Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Occult Magic Before It Had a Name

It is June 1st, and June has always been prime D&D time for me.

Summer was either already here or almost there, depending on where you lived and how hot it was. By then, we had stopped pretending school mattered. Days felt slow, and nights seemed endless. Any place, a friend’s house, the basement, the porch, your bedroom floor, or the dining room table, could become a world of adventure for an afternoon or a weekend. It was a time to sit back and properly read that new Dragon Magazine.

And that was the point. Summer is what makes adventure happen.

Riding your bike to a friend’s house felt like a real journey. The library became a place for research. The woods behind the neighborhood felt wild, and the old cemetery was like an unfinished adventure. If a thunderstorm rolled in, your house could turn into a dungeon.

In Jackson, IL, June 1986 was when the possibilities opened up.

School was over, but its presence lingered. Empty classrooms always felt strange compared to when they were full. The public library was chilly and filled with books on topics teenagers weren’t supposed to care about yet. We had bikes, dirt roads, creeks, and long afternoons. Adults were at work, so we had free time, and free time could be risky.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, June 1986 was a different sort of opportunity.

It was a chance to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons the "right" way, at least, that is what we told ourselves back then. All you needed were the books, some arguments, your imagination, and the sense that the game still held some secrets.

Secrets are where you find Occult Magic.

I didn’t have a clear definition for it back then, but I knew it was there.

There is Arcane magic, the province of the Magic-User with his spellbooks and components and towers, the idea that intelligence and hard work can uncover power. And Divine magic for the Cleric, with his gods and prayers and holy symbols, where belief in the divinity is what matters. Mind you, we were not using those words back then. That is what hindsight has given us. But whether we called in Arcane magic or wizard magic, divine or priestly magic, they were the same.

But there’s something in between, too.

The red string charm. A name spelled backward and set alight. An old woman who knows what the Priest won’t tell you. A vision of the truth. Or a mirror that will only give you an answer under the darkest moon. The familiar in the room that seems to understand more than anyone else. A book nobody wants to claim to have read. A curse that stays until you right the wrong.

That is Occult Magic.

Don’t mistake "occult" for a costume. It is not a wizard with a penchant for wearing black, nor is it a cleric of an old god. It isn’t some word they put in to spook the parents. Pentagrams and black cats and Latin mumblings don’t automatically make it so. Occult is hidden. Concealed. Known only to those initiated.

This matters for the game. 

We’re talking about magic that’s forbidden or personal, knowledge kept through names, debts, and memories. Some people think it’s evil, but making it only about evil isn’t very interesting. Not everything forbidden is wicked. Sometimes it’s just dangerous. Sometimes it’s off limits because it’s embarrassing or because it reveals a lie. It might be forbidden to keep power away from those who aren’t supposed to have it, or because it belongs to people society prefers to ignore: women, outsiders, immigrants, queer people, or strangers.

This is what gives Occult Magic its import for an Advanced D&D Witch or Warlock.

A witch isn’t just another Magic-User with a different spell list. She’s not a Cleric without a temple, either. She needs her own way of understanding magic. Arcane Magic explains the physical world. Divine Magic is about asking gods for help. Occult Magic is about following hidden threads.

What lies underneath? Why put that charm under the threshold? How does a name echo through three generations? What did the villagers and the thing in the well come to an understanding over? Where has the baroness’ reflection gone? And why does the old road put itself out of sight when the moon is new?

A witch doesn’t ask, "What spell was cast?" She asks, "Who needed that to be hidden?" That changes the game completely.

Occult Magic has to do this if it is to alter how we play. It has to turn things into an investigation, making you care about names, places, and what is remembered. It puts the Game Master to work considering family curses, old debts, powers you won’t find on a map, or any old scrolls, and the like. It has to be something special, something hidden. 

Charisma remains the right primary stat for a witch on account of all this. Intelligence is for the Magic-User to pore over his spells, Wisdom for the Cleric to serve his god. Charisma allows the witch to stand at the circle’s edge and call on the unseen. She has to be able to bargain, bind, bless, curse, lead, and put people at ease. She needs to invest something of herself into this bargain, or there will be no bargain at all.

The same holds true in Jackson, IL.

Here, Occult Magic is more than finding an old book in your attic and casting spells. There is a structure to the town you have to read. You have to know the cemetery is not only just a cemetery, or that the library has its share of uncatalogued books. You can tell the school hallway is different once the last bell has rung. The man running the occult shop will have your name before you’ve given it to him. You understand the creek’s name is no accident and that it points to something bad.

For a young witch in Jackson, discovery comes before power. She doesn’t begin with a list of spells. She starts with an experience, a dream, a mark on her skin, a voice, a mirror, a dead girl in the bathroom, or a teacher who notices something in her and quickly looks away.

The magic is still a secret to her. But as she starts to follow the threads, the pattern becomes clear. The horror isn’t that magic exists, but that it’s always been there, while everyone else has ignored it or just survived it. 

This becomes important later on with the idea that some knowledge, either in books, games, or record albums, is just too dangerous to have. 

You could say the Satanic Panic had it all wrong. To them, "occult" was a byword for corruption: dangerous books, dark rituals, evil music, and demonic imagery. An adult would see a teenager with a fantasy novel and some heavy metal on, or one drawing occult pictures and talking of spells, and they would put two and two together and come up with something very wrong in their own imaginations.

But that is missing the point entirely. What you have there is adults who are terrified of young people having access to hidden knowledge. That kind of terror is right at home in Jackson, IL. Not on account of the claims being true, but because they are wielded as a weapon. The girl with her books is being watched. The boy making strange maps is put on the spot. A horror movie makes a teen look suspicious. Get a few friends together after school, and you are a "cult."

It is not supernatural, but it need not be. Jackson has horror enough of its own to go around.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, this matters because witches are the class most misunderstood by others. She knows what people need but are afraid to ask for. She might heal a child and still be called wicked, or give a warning and get blamed when it comes true. That’s Occult Magic in a social sense. Hidden knowledge always has a price. In an adventure, it could be your name, a memory, a night’s protection, or a promise never to enter a certain room. In Jackson, the price is your reputation.

