This is going to be part of a semi-recurring series set in Jackson, IL. While my other series, Mirror Mondays, focused on Jackson and Advanced Witches & Warlocks as mirrors of each other, viewed through the lens of 1986, this one will be more game-design-specific.
There will be mostly world-building items, things the setting has that other NIGHT SHIFT settings don't, plus some game mechanics. There is always a chance that another project will leak into this as well. There are things I have developed for Jackson that, on reflection, didn't work there, but worked great in, say, my Sunny Valley, OH setting or my Valhala, AL setting.
So let's start big. With God and Religion.
Dear God: Religion in Jackson
One of the things I have been exploring lately while developing my fictional Jackson, Illinois, is religion. Not just witchcraft and Wicca, though those are certainly important, but religion in general and the role it plays in the lives of the people who live there. Jackson is based on the real-life Jacksonville, Illinois, a town with a long religious history. Religion has also played an important role in education, community life, and local history almost since its founding.
Now you might wonder why a self-professed and fairly vocal atheist like myself would concern himself with religion, let alone make it the inaugural post of this new series. Well, I hope that will become obvious.
Jacksonville was established in 1825, and religious communities were among its earliest institutions. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and other denominations all established congregations during the town's early years. The founding of Illinois College (the real-world "Illinois Beecher College" in Jackson) in 1829 was closely connected to Presbyterian and Congregationalist religious movements, and the town's abolitionist history was influenced by religious convictions as well. Jacksonville even became known for an intersection where churches from four different denominations stood on the four corners.
The Four Corners
One of Jacksonville's more interesting religious landmarks is the famous Four Corners, the intersection of West State Street and Church Street where four different churches once stood. By 1986, only two of those original churches remained. First Baptist had burned in 1966, and State Street Presbyterian had been demolished in 1968. But that didn't erase the intersection's history or the influence those congregations had on the town. The buildings might be gone, but their legacy remained. So much so that I heard about it my entire life growing up. I certainly lived in the "after" era of those churches, but the mark they left on the town's psyche was deep and profound.
It is not difficult to imagine how this history would carry over into my fictional Jackson. Churches would be among the oldest and most recognizable buildings in town. Generations of families would have attended the same congregations, and the churches would be connected to schools, charities, social clubs, and the everyday lives of the people who lived there. I like that idea for Jackson, where so much of the past still influences the present, often in ways younger residents don't fully understand.
But religion in Jackson is about more than buildings and institutions. It is about people and what they believe, or sometimes what they don't believe.
These churches also have more going on, as you'd expect in a horror game. While the real-world history of Jacksonville, with four major religious denominations all at the same intersection, is fascinating enough, Jackson has more to it.
That research was enough to merit its own post later on.
Religion in Jackson, 1986
As I have been developing the NPCs of Jackson, I have been thinking more about their religious backgrounds. I assume every character has some sort of religious background, even if they no longer practice, have rejected their childhood beliefs, or simply don't think much about religion at all. In a small Midwestern town in 1986, religion could be an important part of your family's identity whether you wanted it to be or not. This was absolutely true for mid-80s Jacksonville, and true for my Jackson.
Take the Vale family, for example. Stephanie, her older brother Grant, and family are all Lutherans, with connections to one of Jackson's older and more established congregations. The Vales are wealthy, and their family has been prominent in town for generations. They attend church because that is what is expected of them. Church attendance is as much a matter of social standing and appearances as it is personal faith. Stephanie knows the services, the hymns, and all the appropriate traditions, but that doesn't necessarily mean she believes everything she hears. Stephanie is also a witch, so she has a different relationship with the supernatural than her co-congregants.
The Thompson family is different. Anderson Thompson's family has an Episcopal background, but they don't go to church except for Christmas and Easter. They aren't necessarily opposed to religion. It simply isn't part of their regular lives. Rowan McGowan, Andy's girlfriend, comes from a strong Presbyterian family, and I see her taking her faith more seriously. That sense of duty, responsibility, and doing what is right will become especially interesting as Rowan develops into a Spirit Rider. Rowan certainly has a cross necklace she will wear when the mood strikes her, but avoids wearing while working in the stables.
