Witchcraft Wednesday: Coven 13, Issue #4

In many ways, this last issue is unlike the first three.  It is still recognizably Coven 13, but it has a transitional air about it. The witchcraft is there, to be sure, but fantasy and sword-and-sorcery have encroached on the center. That makes sense in hindsight because this is the final issue published as Coven 13. Afterward, Fantasy Publishing Company acquired the magazine, and it continued as Witchcraft & Sorcery.

The March 1970 issue contains Buddy Saunders' "The Bidderfrost Dragon," "I, Vampire!" by Pronzini/Wallman, S. M. Clawson's "The Convert," Lee Chater's "The Thing on the Stairs," Sidney Harriet's "Eats!", the poltergeist installment of Bell, Book and Tarot, a Robert E. Howard poem, and the enormous (85-page) conclusion to "Let There Be Magick!" 

The editorial is particularly poignant now. Landis says the distributor wants the magazine to remain bimonthly for another three issues, so they have decided to finish Let There Be Magick! early and clear the decks for the "new COVEN 13 of 1970." The proposed new format would have featured two long novelettes, several short stories, an article, and the regular departments. He clearly expects the magazine to continue.  

Of course, that version of Coven 13 never happens.

That gives this issue a strange quality. Landis thinks he is reorganizing the magazine. We know we are reading his final issue.

"The Bidderfrost Dragon" is probably the most overtly game-like piece we've encountered in the entire four-issue run. Aerma is an inexperienced sorceress trying to conjure a dragon to defend her castle. Instead, she summons a Sheridan tank and its four-man crew from an Army exercise in Arizona. She initially assumes the armored vehicle is simply a very strange dragon. 

From there we get language spells, spellbooks, demons, magical bargains, an actual dragon, armies, castles, and modern military technology. Aerma bargains with demons for fuel, but a translation problem results in twenty-four cases of high-proof whiskey. Fortunately, the Sheridan can run on it. Eventually the tank fights a genuine fire-breathing dragon.

This isn't especially useful for witchcraft, but it is fascinating for the D&D side of what we've been discussing. This is March 1970, and here we already have the sort of gleeful collision of fantasy and modern technology that old-school gaming will later embrace. Again, I would not suggest influence. It simply demonstrates that this kind of genre mixing was already part of fantasy's vocabulary. Plus this sounds EXACTLY like something you could have read in an early issue of Dragon magazine. 

Aerma herself is also interesting. Her magic is procedural. She has books, languages, pentagrams, demons with whom she negotiates, and spells that can go wrong. Magic is fantastic, but not arbitrary. That remains consistent with much of what Coven 13 has been doing.

"I, Vampire!" by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann has put forth the purest version of Landis’ concept for the supernatural in a modern setting. The whole piece is put together from letters, editorial replies, telegrams, newspaper pieces, and official memoranda. Peter Lewis, a vampire, has written his autobiography and regularly sends it to an editor who takes it for a dreadful work of fiction. The vampire makes it known more than once that he is not making it up. But when the editor puts out one too many rejections, he is found dead in his office not long after, his neck punctured and blood gone, with bat guano on the carpet.

After that, Peter Lewis puts "I, Vampire" in front of Arthur H. Landis at Coven 13.

It is entertaining. What is best is how the vampire fits into 1969 America. He is forced to deal with editors, Western Union, postal delivery, and the indignity of having his memoirs dismissed as poor fiction. You will not find any Transylvanian castles here.ignity of having his memoirs dismissed as poor fiction. 

And there is no Transylvanian castle anywhere in sight.

Bell, Book and Tarot deals with poltergeists this time. The article surveys their recurring characteristics, including knocking, objects moving in defiance of gravity, fires, children or adolescents serving as apparent centers of activity, and cases where fraud explains some events but not everything. It stresses how difficult it is to fit poltergeists neatly into a single explanation.    

The line I would keep for your own purposes is essentially this: poltergeist may describe what is happening without explaining what is causing it.

That is an excellent Jackson principle.

Calling something a ghost, demon, faerie, psychic event, or poltergeist gives the characters a vocabulary. It does not necessarily mean they understand the underlying phenomenon.

Then we get "The Convert" by S. M. Clawson, which is easily the most important witchcraft story in the issue.

Benjie Stone is a biochemist who returns to his old family home after his father's death. He plans to clear the old "witching junk" out of the tower and turn the space into a laboratory. The Stone family, however, is one of the old witch families of the region. Benjie's mother had the talent. His father apparently did not. Benjie has rejected the entire tradition as superstition and replaced it with modern science.     

The neighboring Bowman family has its own magical tradition, and Benjie becomes involved in an escalating conflict with Hiram Bowman. What I like here is that the story never really asks us to choose between science and magic. Benjie's biochemistry works. His manipulation of hormones works. The laboratory is real knowledge.

But the witchcraft is real too.

Benjie's mistake isn't believing in science. His mistake is assuming that one system of knowledge invalidates the other.

By the climax, he is being pursued by something science alone cannot explain. Faced with death, he finally cries out that he believes, and the inherited supernatural world he has rejected responds. 

That is excellent material for Witchcraft Wednesday, and probably the centerpiece of this post. I am thinking of ways to adapt this to the magical families of Jackson (the Vales, Vosses, Thornes, and Cricklows) or better yet, to Sunny Valley.

Right after "The Convert" comes another Robert E. Howard contribution, the poem "Feach Air Muir Lionadhi Gealach Buidhe Mar Or." (Scottish Gaelic translation: "Look at the rising tide-a moon yellow as gold.") It invokes Mananan Mac Lir, the sea, ghostly ships, ancient shores, and the pull of an older Celtic world.

So Howard appears in both Coven 13 #3 and #4. That gives the final half of the original Coven 13 run a direct Appendix N connection. Unlike "The Little People," however, I wouldn't call this a newly discovered first publication without qualification. Bibliographies disagree about an earlier appearance in Howard's amateur-journal circle, The Junto.

"The Thing on the Stairs" by Lee Chater goes back to werewolves, but once again Coven 13 refuses to give us the standard cursed-man-under-the-full-moon version. It also features some of the cheesecakeist art we have seen from William Stout so far.

The Weres, yes, that is their name, are an ancient family who have lived alongside humanity for centuries. They can assume human form so completely that they consider themselves the genuine humans and ordinary Homo sapiens a rather underdeveloped species. 

That is much more interesting to me than another werewolf curse.

The Weres have their own family history, reproduction, attitudes toward humanity, supernatural enemies, and traditions. One ancestor even made a deal with the Devil for a creature called the Watchet, only for the Devil to discover the Weres had no soul to bargain away. 

This is another useful example of supernatural people rather than supernatural monsters. Humans aren't the default viewpoint. The Weres think they are normal.

There is something here for Jackson; I have spent some time these last two weeks trying to figure out how I want to do werewolves and other lycanthropes. I am not 100% there yet. Ok. I am not even 30% there yet, to be honest.

It is not terribly different in concept from last night's Teen Wolf.

"Eats!" by Sidney Harriet may be the strongest Sunny Valley story in the issue.

Gerald Johnson stops at an isolated roadside place during a rainstorm. The locals feed him an enormous meal while everyone else watches. Eventually he learns that they do this once every spring. They feed, fatten, kill, roast, and divide a traveler among the townspeople because the ritual keeps bad luck away and helps the crops. 

That is straight-up American folk horror. It's "Motel Hell" meets "Alice."

And this is March 1970, three years before The Wicker Man. The original, not the Nic Cage "Bees!" version. I'm certainly not suggesting a connection between them, but the similarities in the broad folk-horror machinery are striking: an isolated community, agricultural fertility, seasonal ritual, and an outsider who becomes the sacrifice. The Wicker Man would not appear until 1973. 

For Sunny Valley, this is almost immediately usable.

