Mirror Mondays: The Seven Books That Made Me Want Witches in D&D

 I have spent a lot of time during these Mirror Mondays talking about where my ideas about witches came from.

Some came from D&D, obviously. Some came from movies and television. Some came from folklore, mythology, and religion. And more than a few came from simply being a kid in the 1970s and 1980s when the occult seemed to be everywhere. From the Occult revival to the Satanic Panic.

But most of it came from books.

And more specifically, most of it came from the public library.

I talked about the library as a dungeon back in June, and with good reason. My local branch had what struck me as an enormous amount of material on the supernatural: witches, vampires, ghosts, monsters, the whole lot. I made short work of them. I later discovered that we did indeed have more than our fair share. I went on to visit other libraries, and they had only a fraction of what my local one had. 

In those days, before the Internet, if one wanted to know about witches, one had to put in the effort and find a book on the subject. And that also often meant me getting on my bike and riding to the library. 

I was not being completely allegorical when I described the library as a place of quests. Should a book make mention of Jung or some obscure piece of mythology or psychic phenomena, you can bet I was off in search of more. One shelf would lead to another. In terms of shaping my Witch class, that process was likely of greater import than any rulebook from D&D. I did the legwork; I was on the quest.

Below are seven books that put the desire for witches in D&D in me. Don’t mistake them for the seven best on witchcraft; some are scholarly, and some are not, and one doesn’t really concern witches in any way. But they all added to the mix. Or as I often say, the alchemy that allowed the witch to grow in my mind. 

Daniel Cohen, Witchcraft, Superstition & Ghostly Magic (1974)

I went through everything Cohen had to offer at the library in my pre-teen years. He wrote the kind of thing I was after: unexplained happenings, monsters, the like. It was a last stand for a world of magic I wanted to believe in, even though I knew on some level it wasn’t true. Before I turned ten, I could still savor the notion of a secret world beneath the ordinary. That romantic notion has never left me, even if I know that the world is not hiding anything supernatural. 

Take Jackson, IL. The adults are at work, the kids are at school, everyone is shopping or complaining about the weather or worried about grades. But there are witches and ghosts and monsters in that town. Most are none the wiser. 

Cohen didn’t put that idea in my head, but he did a fine job of convincing a younger me that the world is more interesting if you allow for such possibilities.

C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (1983 edition)

I have been a huge fan of Carl Jung. His psychoanalytic theories, especially regarding the collective unconscious and archetypes, have always appealed to me more than Freud’s. The witch is just one figure to come out of that, but the fact that certain stories and symbols have a way of reappearing has meant a great deal to my approach to fantasy.

There is an accident of library history here. In 1984, I set out to read Synchronicity. Yes, because I was a fan of the Police album of the same name. The library didn’t have it, so I made do with Man and His Symbols. In the end, perhaps that was the more fitting book for me to be reading at the time. Jung provided a vocabulary of sorts for what I was already putting my characters through. He made me ask why some of them have a way of coming back in my mind, or why I can spot an element of one witch in another. Why is it that a character can cross from one game to another, from one world or genre to the next, and still be unmistakably who she is? Those ideas had their genesis here. The witch not as a character but as a universal archetype. 

At the time, I was only aware of the patterns. I have reread the book many times and each time I walk away with different ideas and insights. It is not a great work of psychology, but it does provide a great lens in how we view the stories (or my case, games) we create.

Brendan Lehane, The Enchanted World: Wizards and Witches (1984)

One would not be surprised to see this on the list. I have put pen to paper about the Enchanted World series and this volume in particular, but the first had a profound impact on me. Lehane takes you from the wizards of old myth to the forbidden arts of the medieval magician and on to the witches. You will find Circe, Merlin, Roger Bacon, Baba Yaga, and the like all occupying the same broad magical space. Yet they are not all engaged in the same sort of thing. That is a distinction which matters.

It is an idea I am still mulling over in Advanced Witches & Warlocks; a Witch, a Wizard, and a Warlock ought to be more than three labels for a spell-caster. Their approach to magic is different. In looking back at Lehane, I can trace the origins of that notion. There are small things I have taken from the book into my games as well. The bit on witches’ flight, for instance, speaks of distaffs as well as broomsticks, and I have since made room for them in my own work. One reads something at the age of fourteen and finds it has been sitting in your game for forty years.

Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (1959)

Here is one of the major ones. I picked up my copy in a second-hand shop and it has proved indispensable when it comes to witchcraft and demonology. But with Robbins, the subject matter gets less comfortable. Witchcraft is entertaining when you are discussing familiars and old legends. The record of witch persecution is no fun at all. It is the story of men and children, but mostly women, being put to the sword or tortured on the say-so of someone who called them a witch. The witch stops being the wise old woman, the alluring temptress, or even the oh-so-clever teen in homeroom. She becomes the innocent woman tortured to confess something impossible and only has death to look forward to. 

You have the fantasy witch, the one from folklore, and then the individual who is accused. They are not one and the same. Robbins gave some historical heft to what might have been nothing more than a character class in a game. I have gone back to it more times than I can count; of everything here, it is the one I have used most as a reference for my writing.

I am not so vain as to say I write to avenge those wronged. But I keep them in mind with everything I do write. Maybe I read this stuff at too young an age (the ongoing joke that Gen X is the way we are because we read the wrong book way too young), and it imprinted on me. 

Strange Stories, Amazing Facts (Reader’s Digest, 1978)

My parents were/are voracious readers. Books filled every corner of my home growing up, and every room had at least one bookshelf; some, like the living room, had three. 

They, like many people of their generation, had a lot of Reader's Digest books. One, in particular, was Strange Stories, Amazing Facts.

There was a copy of this in my parents’ house, and for years I could not put it down. At first it was my book of choice when I wanted to read about vampires, though over time I began to make use of it for witches too. 

This book should not, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered good literature or even good research. It is, however, good fun and a fun read.

In a way, it was an education in the weird, a sort of giant compendium of everything. You have ghosts next to odd bits of history, monsters beside the unexplained, and folklore rubbing up against what is put forward as fact. 

One might open the volume with a particular aim in mind and turn twenty pages to find one’s thoughts on something else entirely. This is where I came up with the idea that *I* could figure out what REALLY happened to Grand Duchess Anastasia. (She died.)

It was much like wandering the library stacks. I suspect that kind of discovery has had more of an effect on my games than I gave it credit for at the time. I am fond of connections: the local ghost story tied to an old family, which in turn is tied to a witch and some strange occurrence out of town. The supernatural does not exist in a vacuum.

The History of Witchcraft by Montague Summers (1956 edition)

Like Robbins, Summers was indispensable to me as a starting point, but he is a very different source, and I found that to my advantage. Put in the hours reading on witchcraft, and you will see the books do not always agree. There are shifts in scholarship or the authors’ own assumptions at play. Where one man writes of literal truth, another may call it superstition or fraud or psychology. 

A researcher has his work cut out for him. As a game designer, however, I welcome it. There is no need for every source to concur, nor for every witch in my games to be of one mind. A demonologist with an old grimoire, a folklorist, a frightened priest, and a witch who took her lessons from her grandmother could all tell you of the same event in four distinct ways. They could be right, or they could be wrong. That notion is central to what I do now, and I can put it down to having read widely divergent takes on the same subject.

In my academic work I typically dislike contradiction. I like looking for the one true answer. My game design work though has taught me to embrace contradictions.

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle

An odd entry, perhaps, but then again maybe not. 

This is not a witchcraft tome in the same vein as the rest; it is children’s literature and theology and science fantasy and cosmic adventure all at once. 

But consider Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which and Mrs. Whatsit. For a child with an obsession for witches there was no way I would not be drawn in. I can still recall the chills I first felt when I read Mrs. Whatsit’s thundering “WWEEE ARRE HHERRE!” 

I know a witch when I see her on the page.

L’Engle’s book put some things into perspective for me regarding distance. The world is stranger and vaster than it seems; two points can be worlds apart yet still touch. Will, memory, and love can get where ordinary travel cannot. Meg is not a witch, but she has power, and she is central to solving the problems of this tale. 

