Mirror Mondays: The Witch as a Liminal Figure

 With the Autumn Equinox upon us (tomorrow), we have a period in which day and night are on equal footing for a time. Neither has the upper hand. It is only fitting to discuss witches.

But not the kind you might think of as spellcasters or monsters, nor even those who dabble in the occult. I am talking about them as liminal figures. Those who make their home at the threshold. 

In Jackson, Faye Thorne is the prime example of that. Or should I say, Fiona Voss. So instead of ending with a Mirror Shard, I am going to talk about her throughout this post.

Neither One Thing Nor the Other

You will hear the term liminal bandied about these days to put a name to an empty mall or a hotel corridor, some place that feels oddly in between. The older definition is more expansive. A liminal space is a boundary, a doorway. It is where a thing has ceased to be what it was but has not yet transitioned to what it will be. Dawn and dusk are liminal. So is the shoreline, a crossroads, adolescence, and the Equinox. Witches have always been found there.

They occupy the space at the edge of the village or the forest. Between the living and the dead. Between healer and hexer. And in the case of the Thornes of Jackson, they are exactly what you would expect.

The Witches Outside of Town

Faye Thorne

Faye Thorne lives with her Aunties. Her mother and father died in an accident when she was a baby. To the world, they are the Thorne women, living well away from the schools and the respectable parts of town. Out past the neighborhoods where the road narrows, and the trees crowd in. You could hardly do better if you were looking up "stereotypical witch’s house" in the dictionary. 

Of course, "Thorne" is a ruse. The authies are, in reality, the Blackthorne Hags.

And the Blackthorne Hags have been at work on Faye. Not in the way one might imagine; they did not haul her into a circle to make a monster of her overnight. They have done something far worse by selling off her soul in small increments. A little of her soul here and there, through small compromises and bargains. The kind of losses that do not seem to matter until you look back and see what has been taken. Faye herself barely noticed until she did, but then so much of her was already gone.

It has left its mark. Her hair was originally black; now it is stark white. To the Blackthornes, she is the Thorn Child, the dangerous element among the pretty things. Prepared to become one of them. That is the intention anyway.

The Thorn Child

I really like the image of it. The sharp thing concealed under the beauty of a flower. But there is more to it. A thorn is part of the plant. It belongs.

Faye is being made to understand that the Blackthornes are her family, that their nature and magic are her own. That to join them is not so much a choice as the next logical step. It is how she will grow up. She is in a liminal space of her own, or more to the point, theirs. She is still a girl, still human. But something is being eroded, and something else is being put in its stead. She is not a hag yet, but she is no longer beyond their reach. There is a particular danger in a threshold when another is the one forcing you into it or over it.

Stephanie and Larina

Here is where you have to consider Stephanie and Larina.

They are not going to "fix" Faye by telling her who she ought to be. One could argue that would be no different from the Blackthornes' methods. No, they help her out of it. They show her there is an option she had not considered and, in doing so, allow her to take back what the Aunties have been chipping away at.

Choice. 

I find that of more value than any spell in their repertoire. The true measure of victory has nothing to do with vanquishing the Blackthorne hags; it is Faye making the decision that she is not theirs. In time she will do something else entirely: she will take back her original name.

But there is a reason that in High School Faye is always in the middle of Larina and Stephanie. They protect her until she can choose.

Stephanie, Faye, and Larina

Fiona Voss

When Faye Thorne later becomes (or reclaims) Fiona Voss, do not mistake it for a disguise or an alias provided by someone else. It is reclamation. "Thorne" was put on her by the women set on turning her into something else, as was the Blackthorne destiny they had in mind for her. Fiona Voss is hers.

Of course, it does not undo what has been done. Her hair will not go from white to black, and the things the Blackthornes have taken are not going to regrow simply because she has made her escape. There are marks left by the threshold, and that is as it should be. We are fond of our transformation tales where one crosses over and is made new, but actual change is a messier business. You may escape, but you will not be exactly the same as before. Those bits of her soul are still gone. Fiona has Faye with her and the Thorn Child too, but she will not let the Blackthornes put a meaning on either.

But Faye, and then later Fiona, discovers that "gone" doesn't always mean "gone forever."

When she joins the coven with her childhood friend Stephanie and new girl Larina, she sees something. Three long black hairs where there had been only one before.

Maybe that is the real gift from Stephanie and Larina to Faye/Fiona. Not just choice, but the room to recognize that she has a choice. 

I don't need to speculate what would have happened to Faye if she had never met Larina or reconnected with Stephanie. I have my Carbon Vale setting to explore that if I wish. But I also have Yog where Faye is the Thorne Witch. She is what happens to Faye if her aunties got what they wanted. She dies the same night as the Ash Witch. In fact, she dies first. I know from these two examples that life for a soulless Faye is not a kind one to her. And the worst part? She is too far gone to even know that it could have been better. 

Witches and Boundaries

Folklore puts witches at the boundaries for good reason. The rules are less certain there. The forest is not the village, the night is not the day. The crossroads are both the roads, and neither. Yet they touch. That is the witch’s domain.

There is a difference, however, between standing at the boundary and being consumed by it. The Blackthornes know how to exploit a line, to turn one thing into another. Faye has a steeper lesson to learn: how to remain at the threshold and not let anyone else determine what she is to become. 

High School Is a Liminal Place

Faye is well suited to this for another reason: high school is a liminal environment. At that age, one is neither child nor adult, just in the process of becoming. And everyone is being told what they are by the whole apparatus of parents, coaches, cliques, boyfriends/girlfriends, churches, and social systems.

You are the jock, the nerd, the horse girl, the good girl, or the bad one. The freak. The witch. The monster. High school abounds with people eager to put a label on you. What Faye faces is the supernatural extreme of that. Her Aunties are not content to tell her what she is; they make it so, unless she puts a stop to them.

I have discussed this before: how the high school years are a perfect metaphor for dealing with the supernatural. OR is that the supernatural is the perfect metaphor for high school years and adolescence? 

The Witch in the Doorway

I am reminded of a certain picture of the witch (but could not find it for the life of me; I might be misremembering). She is in a doorway, with one world behind her and another ahead, belonging to neither and therefore able to see both. It is a position of power, if not also of some fear.

