Night hags are wicked witches whose nightmarish minds and abilities made them appear to embody the ideals of the hag race. They are known for their ability to induce horrific dreams and for harvesting soul larvae.
Night hags are horrendously hideous beings, unrivaled in their repulsiveness even when compared to most other hags and much more so when compared to ordinary crones. To describe them as merely ugly is 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 are 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 is typically slow and their bodies ungainly despite their similarity in height and weight to human females, a problem caused by the uncanny ways their joints move.
Their sickening skin tone makes their entire forms seem awfully bruised, with a blue-violet hue that could be fairly light or so dark they seem completely black. They self-augment their flesh with tattoo-like scars to enhance their eeriness, although it is often already marred with grotesque warts, open sores, and diseased blisters.
Like an unkempt coif, pitch-black hair often hides 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 are typically woven into their manes in ways the night hag in question found especially bloodcurdling and thin, curved horns make their way through the ebony locks. Behind the veil of hair lays a pair of light, hellish eyes with pinprick pupils radiating a rage-filled red and a jaw that reaches out like a fearsome hook from underneath their sharply pointed noses. Rows of jagged, yellow fangs coated in foul saliva rock unfirmly in their gums and awkwardly jut out from their festering, wizened lips.
Night hags have an array of magical powers at their disposal, including the ability to polymorph into the guise of a female member of other races, as discovered with the woman called Thera.
Night hags are 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 is 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.
Night hags normally keep 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 are 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. The second item was the night hag's soul bag. 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 can use their spectral state to haunt the dreams of those on the Material Plane. They will 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.
