What They Don't Tell You About Night Hags - D&D

begone you hag who lurks in dreams who drains our life through Christ and screams god bless this ward to keep me whole and keep the night hag from my soul the term hag is pretty straightforward and any fantasy game you play it is typically used to refer to a form of which someone who dwells in the swamp concocting vile poisons and dark magics in order to provide nature or civilization and those in Dragons the same applies except that they're not actually mortal they're not women really the monster manual tells us that they used to be spiritual creatures of the Fae wild but because of their dark costumes and McCobb rituals they were banished and instead found a new home in the lower plains where they became fiends essentially hacks come from the hell of Dungeons and Dragons this is why even though they look human ish they're actually not they possess superhuman strength and incredible agility even though they look the way they do much of what you will find in the monster manual is flavor text and will come to as no surprise to you most of this you will already know for example it says here that hags possess magical powers that they can alter their form or curse their foes it says here that their withered faces are framed by long frayed hair horrid moles and warts dot their blotchy skin and their long skinny fingers are tipped by claws that can slice open flesh with a touch to be fair I always appreciate when they actually describe the monster that we're talking about because they never do that actually most times we have to rely on the pictures that they give us to know how the monster actually looks now there are different types of hags and each of them have their own behavior and personality so a lot of this will not apply to all of them that's why we're just gonna go ahead and grab the important relevant stuff from here and take it since this is a fairly long page we're gonna skip some of the fluff now this part here is the big one it says that hacks propagate by snatching and devouring human infants after stealing a baby from its cradle or its mother's womb the hag consumes the poor child a week later the hag gives birth to a daughter who looks human until her 13th birthday whereupon the child transforms into the spitting image of her hag mother there's actually more to this ritual right here it's not fully automatic as the monster manual makes it seem but we'll cover that in a bit hag's sometimes raise the daughters that they spawn creating covens a hag might also return the child to its grieving parents only to watch from the shadows as the child grows up to become a horror now this entire two paragraphs described the general behavior of hacks but a lot of it is self-evident things that you probably would already assume they treat all other creatures as inferior and only treat with mortals that show deference to them they enjoy watching mortals bring about their own downfall they love the McCabe and festoon their garb with dead things attractive creatures evoke disgusting a hag they sharpen their teeth on millstones and spin cloth from the intestines of their victims reacting with glee to the horror that their actions evoke now down here it gets more interesting hacks maintain contact with each other and share knowledge through such contact it is likely that any given hag knows every other hag in existence they don't like each other but they abide by an ageless code of conduct they break no oaths given to other hags as long as the oath isn't given with their fingers crossed down here by the end of the hags entry we get their lairs though it is also pretty straightforward they dwell in dark and twisted woods bleak Moors storm lashed seacoast in gloomy swamps in time the landscape around the hack Slayer reflects the creatures noxious Ness we might touch in covens in a future video but for now I just want to focus on night hags now for these gals we actually get some extra info they have their own page and that info is pretty interesting it says here that the night hacks were once creatures of the fake world we knew that but they're foul nasaw that max out to Hades long ago where they degenerated into fiends the night hags have long since spread across the lower plains that's interesting while a humanoid sleeps a night hack can straddle the person ethereal II and intrude upon its dreams any creature with true sight can see the hags spectral form straddling its pray the ethereal hag fills her victims 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 his corrupted soul in her soul bag for transport to Hades we also get a sidebar here about the items that a night had carries it says a night Hannah 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 first one here we got the heart stone this lustrous black gym allows a night hack to become ethereal while it is in her possession the touch of a heart stone also cures any disease grafting in hearthstone takes 30 days then we get the soul back when an evil humanoid dies as a result of the night hags nightmare haunting the hag catches the soul in this black sack made a stitched flesh a soul bag can hold only one evil soul at a time and only the night hack who crafted the bag can catch a soul with it crafting a soul bag takes seven days and the humanoids sacrifice whose flesh is used to make the bag whoo there you have it this far into the video and we just barely covered the monster manual entry for the night hag you know I gotta say we've got a lot of info to be honest we've got a full page of behavior and a couple of paragraphs specifically about the night hack and we even got magic items yet still somehow they've managed to neglect putting in the single most important aspect of the night hag night hacks are soul mongers just how the Monster Manual calls them but what do they do with those souls what are these hags doing in Hades of all places well buckle up cuz this one is a doozy let's talk about what the Monster Mile does not tell you about night hacks Jesus Christ where do I even begin night hacks are interdimensional traders their currency