Psychopomps shokis and night hags are related?

[Roger Corbera]

I'm reading the Inner Sea Bestiary, and I'm trying to understand the psychopomp concept (guiding the souls to other life, etc), and how to insert one in my campaign.
Reading the psychopomp shoki entry, I found its aspect is really similar to the night hag's (black skin, goat horns, crone-like looking). Also both monsters are involved in the soul's trade: shokis are guides to afterlife, and night hags are soul's thieves and smugglers.
Perhaps the shokis are an evolved sort of night hags? Or the hags are a sort of perverted shokis?

[Generic Villain]

It's a cool idea, and if it works for your campaign go for it, but officially there's no connection that I know of between the two. Night hags have a few paragraphs in Classic Horrors Revisited. They themselves claim to be daughters of the goddess Alazhra, but there's no definitive origin given for them. Also worth noting; night hags are native to the Ethereal Plane and have strong ties to the Plane of Dreams, so if I had to guess I'd say their official origin lies there.

That said, psychopomps and night hags are absolutely going to be at each others' throats. A psychopomp would be a great - if weird and mysterious - ally for the PCs up against a night hag foe.

[Generic Villain]

Thought of something else. If you're looking for an in-depth look at the "soul trade," check out Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Not only do you get spells and magic items that deal with soul theft - there's even a prestige class called Souldrinker. Granted, you have to worship one of the Daemonic Horsemen to become a Souldrinker, but you could easily remove that requirement and slap it on a night hag to make for one scary lady.

[Roger Corbera]

Generic Villain wrote:

It's a cool idea, and if it works for your campaign go for it, but officially there's no connection that I know of between the two. Night hags have a few paragraphs in Classic Horrors Revisited. They themselves claim to be daughters of the goddess Alazhra, but there's no definitive origin given for them. Also worth noting; night hags are native to the Ethereal Plane and have strong ties to the Plane of Dreams, so if I had to guess I'd say their official origin lies there.

That said, psychopomps and night hags are absolutely going to be at each others' throats. A psychopomp would be a great - if weird and mysterious - ally for the PCs up against a night hag foe.

Glad you liked it. A psichopomp versus a night hag+Ethereal plane+soul trade= GREAT STUFF!