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.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Teenage Witches and the Haunted Midwest

Last week, I examined the witch in AD&D. As a class and a monster in a game of spell lists, curses, familiars, old women living at the edge of villages, mysterious maps, and a host of others. Advanced Witches & Warlocks is a project that aims to give her proper due among the iconic elements of classic fantasy RPGs.

But there is another mirror.

If the Advanced Witches & Warlocks is interested in exploring the witch as an element of a fantasy game in 1986, then the Jackson, IL project is a consideration of how the witch would fit in the modern horror world of 1986.

By the "modern," I don't mean contemporary times. I mean an era of landlines, lockers, cassette tapes, libraries, horror movies at midnight, school rumors, and parents who believe they can keep secrets from teens

These are very different takes on witches.

In the world of AD&D, the witch is always on the edge of the village. By the old road, the swamp, the shrine in ruins, or the sinister forest. In the Jackson, IL setting, she is on the edge of town, near the cemetery, an abandoned structure, the stream, the college, a different neighborhood, or a lonely road.

The map is different, but the location itself is not.

Jackson, IL, is where my imagination has found its new home. This place isn't Salem, nor New Orleans, nor some gothic European village under the full moon, despite my affection for those locations. No, Jackson is in the Midwest. It is a small town in central Illinois. A town with brick school buildings, college halls, county roads, corn fields, old graveyards, tiny churches, pizza shops, book stores, hardware stores, Friday night football games, Friday night dances, and houses where three generations have kept the same secret.

In Jackson, the supernatural does not require thunderous declarations or Latin incantations to reveal itself. Instead, it is rather subtler.

Perhaps it is the teacher who hasn't aged since 1569. Perhaps a door in the library, locked for no apparent reason. Perhaps a statue at the cemetery changing directions at midnight. Perhaps the name of a creek that no one remembers where the name came from. Or perhaps it is the mirror reflecting something other than yourself.

This is the haunting of the Midwest. It is not empty. It is a place filled with ghosts.

Every town in the Midwest has its stories: the house that has never been sold, the road where headlights disappear, the creepy old lady that kids are told not to approach, the rail road tracks where strange things occur, the auditorium in the school where lights flicker even with the power shut off, and the place outside town known only by its ominous name of "the Bad Land."

These are stories that form the Jackson, IL environment. Not simply the background, but the actual foundation on which the Veil between what is "Real" and what is considered "Supernatural" is constructed.

Most people in the town interact with the supernatural indirectly, in fleeting moments. A shadow. A whisper. A dream. A cold sensation down the spine. A name spoken out of nowhere. And they explain it away, because that is what humans do. It is simpler to believe that everything is ordinary than to accept that ancient tales still speak truth.

Teenagers are not good at keeping their thoughts and opinions to themselves. That is why a teenager is perfect in a game about supernatural activity.

Adults follow routines, have reputations, jobs, mortgages, church groups, seats on the school board, and myriad reasons to preserve the "official" story. Teenagers care about other things. Why does that room stay locked? Why are they avoiding that particular teacher? Why did Mom go silent when I mentioned that name? Why does the school bell ring differently to me? And why do I see the woman in the black cloak and purple dress in the mirror?

Thus, the teenage witch belongs in this place.

Not only is she a character living between two worlds. At least partly, but not entirely. She is not a kid anymore, but she is not yet an adult. People look at her, underestimate her, boss her around, dismiss her, and correct her, all before she even knows who she truly is.

And then comes the magic.

She begins having dreams. Strange marks appear on her skin. She finds books at the library with strange titles. A stray cat starts following her wherever she goes and never leaves. Her reflection starts speaking to her. And perhaps she discovers that the story about the dead girl haunting the bathrooms at school was not just a story.

That is the importance of their first experiences.

Whereas in the world of AD&D, the witch appears with powers, spells, and a clear-cut purpose, here she is noticed. The world recognizes something in her, and she recognizes it back.

This can be terrifying, but also terribly tempting.

I played this scenario with Larina. There is a young girl named Larina. Some kids call her "Creepy." She has visions and talks to ghosts, but she tries to hide her magical abilities because she knows that using them attracts attention from things in the darkness.

This scenario is perfectly designed for Jackson, IL. But I also realized there was a lot more I could do with it. That starting with powers is one type of game, but developing them as the game progresses is something else. 

Being magical in the Jackson environment means revealing oneself. Every casting of a spell is an exposure to the darkness seeking light. Every magical act draws eyes. 

Jackson, IL, is still a modern reflection of the AD&D-inspired fantasy world in Advanced Witches & Warlocks. The witch concept remains the same, but the clothes are different.

The group of friends is the coven. After hours in school are the dungeons. Rumors around town turn into gossip in hallways. The wise woman standing at the edge of the village is now someone's aunt, a school teacher, a local shop owner, or someone who has waited patiently for the right girl to ask the right questions.

The familiar becomes a pet that manages to enter the school for reasons that no one understands. A notebook under the bed takes the place of the spell book. The place beyond the fence at the cemetery is the ruined shrine. An ancient deity is a name scrawled in pencil at the abandoned classroom.

But Jackson, IL, cannot merely be a simple adaptation of fantasy RPGs. 

Not only would it be uninteresting, but it would lack necessary depth. It would be uninspired. 

Modern horror has to have its own logic.

While in a fantasy game, the main heroes are expected to take up swords and bravely venture into the dungeons, their counterparts in the modern horror world still have homework to do.

They have to attend classes, deal with parents, curfews, training, work after school, live up to peer expectations, compete with rival schools, maintain reputations, deal with their younger brothers and sisters, and people who would certainly notice if they were gone for three days straight.

This makes a big difference.

A teenage witch cannot just leave town on adventures, and she has to find a way to come back, to cover the stains on her jacket, to explain why her homework was done in the library, why she is late for algebra after having seen something crawling out of the drain at night. And yet, this is not a restriction; it is the essence of the game.

The ordinary world, which is often a barrier in games of the supernatural, is, in fact, what makes them scary.