The Blackthorne hags have put themselves apart from ordinary life, living beyond the last streetlight like the dangerous sort of woman from old stories that children are steered clear of. Near the "far unlit unknown," as the great bards have told us. 

Fiona is of a different order. She will cross the line and return. That is the distinction between the hag and the witch: the hag wants to have you swallowed by the threshold, while the witch knows the way home.

The Equinox

Which is why I think of the Autumn Equinox. For a time light and dark are in balance as summer gives way to autumn and the world is in a state of flux. Then the balance is broken. Not a tragedy in itself. Change is not loss, and getting older does not mean you have to give in to whoever says they know what you should be.

Faye Thorne was at that boundary, and the Blackthornes had a word for what lay on the other side: the Thorn Child. But with Larina and Stephanie to point the way, she found she could pick a different course. And a different name. Fiona Voss.

Witchcraft is a threshold, as is adolescence. The peril is not in standing between worlds but in allowing another to choose your side for you. The choice, though, must be made. Unlike that witch of my memory, or my imagining (I have mentioned how funny memory is), you can't stand in a doorway forever. To quote the great bards again, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." 

The equinox comes. But so does winter right after that. "Changes are not permanent. But change is."

And standing there is the witch.

He’s Everybody’s Problem Now: The Refrigerator Goes Creative Commons

Dr. Andreas Gelé by Eugene Jaworski

 Back in 2014, I had some ideas for a superhero game. I needed a bad guy, something that would make the disparate group of supers I had want to work together for a common goal. That bad guy was the misanthropic mad scientist known as the Refrigerator. Named for the obvious cold-based reasons, but also from Gail Simone's 1999 landmark essay "Women in Refrigerators." 

While the game never went as far as I wanted, The Refrigerator lived on and found his way into other games of mine as a semi-recurring bad guy. I say "semi" since he usually never appeared in the same game or campaign twice, but over many games and many campaigns. It turns out his particular flavor of evil is useful in a lot of places. 

The Refrigerator began life with enough psychosexual baggage to make Freud sit up in his grave. His earliest incarnation was much more specifically obsessed with preserving beautiful women. That remains a perfectly valid version of him, but for this open incarnation I wanted to get at the larger idea underneath it: Andreas Gelé cannot tolerate impermanence.

He is not so much an admirer of beauty as he is someone who hates age, change, and decay.

Since he has proved useful in my games (and to some people I have lent him to), I thought, why not make the lending formal? Or, more to the point, give him away.

Background

Dr. Andreas Gelé was born into extraordinary wealth, privilege, but not love. His father was a powerful industrialist who believed anything worth having could be bought, owned, and controlled. His mother was a celebrated actress whose face appeared on theater posters, magazine covers, photographs, and advertisements.

As a child, Andreas grew up surrounded by images of his mother. In those images, she was always young. Always beautiful. Always smiling. Frozen forever at the moment the camera captured her.

The woman herself, however, changed. She aged. As she aged she became bitter and cruel. 

The difference fascinated Andreas. Later, it horrified him.

Gelé became a physician and researcher specializing in cryonics, hypothermic medicine, suspended animation, and the preservation of living tissue. He possessed a brilliant scientific mind, enormous financial resources, and almost no ethical restraint.

The first of his experiments were a failure. Tissue would die, cells would rupture. One could freeze an animal, perhaps, but there was no safe way to bring it back.

Yet Gelé was not one to give up.

In time he put to rest the suggestion held by others that what he was doing was impossible. For his first human trial he chose his father. How much of a volunteer the elder Gelé was, or whether he was made use of or even misled, is a matter of debate. In any case, he did not last long once revived.

His mother was next. He had her preserved, and in his view the success of it was proof enough. It meant decay could be vanquished, beauty could persist, and time itself brought to a halt. Or, at least, a very slow crawl.

After that, Andreas Gelé no longer saw death or aging as anything natural; they were technical issues to be resolved. Worse, he began to regard anything exceptional as something that should be preserved: youth, talent, genius, rare biology, or an extraordinary feature or trait. If it was at risk of being lost, it had his full attention.

Andreas Gelé does not consider himself a killer or a base murderer. 

He instead sees himself as a curator. One who collects and saves.

The ones he selects are specimens of things the world is too negligent to look after, so he preserves them with or without their consent.

Such work has run through most of the vast fortune he inherited. To fund it all, he has resorted to theft and extortion, to illegal experimentation and criminal machinations of ever greater complexity. His cryogenic apparatus has been made portable and weaponized to freeze people, objects, and entire environments as required.

Gelé himself has even repeatedly entered suspended animation.

On some level it is for an experiment; at other times he is making an escape. There are occasions when he just feels the present age has nothing left to give him and makes his choice accordingly.

One can never be sure when or where Dr. Andreas Gelé will appear. He might sleep through decades, let civilizations come and go, allow technology to progress and people to put him out of mind. And then, somewhere, an old cryogenic chamber will start to thaw. The Refrigerator is back.

His outlook is as it ever was: all things beautiful die, the extraordinary vanishes, life itself decays. 

Unless one takes the trouble to preserve it.

Appearance

Dr. Andreas Gelé is a tall, thin, pale man of indeterminate middle age. He is not physically imposing. His frame is narrow, his features sharp, and his posture tends toward the rigid precision of someone who dislikes unnecessary movement.

His hair is dark, usually worn neatly combed back, though some versions of Gelé show premature gray or white at the temples. His face is handsome only in a severe, bloodless way. He rarely smiles warmly. When he does smile, it usually means he has just encountered something he finds scientifically interesting.

Gelé dresses with deliberate formality. Depending on the era, this might mean a tailored European suit, a physician’s coat, an old-fashioned evening jacket, or specialized protective clothing of his own design. Even when working in a laboratory or committing a crime, he prefers to look like a doctor or gentleman rather than a conventional costumed villain.

Cold follows him.

His clothing may be dusted with frost. His breath may be visible even indoors. Glass fogs or freezes near his equipment. His gloves, goggles, insulated coats, and other protective gear often resemble medical or industrial equipment more than superhero technology.

