What does it mean to play a witch?
The witches are so called to be distinguished from the authorized magicians of Nathar. For many years they have been persecuted by the sheriffs of the Exalted Tower. This has lead to them being generally suspicious and mistrusting to the point of paranoia.
The persecution and abolishment of all un-authorized magic has lead to some strange consequences. Many children are born with magical talent, which then starts to show at some age, occasionally even when they have grown up. When the sheriffs find such a person, the options are few. Some children are taken to the Exalted Tower to become trained wizards. Most of the rest undergo de-magicalisation, a procedure which is neither painless nor without side effects – like madness, general weakness and loss of willpower. Those who have developed magical skills on their own will be promptly executed.
Sometimes this has created an unspoken agreement between the witches and their neighbours. Parents who don’t want their children to undergo the sheriffs’ inspections may send word in utter secrecy to a nearby witch who may come to steal the childe away, sometimes leaving a non-talented child as a replacement, if one is available. This is often the case, since the rate of magic among witch-children is like that of other populace. These habits have given rise to a multitude of changeling stories.
The witch and the shadow
Every witch has a shadow – another witch. Their relationship is the base of their magic abilities. Witches and their shadows can be male or female and the couple can be of any combination: two females, two males or one of each. Anything that is written about a witch also applies to the witch’s shadow.
The relationship between a witch and her shadow is difficult to understand. It is based on magical compatibility, not on affinity of any other kind. Love and sexual attraction may come into the relationship, but are not its origin. Thus it may very well happen that a couple sincerely hates each other, but they are still forced to work together, since their magic power depends on their cooperation. There are no marriages among witches. A witch can enter into an emotionally based relationship with any other person, even a non-witch. Mostly though, the relationship between the witch and her shadow functions as a kind of marriage, only that none of them can ever leave each other.
Still, human love or anything of the kind seldom enters the life of a witch. Her first and strongest love is always to magic itself. Those feelings are not simple, nothing in a witch’s life is. Being forced to accept a shadow in order to have access to magic makes them feel imprisoned in a relationship they have not chosen. They cannot perform magic alone, and any magic that would affect the dragon would require many witches doing complicated rituals for many hours. They might never even get to it, since they would have to discuss about an endless amount of details, such as how many persons does a dragon compare to when bewitched. Should the comparison be made by weight, the amount of scales, teeth or magic in the creature’s heart – and how much would that be?
In a witch couple the witches are each other’s shadows. When witch loses her shadow, she also loses her ability to control magic. The magical forces in the witch used to be tame and could be directed with the help of the shadow. Now they are running wild and render the witch senseless and mad, soon to die of magical overload. A split-off witch, that is, a witch without a shadow, might in her madness cling to the body of her dead shadow, but that is just refusal of facts. Witches do not care for the dead, but might be interested in gathering ectoplasm from dead bodies to use in their potions.
It is possible to bond with a new shadow if there are other bereaved witches around or if there is child or a youth “coming into magic”. The witches have elaborate rituals to connect them with each other. These take days so it won’t be possible to create a new shadow bond in the game. If you lose your shadow, you will be totally mad for the rest of the game. It may be like having suffered a stroke, losing one complete brain hemisphere and at the same time having lost the only person who ever understood you.
Witches’ philosophy
Since the witches have lived in isolation for a long time, they have developed many different methods for controlling their magic. The witches believe their magic originates from nature and they tend to draw their power from various natural sources: animals, minerals, plants, the wind and the thunder or the world’s magnetic field. Their Thunder God cult arises from a choice of thunder and lighting as a general symbol of the forces of nature, not from a real religious attitude. Every witch has her own orientation. Some of them use masks which often express their general orientation.
The witches may be seen as researchers of a kind, constantly trying to understand the power that can be drawn from nature and studying the different kinds of powers that emerge when you work with different kinds of materials. This means that there will likely be heated discussions among them – now that they have gathered – about the best way to go about things. Is the mineral based magic generally better than animal based, or are they only suited for different things? Is it possible to mix different kinds of magic? Have the moods, the sexes, or the age any influence on the magic that witches perform?
The witches are egocentrically pragmatic. When they want something, they do what it takes to reach their goal, without any moral consideration. They are not concerned with what is right or wrong, but with what is possible and efficient. They plan their moves carefully and when it is time to act, they do so without hesitation.
At the same time they are superstitiously worried about signs from nature which can tell if a certain thing may or may not be done. Some are keen astrologers, always trying to know if the constellations are in favour of a planned action. Others watch trees, animals or clouds. They always follow rules that seem incomprehensible to others. It might happen that a witch of a certain orientation could not be in a room with an animal, could not use tools made from a certain wood and so on. These are things that the players will work out among themselves and in cooperation with the character coaches.
Role-playing challenges
The witches are in a complicated situation. They are by nature prone to isolation and self-sufficiency, but now they have to cooperate with each other, which is hard enough, but also with other people, which is almost impossible. They have never learned the art of compromising, but they have no choice now if they are to succeed in their quest. Their paranoiac tendencies will likely make all other witches seem like a threat, which will create an immense problem now that they have to share a camp with each other.
It is quite difficult to role-play being torn in two different directions by equally demanding inner urges. It is probably not made easier by the fact that witches themselves are troubled people, not only because they are outcasts from society (they might even like that), but because their magic powers can only be handled by finding a shadow. They would really prefer to find a solution that makes it possible to do without such a construction. So they focus their cool analytical thinking on themselves too, trying to understand the nature of the shadow relationship in order to find a way out of it.
In the game the witches are supposed to have come from afar, travelling for months to reach Cinderhill. This means that they live in tents or makeshift huts made of branches. Each pair has their own shelter and a fireplace with pots. They cook outdoors on open fires, but now they have to have other witches around them, probably witches of another orientation with their foul smoke and horrible smells (if you are of another orientation than your nearby witch). The witches don’t lead an easy life and thus they are best suited for so-called hard-core players.
The players will be given tents and woollen cloth for sleeping in and on, and cauldrons for outdoor cooking. Such small cauldrons that witches use to brew their magical potions will be brought by the players. Most witches brew potions with different kinds of magical properties, other create artifacts with which they can control and direct magical forces. A good witch can find anything she needs for her magic in nature.
Much of the daily activities for the witches will be preparing these potions or artifacts which they will need in their negotiations, manipulations, exploitations that are to come. If they have not been prepared, the witches will have nothing but words and empty threats, and we all know how boring it is to role-play things that none of the players believe in. When there is magic in Dragonbane, there is magic that you can believe in!