An isolated haunted school becomes frightening precisely because it is her school. A cursed road is terrifying precisely because her best friend lives on the other side of it. The monster at the cemetery terrifies her, because Grandma is buried there, while the witch's mark makes her fear going to gym class. The ordinary makes the scary parts scarier. 

This is where the theme of the Satanic Panic emerges as well, but in the background.

Not as a simple decoration, but as the very core of the game, because the town uses that panic as a vehicle to express existing fears that otherwise remain untapped. The odd girl has always been creepy, the abandoned house - terrifying, the mysterious books at the library – suspicious. While the rumor makes the witch, it provides a ready-made justification for the search. This is horror, not because of accusations, but because of the town's desperation to believe that it has reason.

Since the community is already scared of her dark clothes, her books, her music, her art, and the woods she loves, the Satanic Panic gives this fear permission. It transforms gossip into social concern, suspicion into righteousness, and parents into monstrous beings, not changing their appearances in the slightest.

Because this is Jackson, IL, the choice of setting is critical. Where in a grand gothic landscape, the supernatural would sprawl. Here it is concentrated in the small-town Midwest. Everyone knows someone; everyone is related to someone; there are always witnesses to secrets; and there are always connections between the town monster and this place, even if no one has figured them out yet.

The ghost is not just a ghost. She used to be someone's sister, student, patient, or an innocent victim of a horrible event. The hag is not a creature that came here to terrorize. She may be an aunt, a landlord, a neighbor at church, the one whose home everyone avoids because of some terrible sin, or the very reason that three generations of women in one family never drink tea after dark. Local legends are not just myths. They are a necessity. People share their tales with such inaccuracy because the truth demands too much action.

Here is the haunted Midwest I imagine for Jackson: the place familiar enough to evoke a sense of security, and unfamiliar enough to hint at inherent dangers.

It is the time that makes the adventure unique as well. 1986 is not chosen by coincidence, although the brand recognition factor cannot be denied. It represents not nostalgia, but distance in time. No smartphones, GPS systems, online investigations, instant messaging apps, or fast transportation are available for the characters. If something terrible happened at night, they needed a phone line, a bicycle, a car, a payphone, or the guts to go to see it.

Rumors spread quickly, but not evenly. Information is stored in filing cabinets, yearbooks, church hallways, newspaper archives, and the library collection.

Which means that all the investigations are hands-on. The characters have to move from place to place, talk to people, and expose themselves. Which is important because in Jackson, IL, knowledge is bound to a place. The public library is important not because it is there, but because it has archived newspapers. The occult shop is valuable not for supplies but for the chance of someone seeing a teenager there. The school is necessary because almost everyone in town once studied there and left something behind. And the cemetery is crucial, because names are inscribed in stone, but not necessarily in the right manner.

As you remember, the power of the witch in Advanced Witches & Warlocks is bound to fantasy conventions and expectations. It is associated with danger, complexity, and power. Magic comes at a price. It creates bonds and produces unexpected results. In Jackson, IL, everything is different because the flow of magical powers has changed. 

This is the reason why these two projects complement each other.

While the Advanced Witches & Warlocks focuses on how witches look in a classic AD&D fantasy world, Jackson explores how a sixteen-year-old witch attending a class on Tuesday morning realizes that her destiny is tied to something far older than the town.

I am not yet sure whether this second project will eventually lead to a full-fledged book. And it may take quite a bit of writing and effort, probably surpassing 80,000 words before I finally figure out the full vision, there is one thing that I am sure about.

Jackson, IL, is a perfect reflection. While the witch at the edge of the ancient village is the witch wearing the black cloak on the old road in Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the witch sitting quietly at the high school is the girl on the bus looking at the old road with fascination.

Because the fantasy witch and the teenage witch are not different.

They are reflections of one another through the glass.

Prof. Lars Nichols with his daughter, Larina

Mirror Shard: Larina, the New Girl Witch

Every good haunted school needs a new girl.

It is one of the staples in teen horror literature and movies, and yet it works so well because it is not a gimmick. From Buffy Summers arriving at Sunnydale High to start a new life to Sarah Bailey transferring to a new school to become the missing fourth link in a teenage coven. The new girl arrives in the adventure exactly when it is born in the audience member's mind. The new girl does not yet understand the rules of the game, so we get to learn with her.

This is important in a horror RPG.

The long-time local heroine already knows what is better to remain unsaid. She knows the forbidden hallways, the names of the families whose conversation must be cut abruptly, and the teachers whom one has to joke with and not argue. She was taught by experience. While she may not fully believe in the town tales, she knows what they are about or at least what to avoid.

The new girl doesn't know anything. Not yet, at least.

• She wants to know why the third-floor room is locked all the time.
• She is curious why no one ever swims in the creek downstream.
• She wonders why there is a gap in the school's trophy case.
• She would like to understand why the librarian keeps local histories in the drawers rather than on the shelves.
• She would like to know why people fall silent whenever someone mentions "Mauvaisterre" or "Blackthorne."

This makes her useful. This also makes her dangerous.

The character of Larina fits the concept perfectly because she is known and unknown. We know where she can evolve into. The Witch Queen. The occult historian. The redhead witch, who wears black and purple clothing and stands in the way of the bad things trying to get into our world. 

But this is not the case in Jackson, IL.

Larina might have just moved into town because of her father's transfer to the college. She might be a newcomer attempting to blend into normality, failing to do so by noon. She might already be aware that ghosts exist in her town, but she has yet to comprehend their meaning. The other students might consider her creepy before she even introduces herself.

This is useful at the table.

The role of Larina as a New Girl Witch is not to figure out the details for players but to expose the mysteries by noticing things that everyone else failed to see or has learned to ignore.

I use Larina here because she is a great character for me. She is a stand-in, though, for any character the players bring to the table. 