That’s why Occult Magic isn’t just about darkness. What matters is what’s hidden or forgotten. It can protect, bind, summon, or curse. It can reveal the truths people live by. It’s both good and dangerous. Magic should be both.

Of course, every spell having a risk is part of the fun, but magic is also dangerous because it changes how the witch relates to the community, to spirits, and to herself. Once something hidden is revealed, you can’t hide it again. And what you uncover might not let you go. Both projects should follow that idea.

In Jackson, IL, Occult Magic drives teenage horror. The town isn’t haunted because of scary spirits, but because the secret is out and the kids have noticed. June 1986 is the perfect time for this. The days are long, adults are busy, and the school doors aren’t always open. The creek is low enough to reveal its winter secrets, the cemetery grass is overgrown, and the roads out of town feel like an invitation. Summer is for adventure, and Occult Magic helps you find it.

The Mirror Shard: See the Hidden Thread

This spell is more of an adventure tool than a combat spell. You can use it as a low-level Witch spell in Advanced Witches & Warlocks, or as the first real magic a teenager tries in Jackson, IL. It won’t show you everything, but it will reveal the connection between something you see and a hidden entity nearby.

A locket might show you the thread to its owner’s grave. A bloodstain could lead to the person who made it. A teacher’s shadow might connect to an old yearbook photo. A charm under a door could glow with the color of the family who placed it there. Sometimes the thread looks like a red cord or black smoke; other times, it’s silver hair, ink, or music only the witch can hear.

The spell shows you what connects two things you aren’t supposed to know about. It won’t tell you what the connection means—that’s for you to figure out. It doesn’t replace real investigation in an AD&D game; if anything, it might lead you to make mistakes or ask tougher questions. If you use it in the halls of the local school in Jackson, you’ll see too much. Bully to victim. Principal to school scandal. Family name to the cemetery. The first time you cast it, you learn something important. The second time, you wish you hadn’t.

See the Hidden Thread
Occult Divination 

Witch Level 1
Range: 6"
Duration: 1 turn
Area of Effect: Special
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 3 segments
Saving Throw: None

Spell Effect

When the witch gazes through a fragment of silvered glass and speaks the Supernal syllable of revelation, the spell reveals a shimmering, metaphysical thread connecting a visible object or creature to a nearby hidden entity or significant location. The thread manifests in a form unique to the situation or the witch’s tradition, appearing as a red cord, a wisp of black smoke, a strand of silver hair, or even a faint melody only the witch can perceive.

Details

The spell illuminates the "Hidden Thread" between two things that are cosmically or karmically linked, regardless of whether the connection is secret or obscured.

• A locket might reveal a silver thread leading toward its owner’s forgotten grave.
• A bloodstain could show a pulsing red line trailing toward the individual who shed it.
• A charm tucked beneath a floorboard might glow with the specific color of the family lineage that placed it there.

The spell does not reveal the meaning of the connection or the identity of the hidden entity; it only proves that a link exists and shows the path to follow. This is an adventure tool meant to supplement investigation, not replace it. If used in a densely populated or high-drama area (such as a school or a town hall), the witch may see a chaotic web of threads that can be overwhelming and potentially distressing to the caster's psyche.

Material Components: A fragment of silvered glass that was a shard of a broken mirror and a drop of clear water.

More Insight From Daddy Rolled a 1

If you want another perspective of what was going on with AD&D in the mid-1980s then please check out Martin R. Thomas' blog and YouTube channel, Daddy Rolled a 1. 

• A Different Way to Look at the AD&D Hardcovers (Blog)
• Why AD&D Started Feeling Different in the Mid-1980s (Video)

Both discuss the same time period I am covering here, but with a different thesis statement. Both are also worth your time. By this reckoning, my project here is firmly in his Phase 3 camp. Which feels exactly right. I am pleased to see that we see this time period in roughly the same way. 

The Witches of Appendix N: Jack Vance

 You simply cannot talk about magic and Appendix N without mentioning Jack Vance.

Vancian Magic, Ioun Stones, Vecna, the Most Excellent Prismatic Spray. All of these and more came to Gary while reading Jack Vance's Dying Earth books.  

For me, it has been Javanne the Red Witch, the Black Sabbath, the Witches of the Cobalt Mountains, and Llorio the Murthe.

So much of what is in AD&D now originally came from Vance. Or at least ideas influenced by Vance. So it does seem a little odd to me that the witches from the Dying Earth tales don't make it in. Stranger still when you consider it was Javanne at the Black Sabbath on the first edition of The Dying Earth. Though there is a moon in the image, we have been told there is no moon anymore.  Like "Red Lori" from Gardner Fox's Kothar series, she is another evil redheaded witch at the end of time. Maybe there is something to that.

Much like his Lyonesse books, there are a lot of witches here. Not all of them get detailed. Indeed, that is one of the charms of Vance's storytelling. He builds the Dying Earth not explicitly, but through the lens of his tales. The Witches of the Cobalt Mountains, including one with blue hair, are mentioned but not fully explained. We learn there is no moon in the sky anymore, but we never learn when it was gone or why.

Javanne the Red-Haired Witch

Our first named witch, and indeed our cover girl, is Javanne. She starts out appearing to be good, but it is quickly revealed that she is fairly evil. She steals the face of Etarr, her lover, and gives him the face of a demon. Etarr and the artificial girl T'sais track Javanne down at the Black Sabbath, where she is consorting with demons and other witches, including the aforementioned Witches of the Cobalt Mountains. She is able to summon up demons, cast charm spells, and even dominate others. So pretty typical witch magic. 

In truth, she is very much an archetypal witch. The idea that she (and by extension any witch) survives to these later days pretty much with their witchcraft intact is an interesting notion. Is Vance saying here that witchcraft is universal? And not just magic, but witches. This gets a deeper treatment in the later, post-Appendix-N books.

T’sain

T'sain is another artificial human and a twin to T'sais. She is not really a witch, but she does have some magic and spells. T'sais was created by the wizard Pandelume. T'sain was created by Turjan of Miir, though she dies freeing him from a rival wizard. 