I did not have the vocabulary for it on my first reading. I do these days. And so I am led back to Jackson. That comes later in this essay.

Honorable Mention: The Witch’s Catalog (1976) by Norman Bridwell

This one has to be included. An odd volume, but it planted the seeds for much of my imagination when it comes to witches. Most of all, it did away with the notion of the child-eater; in its pages, the witch is a protector, a protector of children from scary things. There is an image of a witch night light that I can still picture as clearly as day 50 years later. It is witch, well a Bridwell witch, glowing with her hand out. She is keeping a trio of frightened-looking monsters away. The caption reads "scary things don’t go where the witch tells them not to go." That stuck with me. Compare that to the "mission statement" of NIGHT SHIFT. All the classes talk about how they deal with the "weird things," and the witch says, "I am the weird thing."

And it was published in 1976, the year I was six. Six is also the age at which Larina first realizes she is a witch in my games. You see where this is going? A coincidence, I am sure. But where is the fun in that?

Shelf by Shelf, Book by Book

You won’t find "my Witch" in any single tome. I cannot direct you to a chapter and claim that it is the origin of the class or of Larina. It was a more gradual process.

Daniel Cohen provided the secret world. From Jung, I took the archetypes. Lehane taught me that magic should vary in kind and gave me the mythic type. Robbins offered history and its consequences; Strange Stories, Amazing Facts made the connections. Summers was all contradiction. L’Engle supplied the sense of distance and the idea that an impossible chasm between two people is not so impossible after all. And Bridwell was there to make the case that a witch does not have to be a monster.

All of that ended up on the same mental shelf. Then, when D&D arrived, I had somewhere to put them. 

Perhaps that is why I return to the library in my writing. A wizard makes do with a spellbook, a cleric with his holy text.

As for the Witch, give her a library card and let her sort it out on her own.

The Mirror Shard: A Wrinkle Between Worlds

I put this concept out there for #RPGaDAY earlier in the year, though I have a bit more to go before it is finished.

Take Jackson Larina, "Nix," and his counterpart in Carbon Vale, "Creepy." They have found ways to talk to one another. Don’t imagine some grand magical rite or a crystal ball; no spell is required. They are just two teenagers after all, and they know a grand total of maybe five spells combined. 

All they need are two well-worn copies of A Wrinkle in Time. Put a message in one, and it will be in the other when you open it. The books are 220 miles apart and in two completely different universes.

That is the kind of magic that appeals to me.

Things get more complicated when Nix uses the book to warn Creepy about something that is going to happen. In Jackson, Larina's mother, Siân, died. Nix warned Creepy in Carbon Vale.

And in Carbon Vale, Siân lived. 

I have already said there will be a price for that. I don't know what it is yet. But there will be one.

For now, it is the book itself that matters. In choosing the object to bridge the divide between the two Larina Nicholses, I went with something I read as a kid. That doesn't feel accidental.

It feels Jungian, and maybe even a little bit of Bridwell too. 

The idea came to me while developing these two similar but distinct worlds. I knew they had commonalities and I knew they had a shared history. But there was divergence somewhere along the way. Game-wise, they allow me to play in similar worlds with different rules. But they kept informing each other on changes. It was like Jackson was talking to Carbon Vale. Or, as it turns out, Nix was talking to Creepy. In game it was innocent enough. Larina "Nix" was at the library. She saw a copy of "A Wrinkle in Time" sitting in the book return area and had the idea to write a note on  bit of paper "I love this book!" and slip it in. She thought that was a little silly, and went back to take it out. She did but now her note read "I do too!" And the handwriting was the same. The responder even used the same purple ink Larina was fond of. 

I am planning an adventure, "The Best of Both Worlds," that will be dual-stated that brings these two together in one world. But so far, that is planned for the first adventure of a "Season 2" after they defeat the Hollow King, so maybe Summer 1986. No idea what Season 2 is even about yet. 

The Best of Both Worlds, when Creepy met Nix

It should be rather ridiculous, and I am really looking forward to it!

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.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. The Witch, the Cleric, and the Magic-User

 One of the central design ideas behind Advanced Witches & Warlocks is something that, in retrospect, seems obvious to me.

The Witch is not a Magic-User in a black dress. She is also not a Cleric with better eyeliner.

I have joked about that distinction before, but there is a real design issue behind it, one that gets to the heart of what I want the Witch to be in Advanced Witches & Warlocks.

From its very inception, Dungeons & Dragons has had two principal modes of spellcasting at its core. Later editions were more explicit in codifying the divide between these forms of magic, but the separation was always there. A Magic-User wields Arcane power; a Cleric has Divine. The former will study a spell, commit it to book and memory, experiment with it, and come to see magic as something to be grasped by way of knowledge. The latter relies on faith and service, on a connection to powers beyond the mortal realm and the authority they confer.

Even if the outcome is sometimes the same (often the same), these are fundamentally different ways of looking at magic. No one at an AD&D table would confuse the two classes when they cast spells. That is an important distinction, and in my view, the Witch is owed the same respect.

I have been saying it here often enough, but it is worth restating: Witches practice Occult magic.

By nature it is secret and initiatory, often dealing with matters that polite society would rather not acknowledge. In some respects it is like Arcane or Divine magic since witches both believe and study. They make use of books and rituals, of gods and spirits, of herbs and stars and the like, drawing on all the same sort of things a Magic-User or Cleric might. But then again, similarity does not make them the same. 

The Witch has her own way of going about it.

Knowledge, Authority, and Relationship

• A Magic-User looks at magic and wants to understand how it works.
• A Cleric looks toward the Divine and asks what is required.
• A Witch looks at the hidden world and asks how everything is connected.

That last part is increasingly important to how I am designing the class.

I have written before about why Charisma is the Witch's prime attribute. I do not use Charisma here as a measure of physical attractiveness or popularity. For the Witch, Charisma is presence, the ability of the self to affect and interact with others. Often, and more to the point, how do this and not lose oneself.

And "others" is a very broad category.

Other people, certainly, but also spirits, ghosts, ancestors, familiars, demons, gods, the dead, the land, magical places, supernatural powers, and things for which there might not be a convenient entry in the Monster Manual.

A Witch does not simply know that a spirit exists. She has a relationship with it. She might summon or put an end to it, make a bargain, issue a threat, or offer some form of appeasement. Perhaps she is in its debt, or she is privy to the one name it would have left unspoken. For this kind of work, Charisma is essential.

Power for the Witch is a matter of relationships, and even those that are hostile qualify. A curse, a pact, a haunting, or the tie to a familiar are all forms of relationship. The same holds true for her connection to her coven, her Patron, or the ground on which she puts her craft to use.

In this way, Occult magic makes a clear distinction from the Arcane and the Divine. A Magic-User will see an effect replicated so long as he has the right formula; a Cleric can expect a miracle by virtue of his divine authority. The Witch acts because she knows how to deal with what lies behind the effect. At times she may know its wants or its name. 

More to the point, it may know her. That is no small thing. With Occult magic, you are always noticed in return. 

That last bit is important. Occult magic always notices you back.

There is an importance to this at the game table as well. When one considers that Occult magic is founded on relationships, a Witch ought not to come across as any other Magic-User with a distinct set of spells. The nature of her art should impose certain obligations and leave its mark. It is a matter of names and places. Of covens, Patrons, spirits, and familiars. And of encounters that are made more than once. Over the span of a campaign, she can form ties with the supernatural; and while they may prove useful, they can be just as often dangerous, or even both in the same breath.

A list of names is often more useful to the witch than a list of what treasures she has found.

That, more than anything else, is why Charisma is the Witch’s prime attribute. It is not enough to perceive the hidden world or understand it. The Witch must be able to enter into a relationship with it and remain herself when it answers.

More Than a Third Spell List

This is something I want to be very careful and very deliberate about in Advanced Witches & Warlocks.

It would be the easy thing to do from a mechanical standpoint to compile a Witch spell list by culling some spells from the Magic-User and Cleric, throwing in a few curses and calling it a day. But that is philosophically lazy. Occult magic must be more than that.