• She observes the reflection's weird movement.
• She listens to a ringing of the bell that no one else can hear.
• She realizes that a stray cat hanging around the school has come there with a specific purpose.
• She discovers that the dead girl haunting the school bathrooms knows her name.
• Her first lesson of magic is not about casting a spell.
• It is about revealing her to the supernatural world.
• The ghosts can see her.
• The entity residing beneath the railroad tracks sees her.
• The teacher who has not aged since 1769 sees her.
• So do students who needed reasons to regard her as creepy.

So use the New Girl Witch when you want to start your campaign with a supernatural revelation. She can be a player character, NPC, rival, friend, or a stranger whom the other characters need to trust or not.

And just like the PCs, she does not have to know everything.

She just has to know enough to be scared.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. The Witch Was Already Waiting in AD&D

The main design idea behind Advanced Witches & Warlocks is simple.

The Witch was already a part of AD&D.

However, she had yet to receive an official class.

After all, she didn't really fall under the same category as other classes, such as the Magic-User, Cleric, Druid, Illusionist, Assassin, Monk, Ranger, or Paladin. But the Witch had a presence.

If you know how to find her, you will encounter her in the spells, in the monsters, in the implied setting, and even in Appendix N. She hides within the text itself. Like an occult figure.

AD&D already contained curses, charms, familiars, potions, polymorphs, magic circles, haunted mirrors, hags, night creatures, demons, devils, spirits, evil temples, forbidden books, and strange old women living on the fringes of the map.  Welcome to witch country.

All that was really left was to make the formal class.

That is why I don't think of my Advanced Witches & Warlocks as trying to force a modern witch concept into a retro-style game. AD&D has its own style, its own rules, and its own unique feel. If you drop a modern witch into AD&D's framework, it wouldn't work. The two things simply don't gel. 

Instead, the real question is: What sort of witch does AD&D want to nurture?

And that is why Appendix N plays such an essential role here.

While writing my Witches of Appendix N posts, I am doing far more than merely collecting witches in an inventory list. In reality, I am attempting to identify the essential concepts that were formed by early fantasy, weird fiction, horror stories, and sword-and-sorcery before D&D codified magic into game rules.

And once you start looking, the witches are everywhere.

Notably, not all witches will go by that name. They might be referred to as sorceresses, enchantresses, priestesses, hags, mothers, queens, oracles, temptresses, psychics, necromancers, or any other female with unusual powers. They are more than just distaff wizards; they have their own unique presence. 

Not all witches will be villains either. In fact, sometimes, they are the only ones capable of interpreting the strange events taking place. Whether that places them on the side of "good" or "evil" is often too simple of a question. 

That is important for gaming design purposes. 

The witch of AD&D doesn't have to be confined to folklore alone. She doesn't have to be a village healer, a wicked stepmother, a pagan priestess, an enchantress, or the mysterious old woman of the woods.

She is all these things combined.

Take, for example, the Satanic Witch featured in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. The story takes place within a setting full of Christian, pagan, faerie, and infernal elements. The witch's magic is powerful because it has spiritual, moral, and social implications. Both the satanic witch and Morgan Le Fey of this tale stand apart AND stand between all these other groups. 

A witch doesn't simply cast a spell.  A witch makes contact with beings that want something from her. She makes social contacts.

Here is another vital lesson for our witch design in AD&D.

• Magic-Users learn the arcane.
• Clerics petition divine power.
• Druids follow the ancient rites.
• Witches make contact.

She makes contact with spirits, patrons, ancestors, elder gods, demons, the dead, the moon, the earth, and whatever else lies beyond naming.

Of course, this doesn't mean every witch is inherently evil. That would be sloppy game design and even worse, boring.

Here we see the magic of Fritz Leiber, where the main antagonist of one of the first Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories isn't some evil mage, but Fafhrd's mother. Mor isn't just a boss in the dungeon, but family, power, culture, and control. She created that whole world for him, and escaping her is an accomplishment not unlike slaying monsters. Mor is not really evil. She is controlling; she is a matriarch after all, but she isn't harming Fafhrd; she is just not letting the youth run free. 

In Leiber's The Conjure Wife we see another witch, Tansy. She navigates her own "dungeon," only this time it is the challenges of a suburban housewife/witch facing other witches for dominance over their husbands' mundane careers at a University. Like Mor, Tansy is not about flashy magic; her magic is about something else.

That brings us to the third thing we learn:

The Witch is social.

She has family members, a coven, social and economic obligations, rivals, apprentices, enemies, taboos, and reputation. People know she exists before meeting her. People talk about her in hushed tones. People avoid her home, yet people end up visiting her.

• They visit when the child is ill.
• They visit when the cow stops giving milk.
• They visit when their husband takes a lover.
• They visit when their crops fail.
• They visit when the ghosts keep coming out.

These things aren't mere background flavor; they're solid adventure hooks.

The Witch should cause rumors. She should be a reason why villages need adventurers. She should affect villages in tangible ways.

Robert E. Howard brings up a fourth point. His worlds are full of the vestiges of lost ages, dark cults, serpent-haunted ruins, vanished civilizations, sinister rituals, and sorcerers whose power seems to predate even mankind itself. His witches and similar beings appear almost to carry within themselves the weight of lost history. Their magic is not theoretical; it is something that has been practiced long before modern civilization.

This matters. Well, at least to me and my view of how witches work.

An AD&D Witch is not simply an academic wizard with a new label slapped on. This character must embody knowledge of forgotten lore that remains effective. The old magic still works.

Sometimes that involves healing. Sometimes it involves cursing. Sometimes it involves making deals with powers better left unawakened.

And here we begin to see how the Witch becomes distinct from the usual AD&D Magic-User. Whereas the latter is kept aloof from the world through scholarship, the former is involved in the world and its dark undercurrents.

• She knows the trees that were once used to hang criminals.
• She knows why the church bell has a crack in it.
• She knows who among the midwives was secretly buried beyond the cemetery walls.
• She knows what the nameless thing in the well is.

Once again, this isn't just flavor. It is essential to what the class is.