Lith the Golden Witch

A different sort of witch. She pops up in the tale of Liane the Wayfarer. Lith is from the golden land of Ariventa. We don't learn a lot more about her, really. She can command 20 sword-like blades to do her bidding, and she is very attractive. Lith also appears good at first, but soon is revealed to be less so. In the mini scenario from White Dwarf #58, she is also called "Lith the Weaver."

Llorio, the Murthe, the White Witch

Ok. So this one is also outside of scope, but I wanted to include it anyway since it covers my main theme. It is from the fourth book in the series, "Rhialto the Marvellous." Llorio, the Murthe, is depicted on the cover along with Rhialto the Marvellous. So at least two of the four main books in the Dying Earth series featured witches who were important to the stories. 

Witches seem to conform to some sort of color palette. Llorio is a "white witch" but not because of her goodwill, but because of her white hair, white skin, and white clothes. Llorio comes from an earlier age where witches and wizards battled in some sort of magical battle of the sexes in the 17th-18th æon (the current age is the 21st æon). She has come to the future to turn all the world's current male wizards into female witches. 

It is an interesting tale. The witches were poised to win this war until their leader, Llorio the Murthe, was sent to a distant star, to the planet Naos. She has now come back and has discovered that the remaining wizards are nothing more than a group of powerless (by her standards) misogynists. So she decides to turn them all into women. Not a terrible plan, really, and an appropriate one for a witch scorned. 

I won't spoil the ending for you all. But I will add this quote from Llorio that appears near the end of the tale. I think it sums up the whole feeling of the Dying Earth rather well. 

"Hope?" cried Llorio. "When the world is done and I have been thwarted? What remains? Nothing. Neither hope nor honour nor anguish nor pain! All is gone! Ashes blow across the desert. All has been lost, or forgotten; the best and the dearest are gone. Who are these creatures who stand here so foolishly? Ildefonse? Rhialto? Vapid ghosts, mowing with round mouths! Hope! Nothing remains. All is gone, all is done; even death is in the past."

Not only is Llorio powerful, she easily defeats most of the wizards of this time. She also has Ioun (IOUN) stones (something it appears only wizards, not witches, are supposed to use), again a Vance creation added to AD&D. Surely this would rank her as one of the great spellcasters. 

"The Murthe" appears to be a granted title. Akin to "The Simbul" or even "Witch Queen." She certainly has all the requisites to be a witch queen.

All three of Vance's witches seem morally ambiguous. Javanne and Lith start out appearing good, but certainly are not. Llorio starts out as a threat, but maybe she has a point. Also, our protagonists have a hard time justifying fighting against her. I think this gray area, or as I have described it so many times, a liminal space, is where witches do their best work. Wizards, at least in terms of how AD&D and the stories that influenced it and were influenced by it, are always either very good, or very evil. In the cases of Gary's own wizards, they are very neutral, i.e., preserving the balance. Witches are allowed a little more freedom. They can be good, neutral, or evil as they choose. They have their own moral directives.

The Lyonesse Trilogy

Jack Vance revisited the theme of magic decades later with his magnificent Lyonesse Trilogy, consisting of Suldrun’s Garden, The Green Pearl, and Madouc (1983-1989). While the books fall outside the chronological scope of this Appendix N series, they are not so far removed from the theme of witches and magic in fantasy as to pass over without comment. The books are set in the mythical land of the Elder Isles, which lies between Britain and France in a time before King Authr. While they are certainly a product of Vance’s later work, they revisit a great deal of the same ideas concerning ancient magic, mystic powers, and the uneasy relationship between human beings and older supernatural entities that pervade Vance’s earlier works. 

While not strictly within the chronological scope of this series, the Lyonesse books warrant a separate discussion of witches in the context of fantasy magic, so this theme will be revisited at a later date. Maybe for my planned "Beyond Appendix N" series. 

Closing Thoughts

Without the works of Jack Vance the Dungeons & Dragons we play today would look very different. While his Dying Earth is filled with wizards, we only get a few named witches. Largely I think this is due in-universe of the Wizard-Witch war of the 17th and 18th æons. It would have been interesting if Gygax had worked some of that into his design. Granted, the books that mention that war post-date the genesis of D&D and AD&D. But maybe there is something I can do similarly in my own games. Something to explain the obvious dominance of wizardry over witchcraft in the world.

In any case, it has been a lot of fun to revisit these tales. I probably should check out the Dying Earth RPGs at some point, as well.

World Dracula Day: Dracula for NIGHT SHIFT

Today is World Dracula Day! Celebrating the release of Bram Stoker's classic horror novel, Dracula.

Like Lord of the Rings, I pick up Dracula and reread it every few years. The last time was 2024, so I might be due soon. Given that next year is the 130th anniversary of its publication, I might reread it then. 

Here he is for NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. I currently do not have plans for him to show up in Jackson, IL. But I should have a vampire show up sometime.

Dracula
16th level Veteran (Supernatural, Vampire)
Archetype: Master Vampire

Strength: 22 (+5) A
Agility: 18 (+3) n
Toughness: 18 (+3)
Intelligence: 13 (+1)
Wits: 14 (+1)
Persona: 22 (+5) n

Vit: 120
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
DV: 5

Fate Points: 1d10

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +7/+5/+3

Melee bonus: +12  Ranged bonus: +8

Saves: +5 to all

Powers

Vampire Powers

Veteran Abilities

Feed: Blood

I would provide a more detailed description, but seriously, if you are reading my blog, then you know who this guy is. 

NIGHT SHIFT is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Why 1986?

So, one has to ask: why 1986?

It is a legitimate question and one that lingers under both Jackson, IL, and Advanced Witches & Warlocks.

I am not talking about the 1980s as a whole, or nostalgia for its own sake. You will find your share of cassette tapes and denim jackets here, horror paperbacks and D&D books with well-worn corners; they are part of the ambiance and atmosphere. I mean this year in particular. Why 1986?

State of the Art for AD&D 1986

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is a strange and handy vantage point. If you go back to the 1974 boxed set, Dungeons & Dragons was almost thirteen years old by then. It was no longer a child. It had acquired a history, some scars, a few good arguments, and traditions. It was a teenager now. At times awkward, at times brilliant, occasionally too sure of itself, and sometimes hard to put a name to, but full of potential. In other words, a bit contradictory. A Witch book from this time should also be like that.