The reason for drawing a line between Arcane, Divine, and Occult is not to put spells in three separate filing cabinets. Each should be predicated on a different view of reality. With Arcane, you are working with the notion that the universe has patterns to be found and put to use. Divine magic is built on the existence of a supernatural authority and the mortal’s ability to partake of it via faith or service.

Occult magic posits that there are things in reality one can enter into: hidden correspondences and identities, debts and thresholds. The Witch might learn, or she might pray; at times she will bargain. At other times she is doing what her coven has been doing for nine centuries without fully understanding the why of it. Or perhaps it works because a promise is being kept somewhere. All of which puts the Witch in an altogether different position vis-à-vis magic.

A spellbook is for knowledge, a holy text for revelation. A Book of Shadows has both, but you will also find recipes and family secrets in its pages, or warnings and the names of the dead. There may be diagrams lifted from stones long since misplaced, or a fragment of a conversation, or the record of a bargain made. You might come across an instruction to the effect of “do not perform this rite twice in the same place.” To my mind, that is what Witch magic is.

To a wizard this looks slap-dash and like “low magic.” Clerics will call it blasphemy or heresy. A witch will see the true power.

Traditions Are Means to Answers, Not Restrictions

New Witch Traditions is an area I have been putting a good deal of work into of late. One has to consider that if Occult magic is predicated on relationships and a certain way of seeing the world, it follows that there can be no single correct Witch theology. To put it another way, the question “Where does Witch magic come from?” should not have one universal answer; different witches will give you different ones. A Tradition is a means to one such answer. It is also what the answers are grounded in and, even more than that, how the questions are asked.

A Tradition does not merely give a Witch an answer. It teaches her which questions are worth asking. 

Think of it as a worldview and a means of making sense of the hidden world, complete with its own body of teachings and magical vocabulary. It is not to be confused with a coven. A coven is a matter of who one practices alongside; a Tradition speaks to how one comprehends the practice itself. The possibilities that distinction affords are considerable.

Take, for instance, the three I have been developing: the High Order, the Scaled Sisterhood, and the Threefold Goddess Tradition. They are all capable of producing witches, and they all make use of Occult magic, but you will find they can be in radical disagreement as to what magic really is. Or even what a witch is.

The High Order

To an outside observer, the High Order is what one would expect of an Arcane tradition. The witches of the order are students of their craft; they put in the work to investigate everything from magical laws and ancient tongues to the hidden architecture of the cosmos, the planes, ritual structures, and metaphysics. There are some who will find common ground with a Magic-User or Wizard, at least for a time.

Yet the High Order does not see magic as nothing more than a mechanism to be put under a microscope. Magic is too large for that, too sacred. One can approach it with knowledge but never fully account for it. A Magic-User is content to learn the formula for opening a gate between worlds. A Witch of the High Order wants to know what the gate is in the first place. She asks why thresholds have such import, or why some doors are two-way, and others are not. Why a spot becomes a threshold unaided by any hand. Who was the first to cross and what came back after him?

Such questions are no longer about mechanics. Study is indeed part of her life, but it is an initiation into deeper things. Her Book of Shadows is not simply a technical manual; it is a record of encounters. In fact, her education affects how she views reality. I have come to appreciate the notion at the heart of the Tradition: the Witch is sovereign, not a servant.

She might have Patrons or pay her respects to gods. She may take instruction from an Archmage or an Archwitch, or from some supernatural teacher whose name is otherwise unknown. But obedience is not the point. The relationship could be one of rivalry or obligation, mentorship or initiation. But there is a relationship. That is what makes the difference. 

That is where the High Order stops being merely "the scholarly Witch" and becomes something distinctly Occult.

The Scaled Sisterhood

The Scaled Sisterhood approaches the mystery from an entirely different direction. For these witches, dragons are more than monsters, gods, enemies, or powerful creatures. Dragons are magic, and mysteries made flesh.

They are creatures that hoard and sleep and dream; they change the very landscape around them with their presence. Their existence spans mortal generations, so it is not uncommon for a dragon to have a firsthand recollection of what the rest of the world would dismiss as mere myth. It puts a different kind of vocabulary to the Sisterhood’s magic.

The questions they put forward are of a particular sort: Why does a dragon put together a hoard? What is the significance of its blood or of fire that transforms instead of obliterating? When one lives long enough, does memory become a kind of magic? What is it to shed one’s skin in terms of identity or rebirth? And what is left in the dragon’s mind that history has let go of?

Their teachings run deep into the nature of draconic beings and powers. Tiamat and Bahamut are part of the Tradition, but by no means do they define it. One will find other interpretations of what it is to be a dragon, such as Vritraxion, Lóngzihua, Anantanatha, and older mysteries. There is no requirement for such teachings to be in accord with each other. 

I would be disappointed if they were.

You will hear the Sisterhood put forth notions like "The Breath Transforms," "The Scale Remembers," or "The Hoard Reveals." Do not mistake them for simple rules. They are propositions, true mysteries that have been the subject of argument among witches for centuries. A Cleric may see fit to worship a dragon god, or a Magic-User might put a blade to a dragon to understand the mechanics of its breath weapon. The Witch of the Scaled Sisterhood wants to know why the dragon is there in the first place. That is the point of Occult magic.

The Threefold Goddess Tradition

The Threefold Goddess Tradition initially appears to lean much closer toward Divine magic.

It is a theological Tradition after all, and that is made clear in its tenets: the Goddess is at once the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. And yet one cannot say the Maiden is the Mother, or the Mother the Crone, or the Crone the Maiden, even as they are all entirely the Goddess. I would not put in the effort to sort out such a contradiction; it is the theology. In fact, it is best not to try.  The Tradition has a way of regarding mystery as something that need not be simplified to be true.

The Maiden, who is beginning, discovery, courage and movement. The Mother stands for fullness, creation and guardianship. Then there is the Crone with her death-wisdom, prophecy, curses and the preparation for rebirth. These are not so much job descriptions as they are expressions. A goddess will manifest in more than one Face if she chooses, and may well seem to run counter to the system or defy classification altogether. So be it. Once you can put a complete diagram to a mystery, it ceases to be one.

The Threefold Sign makes this plain to see in the interlinked forms of the three Faces, leaving the center to stand for something else: the Mystery of the Goddess.

• What does the Maiden reveal? 
• What does the Mother protect?
• What does the Crone hide?

Consider the difference in approach. A Cleric will worship a goddess and be granted Divine magic on account of it. A Witch of this Tradition might pay homage to the very same deity but in another way. She asks what is being concealed, or what is revealed in this particular manifestation, and why. If the Goddess puts in an appearance that we do not expect, the Witch is there to make sense of it. She is not just taking in doctrine; she is interpreting. 

It is a far different kind of spiritual relationship, and relationship is the operative word.

Three Traditions, One Class

This is where these Traditions help me understand what I want Advanced Witches & Warlocks to accomplish.

• The High Order approaches mystery through knowledge.
• The Scaled Sisterhood approaches mystery through ancient beings, transformation, memory, and living symbols.
• The Threefold Goddess Tradition approaches mystery through sacred contradiction, revelation, and theology.

There is no agreement between them, nor should there be. Occult magic has no need for it; it demands participation instead. What unites these three is that they all put the Witch in a relationship with something concealed. For one of the High Order, this might be Magic itself, while a member of the Scaled Sisterhood could be bound to dragons and the old mysteries they stand for. A follower of the Threefold Goddess relates to the Goddess, whose various Faces are but a fraction of the whole.

These are the things that define a Witch, not some spell list. It is the difference between a Cleric who draws on Divine authority or a Magic-User who relies on understanding. The Witch derives her power from the hidden world. She makes promises and crosses thresholds. She has her obligations and her beliefs. In time, she may even have something on the other side acknowledge her. That is the nature of Occult magic.

And there are still two more Traditions I have that I have not discussed in detail yet. One is the Daughters of Baba Yaga. The other can wait a little longer.

Back in Jackson

This distinction also explains why the Witch works so naturally in Jackson, IL, even though Jackson is a very different project from Advanced Witches & Warlocks.

Larina, Stephanie, and Faye are all witches, but they do not understand witchcraft in the same way. In fact, looking at the three of them through the lens of Advanced Witches & Warlocks helps clarify what I mean by Tradition.