A Witch PC knows more than just whether there is magic around. She knows the history of that magic. She knows who left it behind. She knows why.

• What spirit cursed the bridge?
• What drives the wolves away from the north road?
• Why does the old woman who lives near the outskirts to put out milk on dark nights?
• Why does the baron’s daughter cast no reflection?

That's why Advanced Witches & Warlocks doesn't reduce the Witch to simply having a spell list. She is not a wizard with a broom. She is not a cleric with a pointy hat.

The spell list is important, however. AD&D is a game of rules, levels, spells, limitations, saving throws, and consequences. A class has to have some sort of unique footprint.

But a class needs something else too.

It needs a role in the implied setting and world.

The Cleric implies temples, deities, undead, holy symbols, and orders.

The Magic-User implies spellbooks, towers, apprenticeships, lost libraries, and rival magic-users.

The Druid implies sacred groves, circles, mistletoe, ancient faiths, and harmony.

The Witch implies cottage homes, covens, familiars, curses, enchantments, rites of the full moon, hidden grimoires, local superstition, wizened crones, prodigious children, the fool of wisdom, and the dangerous generosity of one who understands your predicament and the price of its resolution.

This is not merely an addition for AD&D. This is part of what makes it AD&D.

Consider the monsters.

The hags; Night hags. Sea hags. Greenhags. Lamias. Medusae. Harpies. Vampires. Succubi. Lycanthropes. Demons and devils who tempt mortals with power. The undead whose restless souls seek redemption. The fey whose customs of hospitality and revenge dictate their actions.

These are not random monsters.

These are elements of a world in which magic is dangerous, intimate, and transactional.

This is the world of the Witch.

Consider the spells.

Charm Person. Detect Evil. ESP. Clairvoyance. Polymorph. Geas. Bestow/Remove Curse. Speak with Dead. Animate Dead. Reincarnation. Contact Other Plane. Magic Jar.

These spells all have their roots in esoteric practices that involve dealing with spirits, transformations, fates, and taboo acts.

These spells all contain elements of witchcraft.

One cannot simply mix and match bits of the Magic-User and the Cleric classes, add a cat, a broom, and a pointy hat. One cannot create the Witch in such a lazy manner. The Witch should not be merely a Magic-User with a familiar or a Cleric without armor nor a Druid with a different robe. 

A proper Witch demands her own mechanics and her own logic.

That logic for Advanced Witches & Warlocks is Occult Magic.

• Arcane magic is learned magic.
• Divine magic is authoritative magic.
• Occult magic is secretive magic.

The Witch recognizes magic as a complex tapestry, and one that might take notice if its strands are pulled apart.

And that's the other reason why Charisma remains my pick for the Witch's primary attribute. Not beauty, not popularity, but presence. Presence, as in the power of the self vis-à-vis others. Because the Witch must bargain, bind, curse, bless, threaten, pacify, command, and beckon across thresholds. 

It is equally obvious why this applies directly to Jackson, IL. Our young Witch may well be one of the smartest people in the room, but we don't need to assume it, and our young Witch will certainly never be the wisest. But our young Witch will have presence. Sometimes it may be subtle. Other times it may be awkward. And it will most likely manifest only under the cover of darkness, fog, mirrors, and whispers of her name. In the context of a school, Charisma becomes not simply popularity but social gravity. The ability to pull others into a secret, intimidate a bully, unsettle a teacher, console a frightened child, or even make that mysterious dead girl in the bathroom listen.

The reason why the Witch also works in Jackson, IL, just like in AD&D, is that she is powered by relationships. And there is perhaps no better place than high school for such power to operate.

Multi-faceted Non-Player Character Witches

That leads to yet another reason why this class is not too simplistic. Modern fantasy is often built around clear-cut heroes and villains, and both can do the job. However, AD&D requires something more nuanced.

The old-school Witch must be useful to the party, feared, necessary, and possibly suspicious.

She may be the party's best hope of countering the effects of a curse... while also being the very reason that curse exists.

She may heal a sick child in one town while being accused of causing a blight elsewhere. She may be neutral but remember that neutrality doesn't imply passivity but rather balance, debts, oaths, and repercussions.

She may be good yet be truly horrifying and evil, yet still cherished by someone she saved.

These are the roles that I want for my new class.

The Witch had to appear in Advanced Witches & Warlocks because of what AD&D represents.

• A dungeon door.
• A path through the woods.
• A forsaken altar.
• A burial site.
• A locked chamber.
• A mirror.
• An old and forgotten tome.

In all cases, the Witch understands that these are thresholds and must be named.

• She was there in Appendix N.
• She was there on the spell lists.
• She was there in the monster manuals.
• She was there in the rumors.

Advanced Witches & Warlocks does nothing more than greet her, provide her some rules, and give her a voice.

Shard: The Village Witch

She was in the game even before she became a class.

She was in the rumor table, though nobody called her by name. She was in the little cottage noted in the forest wilderness map. She was the old woman the people feared, and yet the one they visited under the cover of darkness. She was the stranger who knew the barrow’s true name, the seeress who told the party not to open the black door, the sole inhabitant of the town not showing any sign of surprise when the dead started walking.

There were always traces of her in the game. Her familiar lurking on top of a fencepost. The curse that no Cleric could lift, but she knew who placed it. Potion brewed from grave-moss, moonwater, and blood. Charm tied in red thread. Child born under an unlucky star. Ruined shrine where old rituals still work.

Introduce the village witch whenever the party arrives in a small town dealing with some problem they don’t want to face. She can be anywhere near the settlement – at the edge of the map, at the edge of the woods, marsh, ancient trail, ruin of the old temple, the last house in town before the fields become dark.

She is not automatically an enemy of the party. Nor is she always friendly towards everyone around her. She is not a monster, though the monster may fear her. She is not a Cleric, though the villagers seek her help whenever they get sick. She is not a Magic-User, though she casts spells that are unknown in academies. She is not a Druid, but uses all the old names for plants and trees.