The first flush of the D&D/AD&D gold rush was done with. The game was a culture in its own right, having made its way from college clubs and basements into hobby shops, school lunchrooms, news stories, and even church warnings. With the Monster Manual, the Player’s Handbook, and the Dungeon Master's Guide, AD&D had a core identity and dictated how you were to think about fantasy adventure.

And yet it was in flux. Ravenloft was already on the scene, making a theatrical and tragic impression with its brand of gothic horror. Dragonlance had happened that placed more emphasis on charcaters as characters than previously. Note: Both Ravenloft and Dragonlance became part of what has been called the Hickman Revolution, and often the start of the Silver Age of D&D. The Forgotten Realms were coming, destined to be one of the big shared campaign worlds. So yes, 1986 has a liminal quality to it. AD&D was past its rawest beginnings but not yet the highly branded ecosystem it would turn into. Things were changing. 

That is exactly where the Witch belongs. In the space between the little brown books and the grand campaign worlds, between a dungeon crawl and some gothic melodrama. Between the wargame heritage and the kind of character play we were doing, even if the rules didn’t quite say so. That is what I am are after with Advanced Witches & Warlocks. Not some modern witch retrofitted for AD&D, nor a twenty-first-century class in old-school dress. I want a witch who could have been there, one you might have found on the same shelf as the old hardbacks in a used bookstore, in an era when parents got nervous seeing their kids sketch pentagrams in their notebooks.

She was always in AD&D waiting to be written down, but 1986 is when I can see her most clearly.

As for Jackson, IL, 1986 is important for another reason. It is one of the last moments before "the world wakes up from history."  You get the sense of it from "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones, though that song is from the early 90s, after the walls came down and things were moving too fast to keep up. 1986 is still on the other side of the mirror. The world was not yet as small as the internet would make it. You couldn’t check a fact in five seconds flat or send off a text to all your friends from the cemetery. From the comfort of your bedroom, you were not going to put your hands on a satellite map, or some scanned newspaper archive, or find what you needed on a message board. Information was something you had to go and get. It had a place.

So you went to the library to check the archives. You hopped on your bike and made the trip across town. You put in a call to someone’s home with the hope their parents would not be the ones to pick up. You made notes, copied down an address, and then you waited. The world was bigger like that, which is why it was so easy for shadows to take hold.

Horror needs that.

In Jackson, secrets have a way of surviving because the town is local enough for them to. Rumor has speed, but it is not even. There are things the adults know that the teenagers do not, and vice versa. And while there are records, they are sitting in a file cabinet, a yearbook, the church basement, or a box in some attic. A haunted town requires some friction. 1986 provides it.

But one must be careful with 1986; it is not as innocent as it seems. That is the trap when you write about the eighties. You can make the decade into set dressing with its neon and synthesizers, its malls and hairspray and horror films. I am fond of all that, but it does not cut it. If the year is to have any meaning, it must also have horror and pain; it has to hurt a little.

January 28, 1986, hurt.

When the Space Shuttle Challenger came apart 73 seconds into its flight, all seven on board were lost. NASA will tell you it was the STS-51L mission, and with Christa McAuliffe involved, many a schoolchild was tuned in. It was supposed to be routine. Easy. For my generation, it was one of the first times we saw a public tragedy in real time.

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Reactor 4 suffered a catastrophic meltdown. All our fears about nuclear power played out for us on our TVs. The great specter of nuclear meltdown was now on our evening news, delivered by Tom Brokaw.

We had known the world was not safe, but this was different. It came into the classroom and put an end to the promise we had been fed. Space was our future, the shuttle was routine, the teachers were going up there, and the adults were in charge. Then the sky opened up, and you could see the horror on the faces of the very same adults.

That is what I want in Jackson. Not as a plot device to be used up, but as atmosphere. A fracture in the adult world. A teenage witch in 1986 is surrounded by grown-ups who will tell you they have everything under control despite the evidence to the contrary. You come to realize there are no paladins or wizards; they do not have the spell memorized, and sometimes they built the machine without heeding the warning that it might break. Once you see that, the world is a different place. It is more than innocence lost. It is the thin veil of lies about innocence. 

I talk about it a lot here, but even the Satanic Panic has its part to play in both projects. With Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is the cultural Zeitgeist that makes D&D seem perilous to those who cannot fathom it, lumping in heavy metal, the occult, and a teenager’s imagination as one great threat. It was stupidity, but stupidity has a way of shaping a culture. Just watch the news today.

In Jackson, IL, it is more than useful. A moral panic lets the respectable sort act on old fears. The girl was always a bit odd; the house was already off-limits, and the symbols in the notebook were being noticed. The Santic Panic just gave them leave to do something about it.

You don’t need the Satanic Panic to make a witch. What it makes is an excuse for one to be hunted, feared, and reviled. And that is the more frightening part.

Then there was the music. By 1986, you could still hear the early synth-pop and New Romanticism of the decade’s opening, but the center had moved. The hair metal era was on its way to taking over the landscape, though not yet in full force. 1986 is the space between those things. It is not one note. That is significant.

It is a year of transition. You can feel the afterglow of Live Aid from ’85, and Farm Aid had only just been held back in September out of concern for American family farmers. I put some weight on that because Farm Aid was in Champaign, Illinois, and that puts you in Jackson’s orbit, in the Midwest.

The music wasn’t merely an escape. It was making an effort, if a bit awkward at times, to be something more: political, useful, global. A mix-tape was your confessional, a message for when words would not do. Put in a request at the local station and hope someone heard it. It had the power of a spell.

Take Paul Simon’s Graceland in ’86, with all its complicated influence, as he brought South African sounds to the American mainstream. Or Peter Gabriel’s So, which managed to be art-rock and pop at once, and the end of his cult following days. Run-DMC put out Raising Hell that year, too, a necessary step for hip-hop to be seen by the rest of us.

I don’t see this as mere soundtrack trivia. It tells me what sort of year we are in. The old categories are dissolving, and the voices that were left out are being heard. Parents have their worries, the kids are tuning in regardless, and the culture is at odds over who has the right to speak and what is deemed dangerous.