Larina is a witch of the High Order in every sense. 

She is always with a book, studying witchcraft, folklore, the occult, religious theory, and ritual. It is not enough for her to know how something is done; she wants to get to the bottom of why it works, what the symbols are saying, and what lies under the surface of the accepted explanation.

You would be hard-pressed to call her a Magic-User. Larina does not view magic as some mechanism to be put under a microscope and decoded. For her, knowledge is a way of getting closer to the mystery. A text might explain a ritual, but she is more interested in what was really being contacted, or what the author overlooked. Her faith in the Goddess is no more passive than her study habits; she is trying to make sense of a larger, stranger reality, which precludes her from being a Cleric.

When the ghost sees her, and she sees the ghost, the whole question is altered. She will find an authentic word in a poorly written description of a ritual, or spot the real Enochian coming from someone putting on a show on late-night TV. She has a way of pulling at the threads where theology and lived experience meet. That is the mark of the High Order.

Stephanie is another matter altogether. In many ways I would put her in the Scaled Sisterhood, though not out of any interest in dragons. What comes instinctively to her is an understanding of power.

She knows the social hierarchies, the reputations and the influence. She can tell who is in control of a room and who is only pretending to be, who is vulnerable and where one must apply pressure. This is what makes her such an effective leader, even if she doesn’t think of herself in those terms.

A hoard is not always gold. For Stephanie, it can be status, or secrets, or social capital. She has an instinct for the invisible territories and pecking orders of a high school. But there is also the Scaled Sisterhood’s notion that power entails responsibility. When she puts a stop to another cheerleader making fun of Faye, she doesn’t just chide her for cruelty. She redefines the argument entirely.

"We don’t do that. We have to be the best Jackson Public High has. Not the worst."

In invoking duty and belonging, she is using the very structure of things. That is Stephanie. She has no quarrel with the hierarchy; she makes it serve as her protection. Stephanie understands something else dragons know instinctively: possessing power changes the space around you whether you intend it to or not. 

The Scaled Sisterhood studies dragons because dragons embody power in its oldest and most concentrated forms. Stephanie does not need a dragon in front of her to understand the lesson. She already understands what it means to have power and decide what kind of person you are going to be with it.

Then there is Faye. She is a Daughter of Baba Yaga. I have yet to put a lot of detail into that Tradition here, but Faye can help us understand it a little better now.

If Larina is occupied with the hidden world and Stephanie with the way power is structured within it, Faye is immersed in something much older. The Old Magic. The sort that predated anyone’s efforts to file it away in a church or an occult order or some respectable tome.

The Daughters of Baba Yaga may preserve practice. They remember what must be done even after the reason has been forgotten.

Faye was raised by witches of the Blackthorn and Thorne lines who had no inclination to justify themselves to outsiders. They have their ways, their grudges, their recipes and curses and protections, knowledge handed down through the generations without the need for a formal theology. Some things are done out of habit. Others are left alone because one recalls what went wrong the last time around. Faye is well aware of the difference. She might not care for it, and often doesn’t, but the Old Magic runs in her.

It is why Faye can grasp a thing in an instant that would send Larina off to do some research. Larina wants to know the origin of a custom, the mythology behind it. Faye will just say: "Don’t do that." And when asked why? "Because you don’t." It is an answer that would madden Larina, though Faye is usually right. And Larina knows that.

The Daughters of Baba Yaga are meant to stand for a rougher, more elemental side of witchcraft. Folk magic, inherited wisdom from old women who know too much, dangerous bargains and spirits, rules whose source is lost but not the consequences. 

Yet Faye is not a prisoner to it. Her role is in part about what she chooses to hold on to and what she will remake for herself. That is a relationship with tradition in its own right. She is the witch in Jackson that "looks evil, but isn’t," like Moria is "looks innocent, but is evil" and Sylvia is "looks evil, and is evil, and looks better than everyone else while doing it."

Larina looks for the structure. Stephanie sees how power flows through it. Faye is aware that some magic is older than the structures we build to account for it. They are all witches; they all work the Occult, but the hidden world speaks to each of them differently.

That is the point of Traditions in Advanced Witches & Warlocks. Not to lay down which spells a Witch may cast, but to show what she notices, what she deems important, the questions she puts forward when the impossible occurs. What answers is she willing to accept?

And the Witch has to live with those answers.

Note: For RPGaDay2026 next month, Mirror Mondays will be on pause, but I am still working on all my new projects and campaigns. 

Witchcraft Wednesday: The Threefold Goddess Tradition

 With Advanced Witches & Warlocks, I have had in mind a certain goal: to give the witch traditions the weight of actual occult practice. I do not want it to be a matter of "this witch has fire, that one has healing." There is more to it than that; it is about how one comes to terms with magic and divinity, with their coven, the world, and the self.

In pursuit of that, I have been drawn back to an old friend of my witch material, the Triple Goddess.

"Maiden, Mother, Crone" by Ben Honeycut

For some time now the Maiden, Mother and Crone have served as my way of putting the threefold form of the Goddess into words. It is a familiar shorthand that says something essential about the craft. Yet as I put in the work on Advanced Witches & Warlocks, I came to see that this was no longer an idea or conjecture to be just a background notion. It could stand as a tradition in its own right.

Hence The Threefold Goddess Tradition.

It is not to be confused with a neo-Pagan convenience or the simple equation of witches worshipping Diana. Nor is it only a Triple Moon affair, though the moon holds center stage. What I am building is a framework, both magical and theological, by which a witch can make sense of many goddesses and many kinds of magic under one sacred pattern.

So I am going to steal a LOT from the Christian Trinity. Consider the contradiction:

The Goddess is the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone.

And yet the Maiden is not the Mother, nor the Crone the Maiden. All are the Goddess.

There is no problem with that. The point is precisely there. I am perfectly happy with contradictions.

I call it the Threefold Sign. One might be tempted to take the logic of the Shield of the Trinity diagram – where each is God but not the other, and apply it here. And the logic would hold up. But the visual language would be off. This is not Christian theology in a black dress with a moon pendant. It is witchcraft and requires a witch’s symbol.

So we use something on the order of a triquetra, or three circles interlinked. In the overlap of two you will find their mysteries touching; where the three come together is the Mystery of the Goddess herself, beyond any name.

Some covens will inscribe the words Maiden, Mother, Crone in those circles. Others will put the names of goddesses there, or three moons (crescent, full, dark), or perhaps three ravens, three keys, three wells. The symbol is meant to instruct the initiate that while the Goddess is whole, her faces are not to be conflated. The Crone is not simply an aged Mother, nor the Maiden a young one. They are distinct, they are complete, they are divine. They are unique and they are unified. Like I have said before, I like my gods messy.

To treat it as a puzzle is to miss what is happening. It is a mystery for the witch to enter into.

The most usual expression of the tradition, of course, is to honor the Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone. 

One might call the Maiden the start of things. She is the first step and the new moon, the road left untraveled. She is the huntress and the girl in the woods, the rebel and the initiate, the question put to you that no one wishes to hear. There is a danger in her youth; she is not without power but is perilous in her becoming. The Maiden is the threshold and the keeper of the threshold. Through her there is deeper understanding of the beginning. 

The Mother represents fullness. Think of the full moon, the hearth, or the field. She is the queen and the lover, the teacher and the protector, the witch at the coven’s heart. She has the power to create and to bless, yet do not mistake her for being soft. Those who consider the Mother harmless have never been on the receiving end of a mother defending her young.

Then there is the Crone, the ending and the memory. She is the waning and dark moon, the graveyard and the crossroads, the winter and the final spell. She is the truth from which there is no escape. Feared for what she knows and honored for what she remembers, she is the keeper of ghosts and curses and all final wisdom.

In concert they are the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. It is a cosmology I have used for a very long time. Witches do not tend to view death as some sort of reward or punishment; to them it is part of the great turning, along with rest and rebirth. The Crone is not an end to the story so much as the one who readies the soul to start over. This is also the same reason why my witches can't be raised from the dead.