She knows about what the villagers have done. She knows what the monster wants. She knows the secret the priest won’t talk about in public. She knows what the Magic-User failed to discover, because he was looking for written magic while ignoring oral magic. The magic that predates writing. 

Maybe she cured the reeve’s son once, though the reeve still considers her a wicked witch. Maybe her familiar has encountered the monster, and refuses to venture into the forest at night. Maybe she knows the old name of the hill ruins, but calling it brings her blood loss. Maybe she has written down her secret spells in some old tome that gets written by itself whenever it rains thunderously.

Perhaps the village priest consults her in secret for the reading of dreams. She may have buried something beneath her hearth long ago and never talked about it for two decades. She may recognize one of the party members' birthmarks as a witch-mark. She may ask to have the curse removed only after somebody confesses.

She may inform the party that the haunting isn’t actually caused by the undead, but rather it is the grief made manifest. She may recall times when the ruined temple had worshippers. She may remember which tomb is empty, and why people keep flowers on it. She may not venture over moving waters ever since the last witch-hunt came to the town.

It shouldn’t give away rumors and heal the party for free like an automaton. She has her needs, debts, limits, and enemies. She may request to have a piece of hair, offer to protect someone, make a pact under the moonlight, retrieve a missing charm, or identify the liar among the villagers.

Most of all, she must have a price.  Not gold, for sure. Rarely gold. 

Usually, something only the PCs can provide.

But in any case, the witch is out there. Waiting. 

The Witches of Appendix N: Jack Williamson

“The trouble began when the first witch was hounded and stoned to death by the first savage man. It will go on till the last witch is dead. Always, everywhere, men must follow that old Biblical law: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

- April Bell, Darker Than You Think

Today is the birthday of Jack Williamson. Born on this day 118 years ago. He appears near the end of Gygax's Appendix N, and he is responsible for a couple of books extremely relevant to my exploration of the Witches of Appendix N.

This is also the second of what I think of as the three big "witch-centric" authors of the Appendix N. Last time it was Margaret St. Clair and her quasi-Wicca witches and keepers of Occult Knowledge. Third is Andre Norton. Today, with Williamson, I am looking at two other witches, also keepers of Occult Knowledge, but also different. Different from St. Clair's and different even from each other.

If you go back and look at the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, something rather odd becomes apparent. When Gygax lists his authors in Appendix N, for the most part, you can find at least a couple of works listed for any given author. It was direct, straight from the book into the game (more or less). But Williamson is different. He is (and just a few others are) listed, but no works are mentioned. This was no accident, and it says a great deal about the man and his work. Williamson's contribution to early D&D was not because of any given work, but because of the ideas that are present in all of his work. Ideas of hidden worlds beneath the surface of reality, of old things wearing human faces, and of the disturbing notion that magic isn't learned, but remembered, at least for some.

There are two books of his that I think are crucial to any exploration of Witchcraft from the Appendix N starting point.

Darker Than You Think

This novel began as a novelette in the pages of Unknown back in 1940. Williamson expanded it and its themes to encompass post-War science-fiction rationalism. Occult themes are translated into science fiction, but I'll get to all of these. As a quick aside, this is a really good read. Part science fiction, part occult, and part mystery. Our protagonist, Will Barbee a rough around the edges newspaper man, gives us an almost proto-Kolchak. 

I won't go too deep into the plot of this one because it is a good read, and you look up the details yourself if you really want to (and spoil the big reveal).  Though I will talk about the bewitching (in all senses of the word) April Bell. We meet April Bell, a new reporter, very early in our tale. She is beautiful, with bright red hair (there we go again!), big green eyes, and (dare I say it) a healthy dose of animal magnetism. Our protagonist is smitten right away and, unlike some other heroes I have discussed in this series, is practically dragged around by her. Though that is the point, I think, he has no agency, he is under her spell from the moment he (we) see her.

April Bell admits to being a "witch" and a "witch child." She began her life as a witch when she was only 7. Again, I wonder how my own witches would have been different had I read this first.

April does have some magical abilities like spells, even if there is a "scientific explanation." But mostly their magic involves shape-shifting. I won't spoil the surprise for you, but it is a fairly obvious one. 

The Homo lycanthropus vs. Homo sapiens battle is a parallel to the pagan vs. monotheism/Christian battle I find so compelling.  Casting witches as another species of human is not uncommon, it is something we see in DC Comics, Anne Rice's "Mayfair Witches," and Kim Harrison's "The Hollows" series, just to name a few. And these are also related species to vampires, werewolves, and/or demons in many of these tales as well. This could be related to the psychological phenomena of "the Uncanny Valley," or the human fear of near human, but not quite human, looking beings. Granted, there is no fear of April Bell when we first meet her.  

Witches and Weretigers

While this book did not inspire Gygax to add a witch to AD&D, it very likely contributed to the weretiger we see in the Monster Manual. While many of the lycanthropic creatures are of indeterminate gender, two stand out. The werebear is male and has a rather obvious relation to Beorn of the Hobbit (and both to the berserkers of Norse myth), and the weretiger who is quite obviously female. Indeed almost all art of the weretiger from the Monster Manual on features a female weretiger. I am making the claim that this is directly related to this book and to April Bell. The image of her riding the sabre-tooth tiger must have really resonated.

Including the cover (another witch on the cover of an Appendix N book. Yes I am keeping track) there have been other depictions of April Bell with a tiger.

And then early depections of the AD&D weretiger.

Our "Exhibit A" is the weretiger from David Trampier in the AD&D Monster Manual. I mentioned back when I was exploring the origins of the various Monster Manual monsters that the Weretiger likely had an origin from 1942's "Cat People," just as I speculated that the Cat Lord was influenced by the 1982 remake. 

The original Cat People came out in 1942. The novelette of Darker than you Think came out in the pages of Unknown in 1940. So, there was enough time for the film's producer, Val Lewton, writer DeWitt Bodeen, or director Jacques Tourneur to have encountered the story, but not enough to prove they did. Though there is a more important fact.