Then we get the conclusion to "Let There Be Magick!", and it is enormous because Landis compressed what was originally planned as a five-part serial so it could end here.

By the finale, we're deep into armies, sorcerers, undead creatures, magical attacks, alien forces, telepathy, science-fiction technology, kingdoms, and enormous fantasy battles. At the climax, the Pug-Boos summon something like a quarter-million dottles into the battle, turning what should have been an apocalyptic confrontation into something almost absurdly gentle.

And then we finally learn more about the Pug-Boos. The protagonist is a Galactic Adjuster. The Pug-Boos reveal that they are something greater: Universal Adjusters.

So the apparent fantasy world has been sitting inside a science-fictional cosmology all along.

That ending really completes the point we've been making throughout these four issues. Coven 13 doesn't care very much about keeping fantasy, horror, science fiction, sorcery, occultism, folklore, and weird fiction in separate boxes.

The readers noticed this too.

One letter in this issue asks for more ceremonial magic. Another reader calls "The Little People" the best story in #3, asks for more Howard, and praises Let There Be Magick! as sword-and-sorcery. 

But another reader takes exactly the opposite position, arguing that if Coven 13 is supposed to be about "WITCHCRAFT-HORROR-THE SUPERNATURAL," then Let There Be Magick! has no place in it because it is simply fantasy.

Reminds me of the letters to Dragon a bit.

That disagreement may be one of the most interesting things in the whole issue. We've just spent four issues watching Coven 13 show that Landis doesn't really accept that distinction.

And that may be the best angle for the final post.

The first issue asks what modern supernatural fiction should look like. The second argues that supernatural things need context. The third really brings witchcraft, folklore, weird fiction, and fantasy together. And the fourth ends with the readers themselves arguing over whether fantasy belongs in a magazine about witchcraft and the supernatural.

Then Coven 13 disappears, and Witchcraft & Sorcery takes its place. But we won't see it for another year.

More than any previous issue, #4 feels like a crossroads. That seems entirely appropriate for the end of Coven 13.

I don't have all the issues of Witchcraft & Sorcery, but when I do, I'll have to do a retrospective. 

Witchcraft Wednesday: Coven 13, Issue #3

We are back with my October exploration of Coven 13. The first issue established Arthur H. Landis' vision of a modern successor to Weird Tales and Unknown Worlds, while the second made his editorial philosophy even clearer. The supernatural should not simply be dropped into a story because the author needs a monster. It should be part of the world around it, with its own history, rules, and consequences.

Now we get to Issue #3, dated January 1970, and are now into the decade that would see the 70's Occult Revival, "The Exorcist" and "The Wicker Man", not to mention "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and Dungeons & Dragons, and all the other material I return to in these pages.

Coven 13, Issue #3, January 1970

The contents page actually labels this "Vol. 1, No. 2," even though the November issue was already #2 and the following March issue is #4. I am going to chalk that up to a simple production error. More importantly, this issue gives us Alan Caillou, Ron Goulart, Robert E. Howard, Dennis Quinn, Pauline Smith, James Benton Carr, and Part Three of James R. Keaveny's "Let There Be Magick!" We also get another installment of Bell, Book and Tarot, two poems by Wade Wellman (son of Manly Wade Wellman), and an essay on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.

Landis' editorial is once again worth reading because he continues to define what he thinks Coven 13 should be. This time he complains about the number of manuscripts arriving that simply recycle vampires, werewolves, pacts with the Devil, and familiar monsters. He isn't rejecting those subjects. What he wants is originality. He again insists that writers should look at the world around them rather than simply copying the "mouldering pages" of earlier writers, pointing specifically to Rosemary's Baby, Bell, Book and Candle, and Psycho as examples of stories that combine the strange with contemporary life.  

The rest of the editorial concerns the less glamorous problem of magazine distribution. Landis explains how printing tens of thousands of copies means little if large numbers never make it onto newsstands, and how long publishers can wait before actually getting paid. His declaration that "COVEN 13 WILL MAKE IT!" reads a little sadly in hindsight. There is only one more issue of Coven 13 in this form before the magazine changes hands and eventually becomes Witchcraft & Sorcery.

It is a supply-and-demand issue we still see today in the RPG publishing industry. 

Let's get to the stories that did make his cut.

The lead novelette is "Leona!" by Alan Caillou, again illustrated by William Stout. Christian Althing has lost his daughter Leona and refuses to accept her death. He has an old magical book, an altar, ritual tools, sacrifices, a cauldron, and a growing belief that he can use all of this to bring her back. His grief gradually consumes every other moral consideration.  

This one gets at something I have been thinking about quite a bit in my own games. Death should matter. Witches can speak with ghosts, summon spirits, learn secrets from the dead, and get into all sorts of trouble with necromancy, but actually restoring the dead to life is another matter entirely. "Leona!" is essentially about what happens when someone refuses to accept that boundary. Christian does not want to understand death. He wants to force death to return something it has taken from him, and the results are appropriately (and predictably) horrific.

In my Advanced Witches & Warlocks book, I specifically keep spells like Raise Dead and Resurrection out of witches' hands. It violates their moral and ethical systems. If a witch gets to the point where she wants to bring someone back from the dead like that, she either needs to get a cleric or be satisfied with necromancy.

We also get two poems, "Song of the Undead" and "Nightmare," by Wade Wellman. An important distinction here is that this is Wade Wellman, the son of Appendix N author Manly Wade Wellman. The poems themselves fit comfortably into Coven 13: graves, undead things, banshees, haunted houses, moonlight, and the dead walking where they shouldn't.    

The latest "Bell, Book and Tarot" by Jean Cirrito turns to the Evil Eye, and this is probably my favorite nonfiction installment so far. We get the Italian mal'occhio, protective gestures, amulets, serpents, horns, crescent moons, horseshoes, rue, animal charms, and other ways people have tried to protect themselves against an envious or dangerous gaze. The piece ranges from classical mythology to European folk practice and customs still familiar to the writer in the twentieth century.

This is exactly the kind of material I want for Sunny Valley. Folk magic works best for me when it consists of small things people have always done: a sprig of rue, a hand gesture, a charm over a doorway, something your grandmother insists you carry even though she also insists she does not believe in such nonsense. That feels much more convincing than everybody knowing elaborate ceremonial magic.

"The Strawhouse Pavilion" by Ron Goulart brings us back to Landis' idea of the contemporary supernatural. A modern couple is being haunted by Wendy's dead father, but he does not simply appear as a transparent ghost. He was a bandleader, so he brings an entire 1940s dance pavilion with him, complete with music, cars, dancers, and the atmosphere of another era. Eventually Wendy realizes that her father has essentially brought back the whole ballroom because merely appearing as a ghost would not have been impressive enough.   

I love this idea! It feels like something that could happen in Jackson without changing the setting at all. A haunting does not have to be a figure walking down a hallway. Maybe an entire building comes back. Maybe music plays from a ballroom demolished thirty years ago. Maybe a street looks exactly as it did in 1947 for ten minutes and then snaps back to normal. That is a much more interesting supernatural event than another chain-rattling ghost.

In fact. Jacksonville has a rather famous band stand/gazebo. It was supposed to have been dismantled and shipped to the Smithsonian Institution. I can't recall if it was or not. BUT I have very distinct memories of it, especially sitting on it and reading "The Best of Dragon vol 2." Also, when the infamous "I attack the Gazebo" rumor was floating around in the early days of the internet, that was the image I had. So thank you, Ron Goulart. Jackson now has a ghost gazebo. 

Next comes the biggest literary name in the issue, Robert E. Howard, with "The Little People." Howard died in 1936, making this a very posthumous publication, and this January 1970 appearance was the story's first publication. The story explicitly invokes Arthur Machen's "The Shining Pyramid" and plays with the idea that stories of elves, trolls, fairies, and other "little people" might preserve distorted memories of an older population driven into caves and remote places by later peoples.     