I have found a particular utility in what I term the Lunar Mask. In my campaign notes, there was a moon-priestess who came to see a deeper pattern in the goddesses she revered. She did not forsake her faith, but understood her goddess to be but one aspect of something older and more complete.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks I cannot employ deity names from other published settings, though I have no need to. Our own real-world mythic structure is far superior. So for the Lunar Mask I have settled on:

Diana as the Maiden. The crescent moon and the silver bow. She is the wild wood and the fierce independence of the untamed, the arrow in the dark and the way into the forest.

Selene as the Mother. The luminous presence and the dream-giver. She is the tide of blessing, the lover, the full moon shining down on everything.

Hecate as the Crone. The torch and the key, the ghost road and the witch-night. She is the figure at the crossroads where the living must make their peace with the dead.

This serves as a clean substitute for the triad in my own play and is more broadly useful for the book. It also allows for a clear delineation between the larger tradition and individual covens. One coven may give its honors to Diana, Selene and Hecate; another will have different names for the same Threefold Goddess Tradition.

The Triple Moon Goddess Heresy

I find the notion all the more compelling here.

During a recent campaign discussion, I put forward the concept of a priestess who makes an unsettling discovery: the moon goddesses of her world are not distinct and unconnected powers as she has been taught. Rather, they are three aspects of some deeper lunar enigma.

The temples would call it heresy. The witch calls it revelation. One has to make that distinction. This is no case of a goddess making a thunderous appearance to confirm you are right, nor is it a tidy prophecy. It is a matter of scholarship and risk, of intuition and ritual. The priestess will pore over old songs for matching symbols or spot the same moon-shape in the carving above a long-forgotten door. She hears how a forbidden hymn in one temple is answered by the orthodox prayer of another. She starts to think the line drawn between the goddesses is not so much false as it is incomplete.

That is the sort of heresy I have for my witches. Where a cleric is content to uphold the temple’s version of the truth, a witch wants to know what the temple has left out.

In this way the "Triple Moon Goddess Heresy" can be made to work for the Threefold Goddess Tradition. It is not something every coven must accept, nor does it have to be true in every campaign. But it puts a fine tension on the tradition. For the Threefold Goddess is not simply a matter of old women in the woods with their rites; there is a dangerous theology to it. A witch-priestess might look at three rival temples and tell them they are all correct but have no idea why. That is very much in keeping with a witch.

Beyond the Moon

I am inclined to stick with The Threefold Goddess Tradition as the name precisely because I do not want to confine things to moon goddesses alone.

There really is no better symbol for the witch than the moon. It is the perfect sign in that it can change its shape and yet remain itself; it vanishes and comes back again. It is the ruler of tides, night, magic, madness, and fertility.  The connections are so deep and so ancient I'd be a fool to fight them.

But the Threefold Goddess is a bigger entity than the moon. Other covens will have their own triadic powers to honor her with. A Brigidine coven might see her in poetry, healing and smithcraft, three flames to one fire. Or a Morrígan coven in battle, sovereignty and prophecy, which is to say three ravens and one fate. A Hecatean coven could honor her at the road, the threshold and the grave; a mystery cult as maiden of descent, mother of grain and crone of the underworld. A coven of fates may view her as Clotho the Spinner, Lachesis the Measurer, and Atropos the Cutter. 

They are not the same coven, and they are free to disagree, even to charge one another with misapprehending the Goddess. Again, I have no objection to such contradictions when it comes to divinities. If anything, it gives the tradition an older, more vital feel.

The Daughters of Aradia

This also provides a good home for the Daughters of Aradia, a tradition I have been working on. I had considered them a tradition of their own, and they can still be, but this fits well enough. I have come to the view that they are better suited as a sub-tradition of the Threefold Goddess, or perhaps a coven of some power and mystery. In any case, their take on the threefold pattern is not the same as the Lunar Mask.

Under this arrangement, Diana is the Moon-Mother and wellspring of witchcraft; Aradia the Daughter, the liberator and teacher sent out into the world; Hecate the Crone, holding the night roads and what power is hidden from view. It is a more pointed and politically charged stance for the Daughters of Aradia. They are not simply moon witches but agents of resistance, secrecy and teaching. Their myth holds that mortals were given witchcraft to stand up to tyranny as much as to bless and heal. 

Do they get along with witches of the Lunar Mask of Diana-Celene-Hecate? Some might, others might think their way is right, and the other is a dangerous cult of apostates. Can't wait to have some arguments at my table on this. 

You will not find the quiet feel of a lunar coven of seers here, yet there is no reason both cannot exist under the wider umbrella of the Threefold Goddess Tradition. That is the kind of thing I am after in Advanced Witches & Warlocks. A tradition should be specific enough to give rise to strong covens and rivalries, but broad enough to serve as the basis for many characters and adventures.

Using This in Advanced Witches & Warlocks

For the purposes of the book, I would make the Threefold Goddess Tradition one of the principal ones. Mechanically, its witches are adept at divination, protection, healing, charms, dream work, transformation, curses, and dealing with spirits. There is a synthesis and mystery to their power that you do not get with the rigidity of the High Secret Order, the wildness of faerie ways or the grimness of the Daughters of Baba Yaga.

Their special abilities ought to reflect the threefold nature:

• The Maiden for courage, movement, discovery and warding off fear.
• The Mother for fertility, guardianship, healing and the protection of the coven.
• The Crone for prophecy, spirit speech, death-wisdom and defense against necromancy.

When a witch of this tradition reaches a certain level, she can call on the hidden center of the Threefold Sign. Not as Maiden or Mother or Crone but as the Goddess in her Mystery. It should be a rare and potent thing, bound up with the moon or some rite of initiation. Her highest Occult Power.

It also provides good material for roleplaying. A Threefold witch might be a midwife in one village and a forbidden priestess in the next. She could be put in the position of having to defend herself against accusations of heresy or syncretism, carrying three holy symbols and declining to offer clerics who want clean doctrine any explanation.

That is how I want to set witch religion apart from the clerical sort. Clerics have their temples and orders to serve their gods. Witches come to the divine through bloodlines, signs, dreams, and the mysteries of the coven, things that do not always conform to temple law. Witches are not just clerics with better fashion sense and killer eyeliner.

In the end, the Threefold Goddess is not three, nor is she one in any simple way. She is the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone. The moon is merely the sign by which we have learned to know her.

Three circles. One mystery.

Links

• Gods of the New Game
• Nothing Like The Sun...
• OMG: Greek (and maybe Roman) Mythos, Part 3 Hecate
• One Man's God: Syncretism and the Gods
• One Man's God Special: Syncretism Part 1, The Gods of Faerûn
• Review: N5 Under Illefarn: Bad Moon Rising
• Witchcraft Wednesday: Étaín Moonshadow

Fantasy Fridays: Larina for Advanced Witches & Warlocks

Advanced Witches & Warlocks by Eugene Jaworski

 I have spent the better part of this week talking about my witch character, Larina. Mostly about where she has been and who she has been. Today I want to share the next Larina. A little bit like the cameo of the 12th Doctor in "Day of the Doctor." Is this the same witch as my Dragon #114 Larina or the AD&D 2nd Ed Larina? Yes. And maybe. 

Advanced Witches & Warlocks

I wanted to be much further along on this than I am right now. I have been picking at it for a number of years. In truth, as soon as I finished my Basic Witch book. But OSRIC had not caught on like Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, or later on Old-School Essentials. But I kept at it, testing different ideas. Some of those ended up in other books, others got cut from drafts altogether, but the documents remained. I also had plenty of notes left over from other versions of my witch classes. Things I wrote, but never could get to work the way I wanted them to. Case in point: today's meta-topic. 

Advanced Classes

One of the ideas I introduce in AW&W is that of Advanced Classes. The examples were already there; the Thief-Acrobat, the Hierophant Druid, even the Bard to a degree. These are classes that start with one of the base classes and then move on to a specialization. I mean, I could have called them Specialist classes, but I like the sound of Advanced Classes. AW&W introduces three Advanced classes: the Archwitch, the Witch Priestess, and the Witch Queen. Each offers the witch something different. 

In playtests, it became clear that, with the restrictions I built in, the advanced classes were less powerful than the base class. To remedy this, I made some changes to spells and swapped out expanded spell lists at the cost of occult powers. Though there is the option to choose some occult powers later on, they are usually one of a choice of options. 

