Night Hag

(from 5th Edition Monster Manual - 2014):

Sly and subversive, night hags want to see the virtuous turn to villainy: love turned into obsession, kindness turned to hate, devotion to disregard, and generosity to selfishness. Night hags take perverse joy in corrupting mortals.

Night hags were once creatures of the Feywild, but their foulness saw them exiled to Hades long ago, where they degenerated into fiends. The night hags have long since spread across the Lower Planes.

Soulmongers. While a humanoid sleeps, a night hag can straddle the person ethereally and intrude upon its dreams. Any creature with truesight can see the hag’s spectral form straddling its prey. The ethereal hag fills her victim’s head with doubts and fears, in the hope of tricking it into performing evil acts in the waking world. The hag continues her nightly visitations until the victim finally expires in its sleep. If the hag has driven her victim to commit evil deeds, she traps its corrupted soul in her soul bag (see the “Night Hag Items” sidebar) for transport to Hades.

NIGHT HAG ITEMS:

A night hag carries two very rare magic items that she must craft for herself. If either object is lost, the night hag will go to great lengths to retrieve it, as creating a new tool takes time and effort.

Heartstone. This lustrous black gem allows a night hag to become ethereal while it is in her possession. The touch of a heartstone also cures any disease. Crafting a heartstone takes 30 days.

Soul Bag. When an evil humanoid dies as a result of a night hag’s Nightmare Haunting, the hag catches the soul in this black sack made of stitched flesh. A soul bag can hold only one evil soul at a time, and only the night hag who crafted the bag can catch a soul with it. Crafting a soul bag takes 7 days and a humanoid sacrifice (whose flesh is used to make the bag).

(from 5th Edition Volo's Guide to Monsters - 2016):

HAG LAIR ACTIONS:

If a hag is a grandmother, she gains a set of lair actions appropriate to her nature, knowledge; and history. A coven that includes a grandmother can use her lair actions as well, but the grandmother's will prevails-if one of the coven attempts this sort of action and the grandmother disapproves, nothing happens. A powerful auntie (or her coven) might also have access to lair actions like these, but only at certain times of the year or when the influence of the Feywild is strong. The following lair actions are options for grandmothers and powerful aunties. Grandmothers usually have three to five lair actions, aunties usually only one (if they have any at all). Unless otherwise noted, any lair action that requires a creature to make a saving throw uses the save DC of the hag's most powerful ability. 

Lair Actions On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the hag can take a lair action to cause one of the following effects, but can't use the same effect two rounds in a row: 

• Until initiative count 20 on the next round, the hag can pass through solid walls, doors, ceilings, and floors as if the surfaces weren't there.

• The hag targets any number of doors and windows that she can see, causing each one to either open or close as she wishes. Closed doors can be magically locked (requiring a successful DC 20 Strength check to force open) until she chooses to make them unlocked, or until she uses this lair action again to open them.

Night Hags:

Night hags have left behind the world of the fey to roam the Lower Planes. They have dark blue or purple-black skin with white or light-colored eyes and thin, curving horns. A night hag is as least as tall as a human, and most are stout or have a medium build rather than being thin or emaciated. Night hags enjoy corrupting the dreams of good people, compromising the ideals of their victims to get them to eventually perform evil acts. Then, when a victim dies, the hag can harvest its soul and bring it to Hades.

A powerful night hag might have the following additional lair actions: 

• One creature the hag can see within 120 feet of her must succeed on a DC 15 Charisma saving throw or be banished to a prison demiplane. To escape, the creature must use its action to make a Charisma check contested by the hag's. If the creature wins, it escapes the demiplane. Otherwise, the effect ends on initiative count 20 on the next round. When the effect ends, the creature reappears in the space it left or in the nearest unoccupied space if that one is occupied. 

• The hag targets up to three creatures that she can see within 60 feet of her. Each target must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or be flung up to 30 feet through the air. A creature that strikes a solid object or is released in midair takes ld6 bludgeoning damage for every 10 feet moved or fallen.

(from Planescape: Monstrous Compendium Appendix I - 1994):

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 speak multiple languages, preferring those that help them in their dealings with evil beings.

Combat: Night hags, thoroughly evil, attack any good creature without cause if they feel they have a reasonable chance of victory.

A night hag can bite (2d6 damage and save vs. poison or contract a disease). Night hags also have a bewildering variety of spell-like abilities they can use one at a time, once per turn, at will: know alignment, magic missile (4 missiles, 5 times per day), polymorph self, ray of enfeeblement (3 times per day), and sleep. A night hag’s powerful sleep spell affects selfishly evil monsters or characters up to 12 Hit Dice or 12th level unless the victim saves vs. spells. The hag strangles her sleeping victim and takes its spirit to the Gray Waste as a larva, where it becomes a macabre form of currency.

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 1 from the victim’s Constitution. When the victim’s Constitution reaches zero, the victim dies, 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 are immune to the effects of charm, sleep, fear, fire-, and cold-based attacks. A silver, cold iron, or +3 or better weapon is needed to harm them.

Habitat/Society: 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 outtrick the trickster. Night hags do remember any kindness shown to them, as well, but they appear less motivated to repay it.

Ecology: Night hags are the only lower-planar inhabitants that actually seek out humans and kill them for their spirits. They destroy any life form they can overpower. Night hags are mercilessly wicked.

Night hags carry a special periapt called a charm of blackness. Created by hags deep in the pits of the Waste, they instantly cure any disease the possessor contracts and gives a +2 bonus to all saving throws. If a good creature gains a charm, it functions but shatters after ten uses. Night hags lose their ability to become ethereal without their periapt, but the ability does not transfer to others. Hags go to great pains to retrieve lost periapts; it takes one month and 100 larvae to create another.