There is plenty here that has not aged well, particularly Howard's racial and pseudo-anthropological assumptions, and I have no interest in importing those into my games. But there are some very solid ideas as well. What does interest me is the underlying weird-fiction idea that folklore may remember something real without remembering it correctly. That comes close to ideas I have been developing for Jackson and Sunny Valley, where an old legend might describe something genuine while completely misunderstanding what that thing actually was.

That does not make Howard's Little People my Ur-humans, nor do I want to collapse either of them into Faerie or the Sidhe or even the Sr. Wellman's Shonokins. What interests me is the older literary tradition of asking what might exist behind the folklore. Howard also gives us the direct Appendix N connection in this issue. I am still not suggesting that Coven 13 influenced D&D, but once again we can see these literary circles overlapping just a few years before D&D appears. It would have certainly influenced me had I been in Gygax's shoes. In January 1970, at just six months of age, I am not even sure I owned shoes yet. ETA: Asked my mom, I had a little pair I wore in an "Olan Mills" photo portrait. I was a chunky monkey back then, and my little fat fingers weren't well suited for typing.

This issue does solidify the connection to the earlier pulps that Landis loved so much. Securing the first run rights to this tale must have been a wonderful feeling for him. 

There is a reader's letters column that is a fun read. 

The issue also includes Arthur Jean Cox's essay on Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw." Cox digs into the famous question of whether the ghosts are actually present or whether everything is being generated by the governess herself. The essay is valuable less because I need another interpretation of James and more because it demonstrates what Coven 13 wanted to be. This was not simply a magazine printing spooky stories. It wanted readers to think and argue about supernatural fiction as well.

Then we get "Witch Fish" by Dennis Quinn, which may be my favorite story in this issue. Abat is a witch who transforms himself into an enormous brook trout as part of a revenge scheme against the warlock Marag. That is strange enough, but the real fun for me is the background Quinn casually establishes.

The New England countryside has places known by one set of names to ordinary people and another set known only to witches and warlocks. There is a Federation, a Grand Council, magical territories, familiars, regulations on the use of magic, and punishments for breaking those rules. Abat has only recently finished serving a twenty-year ban on practicing witchcraft.      

That immediately gives me ideas for Jackson and West Haven. There is the map everyone sees, and then there is the map witches know. Same roads, same rivers, same cemetery, but with completely different meanings and boundaries. The mundane map tells you where a place is. The witches' map tells you what happened there and why you should not cross a particular boundary after dark.

"Last Rites" by Pauline Smith is another very 1969/1970 occult story. It even comments on witchcraft, necromancy, divination, parapsychology, and "Cosmic Consciousness" entering colleges and universities. From there we get young people experimenting with the Key of Solomon, the Atharva Veda, ritual circles, lunar timing, a photograph, and a cat. Really captures what I feel was going on in the early 1970s.  

One little detail really captures the entire Coven 13 approach. The old magical texts recommend isolated crossroads, forests, caves, abandoned houses, and other secluded places for ritual work. The characters note that in the age of automobiles and subdivisions, finding such places has become increasingly difficult.

Ancient magic has to deal with modern zoning.

That may be the most Coven 13 idea in the entire issue! 

"Don't Open 'til Xmas!" by James Benton Carr takes us into contemporary urban occult horror. Paul Benton is planning to spend Christmas with his younger girlfriend when a mysterious package arrives. He initially thinks it is from her, but it actually comes from his estranged wife Helen, who has recently been to Haiti. Inside is a doll, and Paul eventually realizes that Helen has used magic to transfer him into it.    

Some of the treatment of Haiti as shorthand for sinister magic is very much of its period, but the basic concept fits perfectly with Landis' editorial philosophy. The occult doesn't require a ruined castle. It can arrive by special delivery at a modern apartment. Sometimes the witch just needs your mailing address.

It also fits well with the themes I have been exploring all month of "Horror comes Home."

Finally, we return to Part Three of "Let There Be Magick!" by James R. Keaveny. By now the story has become increasingly recognizable as the sort of fantasy environment an RPG player could enter without much explanation. We have knights, sorcerers, strange animals, magical wards, hostile creatures, reanimated dead, castles, wilderness travel, and a wizard's stronghold.

What continues to interest me is how the protagonist approaches magic. He sees something everyone else accepts as supernatural folklore and immediately starts asking how it actually works. The "dead-alives," for example, are terrifying to the inhabitants of Camelot, but he begins testing assumptions about them, separating what they actually do from what people believe they do. That is exactly the sort of thing players do in an RPG.

Again, this is not evidence that Coven 13 influenced D&D. What it shows is how many of the ingredients were already circulating together before 1974. Sword & Sorcery, Science Fantasy, occultism, weird fiction, ghosts, witches, monsters, magical societies, necromancy, and ancient forgotten peoples were all part of the same imaginative landscape.

Final Thoughts

Of the three issues I have covered so far, I think this one brings the various pieces together the best. We have a warlock trying to defeat death, a ghost who brings an entire ballroom with him, folk protections against the Evil Eye, a hidden society of witches, young people experimenting with grimoires, Robert E. Howard reaching back into the older Weird tradition, and a Science Fantasy serial becoming increasingly recognizable as the sort of world fantasy gamers will soon inhabit.

Coven 13 still doesn't seem particularly concerned about whether something belongs to horror, fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, folk horror, occult fiction, or Science Fantasy. It is all part of the same supernatural landscape. And frankly, that is fine with me. 

In fact, that is probably what I like most about it.

Sadly, only one more issue to go.

Witchcraft Wednesday: Coven 13, Issue #2

Last week I started my October look at the short-lived occult horror magazine Coven 13. Issue #1 came out in September of 1969 and established what editor Arthur H. Landis wanted the magazine to be: a modern successor to magazines like Weird Tales and Unknown Worlds, but one firmly grounded in the contemporary world with modern takes on horror and the occult. 

This week we move on to Issue #2.

Coven 13, Issue #2, Nov. 1969

Our second issue is dated November 1969 and still has the 60-cent cover price. Once again we are promised WITCHCRAFT, HORROR, and THE SUPERNATURAL, along with Part Two of James R. Keaveny's Let There Be Magick! The lineup this time includes werewolves, witchcraft, ghosts, old gods, transformations, and more of the occult in modern life. Or pretty much my Christmas list.

Arthur H. Landis' editorial is worth revisiting because he further defines what he wants Coven 13 to be. He talks about contemporary witchcraft, including the very real occult revival going on around him in 1969, and argues that religions and occult beliefs exist within and influence the modern world. For Landis, the closer supernatural fiction gets to both the phenomena themselves and the actual world people live in, the better and more meaningful it becomes. He even uses Ray Bradbury's "The Foghorn" as an example of how a fantastic creature can be treated as something more than just a monster smashing things.  

Honestly, this editorial might explain why I am enjoying Coven 13 so much. His experiences also track with my own. Well, not at the time. When Coven 13 #2 came out, I was just about five months old. But it tracks with my writings here about the 1970s Occult Rival.

Landis isn't interested in just putting a werewolf in a story because werewolves are scary. He wants to know why the werewolf is there and what it means that it exists in the same world we do. That is something I have been doing in my own games for years, especially recently with Jackson and Sunny Valley.

Up first is Once Upon a Werewolf by Robert L. Davis, with art again by William Stout. This is a comedic werewolf story set firmly in contemporary Los Angeles. Henry Thorndyke has managed to turn himself into a werewolf, and his friend Ed has to deal with the consequences. We get Laurel Canyon, bars, cars, Hollywood, and all the other trappings of late-1960s California right alongside lycanthropy and occultism.  

This is exactly the sort of story Landis was talking about. The werewolf doesn't live in some remote European village. He's hanging around Los Angeles drinking rye and causing trouble. Exactly the sort of things I am looking for in my games and the overall theme of my current 1980s Horror Movie Marathon.