Of course, as you have all seen from my posts this week, this is exactly the sort of thing I use Larina for. In-game, and in my own history with her, she starts out as a witch but typically becomes more "faithful" and religious. She isn't just a witch, but a witch priestess in function. Now she can be that in form as well.

"Larina" by Djinn

I dabbled with the idea of making her a 13th-level witch and a 7th-level Witch Priestess. Taking the Witch Priestess levels later on, but in truth the differences were very minor save for choices of occult powers or other powers. The big difference is the choice of spells. Of course that also didn't track with the rules I wrote, but hey, sometimes my rules are not right, and I need to tweak them. In this case, though, my rules will stand. 

In this new book, there are spells common to every witch. There are other spells if the witch takes an advanced class, and there are spells unique to their tradition. So no two witches ever need to be alike in terms of the magic they have. This is less revolutionary and more evolutionary. We will see this with schools of magic and spheres of divine influence in AD&D 2nd edition, and we saw it in the Dragonlance Adventures book for the Schools of High Sorcery in AD&D 1st edition. This is just the logical middle ground between those two design choices. 

Traditions

Presently, the new traditions I am putting into this new book are The Atlantean Tradition, The Daughters of Baba Yaga, The Followers of Aradia, The High Order, and The Scaled Sisterhood. I am considering a sixth, but I want to work on it some more before I do. Five is a better number.

Each of these is considered to be "Higher" witchcraft. While many are depicted as older (Atlantean, Daughters of Baba Yaga, and Followers of Aradia), they set themselves above what they consider to be simple Hedge Witchcraft.

I suppose though that the Followers of Aradia *could* just be another type of Pagan witchcraft. Certainly their roots are there. I am still hashing that one out. Maybe Aradia is just the Witch Queen of the Pagan Tradition and not a Patron herself. 

See. Still work to do.

Larina Nix, Witch Queen of the High Witchcraft Tradition

Larina Nix, Witch Queen of the High Witchcraft Tradition

30th level Human Witch, Lawful Neutral
(7th level witch, 13th level Witch Priestess, 10th level Witch Queen)
Tradition: High Order Witchcraft

Secondary Skill: Translator (+1 language)

S: 10
I: 18
W: 18
D: 11
C: 11
Ch: 18

Paralysis/Poison: 3
Petrify/Polymorph: 3  
Rod, Staff, or Wand: 4
Breath Weapon: 6
Spells: 5

AC: -1 (Bracers AC 1, Amulet of Protection +2)
HP: 66
THAC0: 10

Weapon
Dagger +1
Staff +3, Staff of the Witch Queen

Familiar: White flying cat ("Cotton-ball")

Languages: Common, Lawful Neutral, Supernal, Elven, Draconic, Celestial, Infernal, Dwarven, Undercommon, Goblin

Occult Powers
1st level: Familiar
7th level: Circle of Warding (+2 to spell saves)
13th level (Witch Priestess/Divine Favor): Secret Formula* (one 4th level or below spell is always prepared)

19th level (Witch Queen/Occult Eminence): Witch’s Focus

Witch Priestess Powers
Divine Favor (Healing Hands, Nature’s Wrath, Invoke the Ancients, Occult Insight), Sacred Coven, Charge of the Goddess, Drawing Down the Moon.

Witch Queen Powers
Awesome Presence, Occult Eminence, A Thousand Faces, Timeless Body, Mantle of Sovereignty, Ninth Level Spells (5)

Spells
Cantrips: Clean, Dark Flame, Mend, Occult Mark
First level: Arcane Dart, Charm Person, Command, Faerie Fire, Glamour, Häxen Talons, Moonlight Veil, Sanctuary, Speak with Animals, Unseen Servant, Ceremony (Ritual)
Second level: Augury, Bless, I Told the Crows Your Name, Magic Broom, Mirror of the Self, Misty Step, Penny for Your Thoughts, Share My Pain, Sister to the Dark Ones, Spiritual Hammer (Witch's Hammer), Warding Circle
Third level: Call Lightning, Cauldron Sight, Circle of Rue and Iron, Curse of Withering, Eldritch Enchantment, Fey Bargain, Larina’s Eldritch Caress, Magic Circle, Power Word (Command), Tongues*
Fourth level: Analyze Magic, Coven Gate, Divination, Elemental Armor, Larina's Witchfire, Lunar Winds, Protection from Evil (10' radius), Scrying, Soul Snare
Fifth level: Circle of Sevenfold Flame, Coven's Might, Power Word (Pain), Speak with Hidden Folk, Two Places At Once, Witch Gate, Larina’s Word Beyond the Veil (Ritual)
Sixth level: Aspect of the Crone (Crone of Death), Blessings of The Morrigan (Greater), Guardians of the Watchtowers, Heal, Mind Fortress, Word of Return
Seventh level: Speak with the World Soul, Storm of Crows, Witch's Writ of Binding, Wave of Mutilation
Eighth level: Coven Eternal, Larina's Liberum Libre, Ritual of the Closed Veil (Ritual)
Ninth level: Bind Soul, Command the Coven, Power Word (Kill), Rewrite the Name, Seal the Gate

Theme Song: Night Bird and If Anyone Falls

Larina is a High Order witch. These occult scholars combine Arcane, Divine, and Occult practices into one esoteric philosophy. She has always honored the Triple Moon Goddess, and it was her introduction to the craft, but her "learning" of witchcraft began in a more academic way.  

I debated whether her advanced class should be Witch Priestess or Archwitch, and there are really good arguments for both. Archwitch had the advantage of sounding cool and reflecting her origins as a Magic-user, but in the end I went with Witch Priestess because it better reflected how she had been played over the years. She always stood in for a cleric in many of my games. If given the choice between what is optimal and what sounds better for the character in my head, I will always go with the character-serving option. 

So her start was in the High Order due to her academic bent and the learning she did from books at the magic school library. As she progresses in her witchcraft, she becomes increasingly spiritual and takes up the Witch Priestess advanced class. 

Larina the Witch Queen

I am also giving out some spoilers for spell names like "Circle of Rue and Iron," "Lunar Winds," "Coven Eternal," and a personal favorite, "I Told the Crows Your Name." 

There will also be a few more Secondary Skills. Larina is a translator because of her gift for languages. Alchemist or Herbalist might have been the more meta-game choices, but I am playing her as a character here, not a min-maxing experiment. 

Her stats were what I rolled back then. I had three 18s, something like a 1-in-12,340 chance using the 4d6 drop-the-lowest method, and I knew the dice were telling me to do something special with her. Aside: I wonder what happened to the other characters I rolled up that day? I NEVER rolled up just one; it was always a group. I have the ones from right before (rolled up for my birthday game) and the ones after, including my next attempt at a healer. I wish I had kept those "classmates" or even "near Larinas." Somewhere in that lost stack might have been another character I would still be talking about forty years later. I did find her ex-husband and one of my other drow characters who apparently hated her. They were from my birthday game back in June of 1986, though. 

AD&D Characters from the 1980s and early 1990s

It seems rather fitting to me that Larina, who was featured as a 6-year-old witch girl in my first-ever publication, would go on to be the witch queen of my next *D&D-compatible witch book.

It only took me 40 years.

This Old Dragon Retrospective: The Road to the Witch

 Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch. But not in the way that you might initially think. 

My witch class and Larina went through many design phases and had many influences, as I have talked about here, but the truth of the matter is her genesis and my witch class's evolution owe a lot to the pages of Dragon Magazine, all long before Dragon #114 landed on the store shelves and ultimately my gaming table. 

So for today's "This Old Dragon," I am not going to do a deep dive into one issue, but rather the issues between Dragon #85 and Dragon #114, 1984 to 1986, not just some of my prime AD&D playing years, but when I did the most work on my various classes.

Since this is also a bit of an "In Search Of..." post in tone and flavor, I'll explain why this search is important to me.

Now, keep in mind, I did not read every Dragon when I got them and think, "What can I add to my witch?" I *DID*, however, read each new one and thought, "What can I add to my game?" As it turns out, I found the articles on magic, clerics, and new monsters the most useful. 