being Souls they go around and gather Souls just so that they can trade them to those who would need them which turns out many there are many who would this video is about to take a twist that you probably were not expecting for me to be able to explain this actually have to go a little bit into the economics of the lower planes and the big currency here are larva see when a person dies sometimes they go to heaven however if they're evil they go to hell as you would imagine now when you go to hell as a person in the Forgotten Realms you don't really go to hell with your human bodies it's not like you have your human body and the devil's torture you or anything like that instead what happens is your soul gets transported into the lower planes and you appear in the lower planes as a larva a larva is essentially just like a conduit of your soul is just your soul in the shape of a larva the devils and demons are at war and they have been since basically before anyone can even remember this is called the blood war for those of you new to dungeon dragons devils and demons are very different devils are lawful strict disciplined and live in the nine hells where as demons are chaotic and monstrous and live in the abyss they say that if one side were to ever win against the other the world would end because the winner would just conquer the multiverse they also say that millions die on each side of the war every single day neither Devils nor demons truly reproduce instead they grab Souls turn them into their kind and then evolve them using magic for example a devil might turn a human soul into an imp and provided that the amp shows competence it might be rewarded by Huayra but being promoted into a spined devil then promoted again into a bearded devil then maybe into a barbed devil and so on and so forth until eventually it might reach the end of the chain and become a pit fiend this is how Devils reproduce and demons are actually not so different from that with so many of their kind dying in the blood war both devils and demons need a constant supply of new souls to feel the war effort and this is where the night hacks come in see when an evil person dies their soul might manifest in the lower plains depending on their alignment if you were a lawful but evil you will go to the nine hells if you were chaotic and evil you will go to the abyss but if you were simply just evil then you will go to Hades now this is where it gets interesting a humanoid soul that spawns in the lower plains spawns as a larva they look like worms except that they possess a phase that sort of looks like the phase individual had in life the interesting bit is that the best souls are actually the ones that spawn in Hades and here's why the planes that dimensions exude their energies across it the nine hells for example being lawful evil exudes awful evilness across it which means if you were to live there you would actually see yourself turn more and more lawful evil the plane itself just sort of changes you this of course has interesting consequences all across the board but especially to the larva that spawn in the region larva from the nine hells are notoriously difficult to promote into Devils that is because a lawful person is not very malleable they have their way of being and they are very difficult to persuade differently in the other planes physicality and mental states are actually very much conjoined a soul that is very lawful evil will not be very easily changeable or very easily malleable that's just the nature of being off level and that's just the nature of being in the nine hells so when you have a very lawful larva you have a larva that is very difficult to evolve because it wants to keep its shape the opposite applies in the abyss the larva that spawned there are too chaotic and they seldom keep any shape that is given to them when a demon tries to evolve a larva into a demonic fighter more often than not they actually turn into something else instead this is why both devils and demons seek the larva that spawn in Hades the very middle ground between these two and well who owns Hades the Oh Hades the night hacks have actually created an enormous Emporium in Hades where they profit from the blood war by gathering all the larvae that spawns in the plane and selling it to the highest bidder quote ask more plentiful what they think about the night hags and you will hear pretty much the same answer a crafty bunch of evil old crones who else are better suited to snatch up larvae and sell the stinking warms for a tidy bit of junk talk to the Celestials and they'll tell you that they hate the hacks because hacks are the villains who perpetrate the foul racist of the lower plains by bartering larvae to the fiends fiends think a little more kindly of hacks because there is no one better at delivering quality larvae the night hags don't care much of what anyone thinks of them as long as they continue to acquire knowledge wealth and ultimately greater personal power with the selling of larvae nothing else really matters the mistresses of the great waste sit secure in the comfort that ruling the larvae trade means ruling the plain and quote quote scholars who study the lower planes have wondered why no one has ever sought to control the gray waste as others have on Bhatia sue or some layers of the abyss to date not one infernal fiend Lord has risen to claim the gray waste for its own some say it's a despairing will Sepang effect of the waste that stops anyone from even wanting to try to conquer it but that's just not true fact is the night hags ruled the grey wastes that are ruled by any obvious show of force hags are more careful controlling the gloomy plain via their skillful manipulation of the larvae trade you see by playing the various factions in the blood war off each other the hags have secured their position as the planet rulers of the gray waste and quote it is said that the Emporium in Hades is the grandest Bazaar and market place in all of the lower plains with both devils and demons serving shoulders in order to buy larvae the River Styx passes through the