A Message for Brother by John Lipford takes us back toward the macabre. Our narrator awakens confused and slowly remembers his life, particularly his rather unpleasant relationship with his brother. It becomes increasingly obvious that there has been a long history of the two attempting to do kill each other, culminating in a dinner involving some very dangerous mushrooms. The narrator has one final message to deliver to his brother. 

Not really witchcraft, but it fits the old Weird Tales tradition of the gruesome story with a supernatural twist.

Then we get Double Hex by Samuel M. Clawson, and this one is much more interesting for what I am doing here.

The story takes place in Pennsylvania and concerns Amanda Spiegell and her brother Reuben, who are engaged in what amounts to a magical feud. The introduction describes Pennsylvania as rivaling New England in spells, enchantments, and what it calls "garden witchcraft." Amanda uses folk magic, charms, timing, animals, and sympathetic magic against her brother, who knows enough magic to protect himself and strike back.    

This is the kind of witchcraft I love seeing in stories.

It isn't flashy fantasy magic. Nobody is tossing fireballs around. This is household magic, inherited practices, signs, charms, bits of animal and plant lore, and the constant question of whether the magic caused something or whether events just happened that way.

There is a lot here I can use for Sunny Valley in particular. Pennsylvania isn't Appalachia (exactly, but you can see it from there), of course, but there is enough overlap in American folk-magic traditions and rural supernatural storytelling to make this feel familiar. It also fits Jackson, where magic can be happening in someone's house while the neighbors are completely unaware.

The new Bell, Book and Tarot feature by Jean Cirrito is especially important. It promises to explore witchcraft, sorcery, lycanthropy, Druidic lore, spells, enchantments, the Evil Eye, and whatever other bits of occult lore the editors can uncover. They even invite real covens to send in contact information.  

The first installment, About Witches and Such: An Objective Peek, is a very 1969 look at the history and practices of witchcraft. There is a lot here that stems from the Margaret Murray/Gerald Gardner understanding of witchcraft that was common at the time, so I wouldn't treat all of it as reliable history.  Ok, actually not much of it at all. But as a snapshot of what people interested in witchcraft were reading and thinking about at the end of the 1960s, it is fascinating. Plus, as I have said many times about Murray, it makes for a great element in a game. 

We get covens, sabbats, the athame, circle, chalice, wand, cauldron, pentacle, cords, scourge, elemental correspondences, nature worship, and the idea of modern witchcraft as the survival or revival of an older religion.

I have been writing witches for RPGs for a very long time, so quite a lot of this is familiar territory.

Next is The Transmogrification of Ridgely P. Winters by Joseph Harris, another bit of supernatural satire. Ridgely's trip into the infernal becomes a mixture of Hell, mythology, psychology, sex, psychiatry, and bureaucracy. Like Potlatch in the previous issue, it shows that Coven 13 wasn't above having some fun with all of this. Horror and the occult don't always have to be deadly serious.

The Shadow Trader by Wylly Folk St. John is another one that really caught my attention. A modern newspaper is constructing a new multimillion-dollar building and creating a "Crypt of Culture" as its cornerstone. That leads us to the much older belief that buildings require a sacrifice for their their foundations, and to a man who claims his shadow has been stolen by a professional Shadow Trader.    

This one is pure Jackson to me.

A new office building is going up. There are architects, newspapers, publicity stunts, and all the things you expect in a modern American city. But underneath all of that is a very old magical idea that never went away. That is exactly how I like the supernatural to work. The modern world didn't replace the old one. It was built right on top of it.

Then we get the best-known writer in this particular issue, Harlan Ellison, with Rock God. Here we have an ancient stone or earth deity, Dis, associated with Stonehenge and an older world that modern people have largely forgotten. Unlike some of the more conventional supernatural creatures in these issues, this feels genuinely ancient. The point isn't that Dis fits neatly into some mythology. The point is that something very old is still there.

That works extremely well for Sunny Valley.

Some things in the world are older than the names people have given them. Calling something a god, demon, spirit, or monster might say more about us than it does about the thing itself.

That is also one of the lessons I keep coming back to in my games. D&D, by necessity, likes categories. This is a demon. That is a devil. This is an undead. That is a fey. Those categories are useful at the game table, but older weird fiction is often much less interested in telling us exactly what something is.

There is a Letters section, which is kind of fun.

Next is Part Two of Let There Be Magick! by James R. Keaveny. We are back on the planet Camelot, where magic and dark sorcery really work. We have castles, knights, strange creatures, kingdoms, magic, and more of the Science Fantasy/Sword & Planet mixture from the first issue. One particularly fun detail is the Collegium in Glagmaron, where students can study Minstralism, medicine, philosophy, law, theology, and, because this is Camelot, introductory magick, sorcery, and astrology. 

Again, this is 1969, almost five years before Dungeons & Dragons, and nearly 30 years before Harry Potter.

I am not claiming any influence here. I have no evidence of that. Indeed, I feel Coven 13 was largely ignored by many at the time. But this is exactly the sort of literary environment that makes the arrival of D&D a few years later seem much less like something that sprang fully formed out of nowhere. Fantasy, science fiction, sword & sorcery, occultism, and weird fiction were already happily stealing from each other.

Finally, we have Pia by John Donaldson, which gives us another werewolf story. Unlike the comedy Once Upon a Werewolf, this one takes the idea seriously and turns lycanthropy into a story of paranoia and suspicion. Same supernatural creature, completely different effect.

That might be the best demonstration of Landis' point in the entire issue.

A werewolf isn't a story.

It is something you can build a story around.

We end with a great ad for the Unverse Book Club.

It feels very much like the Science Fiction book club, and many of my searches brought up both. 

With Issue #2 done, I think Coven 13 is beginning to show its real strength. Issue #1 established the sort of magazine Landis wanted to publish. Issue #2 starts showing us the rules of that world. Magic exists in modern America. Old gods might still be around. Folk traditions didn't necessarily stop working just because people got televisions and automobiles. Werewolves don't have to behave like movie werewolves, and witches don't have to live in fairy tales.

And perhaps most importantly, the supernatural needs a context.

If there is a troll under the bridge, I want to know why it is there.

That is something I can absolutely use.

Witchcraft Wednesday: Coven 13, Issue #1

 It is October! It's Witchcraft Wednesday. I have been spending a lot of time discussing various topics like the Witches of Appendix N, my upcoming Advanced Witches & Warlocks, and my various campaigns of Jackson, Carbon Vale, and Sunny Valley. All of these share a very interesting point of intersection: 1970s occult horror. And 1970s occult horror is detailed rather nicely by the magazine Coven 13.

Coven 13

Published by Camelot Publishing Company out of LA and under the editorship of Arthur H. Landis, Coven 13 was an American fantasy and horror magazine that did not have a long run, only 4 issues. In its original incarnation, it was a digest-sized affair, four bimonthly issues in all between September 1969 and March 1970, with a focus on “Witchcraft, Horror, [and] The Supernatural.” William Stout, the staff artist, was responsible for much of the publication's look. For his part, Landis had no qualms about stating he intended for Coven 13 to fill a void left by the likes of Weird Tales or Unknown Worlds, though with a more modern slant on the occult and supernatural. Kinda makes it perfect for what I am doing here really. 

That is not to say the magazine vanished after March 1970. It was picked up by William L. Crawford’s Fantasy Publishing Company, with Gerald W. Page as the new editor. Come early 1971 and issue #5, it was renamed Witchcraft & Sorcery: The Modern Magazine of Weird Tales. Leaving no doubt on which legacy it wanted to embrace. Six further issues were put out in an irregular fashion until 1974, making ten in all across the two names. But the first four from the Coven Daysays are something of a unit unto themselves, and they are what I propose to examine this October.