Now I did go back when I got my Dragon CD-ROM archive and look specifically for witch-related and witch-adjacent material. But that was in the 2000s. It helped inform my Basic Witch, but a lot of those concepts were already present in my earlier works. It was, however, a wonderful bit of archaeology. 

Class is in Session

To refresh everyone's memory and to set the stage from 1983 to 1987, I was in high school in Jacksonville, IL (no, not Jackson...exactly). During this time, I played in a regular group where I took turns on DM duties, usually about half-and-half. I had been working on a few new classes: The Healer, The Sun-Priest, the Necromancer, and The Witch. I saw each as related classes where clerical and wizard magic were blended. The Healer never really manifested the way I wanted, though I have played a few healers from the Werper family. The Sun-Priest eventually found life as an AD&D 2nd Edition Kit, and, using the rules as written, I have played some Sun-Priest-like characters in both D&D 4th edition and D&D 5th edition. Again, usually members of the Werper family, often sister-and-brother healer-and-Sun-Priest teams. The Necromancer finally found some life as the Profane Necromancer in my Monster Mash book. 

The witch, however, has been my runaway success. When I got the above classes into a playable state, each had what we would call today an iconic character. There was Celene the Healer, younger sister of Johan II the Sun-Priest and Paladin. The Necromancer was Magnus, and, really, the most unassuming of them all was Larina the witch. Of the four, she went on to true immortality here.  I suppose, though, the writing was all there. Luna Mondgott, Johan's and Celene's mother, was played as a witch using Cleric rules, and Johan's wife, Cara, was played as a witch using Illusionist rules. The witch was more or less inevitable for me.  

But the form it took was not. 

So let's look at one factor that shaped the class, and the character: the pages of Dragon Magazine.

Dragon #85 -May 1984

Why am I starting with this one? Good question. This is the first Dragon I ever owned and used regularly. It was in the pages of Dragon that I saw additions and changes to rules. They were not set in stone; they could be changed. I had already created many new monsters by this time, and the idea of new classes seemed not just reasonable, but actually required.

Dragon 85 was where I saw this. This issue gave me the highly valued Cleric Collection. Clerics were my main class of choice, and I played them less like holy men and more like occult scholars. So, less fighting, holy man, and more Van Helsing. 

This is also the first time I saw an ad for the Witch Hunt game.

Dragon #86 - June 1984

Gods of the Suel Pantheon and the Dragon Deities helped me rethink what gods could be in D&D terms. This issue also gave me new familiars to consider and the idea that they were not just a special pet. The article wasn't perfect, but it was a good start. The Ecology of articles were always great because it made me feel like there were "monster naturalists" in the various worlds studying these creatures.

Dragon #87 - July 1984

The big one here is the Ecology of the Dryad. I know this was a catalyst and one of the reasons why Cara and Larina are both redheads; Red hair = magic. The review for Stalking the Night Fantastic and the ads for Chill made me realize that horror in RPGs was a good option.

Dragon #88 - August 1984

This is another important one. We got Wee Jas ("Wee Yas" or "Ouija") as the Witch Queen, Goddess of Witches and magic. Plus she looked great. THAT was Larina's look for a long time. How could I have not fallen in love with her? And she is Lawful Neutral. The same alignment Larina is to this very day. I may not have known all my witches yet, but I knew who their goddess was. 

Dragon #89 - September 1984

Very helpful article in Many Types of Magic since it shows already that many types of magic are already baked into the system; it is just a matter of finding a spot for witchcraft. The ads for the Time-LIFE Enchanted World prominently feature their first book, Witches and Wizards, which gives witches legitimacy in the pages of Dragon. 

Dragon #90 - October 1984

This features the witch-coded Incantatrix. The name is related to Enchantress, and her ability to steal spells gives her a witch-like feel in a world already filled with wizards. I tried Cara out as an incantatrix for a bit, but didn't care for it for her, and she went back to being just an illusionist. Dragon is certainly circling around a witch-shaped center of gravity for me. Speaking of charm, this issue also has the definitive list of creatures that can be subject to the Charm Person spell. 

Dragon #91 - November 1984

We go darker here with a new demon from Gygax and more devils from Greenwood. Certainly material for masters of the occult.

Dragon #92 - December 1984

Double hit again from the Gygax/Greenwood tag team. Gary has more to say about clerics and I am all ears. This helps me figure out things for my clerics and paladins and ultimately my healer and witch classes. On the other end of the magic spectrum, Ed gives us more spells and has the audacity to introduce me to the Witch The Simbul without explaining anything else about her! 

Dragon #93 - January 1985

Real-world witch hunts come to D&D as told in Gary's “Thinking for Yourself.”  In fake worlds, “The Making of a Milieu” gave me strong advice about building a world where witches would live. This article, along with the two organization articles for Top Secret and Gamma World, gave me something I could build for Chill right away. Which in turn gave me more for D&D and witches. 

Dragon #94 - February 1985

The fiction section featuring Baba Yaga is a great addition to my witch mythos. Not a lot ton of information, but enough. The Ranger revisions also show me that classes don't have to be a static concept.  

Dragon #95 - March 1985

This one is useful as a perspective issue. Tolkien, Forgotten Realms material, non-combat experience, magic-item creation, and the religious response to RPGs in the form of DragonRaid, all feed the broader question of what fantasy gaming is allowed to be. The Denis Beauvais art for the fiction, Desperate Acts, gave me a character who was a contemporary of Larina and part of the same adventuring group. 

Dragon #96 - April 1985

I have to say, I never had much use for Dragon’s April Fools issue each year. This one was no exception; there was little in it of interest to me for the witch class, or to Larina in particular. The only thing that stands out is the FASA Star Trek vessel Ginny’s Delight. Which I low-key loved. It may not have a direct bearing on the witch, but then again, my reading and gaming habits were not so easily compartmentalized. Whether it was fantasy, horror, the occult or superheroes, I did not see them as distinct categories. The starship is part of the same milieu as all the other science fiction, and the like I was into back then.

Dragon #97 - May 1985

Another Pages from the Mages article. The implication here is that wizards are dynamic; they research, they record their work. And spell books are treasure, maybe worth more than gold by weight. 

Dragon #98 - June 1985

If nothing else, this issue reminds me that we are not, and certainly were not, bound by books. There is a lot of talk of playing RAW and rules orthodoxy these days; back then, that is not at all how we did it. There was a lot of experimentation. The “Creative Magic Items” article reminds us of this. 

Dragon #99 - July 1985

This issue covers Unearthed Arcana, and how it will change AD&D. This is a sign to me that AD&D IS a game that can evolve. The Neutral point of view helped me figure out how to play a Lawful Neutral witch when, say, a chaotic Neutral one would have been easier.  

Dragon #100 - August 1985

Classes are on Gary's and Frank Mentzer's mind with the Druid-Ranger, which seemingly breaks the rules. Well, if it is good enough for these two, who am I to argue? The Forum reminds me, though, that there are still people who refer to additions and changes to rules as "illegal."  

"City Beyond the Gate" showed me something I already knew in theory, but this was great in practice; that AD&D is not confined to the quasi-medieval world. Now I remember playing this adventure; I remember many of the characters in it: Johan II, Nigel, and I know Larina was not there.  Too bad; she would have loved it. Marvel-phile gave a strong write-up in Dr. Strange and was a good model on what I wanted for my witches. The variant magic system was also quite fascinating. 

Dragon #101 - September 1985

The biggest draw for me here is the Creature Catalog III with some witch-adjacent monsters. "Sorry, Wrong Dimension" from Mike Manolakes covers alternate realities, a feature that would be important to Larina's many futures. 

Dragon #102 - October 1985

I have not done this one for a "This Old Dragon" because I don't have a copy anymore. This one does include some items I considered important, but not in the typical way. Ads for The Complete Spellcaster and Elvira/Chill had my attention. The "Valley of the Earth Mother" was good, but not one I ever ran.

Dragon #103 - November 1985

A look into the future here. Gygax discusses future editions of AD&D and the game's evolution. The article on the saurians catches my interest, but not for the witch. 