Valentino Moreno is Catholic, as are Roderick Morgan and Moria Zachary. Catholicism also provides the background for the Moretti family and, of course, Sister Lucille, a mysterious nun who plays an important role in my Broken Wings adventure. In Lucille's case, her faith is particularly interesting because she is a succubus who has chosen a path very different from what her demonic nature might suggest. Her religious convictions are sincere, and she genuinely tries to live by them. The Moreno's and the Moretti's are what I like to think of as "Old World" Catholics. They have a very serious devotion that has shapped how their families live.
Candy Mercer and Denise Carver come from Christian backgrounds, though neither is especially active in religion. Both might wear a cross necklace when they feel like it, more out of habit than anything else.
Kyra Bellamy is another matter entirely. Kyra is Baptist and attends the Old Landmark Baptist Church, my fictional counterpart to Jacksonville's historic Mount Emory Baptist Church. Her faith is important to her, and she always wears a cross. For Kyra, religion isn't just something she inherited from her family. It is a genuine part of how she understands the world and her place in it. Kyra is one of those kids who loves her church and everyone in it, and she is one of those rare people for whom religion makes her a better person.
Vera Rook is Jewish, which gives her a different religious and cultural background from many of her classmates. Vera also wears a pentagram, but that does not mean she is Wiccan. Her fascination with the occult and her Jewish heritage are separate parts of her identity. Likewise, Faye Thorne wears a pentagram, but her relationship with witchcraft, religion, and her own identity is very different from either Vera's or Larina's. Faye's religion is what I like to call the "Keyser Söze" point of view. She doesn't know if there is a God or not, but she knows the Devil is real.
Kyra and Vera are prime examples of what I am working on here. Both girls identify with their religion on a deep, personal level. They both have disagreements (of a different sort) with their fathers, but both also deeply love their respective congregations. Kyra loves her Church, and she feels alive there. Vera could spend all night Friday drinking and partying, and she would still get to her synagogue on Saturday. She might sit in the way back and wear sunglasses the entire time, but she will be there.
And then there is Larina Nichols.
The Ghost of Morris
Larina (reading): "Hic locus mortuorum est."
Vera: "Is that some Christian thing I don't get because I am Jewish?"
Larina: "No, it's Latin. And I am not Christian either; I'm Wiccan."
Vera: "There is hope for you yet, Nichols."
Laria: "It says, 'This place belongs to the dead.'"
Vera: "Ok. Less hopeful now."
Larina is Wiccan. More specifically, she follows a form of eclectic Wicca that she developed herself over several years. Her religion predates her arrival in Jackson and, importantly, predates her association with Stephanie and Faye.
Beginning when she was thirteen, Larina spent a great deal of time at Morris Library at Southern Illinois University in Carbon Vale (the mirror of real-life Carbondale), where her father was a professor. She was this little redheaded goth girl who would quietly slip into the library and disappear among the books on witchcraft, mythology, and religion. She tried not to attract attention, though the librarians knew perfectly well she was there. They thought she was cute and eventually nicknamed her "the Ghost of Morris Library."
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| The Ghost of Morris Library |
Larina read everything she could get her hands on. Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, Margot Adler, Margaret Murray, Raymond Buckland, and academic works on religion and folklore all contributed to her developing understanding of Wicca. She compared traditions, questioned what she read, and gradually put together a religious practice that made sense to her. Her Wicca was influenced by Gardnerian practices, feminist Goddess spirituality, and her growing interest in Celtic mythology, but she didn't belong to any formally established tradition.
At some point before moving to Jackson, Larina performed her own solitary Wiccan initiation. This wasn't an initiation into an established Gardnerian or Alexandrian lineage. It was a personal religious commitment, something she had researched, planned, and undertaken herself.
So when Larina tells Vera Rook in 1986, "I'm Wiccan," she isn't experimenting with an identity or trying to shock anyone. She knows exactly what she means. She has already spent years exploring her beliefs and practicing her religion.