The genesis of Cat People was Lewton's own short story, "The Bagheeta," published in Weird Tales magazine (July 1930), about a legendary panther, a "half leopard and half woman ... were-beast." This predates Williamson's tale by 10 years. Digging into this there are many tales equating shape-shifting cat people to witches. The movie Cat People, though, is closer in tone to Williamson's take than to Lewton's original tale.

This doesn't weaken Williamson's claim to the weretiger, but it does show a lineage.  Lewton's "The Bagheeta" only alludes to witchcraft via occult Satanism (or at least an enemy of the Church), Williamson's tale, and Lewton's own "Cat People" make this more explicit. Though this is lost again in the 1982 version. 

In many ways, the "witches" of Darker Than You Think are really closer to shamans than witches. They could have even been part of the mix (along with other sources) of the Druid's ability to change shape.

The Green Girl

Taking place in the far future time of May 4, 1999 (I know I shouldn't be snarky about it) we have a tale of interplanetary travel and alien life. Not really a dungeon crawl, or even magical (almost), but there are still things here to make note of. 

The titular Green Girl, Xenora, has many features of a classical witch, even if Williamson never uses that word here. For starters, there is her green skin, often associated with witches, but that is only superficial. Her best claim to the lineage of witchcraft is her ability to communicate with our protagonist, Melvin "Mel" Dane, via telepathy across great distances. Even more so is her ability to charm or bewitch our hero. 

There is also the Lord of Flame, who is very much like a demoniac figure in this tale. Especially when he responds to anyone speaking his name. 

A lot of this story reads like a tale of a witch and a demon told through the lens of science fiction rather than magic. Though the tech here is so fantastical, it appears like magic. 

Plus I *get* Mel. Much like his Xenora, I have been haunted by Larina. 

Williamson delves into other tales in which strange women act as oracles or seeresses, such as in "After World's End," but that one is weaker. Or even the legacy of occultism and witchcraft, as in "The Mark of the Monster." Here, witchcraft is used as a backdrop. 

Science Fiction Witches

Through both of these works, a pattern emerges that is uniquely Williamson's own. Unlike the other Appendix N authors, who situate their witches in folklore and fantasy, Williamson dresses his in science fiction. 

They are not supernatural, exactly, for they are natural, though natural in a way that ordinary humanity seems to have forgotten or suppressed. "Not supernatural, but superhuman," as quoted from Darker Than You Think. 

They are not taught from books or granted by demons. They are innate, biological, and tied to blood and bone. Telepathy, charm, and hidden sight are not spells, but evolutionary features, the inheritance of something older than civilization itself. This is the way in which Williamson views witchcraft, and this is the way in which he views it in Darker Than You Think, which stands as his definitive work on the subject.

Final Analysis

I think what we have here are two somewhat different interpretations of the witch idea using the lens of science fiction.  Both, though, are good. While I would normally spend this section lamenting that, despite all these examples, we never got a witch, I think I can see what came out of Gygax's reading of these. The weretiger and the druid ability to change shape.  

And neither of those is bad, they are just not witches.

Monstrous Mondays: MoChem the Morgan Chemical Monster

 Going back today to Jackson, IL, my current NIGHT SHIFT^® campaign and my all-consuming obsession. 

Today I have a monster that I have been trying to bring into a game for the better part of 47 years. Not that this guy is a hard monster to figure out, it's just that his history is so tied up in my hometown that he didn't really fit into any other game I have done before.

This particular monster was created by me one afternoon in the summer of 1979 when I was 10. I had been reading a lot of Daniel Cohen's "monster books" thanks to our town's well-stocked Carnegie grant library. 

I lamented that our town didn't have their own local monster (the word "cryptid" was not in my vocabulary yet) though this was way before the internet and before I discovered microfiche to discover my hometown did indeed have it's own history of monsters, ghosts, and other things. 

I figured my creation was as "real" as anything I had been reading (age 10 was the start of my real exploration into skepticism, which led me to the conclusion that the supernatural was all bullshit). While I still enjoyed reading it all, I thought it was as real as, say, "Star Wars."

So in a fit of childhood bravado and creativity that I subject you all too every day, I made a monster.

Outside of town was a chemical plant. Now, I am not sharing the name because my blog gets hit by bots I have found material I have written here for games passed off as "truth."  Details about the Hex Girls and Astral Spiders, just to name two. So there is no reason to drag a real company with real employees into something invented by a 10-year-old. But I am keeping the monster's name.

So let's switch over to the fictional Jackson, IL and it's resident mutant.

The Story of MoChem and the MoChem Monster

Just east of town, the Mauvaisterre splits into various creeks and smaller bodies of water. One of these runs by the now-closed Morgan Chemical plant. Morgan Chemical came to Jackson in the late 1800s, and was founded by Jacobi Morgan and Sons. Morgan Chemical produced fertilizer, pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals needed by the growing farming boom in Central Illinois post-Civil War economy. The plant was well-run, provided hundreds of jobs for locals, and brought money into the local economy. So successful was the plant that the road on which the plant was located was renamed Morgan Ave, and businesses began to pop up all along the east-west corridor. So much so that it eventually took businesses away from the North-South Main Street. 

Jacobi Mogan was very typical of many of the entrepreneurs who had settled in the area at the time. "Work Hard. Tend to Family. Fear God" was his motto. In all fairness, he was, for the time, a good boss. His employees did work hard, and he paid them a fair wage. The company grew on his solid Presbyterian-Protestant work ethic and the belief that anything is possible with faith and hard work. He was an early benefactor to MacAlister College and helped build one of Jackson's famous Gothic-revival style churches.

His sons, however, were not so charitably minded. When the sons took control of the company in the early 1900s, they saw ways to increase profits by cutting some safety standards. They also got involved in the Great War, providing "fuel additives," but it was well known they had taken a side contract in weapons research. When World War II came around, Morgan Chemical provided gas masks, and rumor says the chemicals the gas masks protected against. 