The Refrigerator’s most recognizable piece of equipment is a portable cryogenic weapon. Its exact design varies widely. It may resemble a bulky retro-scientific freeze gun, an elegant pistol connected to coolant tanks, a brass-and-glass apparatus from an earlier age, or technology so advanced that its function is barely visible.

Gelé himself should always seem slightly out of his proper time.

He may dress too formally for the present day, use outdated expressions, carry technology decades ahead of everyone around him, or combine obsolete machinery with impossible scientific breakthroughs. Repeated periods of suspended animation have left him disconnected from ordinary history.

His appearance can change from one incarnation to another.

He may be young or old, scarred by failed cryogenic experiments, physically altered by repeated freezing, or almost unnaturally well-preserved. His ethnicity, nationality, clothing, technology, and even gender may be reinterpreted freely.

Essentially, Dr. Andreas Gelé is a person who has spent too much time among things that do not age.

He should look preserved rather than alive.

So now I am releasing him into the Public Domain under the Creative Commons License 4.0, CC BY-SA

What You Can Do With Him 

Now that you have him, then what?  You can…

• Write stories about him.
• Give him game statistics.
• Put him in your RPG, comic, novel, podcast, video game, or movie.
• Change his origin.
• Change his powers.
• Change his identity.
• Make him a villain, hero, victim, monster, or something else entirely.
• Sell what you create

You may also create new versions of The Refrigerator and place your own original material under whatever copyright or license terms you choose.

Your version belongs to you to the extent that you add something original to him. You do not gain exclusive ownership over The Refrigerator himself, and neither does anyone else.

So, for example, if you create a version of The Refrigerator using the 3e SRD and Open Gaming License. That particular expression of his abilities (class, level, spells, powers) will fall under the OGL, but his background is still CC 4.0, BY-SA. 

NOTE: This only extends to the Character. If you write a story, blog, or game that features him then you retain the rights to your own intellectual property. 

Use him. Change him. Rewrite him. Redeem him. Kill him. Bring him back. Put him in the 1930s, the present day, the far future, another dimension, your superhero campaign, your horror novel, your comic, or whatever strange thing you are working on.

You may use him commercially. You may create derivative versions. You may change his history, appearance, powers, personality, gender, motives, or anything else.

• You do not need my permission.
• You do not need to credit me. (CC 4.0 BY-SA says you do, but I am not going to enforce it.)
• You do not need to tell me. I would love it if you did, though.

Because I plan to maintain a page called "Sightings of The Refrigerator," linking to versions of Dr. Gelé that turn up elsewhere in the wild.

There will be no official continuity. Your Refrigerator is as valid as anyone else’s.

I am not lending him out. I am letting him go.

He’s everybody's problem now.

Good luck.

Release

Dr. Andreas Gelé, also known as The Refrigerator, is now released under Creative Commons License 4.0, CC BY-SA.

This CC 4.0 dedication applies to the character Dr. Andreas Gelé, also known as The Refrigerator, and to the original character material presented in this post, including his background, personality, appearance, motivations, concepts, and fictional history as described here.

To the extent permitted by law, Timothy S. Brannan has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights that he holds in the CC character material identified above.

See the CC 4.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/#licenses-40

It does not apply to game rules, statistics, mechanics, terminology, settings, characters, trademarks, artwork, logos, or other material owned by third parties that may have appeared in earlier versions or adaptations of The Refrigerator.

Earlier game-system write-ups remain subject to whatever rights apply to those individual works and systems.

Art

The attached art was created by Eugene Jaworski and is owned by me (“Timothy S. Brannan”). It is released under the Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license with proper attribution.

You may use this art with your creations with the following guidelines.

• The Artist’s name (“Eugene Jaworski”) must appear with any work where the art is used. 
• You are allowed to sell your creations of The Refrigerator, but this art cannot be sold independently. 
• You are allowed to create your own art of The Refrigerator and use that art as you like. 

So let me know how he does in your hands.

Links (Sightings of The Refrigerator)

Note: These pages are not covered under the Creative Commons Licenses.

• Origin Post (Superbabes)
• Amazing Adventures
• Hollow Earth Expedition/Ubiquity
• Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate Edition
• Vigilante City
• DC Heroes
• NIGHT SHIFT's Jackson, IL setting

Tales of Jackson: In Cold Blood

 It is February 1986 in Jackson, IL, and Dr. Andreas Gelé is visiting both Beecher and MacAlister colleges to give lectures on the exciting field of cryonics and its use in surgery.

The town is unseasonably cold, even for February, and the townsfolk are worried that they are in for a repeat of the Winter of 1985.

February 14th, Friday night, sometime after the school dance, Valerie Beaumont leaves the school, walks to her car, and is not noticed missing until the morning of Monday the 17th, when the police are alerted that her car was still in the lot. Her keys, purse, and most importantly, her coat are still in the car. Police suspect foul play, but the crime scene is already overrun with students coming to school. 

What the police record, but barely comment on, is that her sword is in the back seat of her 1983 Chevy Citation.  The characters know that Val would walk coatless and barefoot in the Illinois snow, but she would never, ever leave that sword behind.

The next two days, both Sylvia Velasco (2/19/86) and Renee Sylvi Jäneläinen (2/20/86) went missing. 

The police interview everyone. Valerie did not have a boyfriend; neither did Renee. If Sylvia does, no one seems to know who he is. It is also 1986; they are not asking about other options. 

One thing is certain. Someone is hunting magical women. 

I also wanted an adventure where Candy and Denise were NOT the monster bait for once. Though my players did miss them.

--

Cold Blood is the next adventure I played for Jackson, taking place in February of 1986. It features the NIGHT SHIFT debut of my frozen little misanthrope Dr. Andreas Gelé, aka the Refrigerator. I had to change his usual raison d’être here, since it didn't really fit Jackson's horror vibe. Oh, his normal modus operandi is horrific enough; I just needed something closer to Jackson. So he is not collecting women and freezing them to preserve their beauty; he is instead collecting and freezing witches to understand their magic and, more importantly, their ability to age more slowly. 