The whole Parental Advisory row comes of this time. The Parents Music Resource Center was founded in 1985, aiming to label anything with objectionable lyrics. Much like the Satanic Panic, it made youth culture a battleground of fear and control.

Witches find that handy.

A witch is someone who will be labeled. Dangerous, immoral, corrupting, or unnatural. Too loud or too quiet. Too independent, too well read, too strange to be put in a box. You will find it in a fantasy village or a modern high school, in any small town where they think virtue is the same as conformity.

So 1986 puts pressure on me from both sides.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is an AD&D moment; the Witch has her place in a game that is between phases. The old stuff still counts but the new is coming, and horror has already made its way into the castle. For my purposes in Jackson, IL, it is a modern setting where a teenage witch can be left to her own devices, misread and watched, and have to go about things the old way. You could say the world is in a state of flux, but it is not yet all one piece. There are still secrets a town can hold. A girl can come across something in a library drawer and have no simple means of telling whether another soul has ever laid eyes on it.

Then there is 1986. It presents me with a culture that is afraid of its children. In some ways, that is the point of it.

Take the D&D crowd, the metalheads, the kids into horror or punk or goth. The queer kids, the smart ones, the strange boys and girls with their notebooks of symbols, the ones who read too much and ask questions they should not. They do not fit the narrative adults have put together for them.

The Witch is to be found there, at the fringes of what is approved. She is not the trouble. She is merely the one to see that the trouble was there to begin with.

That is why 1986 works. Do not mistake it for being simpler or better; it was neither. But it sat on a threshold. You had AD&D old enough for its own mythology yet young enough to leave some rooms empty. The modern world was tied in enough to feel global change but not so much as to put an end to local mystery. The whole culture was loud and nervous and moralizing, creative and frightened and very much alive.

A good year for witches. For mirrors. For secrets.

Mirror Shard: 1d12 Things Found in a 1986 Witch’s Room

This will work for Jackson, IL, or any modern supernatural game you want to set before the internet made doing your research too convenient. A teenage witch does not have a wizard’s tower. Her room is more perilous than that. Private, half-hidden, temporary, and only a knock from her parents away from being found out.

Make a d12 roll or pick and choose.

1. A spiral notebook with dream fragments and song lyrics, plus a page of symbols she cannot recall putting there.
2. An overdue library book on folklore, three months past due. The checkout card has the same name on it every eleven years.
3. Cassette tapes in a shoebox. Put in the unmarked one, and you will hear a voice going through the names in the town cemetery.
4. A hand mirror with a crack in it, wrapped up in a scarf. Works fine until after midnight.
5. A black cat charm on a broken chain. You can tell when spirits are close by how warm it feels.
6. A Polaroid of four of her friends in front of the school. If you look between them, there is a fifth shadow.
7. An old coffee mug with a candle stub in it. Lies in the room, and it will burn blue.
8. A note from class. Open it up, and the handwriting is different each time.
9. Some clipping from the paper on a death half a century back. She keeps it, though she has no reason to.
10. A flower pressed from the cemetery fence. Picked months ago, and yet it has not dried.
11. An old mixtape that says "DO NOT PLAY SIDE B." There is no music on side B, just breathing and a bell tolling in the distance.
12. A character sheet for a red-haired witch in purple and black for D&D. The player will tell you she never created her; she created herself.

Fantasy Fridays: Forgotten Realms Book of Lairs

 Working through my Forgotten Realms books. I’ve been wanting to put in some time with the Forgotten Realms reviews. In part because I have a pile of them here staring at me. Taunting me. 

The one for today is an odd little utility book of the sort TSR excelled at in the late 80s and early 90s.  Don’t expect a campaign-shaking mega-adventure or a big boxed set. Nor is it one of those "here is an entire country, good luck" affairs. It is far more straightforward. "Here are some monsters and their lairs. Go on and have an adventure."

Book of Lairs [Forgotten Realms] (2e)

1994. By Nicky Rea and Sam Witt. Cover art by Larry Elmore, interiors from Valerie Valusek, and cartography by John Knecht and Rob Lazzaretti. 96 pages.

For this review, I am considering my PDF and PoD versions from DriveThruRPG.

This book follows the previous Book of Lairs format TSR has put out in the past, only this is tailored for the Forgotten Realms and for AD&D 2nd edition. Inside you will find 35 short scenarios, each with a monster at its heart. The product copy touts "over 30" adventures for a single session full of danger and humor and the like; I would say that is as apt a description as any.

One thing I do want to point out right away in reading this. Hidden in the math is an ersatz or even proto-Challenge Rating. Each monster lair listing has recommended total levels and recommended average party level. Divide the total levels by 6 to get close to the average party level. It works much in the same way Monster Mark did, and Challenge Levels do. We almost had this in 1994. 

Also note that this is not a monster book, nor an adventure book in the full sense. It is a collection of mini-situations and encounters. And that is where you will find both the merit and the flaw in it.

They do make some assumptions about your library, namely that you have the Campaign Setting and the Monstrous Compendium appendices for the Realms. The latter is key.

You won’t be looking at the usual suspects. We have alguduirs, asperii, beguilers, belabras, bhaergala, bichirs, cantobeles, cildabrins, crawling claws, crimson death, dimensional warpers, dracoliches, fachans, firenewts, frosts, hauns, inquisitors, loxo, monkey spiders, morins, orpsus, revenants, saurials, sha’az, silver dogs, thylacines, wemics, and so on. This is strength really. It makes this a Realms book and not the same as the previous Book of Lairs. IT does mean you need the Forgotten Realms Monstrous Compendium pages, though.

With the old Monstrous Compendium type books/pages you are given some wonderful, oddball creatures and left to your own devices. I don’t mind that; I enjoy my monster books for the reading. But a monster ought to have context, a place in the world, something more than a roll on the random encounter table to justify its presence.