With each generation, the Morgan family motto (metaphorically speaking) lost another word until, in practice, only “Work Hard” remained. By the 1960s, under the fourth generation of Morgans, the plant had become notorious among workers for failing safety standards, careless disposal practices, and toxic leaks. Waste seeped into the groundwater and into the channels that fed the Mauvaisterre. Cattle downstream sickened or died. Children born to workers were whispered about in hushed voices. Whatever prosperity the company had once brought to Jackson now came at a terrible cost.

It was in this poisoned environment that MoChem first came to be known.

No one agrees on what MoChem truly is. Some claim it was born in the tainted water itself, shaped by chemical waste and bad earth. Others whisper that it was once a deformed child, discarded by frightened parents after the plant poisoned too many families. Another tale says it had been a worker who fell into a vat and came back wrong. The most popular story holds that MoChem was an undercover reporter from St. Louis or Chicago who came to expose Morgan Chemical, got too close to the truth, and was murdered and dumped in the waste.

What is known for certain is that in 1973 Morgan Chemical was fined, shuttered, and abandoned. Cleanup was promised. Very little was ever done.

Soon after that, sightings began.

MoChem (AD&D 1st Edition)

Frequency: Very rare
No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
Armor Class: 5
Move: 9”
Hit Dice: 4+4
% in Lair: 55%
Treasure Type: Nil
No. of Attacks: 2 or 1
Damage/Attack: 1-6/1-6 or special
Special Attacks: Blood drain, engulf small prey
Special Defenses: Semi-liquid form, surprise
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: Low to Semi-
Alignment: Neutral (Evil)
Size: M
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
Level/X.P. Value: IV / 240 + 5 per hit point

MoChem (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
DV: 6
Move: 45 ft.; may flow through narrow gaps at 30 ft.
Vitality Dice: 4
Attacks: 2 slams/claws
Damage: 1d6/1d6
Special: Semi-liquid form, blood drain, engulf, surprise, light sensitivity, sunlight damage, double damage from fire
XP Value: 140

MoChem is a malformed humanoid horror spawned from decades of illegal chemical dumping. Roughly man-sized but squat and thick-bodied, it has overlong arms, short, powerful legs, a single milky eye in its upper torso, and a flexible feeding maw below. Its body is coated in a red oily secretion often mistaken for blood.

Combat: MoChem attacks with two heavy slams or claws for 1-6 points of damage each. It may instead attempt to batter, grapple with, or press itself against prey to feed. It is cunning only in an animal way, preferring darkness, ambush, narrow spaces, and prey that are alone or already frightened.

Special Abilities

Blood Drain: Whenever MoChem scores a critical hit, it opens feeding pores or its maw against exposed flesh, draining 1-4 additional hit points of blood and vital fluids. This is in addition to normal damage. A drained victim may appear pale, weak, and chemically burned around the wound. This is not a vampiric or magical effect.

Semi-Liquid Form: MoChem may compress itself into a half-fluid shape, allowing it to pass through bars, storm drains, culverts, wide cracks, broken windows, pipe openings, or any aperture large enough for a cat or small dog. In this form, it cannot attack normally, but it may move through spaces inaccessible to most man-sized creatures. It may resume its full shape in the following round. Because of this ability, it cannot be held by ordinary ropes or manacles, and non-magical grappling attacks against it suffer a -2 penalty.

Engulf Small Prey: Creatures of small build, as well as animals the size of dogs or smaller, may be engulfed if MoChem successfully hits with both attacks in a single round. The victim must save vs. petrification or be pinned within its semi-fluid mass. Thereafter, the victim suffers 1-4 hit points of damage per round until freed or dead. Small animals may simply be swallowed whole at the DM’s discretion.

Surprise: In darkness, sewers, culverts, abandoned industrial works, or wet ground near polluted runoff, MoChem surprises on 1-4 on 1d6.

Light Aversion: Bright light causes MoChem pain and disorientation. A strong lantern beam, continual light spell, or similar bright illumination forces it to attack at -2. If trapped in such light for more than 3 consecutive rounds, it will retreat if possible. A light spell cast directly upon or very near it inflicts 1-4 hit points of damage.

Sunlight: Direct natural sunlight inflicts 1-6 hit points of damage per round and prevents use of its semi-liquid form. MoChem avoids daylit areas whenever possible.

Vulnerability to Fire: All fire-based attacks inflict double damage.

MoChem is not undead, nor is it a true elemental or demon. It is a pollution-born predator, a toxic life form awakened in bad ground and abandoned waste. It lairs in culverts, runoff tunnels, chemical pits, and flooded industrial ruins.

MoChem possesses a rudimentary intelligence. Enough to know it despises its own existence, but not enough to know how to end it. It fears light and the sun and avoids both at all costs. According to scholars on local BBS sites, if you could lure it into direct sunlight, it would dry up and die. Others speculate that such a death would not be permanent unless the creature was also burned.

--

I kinda wish 10-year-old me could see this!

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

Monstrous Mondays: Old Annie, the Mauvaisterre Hag

 Everyone in Jackson, IL knows about "Old Annie" though not everyone agrees on what or who she is. The most popular story is that "years ago," Annie was a local woman who lived near the river. She had three (maybe four, maybe two) children. Her husband left her, and she drowned her children. Then, in a fit of grief, she drowned herself. At least that is the most common story. Everyone has a story about seeing her, or someone who has seen her, or heard her wails at night when she is supposedly out looking for her drowned children.

Others include an escaped patient from the Illinois State Hospital who fell into the river and drowned, and now her ghost is trying to find her way out.  Others claim the whole thing is a hoax and point to a 1967 Jackson Gazette story of faternity pranks at MacAlister College where pledges were forced to dress up as Old Annie to scare people.

“Don’t go near Mauvaisterre River, Old Annie will snatch you.”

Everyone has a theory of who Annie was, including a woman named Anne Sullivan from the 1870s.  