When Raymond Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, the famous "Big Blue Book," appears in 1986, Larina reads through it with considerable interest and, I am certain, plenty of opinions. She appreciates the organized approach to learning witchcraft and its accessibility to solitary practitioners, but she has already developed her own practices. Buckland isn't introducing her to Wicca. He is providing her with another perspective to consider, agree with, or argue against.
And knowing Larina, I suspect her copy would soon be filled with notes in the margins.
Something else is important here. Being a witch and being Wiccan are not the same thing. This is a distinction I have maintained in my AD&D witch material, and it carries over into NIGHT SHIFT. Being a witch concerns what Larina is, what she can do, and her understanding and practice of occult magic. Being Wiccan concerns what she believes, her relationship with the divine, and how she chooses to live her life. They are separate things, but for Larina they are deeply related and connected.
Not every witch in Jackson is Wiccan, and not every Wiccan in Jackson has supernatural powers. Larina is the case where she is both.
As Larina gets older, she becomes even more deeply connected to her faith. In 1986, she is still establishing and expressing her religious identity. She wears a triple moon Goddess necklace with a pentagram in the center of the full moon, celebrates the Sabbats, and is quite willing to explain or defend her beliefs. Decades later, her Wicca is less about outward declarations and more about lived experience. Her faith informs how she treats others, understands the natural world, and deals with life, death, and the supernatural.
She doesn't become less Wiccan as she gets older. She becomes more deeply Wiccan. Just less vocal about it.
Her experience is not made up whole cloth. It mirrors my own experiences in creating a witch class.
An Outsider Looking In
My own experience with religion has largely been that of an outsider looking in. I grew up as an atheist in an extremely religious town, one well known for its churches. Religion was everywhere, from the buildings and institutions to the people I knew and the everyday rhythms of community life. It was something I understood as part of the world around me, even though I didn't personally believe in it. I have often joked I was kicked out of the Boy Scouts for being an atheist, but the truth was that my points of view and beliefs were not compatible with the Boy Scouts of America past the age of 10.
Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, I frequently played religious characters in Dungeons & Dragons. Clerics, paladins, and, of course, witches. I enjoyed exploring characters whose faith was important to them, even when that faith was very different from what I believed. Religion could inform their worldview, their relationships, their sense of morality, and the choices they made. It was part of what made them interesting characters.
That same curiosity followed me into my research on witches. When I started working on a witch character class for AD&D, I spent a lot of time sitting in libraries reading everything I could find about witchcraft, mythology, folklore, and religion. I wasn't searching for a religion of my own. I was trying to understand these traditions well enough to create a witch class that was something more than a magic-user with a different spell list.
I read about historical witchcraft, the witch trials, pre-Christian religious practices, and modern Wicca. I compared what different authors had to say, looked for common elements, and tried to decide what would translate into the rules and assumptions of AD&D. I wanted my witches to feel like witches, drawing from folklore and religious traditions rather than simply being another variety of spellcaster.
Years later, when I began developing Larina's history, I gave her this similar experience.
There we were, both sitting in libraries, reading many of the same books about witchcraft and religion, trying to construct something from what we had learned. But we were pursuing very different goals. I was trying to create a witch class for AD&D. Larina was trying to construct her own Wiccan faith.
Where I was looking at religion from the outside, Larina was finding her way into it. I was trying to understand witchcraft well enough to write about it, while Larina was trying to understand Wicca well enough to live it.
My original witch class has changed considerably over the decades, eventually becoming part of Advanced Witches & Warlocks. Larina's understanding of her faith has also grown and changed. Neither of us abandoned what we began in those libraries. We continued to learn, reconsider our assumptions, and deepen our understanding.
Faith in a World Where Monsters Are Real
Religion takes on another dimension in Jackson because the supernatural is real.
Demons exist. Ghosts exist. Witches possess actual magical powers. Ancient beings people have worshipped as gods still exist. But knowing these things doesn't automatically answer religion's larger questions. The existence of a demon doesn't prove every religious teaching about demons, and meeting something that claims to be a god doesn't necessarily mean that being deserves worship.
Or as Faye Thorne might remind us, just because there is something out there claiming to be the devil doesn't mean there is a God.