market making it easier to get to and the market is said to be overseen by what is believed to be the longest surviving hag coven ever outside of larvae you can also purchase all manner of interdimensional contraband in the Emporium from blood war weapons and armor to dark magics and slaves they say that there is a restaurant in there as big as a whole town the way hags go about collecting the larvae is actually pretty mundane as it looks very similar to a Shepherd the larvae just sort of materializes all of the sudden in the lower plains but they tend to materialize close to an already existing larva so if you have a clumped up group of larvae chances are that more will spawn there together if you give it some time which is why you would find tons of larva pens in the plane now knowing this you might be wondering wait hold up if it's so easy to get larva in Hades then why would a night hag go through all the trouble trying to seduce a person in the Material Plane to do evil just so that they can snatch his soul well not all larvae are actually the same generally speaking the more powerful the individual the greater the larva is but the method of its transformation is also pretty important evil souls that die and end up in Hades through the natural way are not quite as grand on the other hand a powerful soul that gets directly turned into a larva by a hag is the most powerful and hence can get sold for a lot of money now generally speaking it is still not worth it and that's why 99% of the night hacks that deal in the larva trade actually stay in Hades but still some night hacks appreciate the journey more so than the destination and they try and obtain the grandest and the most exquisite of larvae through direct means which is why they live in the material realm see a normal larva is typically transformed by devils and demons into the lowest form of their kind a lemear by The Devil's or a Mane by the demons but a larva obtained by corrupting a powerful evil entity in the material realm can actually completely skip that part and be transformed into a full devil or demon making them a lot more valuable and worth a hell of a lot of money essentially the night hacks that you encounter in your adventures in the material realm are the true badasses that are going out of their way for the high-risk high-reward sins a larva essentially just a soul in the shape of a worm it can be used for anything that a soul can typically be used for it can feed the monsters that feed on Souls it can be used for rituals that require souls and it can feed the phylactery of a lich in fact you will always see many allege bartering in Hades trying to get himself a nice supply of larvae to keep himself undead in fact it's funny that it is explicitly told in the lore that hacks don't quite respect Lich's as much as they respect the devils and demons and because of that let's just get swindled all the time in Hades quote poor quality larvae are generally either destroyed or usually sold to clueless Lich's and quote now there's also a third way of obtaining larvae or for an entity to become larvae which happens when an astral traveler spends too long in Hades which happens hey many people go out to explore the multiverse and sometimes they stay too long in a place where they shouldn't have stayed too long and well if you stay too long in Hades bad things happen see hey this is cool because it is kind of like the bottom of the multiverse if you were to go to heaven for example and you would find Mount Olympus if you were to actually climb down the mountain you would find yourself in Hades why because the base of the mountain the base of Mount Olympus actually starts in Hades the same thing actually applies to aggress shield the world tree the roots fig Drasil are actually found in Hades and the tree grows all the way from Hades all the way to is guard so there are actually many reasons why an astral explorer might find themselves down here without even mentioning the fact that visiting the night hag Grand Emporium would actually be very very official to any Explorer now the thing is the energies of Hades SAP all will an all-call or from you if you were to arrive in Hades with a blue shirt for example in the span of a day you would actually notice that your shirt would have permanently turned gray this is why the lands of Hades are actually called the gray waste because they absorb all color now this actually also happens to your emotions and this is the very dangerous part the plain sucks and your feelings and emotions until there's nothing left once you have no call and no emotions you start to disappear turning translucent at first but eventually simply disappearing and turning into a larva anyways there you have it this huge part of being a night hag that was completely neglected in the monster manual these gals are actually a major power in the politics and the grand scheme of things in the Forgotten Realms you would never have imagined that night hacks were a major player alongside Devils demons and angels in the multiverse but hey there you have it now let's actually go small picture for the rest of the video and focus and more specific things about the hag that the monster manual would not tell you the hearthstone is really called a hearthstone that's just the name given to it by human oils who find it from the corpses of the hacks that they slay namely so because of his shape hacks wouldn't really use such a cute name for it instead they actually call it the charm of blackness and the reason they hack it goes through a lot of trouble to get it back if it's ever stolen just how the monster mono suggested it's because it actually costs them a grand fortune to create the monster miner doesn't tell you of course they just tell you that it takes a 30 days to create but the thing is the real problem is that it caused them 100 souls to create and they can only create it back in Hades which is a major pain in the ass for them also they don't tell you that the hearthstone is meant to be used only by evil people when a good person uses it to cure diseases the stone actually