Book of Lairs provides that. Each entry is brief, a page or two at the most. There is the creature, the setup, the lair, a few complications. You can run it with hardly any prep. You will find another reviewer has it right: the bulk of the encounters in here run to 2 or 3 pages and are drawn from the monsters in MC3 and MC11, the appendices for the Forgotten Realms Monstrous Compendium. It is a quality that makes the book feel like something you can put to good use at the table.

Then again, not all of them are "Realmsy" (if you want to call it that). You could take some of these and put them in Greyhawk, Mystara, my own Mystoerth, or wherever your world is with no trouble. I would say that is the best way to employ the book these days. Sure, it is a 96-page tome of weird AD&D monster encounters and a product of the Realms, but I can make use of it anywhere. My oldest is currently using it in his own world using AD&D 1st edition, so it has flexibility. 

The setting does make its presence known. You will come across Harpers, Zhentarim, Tyr, Moander, places like Westgate, Yhaunn, Calaunt, the Shining Plains, and Sembia. But do not expect the kind of lore you get in The Code of the Harpers; this is a working DM’s book. I think that is why I like it.

My only real gripe (and this is a minor one) is with how it is put together. An alphabetical list by monster is well and good when you have decided on a dracolich or revenant, but what if you are looking for something to throw at a 5th-level party in a swamp? So an index by level or difficulty (dare I say, Challenge Rating) would be great.

But then, it is 1994 TSR. This is the sort of thing you were meant to read, mark up, and leave next to your DM's screen. Find an encounter, make it your own, and be done with it. There is a very AD&D sensibility to that.

In many ways, the Realms at this time still has that huge, messy quality to it, with things left unexplained. I see that as a feature, not a bug. The Forgotten Realms is at its best when it seems you have only seen one inn or one haunted ruin, and there are a hundred other things about to step out of the torchlight. This book gives you that sense.  I mean, despite the fact that we are now sitting on the other side of 40 years of published Realms lore, I am still new to all of this.

There is your dracolich lair, the big ticket item, but I am more inclined toward the odder, smaller fare. A silver dog, a saurial, a wemic, or the thylacines (I am a fan of The Howling III, and I think at least someone on the Realms staff is as well.). They are the kind of creature that tells you the Realms is more than generic fantasy with Elminster tacked on. These are places where oddities have families, enemies, and a history.

That is what the book is worth. It shows you a monster is not a stat block. It has a place, a situation, and motivation. And the lair itself is often the adventure.

Sinéad, Nida, Arnell, Jaromir, and Rhiannon

Since my characters are still heading east, this book is immediately useful to me. I could drop one of these encounters into their path without too much trouble. A strange beast on the road. A ruined tower with something nesting inside. A village dealing with a problem that is bigger than they understand. That is exactly the sort of thing this book is built for.

I don’t know that Book of Lairs is essential Realms material. If you are building a Realms library, you want the boxed sets, the regional books, the big lore books, and probably the deity books before this one. But if you are actually running AD&D 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms, or any old-school fantasy game, this is the kind of book that earns its keep.

It is not flashy. It is not a grand tour of Faerûn. It is not going to explain the Time of Troubles or give you the secret history of the Harpers. It will give you a monster in a lair and a reason for the characters to investigate. Which, honestly, is how most good monster encounters should work.

The PDF and PoD are both legible and easy to read for a scanned product.

The PoD suffers from faded text typical of a scan, but this one is a little better than most, to be honest, and unless you are looking for it, you might not notice it. 

All in all, pretty happy with my purchase.

This Old Dragon: Issue #44

 I talked about Gardner Fox and his contributions to the Appendix N yesterday. I thought I'd pull out a very old Dragon magazine, #44, and feature his contributions from it today. As I mentioned previously, he is one of the rare few authors in the Appendix N who would later also publish within the pages of Dragon. So let's set the controls all the way back to December 1980. At this point, I have been playing D&D for a little more than a year. Playing was rare, but it always filled me with excitement.  Clint Eastwood stars with an orangutan in "Any Which Way You Can." In a sad note, the orangutan, Buddha, who played Clyde, was clubbed to death by his trainer for stealing a doughnut. There were no laws about the treatment of animals on the books at the time, so nothing happened. "Lady" by Kenny Rogers is all over the airwaves, and on tables and game store shelves everywhere is This Old Dragon #44.

Our cover is from none other than Phil Fogolio, featuring the new included game, Food Fight. Other artists include Mike Carroll, Jack Crane, Jeff Dee, Tracy Lesch, Kenneth Rahman, Roger Raupp, Jim Roslof, and Bill Willingham.

I have to start by noting how thick the paper is for this one. At 100 pages, this issue is heavy. Yes, there is the Food Fight game inside, but still, the paper is quite thick. Compared to the similar page count of Issue #85 (my first purchased issue) they feel very different.

So already this is a big issue in more ways (weighs?) than one. 

We have two Editorials: one from Bryce Knorr on his Food Fight game, and another from Assistant Editor Kim Mohan on all the features of this issue. 

Letters is still known as Out On A Limb at this point. The topic of the month are Dwarven Women, Beards or No. 

Up first, and foremost, is The Lure of the Golden Godling, a Niall of the Far Travels tale by Gardner F. Fox. While this is not a Dragon I owned back in the 80s, I looked up once I got my Dragon CD-ROM and I was completely surprised that Fox had written for Dragon.

The Super Spies for the new Top Secret game is up by Allen Hammack. This covers the Top Secret stats for various movie and TV Spies like James Bond, Napoleon Solo, John Steed, Emma Peel, and even Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. I rather love things like this and have done my own fair share of multimedia witches here. So I can appreciate this level of obsession. This is not something you would see anymore; corporations are far too litigious. 

Mark Simmons has a review of the King of the Mountain board game. The game is for 2 to 10 players. The premise is simple: get your character to the top of the mountain first and claim the wizard's prize with one player controlling the actions of the Wizard and the monsters. It sounds like it could be fun, but it doesn't trigger my "Traveller Envy," which I guess is good.

We get to an early featured topic section in Dragon with Fantasy Genetics. These articles all attempt to take a scientifc point of view on the various humanoid species in D&D. 

