Night Hag
Occasionally venturing from the Nightmare Lands into dreamscapes, night hags are wretched witches that prey upon sleepers for reproduction, sustenance, and lucre.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Night hags vary widely in appearance, standing between 5-1/2 and 7 feet tall, and weighing from 150 to 300 pounds. They always have ugly features, often black skin, and burning red eyes. Many night hags have horns of some sort. Their hands end in impossibly long fingers with sharp talons that drip a paralytic poison. The body of a night hag appears to be skeletally thin; however, they possess a great strength fueled by the hatred of all beautiful things.
Genetics and Reproduction
Night hags, being exclusively female, can only reproduce by mating with a male member of another species, typically a member of a civilized race and always in a dream. The hag often then slays her mate or steals his soul to be used as currency in the lower realms. The female children born to the night hag look like normal members of their species with black or blue hair and are often given into foster care, most often by being found on a doorstep. When the foundling reaches puberty, the mother night hag visits the child several times in her dreams, gaining her trust and ultimately teaching her daughter several rituals that the girl must perform. Completing the rituals transforms her offspring into a maiden night hag but interrupting any one of the rituals that takes place ceases the process of transformation. It has been rumored that any girl performing these rituals may become a night hag. Male offspring of a night hag are hagspawn.
Growth Rate & Stages
Like all hags, night hags come in three categories denoting age and power. maiden, matron and matriarch.
Maiden night hags are those fresh changed and new to their status. They spend their time learning to be night hags from matrons and gaining power, both mystical and temporal. Eventually the hag will feel the desire to reproduce and move into the matron stage.
Matron hags are very powerful magically, physically and through influence. They feel the need to reproduce and when their daughters come of age and become maiden hags, teach them the ways of the hag. At some point, growing tired of the constant battles with impudent, demanding children constantly trying to overthrow them, the hag removes herself from the coven or drives her remaining children out and enters the matriarch stage.
Matriarch hags have had and raised their children and again focus on their personal power. They can be immensely powerful magic-users, rivaling archmages in the scope of their abilities. Some may have a diminishment in their physical abilities due to aging, but they are still more than a match for many mortals.
Ecology and Habitats
Most often, night hags roam the dreamscapes looking for suitable victims. Occasionally, one will move incorporeally through the physical world and attack a victim. A sleeping target may attempt to prevent the night hag from entering its Dreamscape by succeeding on a contested Presence check. If it succeeds, the target sleeps normally, and awakens with all the benefits of sleep.
If the target fails to keep the night hag out of its Dreamscape, the victim will sleep unsoundly, dreaming of strange creatures watching it or sitting on its chest. The night hag may then engage in whatever horrible fate it has in store for the victim.
Night hags are fierce rulers of the Nightmare Lands. As they are collectors of souls (though nowhere near as prolific as devils) they do some bartering in the lower realms of the Mindscape. A few have set themselves up as neutral bankers in the under-realms, able to deal effectively with both devil and demon. Others have been known to share their wares with adventurous or stupid mortals. One night hag has even set up a shop in the city of Slumber in the Rapture Lands.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Night hags feed on souls, usually taken from sleeping victims.
Additional Information
Social Structure
Night hags are most often solitary creatures, often unwilling to tolerate even each other's presence. Occasionally, they will form covens, rarely exceeding half a dozen individuals. Indeed, three seems to be the most stable number of members in a coven and although some sages attempt to ascribe metaphysical significance to this number, the truth is far more mundane: any larger than this and a coven’s more likely to quickly break down into infighting and cliquishness. Composition and duration of covens can vary with the most long term covens being familial: a matron and her maiden children. However, maiden night hags are often driven by their vile natures to attempt to usurp their mother’s power as the head of a coven. If they succeed, they fill the niche their mother once did, if they fail, they may be killed but are just as likely to flee into the Nightmare Lands to start a coven of the second type, that of mainly unrelated maidens attempting to consolidate their power and banding together as a survival strategy. Again, these covens will not last forever as the maidens vie for power and leadership of their little group.
Uses, Products & Exploitation
Concentrated night hag venom is a powerful soporific/paralytic, depending on whether it is used in the physical world or Mindscape.
Facial characteristics
Night hags are universally ugly. Often scarred, warted, with exaggerated features such as abnormally large noses. Eye color is as varied as skin color.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Mindscape, more common in the lower realms, and nearer Nightmare Lands, in the Dreamscape, where they are the most often found.
Average Intelligence
Excellent
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Night hags senses extend into the astral plane.
Lifespan
Centuries
Conservation Status
Very rare in the Dreamscape.
Rare in the Nightmare Lands
Average Height
6'
Average Weight
200 lbs.
Average Physique
Excellent
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Body colorings are varied and can run from normal human ranges to sickly yellows, deep reds, purples and jet black being among the more common.
Geographic Distribution
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