It's a well-known trope that witches don't age like normal humans. This is true in many games and media featuring witches. And it is true here as well. The witch characters in the game just didn't know this yet. They learn about it when they uncover Gelé's notes. Not just notes, worked-up profiles on all the witch characters, including their suspected ages (he thinks they are older than they are and 'pretending' to be teens). These profiles are terrifying in their clinical detachment and their dehumanizing element. Witches are not people to him. They are things, and he can extract their essence to prolong his own life. He grabs Valerie, thinking she is a witch, knowing only that she has some magic and that he has evidence she is much older than she appears. Both of which are true, but he does not suspect she is immortal. Since she is not responding to his treatments as expected (she is not a witch, really), he freezes her solid to experiment on her later. This would kill a normal human. For Valerie, it just pisses her off. 

He goes after Sylvia and Renee next, assuming that as outsiders (an immigrant distrusted by the community and a foreign exchange student), they would not be missed.

This is the first time the witch characters in the game have learned this. They know Valerie is immortal. But other than that, they know nothing else. As my playtest characters, Stephanie knows that she has a grandmother close to 100 (she is actually much older), and Faye's "aunties" are really Urban Hags. Larina's own mother is gone, and her father only has the tiniest of magic (I have him making sparks with his hand at a later point). So none of my playtest witch players or characters know. 

Sylvia knows. Because, of course, she does. And it is also the sort of knowledge she wouldn't share unless she was given something for it. Renee knows. But she feels it is not her place to say anything. She is the quiet one, but Renee is also the one who is missed.

This brings in my other layer. 

Roderick Morgan, the psychic, knows she is gone. 

Morgan: "Where’s Renee?"
Larina: "What?"
Morgan: "Renee Jäneläinen. Where is she?"
Larina: "Why would I know?"
Morgan: "Because Valerie is missing. Sylvia is missing. Now Renee is gone. And every time this town starts eating people, there are witches standing near the teeth."

Morgan doesn't like witches. But not because he is a misogynistic jerk, but because witches are "untidy"; they are too chaotic, and he thinks their psychic baggage causes half the problems in town. He is not entirely wrong. Every time someone uses magic, it is like ringing a dinner bell for the supernatural elements in town. BUT some of the players were under the impression that Morgan hates witches and, by extension, women. I mean, he is an arrogant prick sometimes, but that is too far. I wanted to show that he is absolutely NOT Andreas Gelé, but he can see the road Gelé is on from where he is standing.

Faye: "Are you keeping tabs on us, Morgan?"
Morgan: "Don’t flatter yourself. I keep tabs on all potential threats."
Stephanie (tersely): "Renee isn’t a threat."
Morgan: "No. (quieter) She isn't."

I said before that Morgan and Renee are based on two old AD&D characters that have an uneasy history, Morgan Highstar and Rhiannon. At that time I didn't know what their reactions were going to be in their Jackson versions. Then it became obvious. Morgan likes Renee. At the end of this adventure, he should be a better person. Maybe not by much, but his classification of the witches in town is a little too close to Gelé's notes, and that should bother him. It has changed how I played him afterward. 

How Does it End?

At the end of the adventure, the witches and Morgan are standing together. My not-so-subtle message here? Together they are stronger, and that is where the magic is, not in a blood or tissue sample.

So, here is the problem I was having with my adventure. I have Gelé here. He has kidnapped Valerie, Sylvia, and Renee. In my game, they were rescued by Morgan, Larina, Stephanie, and Faye. Pretty much every bit of heavy firepower I have in this game. And Larina, at this point in her life, is pretty well known for her very poor anger management skills. She wanted to burn him alive at his first "Ah, Fräulein Nichols." How do I give the characters and the players a satisfactory ending and STILL make it so The Refrigerator could come back? 

Well, as it turns out, I gave myself a "Rule of Two" roll that his machines would fail. I rolled a "1." A success that, in this case, is also a failure. The machines begin to blow up with Gelé melting before their eyes. Everyone got out, and I had Val toss out a 'See you in Hell, Andreas.' 

So, just like his horror godfather, Dr. Phibes, Dr. Andreas Gelé might return.

Presently, I don't have any plans to bring him back to Jackson, but he might appear in other NIGHT SHIFT games. 

Dr. Andreas Gelé by Eugene Jaworski

Dr. Andreas Gelé

5th level Inventor, Human Male

Background: Scholar

Base Abilities

Strength: 11 (+0)
Agility: 13 (+1) 
Toughness: 14 (+1) n
Intelligence: 18 (+3) A
Wits: 16 (+2) n
Persona: 10 (+0) 

Vit: 25 (1d6)
DV: 8
Fate Points: 1d8

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +3/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +2
Melee bonus: +0  Ranged bonus: +0

Languages: English, German, French
Skills: Medicine, Cyronics, Engineering

Saves: +4 to Intelligence and Wits saves. +1 to Toughness.

Inventions
Freeze Ray
Effects (1st-3rd level)
- Chill Ray
- Hold Person
- Sleep
- Slow

Effects (4th-6th level)
- Control Temperature
- Finger of Death
- Wall of Ice

Effects (7th-9th level)
- Destroy Life

Cryochamber
Effects (1st-3rd level)
- Hold Person

Effects (7th-9th level)
- Sleeping Village

Heroic Touchstones
Level 1: +1 to Toughness saves.
Level 2: +1 to hit with unique attack mode (Chill Ray gun)

Hair: Black with Gray streaks
Eyes: Blue
Height: 6'0"

Archetype: Science Nerd / Evil inventor
Quote: "Ah, you see Fräulein, only cold logic can prevail here."
Quirks: Arrogant and thinks he is smarter than everyone in the room. He is usually right about that. 
Theme song: Cold as Ice - Foreigner

And because I have not posted him yet and to show the similarities between these two. 

"Just Mogan."