The tonal shift from Coven 13 to Witchcraft & Sorcery is enough to consider them two different magazines. Coven 13 was more about modern horror and the supernatural. Witchcraft & Sorcery was closer to the pulps of old, with more fantasy. Both titles have their fair share of Appendix N authors, so exploring these two should be interesting.

Coven 13, Issue #1, Sept. 1969

Our first issue dates back to September 1969. Our cover price is 60 cents.

The magazine promises all-new stories of WITCHCRAFT, THE SUPERNATURAL, and HORROR! 

The editorial by Arthur H. Landis pretty much tells what he wants out of this, something akin to Weird Tales. The feel of this magazine is certainly right. He wants to honor the old writers, who he thinks deserve much more credit in the literary landscape than they do (or rather did then, they do now), and invite new authors to contribute stories of the same sort. 

So already I get a solid Appendix N feel out of this magazine. Hard to say what D&D could have become if this had been in the mix. Spoiler, I know what it would have become and I have been writting that material for years.

Up first, we have Odile by Alan Caillou with art by William Stout. Caillou became a prolific script writer and actor. Stout has art everywhere.  The women of the small villiage of Petit Gruet do not like Odile Lautrec, not one bit. She is accused of stealing men and dancing naked under the moon, so she must be a witch. Then the trouble begins and doesn't end even after Odile is dead. Set in 1936 (and told from the perspective of much later on) it is a great modern witch tale.

Joseph Harris's Potlach is next, also illustrated by William Stout. Here, the devil takes up in Country Club. In Markham Town! by Jack G. Levine is a tale of gothic horror in the post-atomic age and how the monsters are still out there. 

The Postman Always... is a quick little tale of the Devil in modern times by Richard P. Flanagan. And followed by a Faustian tale Of Brides & Brimstone by Lenore Betcker and more art by William Stout.

Spell of Desperation by G. Kissinger brings Black and White Magic to the modern age and is a great example of what Coven 13 was really trying to do: mixing magic, modern times, horror, and the gritty feel of the pulps of the 1970s. Though the tale is still rough by 21st-century standards. 

James H. Keaveny's is an odd one out. Let There Be Magick! is not a modern tale, but set on a planet named Camelot. So both fantasy and futuristic. It's a bit of Sword & Planet with magic. It is also explicitly Part 1 of 5. 

With Issue #1 done, I admire the direction Coven 13 was going in. Either it was on the cusp of the prevailing Zeitgeist of the Occult Revival of the 1970s (which I have typically placed at its peak in 1973 with the release of "The Exorcist") or just a little bit before it. Likely before it. 

I think the reason that Coven 13 didn't become more prominant during this time was due to the rise of cheap paperback novels. Something I have detailed before. 

We still have a few more issues to go, so plenty still to talk about.

Witchcraft Wednesday: The Three Laws of Witchcraft

 "Let it be remembered that witches shall keep the hearth for cats, and cats shall keep watch where witches sleep. Neither shall betray the other to hunter, priest, or king. What was agreed before shall endure one hundred years more."

- A portion of The First Accord, as renewed between witches and the Lords of Cats

Power has a price.

Magic has laws.

Not in the sense of laws in the way a king puts his seal on a decree, or even in the manner of wizards who have devoted their existence to the study of how spells are wont to behave. These are far older than that. They exist because powerful beings agreed that certain things would be done in certain ways.

The Three Great Laws of Witchcraft

For witches and warlocks, there are three such arrangements that hold sway over all others.

There is the Pact of Baba Yaga, or what some refer to as the First Pact, which dictates the duties one witch owes to another. The First Accord governs the ties between witches and the Lords of the Animals, and concerns the use of familiars. And finally, the Concordat of Mephistopheles, setting out the terms by which supernatural Powers can endow a mortal with their strength and make a warlock of him.

In truth, none of these are fully known. You will not find an original, authenticated copy in the hands of any mortal scholar. Witches are quick to dispute the finer points of the First Pact. An Animal Lord may recall some part of the First Accord that has been lost to the witches’ memory. A warlock might come to the unpleasant realization that his patron left out a clause or two in the Concordat in their verbal agreements.

But for all that, they are real enough.

The Pact of Baba Yaga

Witches will tell you the Pact of Baba Yaga is the oldest of their accords, so old, in fact, that they call it the First Pact.

Tradition says Baba Yaga had no hand in making witches. They were here before the Pact was drawn up, as was magic, long before anyone put words to what it was. What she put in place was of far greater importance: she set the rules for how witches would have to deal with each other.

The Pact is an acknowledgment of the witch as an independent creature. She might be in service to a Goddess or a demon, to the elements or some ancestral spirit, or to no divine power one can name. She can be part of a coven or a solitary figure; kind or cruel, lawful or capricious, and either respected or feared. Yet she is a witch all the same.

And the First Pact lays down obligations that transcend covenants, nations, religions, and alignments. It is the source of ancient expectations regarding hospitality, sanctuary, debts, secrets, and the resolution of magical disputes.

None of this means a witch has to like her sister. The Pact does not even preclude enmity. Two witches can be at each other’s throats and still be bound by it. That is the point. The Pact of Baba Yaga is no declaration of universal peace or sisterhood; it is a recognition that there are things a witch does not do to another without consequence.

What precisely those things are is open to debate. One tradition will have its own take on the Pact, another its own. Some tenets are made plain to an apprentice, others are not spoken of until after coven initiation, and some are said to be the province of the very old. Baba Yaga, it is thought, remembers them all.

One should not expect a bolt from the blue every time a witch is dishonest with another. Breaking the First Pact rarely brings about such immediate retribution. The aftermath is often worse. A transgressor may find herself shunned: no one will trade spells with her, put her under their roof, honor her claims, or come to her aid. Then there are the tales of those who overstepped and found Baba Yaga taking a personal interest in the affair. Most witches find that prospect enough to ensure they behave.

Which is why a witch being styled a Granddaughter of Baba Yaga is more than a matter of prestige. It is a sign that she has personally taken note of the witch. And it is a reminder to all that the witch is bound by the First Pact. There are benefits, but there are also obligations.

The First Accord

The First Accord is older than most surviving witch traditions, although whether it predates the Pact of Baba Yaga is a question witches and occult scholars have argued about for centuries. The Animal Lords are not inclined to settle the argument.

The Accord concerns familiars.

Witches have always had their associations with animals. They have been friends to them, compelled them with magic, or used them as tools and vessels. But the Lords of the Animals eventually took notice.

The Lords of the Animals go by many names: Beast Lords, Totem Kings, First Beasts. They are not gods as one would understand them, nor simply animals of great power. They are something older, the embodiment of the creatures in their keeping. The Cat Lord is not just a cat; in a deep magical way, she is Cat. The same holds for the Bear King, the Wolf Lord, the Crow Queen, and the rest of the courts at the fringes of the mortal world.

Under the terms of the First Accord, a witch may have a familiar, but the Accord makes clear that the animal is not property. The bond is a relationship in the eyes of the Lords, not one of ownership. The familiar may guard, advise, or teach, but it gives something, and the witch must give in return.

Some are companions for life, others are inherited, and some come and go with little explanation. But any proper arrangement between a witch and her familiar falls under the protection of the Accord. When a witch is unkind to her familiar, she is in danger of more than just being without a handy magical companion. She risks the displeasure of powers that have an entire kingdom of animals to answer for.

The First Accord has its own history, though the details are not entirely clear. The earliest records we have put it down to negotiations between witches and some of the more formidable Animal Lords; later on, tradition speaks of further meetings to clarify or renew those terms. In the time since, certain witches have made their living as intermediaries between the two worlds.