For some characters, encounters with the supernatural challenge their religious convictions. For others, those encounters deepen them. Roderick Morgan's Catholicism, for example, provides one framework for understanding demons and possession, but he also approaches supernatural events through investigation and scholarship. Ghosts are not the spirits of the dead to him, they are psychic manifestations that are no more the original person than a reflection or photograph is.
Coach Kiera Moreau, with her ancient supernatural heritage, has a religious outlook rooted in a world far older than modern Christianity. The Blackthorne Hags practice a form of old Paganism that is very different from Larina's modern eclectic Wicca. Sylvia Velasco and Natasha Wilcox have complicated relationships with religion, magic, and the supernatural, shaped by experiences most ordinary people could scarcely imagine.
Then there is the relationship between Larina Nichols and Kyra Bellamy.
In 1985-6, Kyra is genuinely afraid of Larina. She has been raised in a Baptist church, and much of what she has been taught about witchcraft gives her reason to fear, or at least distrust, someone like Larina. Larina, meanwhile, knows that her own religion is widely misunderstood, and she doesn't particularly enjoy being treated as something evil simply because she is a witch. This was important to me since ANY NPC in the game can be an ally or enemy, or something in between.
If your characters befriend Kyra first (and why not! She is a super nice kid), Larina is going to be that "new kid who brought evil witchcraft to town." If your characters befriend Valentino first, then Larina is "that scary girl," and Kyra is that "goody two-shoes preacher's kid." This is why I have so many NPCs and spend so much detailing them.
But years later (in the "Class Reunion" adventure I am planning), the two women develop a much better understanding of one another. Kyra sees Larina repeatedly demonstrate compassion, courage, and a willingness to help people regardless of who they are. Larina sees those same qualities in Kyra, whose Christian faith inspires her to live a life of service and kindness.
Neither woman converts to the other's religion. Neither has to abandon her beliefs or pretend that their theological differences don't exist. Instead, they come to recognize one another as positive representatives of their respective faiths.
Kyra still wears her cross. Larina still wears her triple moon and pentagram. Neither has changed what she believes, but both have changed how they understand the woman wearing the other symbol.
And I think that is important.
Religion and Character
I don't want religion in Jackson to be a simple matter of deciding which characters go to church and which ones don't. Nor do I want religious affiliation to serve as shorthand for whether someone is good or evil. I also certainly don't want it to be a line on the character sheet that needs filling out. Well. Not just a line. I want it to mean somthing to that charcter even if it just says "None."
Some of my characters are deeply religious, some are only nominally so, and others have beliefs that would be considered strange or even frightening by their neighbors. The Vales attend church because society expects it. The Thompsons don't attend because they don't feel they need to. Kyra's Baptist faith is deeply important to her, and she would never be anywhere else on Sunday. Vera's Jewish heritage is part of her identity, even as she explores occult ideas. Larina is a witch whose Wiccan faith grows more important as she gets older.
They are all different, and those differences matter.
Religion in Jackson influences how people see themselves, how they understand the world, and how they respond when confronted with things that challenge their beliefs. It can be a source of comfort, conflict, courage, community, or fear. Sometimes it brings people together, and sometimes it drives them apart.
And that is true whether the monsters are real or not.
When I think back to my younger self sitting in the Jacksonville Public Library trying to figure out how to write witches for AD&D, and then imagine thirteen-year-old Larina Nichols sitting in Morris Library trying to figure out what it meant to be Wiccan, I see the same curiosity reflected in both of us. We wanted to understand something that fascinated us, even though we were approaching it from very different perspectives.
I didn't have to become Wiccan to write Larina as someone whose Wiccan faith is genuine and important. I don't have to be Baptist to understand why Kyra's Christianity matters to her, or Catholic to appreciate the significance of Sister Lucille's devotion or Val's lived-in faith. I just have to take their beliefs seriously and allow those beliefs to shape who they are.
Because ultimately, that is what makes these characters real to me, and hopefully real to you.
You don't have to believe what your characters believe. You have to believe that they believe it.
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