The party would commence on the next harvest moon at midnight.
On the night of the harvest festival, a group of travelers entered the township. They came in riding heavy horses that are black and wearing dark green embroidered skirts of an elk. The covered wagons have antlers sewed onto the frames. The people driving the caravan all had milky white skin and jet black hair. The riders were all wearing dark green leather jackets with fringes. Three escorted wagons of bohemian travelers entered the town. Mrs. Nowak, the town religious leader, invited the pilgrims to their township. She mentioned that they could help with the Von Symanski fertility problem.
Mrs. Nowak’s gamble yielded results. The crops started producing again, and people started recovering from the plagues that attacked the township. The roaming bandits have begun to disappear from the land. The Von Symanski family was pregnant shortly after the festival. The citizen has already started to rejoice at the news. The Von Symanski family was equally as excited about all the good news coming into town. Even more enthusiastic about their child coming into this world.
Nine-month flew by, and Anya Von Symanski gave birth to a chestnut brown hair baby girl. Shortly after the birth, the baby’s hair turned to pitch black. Her name was Joanna Von Symanski. Joanna had a normal childhood, and she was smart and sassy. The people of Cumowac loved having her around. She was a breath of sunshine.
Around Joanna’s thirteenth birthday, the troubles had begun. The moors turned sour, and the crops were no longer producing. The people were getting hammered by various diseases that crippled the town. People again looked to Karametra and the harvest festival. They believe that the goddess and celebration of the miracle child would save them. The travelers had returned for the celebration. They were honored guests since they helped Von Symanski with their fertility issues. A few minutes until midnight and at the highest height of the harvest moon. The Von Symanski family took to the stage to present Joanna the halo crown of Karametra. Joanna kneeled and bowed her head. Anya Von Symansk laid the crown across her braided hair.
The bells of midnight toll. Joanna screamed. It was the screaming of somebody dying. She buckled over, and the people saw her body break and twist unnaturally. Joanna’s complexion turned dark purple, and her skin tightened around her muscles. Horns sprouted out of her forehead, and a loud cackling echoed through the town square. Anya tried to comfort her loving daughter, but Joanna no longer existed. It is now this fiendishly looking creature. The fiend seized Anya by the throat and lifted her, snapping her neck. Anya walked over to her shocked father. She thrust her talons into him. Taking his heart out of his chest and began to devour it in front of the entire time. The town exploded into chaos as the celebrated guest began to assault the townspeople.
That is a summary of the events that took place at Cumowac. After interviewing the known survivors of the town. It became clear to me that this was a classic hag cradle snatch. Most hags reproduce this way, but only the Night Hags will let the child mature to their thirteenth birthday. We are unsure of the reasons why they wait that long. It could be a teaching method for manipulating the dreams of the common folk. Or it could be their cruel nature.
Scribed by, Inquisitor Marlee Devour

Incident Report: Stonemorze, Clotho

Elk gang mentioned Scribed by, Inquisitor Marlee Devour

Incident Report: Sostenger, Galadhil

Elk gang mentioned Scribed by, Inquisitor Marlee Devour

Incident Report: Montagna, Donion

Elk gang mentioned Scribed by, Inquisitor Marlee Devour