starts breaking the stone can only typically cure about ten diseases before completely breaking if you spy a good person I should also take the time to mention here that now that we're talking about diseases that the bite of a hag can produce a very foul disease the disease is called demon fever and it has an incubation of about a day after that if it's not cured you will lose your constitution permanently every day it progresses also hags have a special ability to turn evil dead humanoids into larvae they don't really need to go through the whole process of mounting the ethereal form of a sleeping person like the Monster Manual suggests in fact it is very explicitly told to us that a night hacks favorite way of obtaining the soul of an evil person is to simply use an extremely powerful version of the sleep spell on their target and then simply strangle the individual in their sleep essentially all they need to steal the soul of an evil person is to just kill that evil person and then once they have the soul they can turn that soul into a larva so that they can sell that larva in Hades it is only when the individual that they're hunting cannot be put to sleep that they actually resort to dream attacks like in the case of a powerful adventurer who keeps resisting her spells now this is where the previous lore of night hacks actually directly conflicts with the lore given to us by the Monster Manual we were told that hacks could only attack the dreams of evil people that as long as you were good hacks could actually not touch you in your sleep this of course is not what the monster model tells us saying that they in fact specifically target good people in their sleep in order to corrupt them but hey take whatever you wish from that but in the old lore it was said that when a night hack terrorized a village it was always the criminals that died first onto the town ran out of them and she would have to resort to corrupting those who were left in order to kill them I want to specify that for a soul to turn into a larva the soul has to be evil that's why they need that's what they have to corrupt you now in the master manual were told that hacks propagate by snatching and devouring human infants and that a week later after doing so they give birth to a daughter who looks human until her thirteenth birthday whereupon the child transforms into the spitting image of her hag mother what the much terminal doesn't tell you is that there's an actual process and ritual that the hag needs to make sure the child goes through for the transformation to actually happen quote at any time between the child's first birthday and puberty a night hag might return to perform a series of the spoiling rites that culminating the child's transformation into a normal night hag the process begins with an initial visitation during which the night hag must engage her child in a foul ceremony for an interrupted our after this initial ritual that I'd hag must return three times each visit 13 days after the last on these visits the night hag must suckle the child and feed it the flesh of a living larvae a process that takes an hour if any of these feedings are interrupted or if the night hag cannot access the child by the end of the proper day the child cannot be transformed into a night hag otherwise the end of the final feeding initiates a rapid and irreversible transformation and within an hour the child becomes a full-grown night hag uncaring of their daughters but covetous of their uses night acts often foster more children than they have any intention of transforming into full-blooded night hags essentially keeping spare children littered across the plains should their plans require more servants or their current brutes dwindle and quote if this ritual cannot be finished the child simply will grow into a normal child I should also mention that night hacks can indeed have normal children the normal way something that the monster model doesn't mention a night hack can't pull him or herself into a normal human and seduce men into impregnating her the resulting daughter will look normal in every regard of course once again until it reaches purity if the spoiling ritual is never done then the child will simply grow up normally these children by the way are candidates into becoming Sorcerer's with a hag ancestry I should also mention that even though there is absolutely no way of telling a hag child apart from a normal child do know that hack children will always 100% of the time have black hair that's the single only defining feature that they all share I should also mention that creating children it's actually pretty important for a night hag more so than with other types of hacks because night hacks specifically actually dislike forming covens with any other type of hag they see green and sea hags as being lesser and with good reason they are also not a big fan of making coffins with each other actually so they actually rely on creating daughters and subjugating them by making comments with them but through domination in these governs not all hags are equal but instead the mother night hag is the ringleader and the rest follow her demands when encountering a night hag be mindful of the fact that they actually prefer having not just one but two different layers there's always the layer that they keep in the material realm where they grow their poisons where they purify their meat and race their plants but there's always a secret hidden layer in the ethereal realm hacks can face things from the material realm and move them into the ethereal by simply grabbing them as they shift and by doing this they move stone and other objects and form a layer on the other side of the veil these fortifications are typically used for holding important prisoners people that they wouldn't want to risk existing in the material realm this prevents most people from finding their holdings and allows a hag to always have a secondary place to run to see when an adventuring group is hag hunting but the hag likes to do is to find one of her prisoners in the ethereal realm killed them and then face the