One might be called a Bearer of the First Accord, a mark of recognition from the Lords of the Animals and an acknowledgment of the obligations she has been given. Then there is the rarer title of She Who May Approach. To a mortal ear, it is unassuming, even unimpressive, but the Animal Lords would disagree. A mortal who may approach has been recognized. She may enter places where other mortals would be intruders. She may speak before powers that would otherwise ignore her, or worse, see her as prey.

It does not make her safe; the Bear King is still the Bear King, but at least she will be heard.

There is also the Peace Talker, for those who have habitually stood between the witches and the Animal Lords. These are privileges of a sort, yet like most occult designations, they come with strings attached. A Bearer of the First Accord cannot flout the rules and then claim the title. A Peace Talker is expected to make conversation before making threats.

Every title grants something.

Every title also takes something away.

The Concordat of Mephistopheles

Warlocks are a different matter altogether. While a witch’s power comes from study, initiation, and the good graces of her Patron, a warlock bargains. For the origins of that, you have to look to the Concordat of Mephistopheles.

Do not believe the clerics' claims that all warlocks are in service to Mephistopheles. Most have never uttered his name, and some of the Powers that make warlocks would count him an enemy. Mephistopheles did not lay claim to them all; he simply set the terms of the bargain.

Before the Concordat, there was no dependable way for a supernatural Power to put some of its strength into a mortal on a permanent basis. You had your miracles from the gods, your possessed mediums, your demons teaching sorcery, but it was an unstable business. Mephistopheles put an end to that. He created a metaphysical framework that allowed a Power to bestow ongoing abilities in return for whatever consideration was deemed fit: allegiance, sacrifice, or obedience. And so the warlock was born.

It hardly matters what the Power is. An archdevil or demon prince can make a warlock, as can an ancient dragon, an archfey, an elemental sovereign, or something from beyond the stars for which our scholars have no name. The Concordat is the mechanism; the pact itself sets the terms. That is why you will find no two pacts alike. One may give up her soul, another seven years of her life, another must see to it that a lost relic is found. Some of these deals seem quite generous. They are not safe for all that.

Warlocks come to understand the central tenet of the Concordat in short order: power given is power owed.

What the original text of the Concordat says is anyone’s guess. There are plenty of forgeries in circulation among the occult set. Demonologists will tell you Mephistopheles put out contradictory versions on purpose, while infernal types say the true copy is in Hell. Warlocks have been known to put their hands on fragments in languages older than any mortal tongue. But the principles are plain enough. A Power must deliver on its word, and a mortal must put something on the table. Both are held to the letter of the agreement, not to intent. And there is always a price.

This accounts for the precise way warlock patrons talk. Devils are well known for it, but Faerie Powers can be worse given how differently they view a promise. It is also what makes a witch deeply suspicious of a warlock. Her Patron can do as he pleases, teach, punish, or leave her to her own devices. A warlock’s Power has entered into a deal.

An outsider might not see much in the way of a distinction. For witches, however, it is everything.

Three Agreements, Three Relationships

Taken together, these three ancient agreements describe much of the hidden structure underlying witches and warlocks.

There is the Pact of Baba Yaga, which puts to rest the question of how witches are to conduct themselves with one another. The First Accord is there to determine the terms between a witch and her familiars, as well as the Powers that give voice to them. Then the Concordat of Mephistopheles to settle what price a Power will exact from a mortal for bestowing its supernatural gifts.

In short, the First Pact is about community, the First Accord is about relationship, and the Concordat is a transaction. But running under all of them is an age-old tenet of magic: no power is ever given without some obligation attached.

Power is never free.

Witchcraft Wednesday: Larina at 16, the Girl in Jackson, IL

Larina Stephanie Nichols at 16

 On Monday, I talked about Larina and her genesis in 1986 and before. On Friday, I am going to talk about the character's future. So today I thought, what about the present? What is Larina doing right now, and how does she affect my game design? So *who* is the Larina sitting on my desk now as I write?

Well‚ unless this is your first day here‚ the current incarnation of Larina is the one in Jackson‚ IL‚ set in 1985-86‚ and she is not the witch queen, not yet and se might not ever be․ She is often more frightened than not. Well‚ not that she'd tell you․ She only knows two spells and has a handful of books on witchcraft. And now, she and her dad just moved to Jackson‚ IL‚ the most haunted town in the Midwest․

There are a lot of really good reasons to go back to an earlier version of this character․ For starters‚ as I have hoped to point out‚ this was when she began in real life‚ so it would make sense to explore the character becoming who she is․ Not the legend․ Not the queen․ Not the character who has shifted through AD&D‚ Chill‚ WitchCraft‚ Mage‚ and NIGHT SHIFT‚ but just simple Larina‚ the sixteen-year-old trying to figure out why every shadow in the town knows her name․

I have had forty years to get to know the person Larina is. But in 1985-86, when I play Jackson Larina, it is an altogether different matter. At sixteen, fresh to town, left to make sense of her magic on her own. She has some friends who become her coven and are like sisters to her, and other friends she will fiercely defend. But the monsters here always have the upper hand.

Back in real 1986, Larina was not nostalgia. She was immediate. She was a character I needed at the table, a witch-shaped answer to a question AD&D had not quite answered for me yet. Today, writing Jackson Larina as a sixteen-year-old in a fictional1986 is something else. It is not just returning to the character. It is returning to the age when I first imagined her.

That changes everything.

I was the same as Larina when I first put her on the page. Being a teenager in 1986 is no exercise in imagination for me; I was living it. The music and books, the games and the anxieties that came with them, the moral panic, the cheap notebooks where I would scribble down character ideas, the disputes over rules, the feeling that the world was a far stranger place than the adults would have you believe, all of it was right there. Larina is a product of that time.

With Jackson Larina, I can return to those days, but from a different vantage point. I am not sixteen any longer, nor am I looking ahead from 1986. I am looking back. It puts her in an altogether different position in my writing and in the games I make. She is more than a younger iteration of a familiar character; she is a means of inquiring what she was before the weight of mythology and design had a chance to settle on her. And honestly, I like her that way.

There is utility in stripping away the power one has accrued over the years. Jackson Larina does not have a host of powerful allies or old enemies to call upon, no lost loves, no artifacts or cosmic scars to speak of. What she has is her father, a few spells, some books and a good deal of stubbornness. And an instinct telling her something is amiss in Jackson, and that if she does not put two and two together, someone will be the worse for it. That is a witch of a different sort. 

She does have friends. Stephanie and Faye are her coven. Candy and Denise are loyal even if they need saving more often than help, but they are still there. Even later characters like Andy, Rowan, Ami and Valentino have their places in her life. Much different than her Dark Places & Demogorgons counterpart.  

Which is precisely why she is so useful in my game design. I can have all these versions of her.

While Larina is always a feature in my design work, here she plays a more crucial role. She is my test of the rules and setting for other characters, the character others might use. Characters you might use. If the rules only work when a witch is already powerful, then they do not work. If the setting only makes sense once the character has become legendary, then the setting is too thin. Jackson Larina asks a more basic question: can a beginning witch survive here?

That is what I need to know.

You will not find high-level characters in Jackson, IL. This is a town of teenagers and their teachers and parents, of record stores and public libraries and old cemeteries, of college lore and haunted houses and things best left unencountered after midnight. A witch operating in this environment must be able to conduct research, protect her friends, and make mistakes. The game has to let her be clever, not invincible.

So the fact that this Larina knows only two spells is of consequence. It makes me, as a designer, consider what witchcraft is apart from a laundry list of abilities, powers and spells. What does she suspect? What has she read that is beyond the others? What does she see when they are not looking? And at what cost? Those are the questions that matter to Jackson Larina, not the damage a spell might do. With this version, I am able to create a witch as a playable character rather than a pre-packaged archetype. She ought not come across as the inferior of an older one, but as one who has only just started on a perilous education. Jackson Larina is my means of testing that proposition. She shows me if a novice has sufficient mystery to hold a player’s interest, or enough to offer an adventure and a group.