Gregory G. H. Rihn is up first with Humanoid Races in Review, which builds upon The Dragon #29 article from Gygax about the Half-ogre and the issues it caused back then. Among other things, we get some quasi Linnaean taxonomy on the various species. Humans are Homo sapiens sapiens, elves are Homo sapiens sylvanus, and orcs are Homo sapiens orc. The implication here is that humans are fertile with both elves and orcs. Cavemen are Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, dwarves are Homo faber (and both genders feature beards), and the Sasquatch is Homo sasquatch. Gnomes are a subclass of Homo faber. So both dwarves and gnomes are "makers." That works. Halflings are not covered, but 24 years later, we get the discovery of Homo floresiensis, who are called "Hobbits."

Half-ors in a Variety of Styles by Roger Moore takes us to Fantasy Genetics II. Here, our focus switches to the orc family and the various cross-breeds they can have. Here Moore contends that orcs are a member of the genus Australopithecus. These include: Kobold (Australopithecus boisei), Goblin (Australopithecus africanus), Hobgoblin (Australopithecus robustus), and Bugbear (Australopithecus giganticus). Even ogres (Ramapithecus robustus) and hill giants (Meganthropus giganticus) are covered.  The science is a bit bonkers, but it is a lot of fun. I mean if dragons can have a taxonomic nomclature, humanoids certainly should.

Fantasy Genetics III kicks off with What Do You Get When You Cross...? by John S. Olson. He is also building off of the Half-Ogre idea from The Dragon #29. He makes the radical suggestion that nearly any sort of creature can crossbreed with another. But not all of their offspring are going to be suitable for play.  In fact there is a section here that is close to the hearts of many new players that most old players seem to have forgotten was first introduced in 1980.

Finally, in Fantasy Genetics IV, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh takes us back to high school biology, Mendelian genetics, and Punnett squares in Half + Half Isn't Always Full. Well, a really simple overview of inheritance by genes. Examples are given with humans and orcs. 

None of the four articles really solves any problems and likely introduces new ones. I'll have to pick ahead and see if there are any letters about this issue. 

Nice big ad from J.J. Brodsky & Sons, Inc. Hobby Distributors. Featuring all the hobby stores in the Midwest that offer Dungeons & Dragons. This gives a little bit of evidence to my whole Illinois Pipeline idea. There are a ton here whose addresses are well known to me, but sadly, there are no hobby stores left there. One of which would have been a 10 min drive or less from my home. 

Sage Advice covers some AD&D rules questions.

Dave "Zeb" Cook (of the Expert Set, Isle of Dread, and so much more) is next with a new Giants in the Earth featuring two more NPCs taken from novels. We have C.S. Lewis's Reepicheep and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. I don't know the first, but I am a fan of Challenger, who in my mind should be played by Brian Blessed. Though I don't think he is a 16th-level fighter, really. He would make for a great NIGHT SHIFT character.

My late friend Len Lakofka is up with Leomund's Tiny Hut Monsters: How Strong is Strong? where he attempts to give some monsters some Strength Scores. His logic is sound IF the damage types and spreads are good. I have gone through many, many monsters in my oft-languishing "Basic Bestiary," and there is some good data here. But as well know, really, that Gygax often did not build his monsters using the same rules that characters use. That is not something we will see until the new editions of D&D, starting with 3rd. Len, though, makes a solid showing here, and his numbers look really good.

The Simulation Corner is up with A History of Games and Gaming from John Prados, noted Wargame designer, and here about two years shy of his Ph.D. in Political Science. He is lamenting the lack of any written history of games and gaming and is actively looking for such documentation. 

Food Fight is our mini-game this issue, but it does take up quite a lot of the issue, to be honest (24 pages and a cardstock insert) . The game was designed by Byce Knorr, and the art is from the amazing Bill Willingham and Jeff Dee.  You can read a bit about the game at Board Game Geek, but it does make this your better-than-average value Dragon magazine. Honestly, reading it over more I kinda want to adapt it somehow to my Jackson, IL game! Though it doesn't really fit the vibe I am going with.  Though there is a really convenient map.

After this, we get the continuation of the Gardner Fox Niall tale. 

Here Comes the Judges Guild, by William Fawcett, is an overview and review of nine products from Judges Guild. These are some of the classics of the early days of JG; Modron, Escape from Astigar's Lair, The Treasure Vaults of Lindoran, Inferno, Portals of Torsh, Spies of Lightelf, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Legendary Duck Tower, and City of Lei Tabor. Great content. Too bad JG went to complete shit. 

The agents for Top Secret continue, as does the review of King of the Mountain. 

Glenn Rahman is up with his classic Minarian Legends for the Diving Right game. This time about The Black Knight. I will admit that I know next to nothing about this game. But there is a wiki for it, so maybe I will check it out.

The Electric Eye from Mark Herro offers early examples of computer software for playing D&D-like games (Dungeon of Death). Keep in mind, we are talking Atari 2600-level games at this point, and this is the end of this column's first year. The games include  Dungeon of Death by Instant Software for your solo gaming needs. Android Nim by 80-US, and Time Traveller by Krell Software. Software companies came and went like leaves in the wind back then. Few survived to today.

There is even a little BASIC program at the end. 

Dragon's Bestiary gives us three new AD&D creatures. The Koodjanuk, Cyroserpent, and Ice Golem.

Another ad for a Hobby Game Distributors, with more stores in Illinois than in nine other states combined. 

Nothing But the Ho-Ho-Ho Truth by Douglas Loss is an odd one, since WotC has it online for you to read.

Comics include Wormy and Darlene's The Story of Jasmine. The art for Jasmine is still above and beyond anything you should expect from a magazine.

So this is a really good issue and filled with some really fun content.

Makes me want to check out more from this era.

The Witches of Appendix N: Gardner Fox

Gardner Francis Fox is an interesting member of the Appendix N canon. Fox is one of a small few I can find that has also published in the pages of Dragon Magazine (Issue #44 and Issue #55) (L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's "The Green Magician" was published after Pratt's death). He also had a celebrated career at DC comics, where he created some of my favorite characters, including Zatanna. 

Since today is his birthday, let's dive into his mentions in Appendix N. 