Roderick Morgan

4th level Psychic, Human Male
Student at St. Michael's Catholic Academy and High School

Background: Nerd

Base Abilities

Strength: 14 (+1)
Agility: 14 (+1) 
Toughness: 10 (+0) 
Intelligence: 18 (+3) A
Wits: 16 (+2) n
Persona: 16 (+2) n

Vit: 20 (1d6)
DV: 8
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +3/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +2
Melee bonus: +0  Ranged bonus: +0

Languages: English, Latin
Skills: Computers, Writing 

Saves: +4 to Persona saves, +1 to Wits saves

Psychic Abilities
Danger Sense, Supernatural Attacks, Supernatural Power

Psychic Powers
Precognition 4 (Supernatural)
ESP 4
Biofeedback 1

Heroic Touchstones
Level 1: +1 to Wits saves
Level 2: Pick Locks skill (35%)

Hair: Black
Eyes: Blue
Height: 6'0"

Archetype: Student 
Quote: "Witches are messy. They are untidy and frankly get on my nerves."
Quirks: Arrogant. Never uses his first name; he prefers to go by "Morgan." 
Theme song: Tom Sawyer - Rush

Morgan isn't quite Andreas Gelé, but he can see the path from where he is standing. The thing that makes Morgan, ultimately, a good person is he chooses not to take that path. Oh, he can still be an asshole, but he's not an evil asshole.

I also had pulled out my copy of Beyond the Supernatural 1st Ed since I knew I was going to be stating him up eventually. Not done with his BtS sheet yet.

Night Shift^® is a registered trademark of Elf Lair, LLC.

The Artemis Club

 My wife and I have been paying for PBS Passport. It's been fantastic, really. We have been watching a lot of Masterpiece Mystery, which I have always loved (back when it was just "Mystery!"). We watched all the seasons of "Miss Scarlet and The Duke," now just "Miss Scarlet." It was great, about a woman detective (whose father was played by Tim Downie, who also played Gale Dekarios in Baldur's Gate 3) set in 1882 and the issues she faced. 

The fun thing about Masterpiece Mystery is that it has all these shows about mysteries and murders in England. I speculated that there are more murders on PBS than in real England.

We also watched the very good "The Law According to Lidia Poët" and the enjoyable "Enola Holmes." Both on Netflix. Though I will admit the caliber of the shows on PBS is much higher in terms of writing, even if the Netflix shows have bigger budgets.

All three have strong women leads as primary investigators. They all take place at roughly the same time as well: 1882 for Miss Scarlet, 1883 for Lidia Poët, and 1884 for Enola Holmes. Given my love of the Victorian era, I could not help but enjoy these shows and wonder if there was something I could use here.

The idea was one I mulled over and sat on for a while.  

I spent some time with SCP and thinking about how I could adapt my ideas for A.R.T.E.M.I.S. as well as an occult investigative organization.  I mean, I really like it. The ideas are not really ready for publication here yet. I am still cooking them...and then I got a little sidetracked. 

While writing, I was wondering about the origin of A.R.T.E.M.I.S. When and where it began. Who started it and why. They are some good ideas. But they don't really fit with what I really wanted A.R.T.E.M.I.S. to be. They do work great for The Artemis Club.

These new ideas began while I was recently re-reading some of my old Ghosts of Albion material. I began thinking, what if A.R.T.E.M.I.S. began as a criminal investigation club in the Victorian era? Certainly has some value to it. This gives me a chance to work it from both ends. I had some ideas I like, but they don't really fit well with the modern A.R.T.E.M.I.S.  

The Artemis Club

The Artemis Club began not as an investigation club, but as a "reading club" for young women associated with Oxford University. 

They began meeting informally in the Oriel College Library, often at hours when their presence would attract the least attention. They discussed history, philosophy, literature, science, antiquities, folklore, and current events. Mysteries of all sorts, however, grabbed their attention the most.

Because they were often seen moving quietly through the library stacks and galleries, the women were jokingly called "The Ghosts of the Oriel." The name began as a mockery but was quickly adopted by the women themselves. Though, feeling pressure from the University, the women moved out. 

Aurora Evelyn Ashcombe, better known as Lady Ashcombe, was young, rich, intelligent, and married to a considerably older husband. Lord Ashcombe had little interest in how his wife spent her time or his money, provided her interests remained respectable and she stayed away from younger men. She obliged him by giving him his heir and only keeping the company of other women.

Aurora pays for the new meeting place and suggests the new name as an homage to the Huntress and Protector of Women.  The club members, with renewed dedication, refocused on solving all sorts of mysteries. First, as an academic exercise, then as time went on, the club began hosting what became known as consulting detectives, but for female detectives. Many focused on completely mundane sorts of crimes: missing people, affairs, dishonest staff. A few cover the more complex crimes, like murder. And very few consult on crimes of a paranormal and supernatural nature. These are the sorts that Aurora herself is most interested in, and ones she secretly funds more than the others.

From the 1840s onward, the Artemis Club investigated all sorts of crimes.

The Club eventually developed a simple investigative philosophy:

Observe first. Explain afterward.

A second maxim, usually attributed to one of the original Ghosts of the Oriel, became equally important:

Dismiss nothing merely because it is impossible.

This did not mean the Club believed every tale of ghosts or monsters. Quite the opposite. Artemis investigators became notorious for exposing fraudulent mediums, false hauntings, forged antiquities, staged séances, and criminals who used superstition to frighten their victims.

For this reason, the Club's supernatural case files were not labeled "Ghosts," "Demons," or "Magic."

They were simply marked: UNRESOLVED

Members of the Artemis Club never wore uniforms or carried official credentials, but many wore a small silver brooch showing a crescent moon crossed by an arrow. It was not meant to identify them publicly. Rather, it was a quiet sign between members that help, discretion, and perhaps a warm cup of tea were close at hand.

Throughout the Victorian era, the Artemis Club quietly solved cases that baffled the preeminent and male minds of the time. By the 1880s, they had members throughout England and had begun a chapter in St. Andrews, Scotland.

 But it was not to last.

The 20th Century

The end of the Victorian era and the dawn of the 20th century initially looked like a new age for the Artemis Club. Women were entering universities in greater numbers, taking professional positions, publishing under their own names, and gaining access to institutions that had once excluded them. In some ways, the world was finally beginning to resemble the one the Club's founders had imagined.