Larina also serves as a reminder that knowledge is among her most ancient of powers. Even in the days of AD&D she was never simply a matter of spellcasting. She was the one with the books and the lore, the one with the questions, the translator of ancient languages. If there was a symbol on the door or an old name in the grimoire, or a ghost that made its annual appearance, it was she who sought to make sense of it. Jackson Larina refines that. Her two or three spells are beside the point; her strength is in what she pays attention to. She reads and listens and connects one weird detail to another.

I want a "knower" in NIGHT SHIFT and in my Jackson work, not merely a caster who hurls magic at a monster without knowing why it is there. 

She doesn't have firepower. She has two spells and a library card.

The Larina on my Desk

There is a certain vulnerability in her that the older incarnations lack. An adult Larina can be fearsome, the Witch Queen mythic; some versions of her can enter a room and reality must bend around her. Jackson is not at that stage, she might never get to that stage. She can be overmatched or mistaken, in need of assistance, the new girl unsure whom to trust. That suits Jackson better. 

The town is at its best when the characters are not entirely in command. That is Horror Movie logic and Gothic Fiction logic; it is good for horror. They may be resourceful and brave, but Jackson should seem older to them. Dangerous. There are secrets in the place that predate their birth, colleges with ghosts, houses with memories, and adults who know either too much or not nearly enough. A sixteen-year-old Larina belongs in such a world; she has the power to spot the cracks but not always know how to put them right.

In a way, that is what Larina is worth to me today. She is no longer just the character from forty years back, nor the Witch Queen in waiting. For now she is the red-headed girl in Jackson with her couple of spells and a handful of books, some really great friends, an over-protective dad, and a nagging feeling the town is going to put everything she knows about magic to the test. As a designer, I need her to be there.

If Jackson Larina works, then the witch works. Not the high-level witch. Not the legendary witch. Not the Witch Queen. The beginning witch. The playable witch. The girl who has just enough magic to get herself into trouble and just enough courage to try getting everyone else out of it.

That is the Larina sitting on my desk right now, and after forty years, she is still teaching me how to write witches.

Two Spells and a Library Card

A natural question can be raised. Why her? I mean I have no shortage of witches. I even created a brand new one (more or less) just last week. I even have a witch that has a great background AND is about the right age in Elowen. 

So why go back to Larina?

I think part of that has been answered above. Larina, the character, is a product of the mid 1980s for me. A lot of what I wanted a witch to be in 1986 is her. So naturally, if I am going to have a witch character in 1986, why not her?

Also, Larina is always great for me because I know her so well. When I am running situations as a thought experiment or at the table, I know how she should react, not how I, as someone who knows the rules of the RPG, would react. That's important to me.

Also, Elowen has a very specific role in my mind. She is deeply connected to West Haven and very much Larina's "adopted" daughter. More so than Sinéad was, despite that being an early idea. 

Larina at 16, at least how I am using her in Jackson, is becoming something really fun and she can proudly stand beside her "sisters" (or Shards as I have been calling them) from Chill, WitchCraft, Mage, and the Witch Queen from AD&D. Even the other versions of her in NIGHT SHIFT. 

Other Larinas have crossed worlds and realities; the Larina of Jackson, IL has to get across town to St. Michaels for her Greek II class in her old purple 1977 VW Bug (which she has named "Eurydice" which makes no sense really). That is enough of a challenge.

And she is teaching me more this way.

Witchcraft Wednesday: Étaín Moonshadow

 I picked up a new Forgotten Realms game over the past weekend. Sorta. It is actually the same game I have been playing in, just with some new characters. In reality, I am worried less about the setting or background and more about the playtest. I am using this game to try out some more ideas from my Advanced Witches & Warlocks book. While I have the classes pretty much where I want them, I still want to "stress test" them a little more. 

Étaín Moonshadow

 I have half-jokingly referred to Étaín Moonshadow as my Margaret Murray of the Realms. She is a Moon Elf and was born in Evereska. She was an acolyte of Sehanine Moonbow and could have lived the quiet life of a priestess. That was until Sehanine came to her in a dream, telling her there was more to her faith than she knew. The dream, nearly half-forgotten, disturbed her at a fundamental level. She tried to forget it and ignore it, but the more she tried, the more it got to her. 

Her mother was a member of the clergy of Sehanine, and her father was an archivist. This gave her access to documents, scrolls, histories, and tales of the elven folk.  As she read, she remembered tales from her grandmother on how her own grandmother came from the Moonshae Isles, and her worship was different.  Much was the same, but other aspects seemed odd or incongruous at the time. Until she read more and discovered that some of the rituals were similar to those she had read about in Selûnite prayer texts. Liturgical texts lifted word-for-word from Sharan ones. At the start, she believed what any elf would, that humans had copied older elven texts. But as she read, she became less and less certain of that. She began to come to the conclusion that the worship of Sehanine Moonbow, Selûne, and Shar were all one and the same. Even more than the three goddesses were all but a face of a single Moon Goddess.

Étaín left Evereska to seek adventure, at least that is what she said. It was not uncommon for a young Moon Elf to do so. But what she didn't tell anyone was that is was not treasure she sought, but knowledge. Knowledge to support her idea of the Triple Moon Goddess.

--

So now I have this adventuring witch who is not looking for gold and glory, but for knowledge and divine truths.  She feels there is an ancient religion out there, and she just needs to reclaim it. She is also searching for others who share her beliefs. These will be members of the other classes from the book. Some will agree with her, others will challenge her. She will run into the orthodoxy of the Sehanine, Selûne, and Shar religions and she will have to deal with them as well.

Her interest in Selûne started out as an academic curiosity, until the dream of Sehanine. Then it became much more. 

This is also where she is less Margaret Murray and more Raymond Buckland. This ties back to my 1986 connections with his own "Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft" published that year. Étaín is not just searching; she is reconstructing this religion as she goes. "Moonshadow" then becomes the craft name she chooses for herself.

Calling Étaín the "Margaret Murray of the Realms" is only partly accurate. Like Murray, she is assembling scattered traditions into a larger theory. Unlike Murray, though, Étaín is willing to abandon her conclusions if better evidence appears. She is less interested in proving herself right than in following the evidence wherever it leads. In that sense, she also owes something to Raymond Buckland, who took fragments of older traditions and helped shape them into a living modern faith.

So she is a witch character to help me discover more about other witch characters.

Étaín Moonshadow

Moon Elf
Witch level 6

Secondary Skill: Scribe

S: 10
I: 14
W: 16
D: 12
C: 10
Ch: 15

Paralysis/Poison: 11
Petrify/Polymorph: 11
Rod, Staff, or Wand: 12
Breath Weapon: 14
Spells: 13

AC: 10 (None)
HP: 22
THAC0: 18

Weapon
Dagger 1d4/1d3
Staff 1d6

Familiar: Snowy Owl "Nóta"

Spells 
First level: Charm Person, Glamour, Mend Light Wounds, Read Languages, Speak with Animals 
Second level: Augury, Detect Thoughts, ESP, Knock, Suggestion
Third level: Clairvoyance, Tongues

Theme Song: The Mystic's Dream - Loreena McKennitt

Eyes: Blue with flecks of silver
Hair: Black
Born: 1230 DR (age 128)

What excites me most about Étaín isn't whether she'll discover the truth about the Triple Moon Goddess. It is whether she'll change her mind along the way. If the evidence leads somewhere unexpected, then so will she. That's the sort of character I want to spend time playing, and exactly the sort of witch I want Advanced Witches & Warlocks to encourage.

Now I just need to play her some more.

One of the things I want to test with Advanced Witches & Warlocks is whether a witch can drive an entire campaign through curiosity rather than combat. D&D often assumes adventurers are motivated by gold, glory, or survival. Étaín is motivated by questions. If there is an old moon shrine, she wants to read the inscriptions. If there is a forgotten library, she wants to compare its texts. If there is a village with unusual customs, she wants to talk to the oldest grandmother she can find. Success for her isn't measured by magic items recovered, but by another page filled in one of her journals.