corpses back to reality in front of the adventurers as a warning sign and generally there's nothing that the adventurers can do if they don't have the ability to face into the ethereal which is likely a favorite technique of the night hack as well is to grapple an adventurer and then face him into the ethereal realm effectively taking the adventurer with her if the adventurer doesn't have a way to get back then they are stuck on the other side now let's go back to Big Talk for the end of this video the hags actually have a cosmic secret in fact they probably have many but there's one in particular that I want to talk about for this we will go back to the Monster Manual this is in the you loss section quote the first dougela were created by a sisterhood of nine hacks on ohina it is widely believed that us Modi is the lord of the nine hells commissioned the work in the hope of creating an army of fiends that were not bound to the nine hells and quote so the night hacks were the original creators of the new Olaf a large group of things that were said on the neutral grounds of the lower plains but what's interesting about this is the connection that hacks have with the Juggalos see hacks actually possess a secret ritual that can actually transform any giggle off into an ultra law a feeling so powerful it actually possesses the strength to combat and even defeat monsters such as bay lures or peat fields if you were ever wondering how you could ever use night hacks for a level 20 campaign well here it is this power alone has saved the hacks in Hades from countless Wars and it is a secret that they keep from any other power in the multiverse and of course not something mentioned in the Monster Manual first a contract has to be made between the hacks and the Dougal off where the hacks will granted youghal off unbelievable power in exchange for a service when both parties have accepted the turns the process can begin first they obtain an enormous cauldron that will be filled with the waters from the river Styx and putrid larvae a huge fire is lit under the cauldron and the uvula is sealed within the cauldron with melted wax made from the slimy larval rasa deer wards will be placed around the cauldron and the Incan tations by the hax will begin that will imbue their champion with magical power the hax will sacrifice their own life force in order to give it to the you lava in order to make it more powerful however a hag cannot die in the process but can be left on the verge of death the more hags given their life force the stronger the Juggalos will be with seemingly no real limits to how strong they can make it in fact some of the stronger ultra lots in the multiverse took months of the hacks giving them power when the power giving is finished the drained hacks will be exhausted and in no way to survive any form of encounter they will not be able to defend themselves against anyone or anything for weeks when the ritual is taking place is also kept a secret in order to prevent people from killing the hags while they are weakened now the cauldron must be kept at boiling temperatures for the entire time of the ritual typically you will actually see hags imprisoned fire methods under the cauldron to make sure that the cauldron always stays at boiling temperatures because if it's ever not then the Dougal öthe dies and the ritual is ruined the cauldron will remain there at boiling temperatures for an average of about two years of seeping but when it is done it will finish with the violent explosion of the cauldron sprang out larval Jews and chunks of heated metal everywhere emerging from the cauldron would be the newest hag champion and ultra law magical precautions would have been woven into the transforming contagions by the nine acts that virtually guarantee the loyalty of their new creation if the altar loft attacks one of its mistresses or ignores the condition of the contract it will immediately suffer wracking pain which will continue until the creature either dies or stops only the completion of the contract can free the altar loss from his restriction should one of the ultra lux hag creators die during the time of the contract a period of servitude the altar law also dies it is therefore in the ultra lofts best interest to see the well-being of his mistresses until the contract has expired now guys the power of this monster cannot be understated and it is definitely a campaign wide power an example of an ultra loss Incirlik the boat man of the River Styx the one who ferries Souls down the river believed to be one of the strongest powers in the multiverse [Music] happy Halloween everybody and thank you so much for watching this extraordinarily long video I I do apologize a little bit for it being so long but I I personally felt like if we wanted to explore the night hacks that there was no way that I couldn't just not explore the place where they actually come from the place where 99% of the hacks actually come from there's this entire massive Society of them living out there in this extra planet reality and the monster metal of course you know no mention of it so I felt hey I'm gonna do a service here and bring that up even though it ended up in this video being extraordinarily long in any case I would like to personally thank my patrons reporters ricado fan Daniel Luna doctor cowbell skits you boy major fail gaming Barry mask and 5e magic shop Daniel Umar Morgan Johnson sack bowel Simon Holman rusty rein biotech no frag and mediocre at best for supporting me on patreon at the $25 level if you would like to support me as well then please head over to patreon.com slash mr. Rex to support once again guys thank you so much for watching and have a beautiful day oh and before I forget of course please go and watch the playlist all of those videos are as good as this one I promise you go watch the playlist thank you thank you so much bye-bye

Channel: MrRhexx

Views: 507,898

Keywords: mrrhexx, rhexx, dungeons and dragons, d&d, dnd, hags, night hags

Id: 6SXfrT7-h2s

Length: 31min 12sec (1872 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 31 2019