Ironically, that success weakened the Club.

The Artemis Club had been born because intelligent women had nowhere else to go. By the early 20th Century, some of those women now had universities, laboratories, newspapers, hospitals, political organizations, and professional societies of their own. The Club remained respected, but it was no longer as necessary as it had once been.

Even in her 90s, Aurora Ashcombe remained an active participant and an imposing presence in Club affairs. She represented a direct link to the earliest days of the Ghosts of the Oriel, but after her death the Club lost more than one of its founders. It lost its greatest patron.

The Ashcombe fortune had supported the Club for decades, but no fortune is endless, particularly once divided between heirs who did not share Aurora's interests. The Club continued, but with less money, fewer staff, and increasing difficulty maintaining its London house and enormous archive.

Membership numbers start to fall. The First World War was a further setback. A good many of the members put in their time as nurses, physicians, clerks, and intelligence workers, some as volunteers or translators. Some did not come back at all; others were killed. And for those who remained, the war put a different complexion on the kind of mystery one would trouble to solve. After the trenches and poison gas, after the mass graves and the millions of dead, stories of strange disappearances and ghosts had a way of seeming quaint.

There was a period when spiritualism made an appeal. Bereaved families were only too eager to think they could speak with the departed, and Club members found themselves looking into mediums and séances, even claims of messages from soldiers who had fallen. Most of it was a sham. In some instances, it was not.

The Artemis Club of the interwar years was a more closed and older organization than its Victorian predecessor. They still took on cases, but they were less of an academic exercise and more likely to involve fraud, blackmail, and political extremism than the cases that defied easy categorization. In other words, they had grown out of the "ghost hunting" business.

By the 1930s, the Club had on its books nearly a century’s worth of unexplained phenomena, which was of some interest to certain governments. They were still consulted, but more often than not, even their extraordinary-sounding cases became ordinary in the end.

Then the Second World War arrived.

The Blitz left little of London standing, and the motherhouse of the Artemis Club was no exception. The building went up in flames, and with it, their grand library. Generations of investigators had amassed casebooks, journals, maps, photographs, and artifacts; all of it was lost.

One might find a file here and there that had been copied or put in safekeeping, and the St. Andrews chapter held on to some Scottish records, as did a few families with their own papers. But the archive proper was gone.

The Club did not formally die that night, but it never really recovered. When the war was done, the rest of the members were scattered and worn out. Britain had to be put back together, as did families and careers. The world that had given rise to the Artemis Club was another matter entirely.

Former members would get together now and then in the 1950s, old friends rather than working investigators. But that too came to an end.

A couple of scholars and investigators attempted in the 1970s to put the old organization back together, riding a wave of public fascination with the occult, UFOs, and the like. They could not make it work. Too much was gone, too many of the old traditions, and the references that remained often told different stories from one another.

So by the close of the 20th century, the Artemis Club was nothing if not a historical oddity.

For most people, anyway.

The Rise of A.R.T.E.M.I.S.

Modern A.R.T.E.M.I.S. did not descend directly from The Artemis Club.

There is no charter passed down from one to the other, no secret chain of command, nor any hidden society that has been in operation since Victorian times.

The link is there, but it is a symbolic one and was put in place on purpose.

When the modern agency was being put together in the early 1990s, researchers came across odd fragments of the old Club’s history. What they found was far from complete: some case reports here, a reference in a police file or a university archive there, the odd newspaper clipping or private journal. The founders were not so much interested in the Club’s putative dealings with monsters or ghosts as they were in its approach.

Observe first. Explain afterward.

The Artemis Club had a way of doing things. It would take up claims that the establishment chose to overlook, gather evidence, cross-reference the files, and note what witnesses had to say, even if others were inclined to dismiss them. Above all, it did not turn its back on an event just because the prevailing wisdom held it to be impossible.

That kind of thinking appealed to the new organization, and the name was taken as an homage. The acronym followed in due course: A.R.T.E.M.I.S., standing for the Agency for Research into Transdimensional Events, Magic, and Inexplicable Sightings. The founders were fully aware it was put together in reverse to keep the original moniker, but that was fine with them.

Artemis stood for something of value: the hunt for truth and the protection of those who might otherwise be left out, and a readiness to go where a conventional investigator would not.

In terms of actual legacy, the new body inherited little from the Club. There was no headquarters, no continuity of institution, no command structure, or full set of archives. Just an idea, a few cases, and a name. Which is perhaps for the best.

From time to time, A.R.T.E.M.I.S. reacquaints itself with the past. An investigator may open a file from 1872 and find that the thing he is after has been encountered before. Or a sealed box is turned up in the cellar of an old Scottish property, or a journal comes to light at auction. 

There have always been rumors that some of the more unusual records were removed from the motherhouse before the Blitz. No one knows by whom or where they went. Modern A.R.T.E.M.I.S. officially considers these stories unsupported. Unofficially, more than one investigator has spent considerable time looking for the missing files.

Artemis and A.R.T.E.M.I.S. 

I know I am not done with either organization. Tales of the exploits of the Artemis Club are likely to surface from time to time. Of course, A.R.T.E.M.I.S. is in a solid growth stage and likely to expand and change as I write more. In fact, sitting here now, I remember I have a bunch of notes I wrote about the SCP Foundation that I plan to move over to NIGHT SHIFT, notes I could have used here today but didn't. 

Well, that is another post. 

Thinking About October

October is a big deal around here, and I am gearing up for some posts.

As always, I will be hosting the Horror Movie Marathon here at the Other Side. 31 Nights, 31+ movies, at least 20 first-time views.

Since I have two "1986" centric projects, I am focusing on movies from 1985 to 1986, with various exceptions from 1983 to 1987. I am focusing mostly on hometown horror, high school horror, and generally 80s-focused horror. I might hit a few slasher flicks, but there aren't really any I haven't already seen.

Yes, those are my tapes, Trapper Keeper, and my 1986 high school yearbook.

If you want to join me, just post on social media! 