When the party enters a ruin, the fighter looks for enemies, the thief looks for traps, and Étaín looks for inscriptions. If someone says, "We found treasure," she'll smile and congratulate them. If someone says, "We found an old prayer carved into the wall," she is already halfway across the room.

Unlike some of my other witches, Étaín does not have a Jackson, IL counterpart. Étaín is too linked to the history and the mythology of the Forgotten Realms in my mind.

Witchcraft Wednesdays: It Takes Three to Make A Thing Go Right

 With all apologies to MC Rod Base and DJ EZ Rock (nobody rocked harder dressed like a pack of Newports, RIP), there is a reason you see covens of witches vs solitaries. 

I have said it here before, but witches are social. They see patterns in social dynamics and in social constructs. A cleric might ask why someone read a book on demonology. A wizard might ask why they read this particular book on demons. A witch will notice why the book is grouped with local maps and notes on when the graveyard was first used. They seek out the connections between people and each other; the living and the dead, people and the divine, and people and the arcane. 

And there is a reason that NIGHT SHIFT is called "Veterans of the Supernatural Wars."

People who fight the darkness rarely get to retire, and when they do, it is only to pass the fight down to the next generation. 

Today I want to talk a bit about Stephanie, Faye, and Larina in Jackson, or not really them specifically, what and who they are in the game. For me, they are the stand-ins for the PCs as I playtest and write. If and/or when I am able to move this from my computer and game table to yours, they might not even be there; your characters will. They will have their own organization and social dynamic, and they will have one, but more importantly, they will have a history. Not a backstory per se, but a history, things that went on before them. The people who fought this battle before they did. Some won. Most lost.

Let's look into how this plays out in my game.

So, before these witches walked the halls of Jackson,

Stephanie, Faye, and Larina (1986)

These witches did.

Lena, Alyssa, and Keely (1983)

Selene "Lena" Marquette, Alyssa Argent, and Keely "Q" Ellison were Jackson's witch protectors in the time before Larina got here and before Faye started paying attention. Lena was smart, popular, and already one foot out the door to study at MacAlister the summer of 83. Keely was popular, had a smile for everyone, and was on the cheerleading, dance, gymnastics teams, and the choir. Everyone loved her. Not liked, loved. And Alyssa. She wasn't the smartest girl in the room. She was the smartest person in the whole damn town. Brilliant, chaotic, she read theoretical physics for fun, translated languages in her spare time, and had a full-ride scholarship to pretty much every Ivy League school. 

And their story is tragic. I normally don't like to make characters fail, but sometimes they do, and that is the horror. In Jackson, horror is everywhere.

One night, when dealing with a monster, Lena and Keely never made it back. Alyssa did, but her mind was no longer intact. The official story is that Lena and Keely were coming back from school late at night and someone grabbed them. Upon hearing the story, Alyssa broke down. But the town's people knew something was not right. Lena and Keely were friends, but there was no reason for them both to be leaving the school that late at night and together. Alyssa had a nervous breakdown, which surprised no one, but it had been a long time coming, and whether it really had anything to do with the official events is anyone's guess.  Alyssa spent the next year at the Illinois State Mental Hospital in town. She didn't even get to go to the funeral of the two girls she called "sisters."

Last page of the Jackson PHS 1983 yearbook

One of the features I have with Jackson is that it is based on my real-life high school. One of those real Jacksonville things was that every year in high school, one or more students would die. Gruesome, right. Yeah, now imagine it is a small school of just over 1,500 students total. We used to say the school was cursed. I have no idea if it is still happening.

You can begin to see why I have so much material for this project.

It's not just that Lena and Q died. It's not even that they died because of Jackson's supernatural elements, or that it left the once-brilliant Alyssa a shell of her former self.

It's when Stephanie, Faye, and Larina (or YOUR characters) are walking the halls, the adults say things like "Oh, Larina, she is just like Alyssa," and then they go quiet. Or even "Stephanie Vale lights up a room, just like Keely used to."  But the worst part is the adults who never say anything at all. They watch the girls walk by laughing conspiratorially, and inside, they are thinking, "No. Please. Not again."

The fight in Jackson is old. It has been going on for a long time. And I want to impress upon the characters and the players that they are not the first here, they won't be the last. These are the Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. Kids that are not even old enough to drink (legally) or, in some cases, vote.

But Lena, Alyssa, and Q hold another lesson too.

You can't do this alone.

I am not sure of the details yet, but I do know this: they failed and died because they were not working together. Look. I don't want to blame them for their deaths. It was a horrible thing, and honestly? I have only had them for a couple of days, and I feel terrible. But they died because, as witches, they were not working together.

I love Stephanie, Faye, and Larina. I do. I want them to live happily ever after in the Jackson Game world for as long as I can. But I also know how I typically play these characters, and honestly, I am a little surprised that Jackson-Larina has not met the same fate as other Larinas on other worlds. 

In the past I have described Larina as "the girl who sets herself on fire to light the way for others," and yes, she has died. Many times on many worlds. I have a binder filled with her character sheets. But here in Jackson, her lesson (and the PC's lesson) is, you can't and should not do this alone. My own rule also says I can't raise her from the dead. Sorry, witches can't raise the dead, and this is an absolute rule in my games. So, Larina, as my iconic witch, cannot break that rule.

For witches and any character, these connections are important. I have not implemented coven casting rules in NIGHT SHIFT outside of the Arcane Bond power, but I really should. 

Coven casting is not just "three witches get together, and the spell gets bigger." That is wizard-thinking. That is math. Witches can do math, but that is not where the magic lives. 

The coven is the circuit for a witch. There is one to name the thing, one to hold the line, and another to mind the human toll. Put in different witches, and you have a different spell. Stephanie, Faye, and Larina are not some interchangeable cogs in a machine. Stephanie will be on to the lies people tell and the social fallout. Faye has her finger on the room’s emotional pulse. Larina spots the occult design. Put them together, and they can pull off things no one of them should be able to do by herself.

More to the point, they can survive it. Or at least they have a better chance.

I want to make that a rule in Jackson. Coven magic can give you an edge on a roll, but it should be more about sharing the danger, the cost, the insight. Let one witch absorb the psychic backlash while another steadies the ritual or makes sure the door does not shut. Or let one put her foot down and say "No, we’re done," and have it count for something in the mechanics. 

Lena, Alyssa, and Q lost that. Or perhaps they never really had it to begin with. I don't know, and niether will the players or characters.

Alyssa had power. Terrible power that made everyone stop and look. She was capable of more than Larina ever could be. But there is a difference between brilliance and wisdom, between power and the connection of a coven. On her own, a witch is a weapon, a flame, or a ghost story to be told in hushed tones in the hallways. A coven puts the humanity back in her. A coven gives that power a focus and meaning.

Jackson is full of monsters, of course. Haunted colleges, the bad land, old tragedies, and the odd book in the library where the Veil is thin. But it is also about the girl in the hallway beside you. The one who knows your real name and your worst ideas, and when you are lying or afraid. The one who will take your hand and tell you, "No, you are not alone."

That is witchcraft. I love my circles, candles, and athamés as much as the next person (ok, maybe more so than the next person), but this is more than spells or familiars. It is true connection made dangerous. Friendship with teeth. Love in a circle aimed at the dark.

I want Jackson to remember that. Lena, Alyssa, and Q are a reminder that the fight was here before your characters got to it. Stephanie, Faye, and Larina show us you don’t get to just assume you will make it. Your characters ought to feel the weight of all those names when they walk these halls.

The defeated and dead aren’t there to put a damper on the game. They are there to remind the living how to stand together.