Kothar Series

Kothar is a giant blonde-haired, blue-eyed barbarian from the far north, weilding a mighty sword. His world of Yarth seems to exist at the very end of time. There are five Kothar books, and they are largely collections of shorter novellas. There is a continuity between them, so they do follow one from the other. Here, demons and gods are used somewhat interchangeably. 

The Sword of the Sorcerer

The first Kothar tale gives three different sorts of witches. First is Red Lori, the beautiful redheaded half-succubus witch; she is a proper witch whose skills seem to be both "necromantic" and "priestessly." She haunts Kothar throughout his series. She spends half her time wanting to kill Kothar, the other half taunting him, making me think she actually likes the barbarian. 

Queen Elfa is a Queen, but she is also described as a witch and the main antagonist of Red Lori. She has some sort of relationship with the witch Fristhia, who is our old, hag-like witch.

This tale also gives us hydras, dragons, and a lich. His other books follow a similar pattern of Kothar being broke, hungry, and/or thirsty (for ale, but yeah that other one too) and stumbling into trouble.

The Woman in the Witch-Wood. Here we get a witch, the Lady Alaine, and a warlock. 

The Demon Queen. Queen Candara of Kor is a Queen and part demon. She has some magic and serves a demon-god for youth and beauty. She serves demons, but not so much that she seems to be a warlock.

The Conjuer's Curse. We open the story with Stefanya, who is about to be burned as a witch. She served a wizard named Zoqquanor. Her life is linked to that of Zoqquanor so that if he dies, she dies, and vice versa. Stefanya reminds me a bit of Myrnis later on.  She isn't a witch, but that doesn't stop the angry mob.

There is a flashback to younger Kothar meeting a "wild woman" named Ursula. Later on, he meets another wild woman named Lupilina. They could be described as a "Bear Witch" and "Wolf Witch" respectively.  

In Kothar and the Wizard Slayer, we see Kothar team up with his "arch enemy," the witch Red Lori. I say in quotes because they have been having a love-hate relationship throughout the books. They travel and work together to see who is killing all of the mages and necromancers in the world of Yarth. 

I can't help but think about what I would have done differently with my own witches if I had read about Red Lori beforehand. Would Larina have ended up different? Maybe. Red Lori would have been something like a spiritual godmother to Larina had I read these first. Who knows, maybe some of Red Lori's DNA filtered down via the pages of AD&D to Larina anyway. 

Kyrik Series

Kyirk is, wait for it, a giant blonde-haired, blue-eyed barbarian from the far north, weilding a mighty sword.

There are three Kyrik books. Kyrik starts his tale dead. But we are not going to let that stop him. We actually get a witch, or a sorceress, Aryalla, before any other character. She finds a statue of Kyrik and, with the help of three demons, brings Kyrik back from the dead after a thousand years. 

His girlfriend, Myrnis, sometimes shows witch-like powers, but that usually happens when she is possessed by the demon-goddess Illis. 

Kyrik is described as a warrior-warlock. He does not cast spells, but he does get help from the demon-goddess Illis.  

--

So I have some issues with both series. In Kyrik's series, he was "dead" for 1,000 years, but he finds a gem in a room he had been in 1,000 years earlier, and his hunting lodge is still standing. Maybe if he had been trapped in the statue for 100 years, it would have been more believable. It is a complaint I have for many of Fox's tales. You can reduce any time he gives by 10x and get a better number. Same with Kothar, but here it is 100s of thousands of years. True Kothar is at the very end of time and would be more at home in the Hyperborea RPG than, say, Wasted Lands.

Kyrik seems a little more lustful for life than Kothar. Kyrik also finds the "Romany" girl, Myrnis, and stays with her for the whole series. The only time he is "unfaithful" to her is with a deposed Queen who looks exactly like her. Kothar, for all his lusting, seems relatively tame. Unless the girls he meets, he spends his nights with "off page", his only true obsession (and may I add equal) is the witch Red Lori. Sure, there are, that are more than implied, a serving girl and Queen Candara, for Kothar in particular.

Pretty tame, really, given he was also the author of "Cherry Delight" and "The Lady for L.U.S.T." vintage sleaze spy novels.

The biggest issue between these two tales is that Kothar and Kyrik might as well be the same person. Both are "giant" barbarians with blue eyes and blonde hair. Kothar has the sword "Frostfire," and Kyrik has the sword "Bluefang," both of which are described in remarkably similar ways. OH, take a drink anytime either is described like some sort of cat. You won't make it.

The stories are not great, but they are fun. Not every tale needs to be a full-course meal. These tales are sliders. Again, sometimes you want a steak, other times you want a slider. As far as sliders go, these are pretty good. I mean, it is hard not to like Kothar and Kyrik despite their clichés, or maybe even because of them. 

There is a lot here that is foundational to the AD&D experiences. Fighting demons, ghouls, and undead. Epic quests for gold, glory, and more. And lots, and lots of witches, wizards, and necromancers. "Lich" gets mentioned more than once and almost always in respect to a long-dead/undead wizard. Given everything from these books that did make it into AD&D, it feels odd that witches did not, given how much they feature in all these tales. 

There is one thing to consider. A lot of what made it into AD&D (and D&D) here also came from elsewhere. Kothar and Kyric feel like AD&D adventures because they are dipping into the great well of ideas that AD&D also dipped from: Conan. 

Oerth and its near clones are obviously influenced by Fox's Yarth. It would have been fun to see more of Kothar and Red Lori traveling together; him with Frostfire and her with her magic, going back and forth between wanting to kill each other and still ending up in each other's arms. Especially with the scene where Red Lori shows she is more than a match for Kothar.  I think, honestly, that would have been a much more interesting tale. Something that would have elevated this from just being a Conan clone. 

I wonder if there are any tales like that out there? I mean, there is Thundarr and Ariel from the Thundarr series, but there was never a love/hate relationship between the two of them. I suppose Silverglass also counts. Corson as our fighter/barbarian and Nyctasia as our witch, their relationship is fairly love/hate at the start until they gain mutual respect for each other. 

Final Thoughts

I was prepared to like these at first, but didn't, but once I got into them, I began to enjoy them a lot more. I have been a Gardner Fox fan for a while and these were a lot of fun. Just don't take them very seriously.