I am also bringing back Urban Fantasy Fridays for October to look at some urban fantasy/horror RPGs. Likely to use with one of my three urban fantasy/horror settings: Jackson, Carbon Vale, and/or Sunny Valley. I like the idea that each setting uses a different rule system. 

The purpose is to see what these games have to offer me, what ideas I can adapt for my own play, and mostly just to have some fun with some other games.

So as always October is a busy time here.

In other news, I am working on finishing Codex Qliphothica. I had to buy some new PDF tools. This also means Advanced Witches & Warlocks will be delayed until next year, and no idea when Jackson, IL will be ready for public consumption.

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!

Fantasy Fridays: The Gate is Open! Yog vs Dark Sun

 "THE GATE IS OPEN! THE GATE IS DEFENDED!"

- Dying Edict of the Ash Witch

These were the final words of the Ash Witch and the first words of the Wasted Lands of Yog campaign.

Last week, I was discussing the makeup of Yog: Dying Earth, Zothique, Hyperborea, Gor, and an assortment of other sword-and-sorcery, weird fantasy, and cheap paperback fare that I have put together over the years. I brought up this idea. The Dying Earth is clear on the fact that we are all going to die; Yog asks what we plan to do about it beforehand.

I mean to start putting some answers to that this week. An oddly fitting catalyst has presented itself in the form of another world in its death throes.

Dark Sun is making a comeback.

Wizards of the Coast announced at Gen Con that Athas will be back in 2027 as D&D’s first mature-rated setting. I am looking forward to it. I have always been fond of Dark Sun for the sorcerer-kings, the city-states, the perilous magic, and the feeling that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket and those remaining must make do.

But the news has stirred up an old conversation. What does one do with the hard parts? Slavery, tyranny, genocide, brutality, and ecological ruin. These are what make Athas, yet they are at odds with much of today’s heroic fantasy.

I don’t know how Wizards will handle it. I haven’t read the new material, so I am not going to judge it now. I wouldn’t want to try and make Yog into some version of "Dark Sun done right." That would be silly and a bit juvenile. 

Athas is one thing, Yog is another.

The real question is how to put genuinely disturbing matters in a roleplaying context without either sanitizing them or making a spectacle of the whole affair.

How does one handle the hard topics?

This Is a Warning

Let me be extremely plain about this.

Yog is a brutal place. Here, one will find slavery, torture, exploitation, religious oppression, sadism, and sexual violence implied.

For centuries, the Priest-Kings have held sway over their city-states through fear, tradition, and violence. Their economies run on slaves born into bondage. There are professional torturers and priests whose duty is to sanctify the social order. Some make a living from it; others simply like it.

It is an important distinction. Sometimes cruelty is the work of an evil system, sometimes the system allows an evil person to be what he wants to be.

But there is another side to it.

I have made Yog brutal, not so the players can bask in it, but to give them something to fight for.

I have no use for pages of description detailing the degradations of the enslaved or graphic accounts of every atrocity under the Priest-Kings. At some point, "mature" content is just spectacle and says nothing of value. I am after consequences.

Take Constance, for instance. She is from Yog, and she has had terrible things done to her.

I won’t go into exactly what they were. There is no need. One can tell from the world she inhabited and the sort of men who held the reins of her life. The implication is enough.

I am not in denial that the worst happened, but I see no reason to make of her suffering some kind of entertainment for the reader's edification.

What matters is Constance. And the people who later step up for her. Deirdre helps her. The Ash Witch sees to her escape. Once free, Constance starts to help others. In a sense, that is the true beginning of her story. I want to know that the players meet Constance and see that she creates a new life. And then I want their characters to do the same for all the other Constances still left on Yog.

I have a particular affinity for Constance because she is, in an odd way, a mirror to one of my other characters, Candy Mercer from the Jackson, IL game. 

Candy is a sweet girl in a world where awful things happen. Yet Candy has her protections. She has a family and friends who care for her; there is a trio of witches and a host of teenagers who have made it their business to stand between any trouble and one of their own. With all that, Candy is able to put down roots. She gets to grow up. Later, she makes a life for herself as a nurse, becomes a mother, and I she becomes someone who helps others.

Constance is what you get when you take away those safeguards from Candy. Not out of weakness or any notion that she is due for a different fate. It is simply that nobody was there in time. That is, until they were. Deirdre says no. The Ash Witch will not have it. And Constance is free to be the one who can say no on behalf of the next person in line. That is the kind of game I want Yog to be. Constance is only one, after all. There are thousands more who are still waiting for someone to make an appearance.

Look at it this way. I see a distinction between acknowledging something and putting it on display. A game can let someone know that sexual violence is part of the setting without making the players part of it. It can have slavery in its world without dwelling on the lot of the enslaved. One can have sadists in the mix without the game itself turning sadistic. Implication is not always a form of cowardice; it can be restraint.

But I am not going to solve matters by feigning these things do not exist. 

You cannot solve a problem until you are willing to look it in the face.

Slavery is evil, as is religious tyranny, and the treatment of another human as property or as disposible. I don’t believe fantasy is made better by shying away from such truths, nor does a setting become mature just for the sake of having them. Maturity isn’t a matter of how much blood is spilled on the page but the understanding of what that blood signifies.

Which is why we come to the player characters.

The slavery in Yog is not for the players to have a go at living in a slave-holding world. It is there to be broken. The Priest-Kings are not meant to be admired for their decadence, but to be overthrown.

That is not to say every outing in Yog will be an insurrection against a city-state. Characters will still be robbing tombs and sifting through ancient ruins in the sand. They will encounter necromancers who have no qualms about using the most plentiful resource in the world, the dead. There are assassins, witches, strange monsters, and dying gods, and things so old one can’t tell if they were ever alive. It is a swords and sorcery game, plain and simple.

But the Priest-Kings are part of the scenery. Perhaps the merchant outfitting an expedition the PCs are guarding is quietly passing fugitives from one city to the next. Or the caravan they are hired to protect is carrying something other than wares. Maybe that old magical weapon just uncovered is enough to put a Priest-King in the ground. 

The characters will have to decide.

And to be clear on one point: the witches did not put resistance on the map. The people of Yog have been at it for centuries. They have hidden children and fugitives in villages, poisoned their masters. Priests have turned a blind eye to orders; soldiers have done the same. People have escaped.