Dragon #104 - December 1985

The articles on the thief class are interesting and showcase the class beyond the charts and numbers. I will use similar logic to pull the witch further away from her "magic-user" roots. 

Dragon #105 - January 1986

Our first issue of 1986. I mention here that I recall January 1986 starting out really cold. I recently took these memories to help form a new Jackson, IL adventure featuring my frozen misanthrope, The Refrigerator, but more on that later.  "Seeing is Believing" by Geoffrey Meissner covers different types of invisibility. While this had immediate uses for my witch class, it served my DM and his Riddlemaster/Adept psychic classes even more. The magic in our worlds stopped being a monolith and became multiple expressions. 

Fraser Sherman's "A world of difference: The parallel concept expands gaming horizons" was the right thing at the right time for me, as I was really exploring the idea of parallel worlds at the time. This was the height of DC's "Crisis on Infinite Earths," so we really made extensive use of these ideas. Larina would later be in contact with some of her alternates via her Mirror, or "Shards," as I now call them. 

Dragon #106 - February 1986

Issue #106 matters to me because of "A Plethora of Paladins." That article showed that the paladin need not exist only as a single lawful-good archetype with an evil mirror image. There could be variations. There could be holy warriors shaped by alignment, ethos, patronage, and worldview. For someone building new classes, that is an important lesson. It says the game's iconic roles can be opened up, examined, and rebuilt.

That matters to the witch because the witch was never just meant to be the "distaff magic-user" or the "evil cleric" or the "NPC spellcaster from a fairy tale." She needed her own space and reasons to grow. Sure, I never used a lot of these paladins; I was pretty happy sticking to the Lawful Good ones and my single Anti-Paladin NPC, but I was thrilled to see them. 

"The Laws of Magic" and "Casting Spells for Cash" both feed into the idea of magic as something with rules, culture, economics, and social consequences. That connects nicely to Larina's earliest personality: a witch pretending to be a wizard-in-training. She is not merely learning spells. She is learning how magical society works, what it expects, what it permits, and how to pass inside it while being something slightly different.

Dragon #107 - March 1986

I have not reviewed this one yet, but it is sitting here next to me. I will get into it in detail in a future This Old Dragon, but the artifact from this one is a reference to Laurana from Dragonlance. That matters because Larina’s name almost certainly owes something to Laurana. Did I get the name from this issue? Probably not. It is much more likely that it came from reading the Dragonlance novels themselves years before. But #107 shows the name, or close enough to it, was in the air at exactly the right time.

This is one of those small pieces of character archaeology that I can't prove, but that's too interesting to ignore. Larina was not named Laurana, but the resemblance is obvious, and the timing is right. Somewhere between Dragonlance, Dragon Magazine, and my own teenage need to make the character mine, Laurana became Larina. In truth, Sinéad owes her overall look and part of her history to Laurana. 

Dragon #108 - April 1986

I would not call Issue #108 a major witch issue, though "Cantrips for Clerics" is an entry worth a mention. I had come to view divine and semi-divine spellcasters with more variety in mind than the run-of-the-mill cleric; one could see that same design impulse at work in the healer, the sun priest, the necromancer and the witch.

Clerical cantrips suggested that even minor magic could help define a caster’s identity. There is no need for every effect to be a miracle or some purpose for the dungeon or the battlefield. A few well-placed blessings, charms, and practical bits of magic speak volumes about how a character stands in relation to the supernatural.

This applies to witches as well. It is not enough for a witch to be judged by her top-tier spells; she must have that quality in her minor workings, too. Hedge witches need recognition as well and need to work into my systems of magic.

Dragon #109 - May 1986

While I can easily point to Dragon #114 as a major issue for the witch, issue #109 might have been more influential. While I had a fairly good grasp of the math behind XP per level values, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh’s "Customized Classes" becomes the article where I can test my ideas. It was a pivot point in my home games. I created the witch, healer, and sun-priest XP values that spring. My DM Grenda used it to create his various Riddlemaster/Adept classes. That summer was spent playing and playtesting a lot of new classes. This article showed me not just that I could build a witch, but I could build a good one. 

The Barbarian Cleric by Thomas Kane even gave us a shaman-like class. Great for my ideas on what a primitive witch could be. 

Dragon #110 - June 1986

The Cult of the Dragon was a HUGE influence on the development of cults and heresies in my game. In fact, my very first notes on what would become my Scaled Sisterhood Witchcraft tradition were written down here. Ed also gives us some more background on Elminster himself and some spells.

The Norse Myth articles gave me Angur-boda, Grid, and Gullveig. All described as witches and all of whom have played some role in my writings and development. 

Dragon #111 - July 1986

The magic focusing items grabbed my attention right away, and certainly West Haven owes a little bit to the magical city Malachi. 

If DC was dominated by the Crisis on Infinite Earths at this time, Marvel had their Phoenix Cycle. Phoenix gets a write-up from Roger E. Moore and later on Supergirl gets one as well from Greg Gordon. Why are they important, well both are described as two of the most powerful beings in their respective universes and both to a degree had impacts on my later game writing in particular the work I did on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Dragon #112 - August 1986

I just covered this one last week. The big thing for me was that this was the first issue that let me know there had been a witch class in the pages of Dragon, and I was not creating something that no one would want.  I would need to wait for Dragon #114 to see it, but that was only a couple of months away; it wouldn't be until I picked up Best of The Dragon (Volume 1) that I saw the witch from Issue #5. And it would be even longer before I got the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection and then saw the witches from issues #20 and #43.

By the time Larina appeared in my notebooks in July 1986, most of the ingredients were already there. Dragon #112 showed me the magazine had older witches in its own past, and Dragon #114 gave me the first Dragon witch class I actually had in my hands.

Dragon #113 - September 1986

The last issue before the witch. The cover alone was enough for me since the swordsman reminded me of my Johan III character.  "Clout for Clerics" is a good article for expanding the Cleric's role and giving them some followers.  James Yates gives us lesser clerics and man-at-arms followers for clerics and explains why, out of all the classes, they should have them. I expand on these ideas for covens. 

There is also a great article on Hades. 

Dragon #114 - October 1986

And here she is. I have said so much about this particular issue that I am at a loss as to what more I need to add. So, here are some links to things I have already said, including Larina's involvement.

• This Old Dragon, #114
• Character Creation Challenge: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition
• Skylla: Dragon Magazine #114
• Larina Nix for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Dragon #114 version)

The Larry Elmore art of the "enchantress" became my stand-in art for Larina for decades. While this was the first Dragon Magazine witch I read about (like many others) it was not their first, nor as you can see from above, the first time witchy topics were discussed in the pages of Dragon.

In retrospect, there is an inevitability to Dragon #114. Not because TSR was always going to publish a witch class, but for over two years I had been reading in that direction. The magazine had put before me its share of god-bound clerics and odd familiars, goddesses of magic and spellbooks with a past, not to mention alternate and custom classes, the monsters of folklore, parallel worlds, magical cities and the sort of horror that lingers at the periphery of fantasy. Come October 1986, the pieces were all laid out on the table; I picked them all up and reassembled them into something more Larina-shaped. 

Special Mentions

While these do not fit inside the publishing window for the most part, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up Best of Dragon vol. I, II, and IV.

Best of The Dragon

This first collection reprints the witch from The Dragon #5. Great little bit of archaeology and shows that the witch has been haunting the pages of Dragon (and D&D) since the very beginning.

Best of Dragon, Vol. II

This one gave me the Anti-Paladin and the Healer class. Not to mention two different ninjas. I learned that classes are not a static thing.

Best of Dragon, Vol. IV

This is where I first saw the Death Master NPC class and compared it to my own Necromancer. I liked the Death Master quite a bit, and I actually approached Len Lakofka about it later on. We stayed in regular communication until his death.

Not all of these shaped Larina in particular or even my witches in general, but they did contribute to the environment in which my witches could grow, and Larina could be created and grow. 

That is why I say Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch, but not because one article created her. Dragon gave me permission, examples, arguments, monsters, spellbooks, gods, and the idea that classes could be built, tested, changed, and made personal. Dragon #114 gave me a witch. The previous two years helped make sure that when I finally found her, I already knew what to do with her.