People fled into deserts, where they might die, rather than remain somewhere they would certainly suffer.

Rebellions broke out. Most of them were put down. There were heroes, though their names have been lost to time for the most part.

I have no desire to present the Thorn Witch, the Red Sorceress, or the Ash Witch as some kind of powerful outsiders who had to show helpless folk what freedom was worth wanting. The people already had that in them. What the witches did was of a different order.

For centuries, the oppressed have been putting up a fight. The witches’ contribution was to show that the Priest-Kings can bleed.

That is a matter of some consequence. 

A slave market goes up in flames. A slaver is gone, and then another. The Red Sorceress has a mind for some trouble, and the soldiers the Priest-King sends after her never return. Word gets around that the Thorn Witch made short work of the soldiers after an escaped girl; someone else will tell you the tale another way. Then the Ash Witch makes her mark.

The stories take on a life of their own. They are sung, prayed over, and scratched into walls. Some are threats. Whether only half of them are true is beside the point.

The Priest-Kings can bleed. And if they can bleed, they can be beaten. In a society that holds its rulers to be beyond reproach, that notion is more perilous than any act of the witches.

But the Ash Witch does something worse still. She provides a destination.

The Witch Gate

I have mentioned the Gate before. For the witches who created it, it was simply The Gate, but the oppressed people of Yog have named it something else. The Witch Gate.

I will leave the details of the Gate, and where it might lead, to the imagination of the players and the characters. Those in Yog who are downtrodden call what lies beyond it *Haven*. The Priest-Kings have a word for it too: *Hell*.

Spoiler: The Gate leads to West Haven, where the Witch Queen waits on the other side.

Their priests are quick to denounce the witches as demons, preaching that the Ash Witch has opened a road to damnation and is stealing souls from the natural order. But those making a desperate bid for the Gate are not much moved by such theology. More to the point, in their minds, nothing on the other side can be worse than life here.

Prior to the Witch Gate, any escape was fleeting. One could put distance between themself and a master or a city, or hide with strangers in the desert. Yet they were still on Yog, subject to the next slaver or law that would see them in chains. The Witch Gate offers an actual way out, not just a chance to run a little farther and hope the slavers give up.

Opinions differ on what the Gate is. Some say the Ash Witch found a road that was always there; others say that she has made a new world. Some think Haven is a kingdom, some a city, some nothing but freedom. The Priest-Kings insist on Hell. Perhaps they are all wrong. 

With this Gate, the Ash Witch alters Yog more deeply than she ever could with a blade to a Priest-King’s throat. She leaves behind something that will outlast her. The witches are a legend, but the Witch Gate is a permanent fact of the world. And a dangerous one at that.

First, they learn the Priest-Kings can bleed.

Then they can lose.

Now they understand the Priest-Kings do not have the final say on whether you remain.

That last bit is likely to unnerve them.

And it is the most important part of the campaign.

The Ash Witch Falls

And then she is dead.

This is the point at which I want the game to start. Not in the middle of the great witches’ exploits, but in their wake. The Ash Witch, The Thorn Witch, and The Red Sorceress. They have had their day and left their mark on Yog in ways the Priest-Kings cannot undo. Now they are gone.

There is no standing behind the Ash Witch and letting her sort things out. She dies.

As she falls, her voice is heard across the land.  Maybe they hear it with their ears. Maybe they hear it in dreams. Maybe a Priest-King wakes, breathing heavily, because the words are suddenly inside his head, louder than any scream he has caused.

Maybe an enslaved woman working in a field stops what she is doing and somehow knows that, somewhere beyond the horizon, a dying witch has just spoken.

It doesn't really matter how the message travels.

Everyone hears the final Edict of the Ash Witch:

THE GATE IS OPEN! THE GATE IS DEFENDED!

These are the campaign’s opening lines as much as they are the last of the Ash Witch. And the second carries as much weight as the first.

The Gate is open; you can escape.

The Gate is defended; they won’t be able to just take you back.

As for who is doing the defending? I will not say in the game. The Priest-Kings would have you believe it is demons. Some maintain that the dead Ash Witch herself is on the other side. A few witches will only smile if you put the question to them, while others claim the Gate is its own protection. What is beyond dispute is that the Ash Witch is gone and the Gate is still there.

A slave owner may wake to an empty room and find no sign of where his property has gone. A Priest-King will have his sermon ready on the soul-stealing ways of witches, though someone in the pews will be hearing something quite at odds with his intentions. There is an exit. And once that is known, the cage loses its permanence.

This Is Where the Heroes Come In

One can get used to almost anything, but that does not make it right. For as long as anyone in Yog can remember, the Priest-Kings have been saying this is the way of things. Their forebears lived so. The temples call it sacred, the merchants necessary, the soldiers call it law. Given time, the monstrous becomes normal when one has no memory of an alternative.

The world has made a habit of suffering. The heroes have not.

I could make no more telling statement about Yog. 

Perfection is not required of the heroes any more than of the witches. Some are vengeful or prone to killing where another witch would show mercy. After a lifetime of battling monsters, one has to wonder if the line has been crossed. Resistance is not a blanket justification for every deed.

But heroism can be as straightforward as looking at what has been accepted and saying:

No. This is wrong.

And then acting on it.

That is the distinction between Yog and a fantasy world done up in dark colors for the sake of it. I have no desire to see how much misery I can cram onto a map; I want to see the response to it. Which brings me to the talk around Dark Sun. Not because Yog is superior, or that Athas ought to be handled my way. Athas is what it is. But it is worth asking why we put such material in a game.

With Yog, I know why. To be opposed.

Let the sun go dark in time. Let the kingdoms and towers and Priest-Kings become yet another stratum under the sand. Everything dies. But there are chains to be broken in the present. There are people like Constance who require someone to come to them now.

The Ash Witch, the Thorn Witch, and the Red Sorceress had their say. They are dead and cannot see it through. That is as it should be in a role-playing game.

The Ash Witch’s last words are the campaign’s first.

From here on in, it is up to the player characters.