The trouble is, everyone is wrong. Not about Old Annie as such, just who she is and what she is. Annie is not the ghost of a guilty mother. Old Annie is really the Mauvaisterre Hag.

The Mauvaisterre Hag

The land that was settled and later became Jackson, IL originally had a different name. When Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet first came through this area in the late 1600s, they went to places of local importance. Like the Dixon and Cahokia Mounds, the bluffs over the Mississippi River are where the Piasa was said to have lived. And north of that was a land that all the locals avoided. A place they called "The Bad Land."  This translated into "Mauvaise Terre" and eventually became "Mauvaisterre".  Today it is the name of the county where Jackson sits, a lake, and a river that runs through the town.

Even then, legends of a hag-like creature haunting the waterways were old.

The Mauvaisterre Hag is a corrupt spirit of the land, a water spirit similar in many ways to a nymph or nixie, but something evil happened, and this balanced nature spirit became twisted and evil. 

If the members of the Peoria tribes had a name for this creature, they never told anyone, least of all the white explorers to their lands.

THE MAUVAISTERRE HAG, "OLD ANNIE" (AD&D 1st Edition)

Frequency: Very rare (Unique ?)
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 5
Move: 9” / 12” in mud, swamp, or shallow water
Hit Dice: 3+3
% in Lair: 60%
Treasure Type: None
No. of Attacks: 2 or 1
Damage/Attack: 1-6/1-6 or by weapon
Special Attacks: Horrific appearance, drown
Special Defenses: Camouflage, surprise, half damage from cold
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: High
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: M
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
Level/X.P. Value: IV / 165 + 4 per hit point

Mauvaisterre Hag (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 1
DV: 5
Move: 45 ft. / 60 ft. in mud, swamp, or shallow water
Vitality Dice: 3
Special: 2 claw attacks or by weapon; horrific appearance, drown, camouflage, surprise, half damage from cold
XP Value: 

The Mauvaisterre Hag, also known as "Old Annie," appears as a bent and sodden crone with long trailing hair like river weeds, pale eyes, and skin the color of wet clay. Her garments are formed of rotted cloth, moss, mud, and reeds. She is most often encountered near creeks, riverbanks, marshes, drowned groves, or low ground where the earth has become soft and treacherous. Though related to the sea hag in nature and malignancy, Old Annie is a thing of bad earth and black water rather than salt sea and storm tide.

It is said by those who can read these signs that Annie used to be something more akin to a nymph or a nixie, a water creature of nature and balance, but something happened. Something that changed the land and corrupted it and the spirits that lived there. Some of these spirits have gone to darker, deeper places in the earth, but Old Annie remains. She is ancient beyond reckoning, and her age has done nothing but deepen her malignancy. 

Old Annie attacks with filthy claws, striking twice per round for 1-6 hit points each. She may also wield a crude knife, broken oar, driftwood club, or similar object if it suits the encounter. She prefers ambush, isolation, and terror to open battle.

Special Abilities

Horrific Appearance: Any creature beholding Old Annie for the first time must save vs. paralysis/petrification (Wits based for NIGHT SHIFT). Those failing suffer a -2 penalty on attack rolls against her for 1-4 rounds due to revulsion and dread. If the victim fails the saving throw by 5 or more, they must also flee in panic for 1-3 rounds. This is less potent than the deadly gaze of a true sea hag, but no less hideous in its own fashion. Creatures accustomed to hags, swamp spirits, or similar horrors may receive a +2 bonus to the saving throw at the GM’s discretion.

Drown: If Old Annie successfully strikes the same man-sized or smaller victim with both claws in one round while in shallow water, mud, or slime, she may, on the following round, attempt to drag the victim beneath the surface. The victim must save vs. death magic or be pinned and begin drowning. On subsequent rounds, the victim may attempt to break free with a successful bend bars/lift gates roll or by Old Annie being driven off, slain, or taking 6 or more points of damage in a single round.

Camouflage: When standing motionless in reeds, mud, shallow water, or against a creek bank, Old Annie is 75% likely to be mistaken for driftwood, roots, a patch of reeds, or some other natural feature unless closely examined. She surprises opponents on 1-4 on 1d6 in such terrain.

Half Damage from Cold: As a creature of chill muck and black water, Old Annie suffers only half damage from cold-based attacks, with fractions rounded down.

Old Annie is not a true hag, but a corrupted nature spirit. As such, she does not have access to witch magic or form a covey with other hags. Though she shares no love for hags either and will avoid the Urban Hags of Jackson. 

--

"Mauvaisterre" is a real place name in Central Illinois. The rough translation does mean "bad earth" or "bad land." It is the real name of a creek and a lake, but not a river or county. I also thought it was appropriate for a place I have been calling "a sinkhole of evil."

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

Monstrous Mondays: The Crimson Cougar

 My latest obsession is my Jackson, IL campaign for NIGHT SHIFT^®. I have been doing a lot of research, and many creatures keep coming up, but none more fun than the giant cats of the area where I grew up. 

Opinions vary. Are there cougars in the middle of the state of Illinois? Large bobcats? Panthers? Well, there is a "Panther Creek" conservation area nearby, but no actual panthers. But were there? Well, in Jackson, there certainly was. Maybe there still is. 

The Crimson Cougar

Every school has a mascot. Some have teeth.

In Jackson, Illinois, the teams of Jackson Public High are the Crimson Cougars. The name is on jackets, painted across gym walls, and shouted from the bleachers every fall. Officially, it is a solid school mascot. Strong animal. Local color. Nothing more.

Ask around long enough, and the older stories surface.

Long before the school took the name, farmers and hunters spoke of a great red cat seen along fence rows, creek beds, and field edges at dusk. Some said it was a cougar caught in strange light. Others swore it was too large, too lean, and too quiet to be natural. A few claimed it appeared before storms, accidents, sudden deaths, and other runs of bad luck. When Holmwood Hall on MacAlister campus burned down in the 1940s, some students claimed to have seen it roaming around. It was seen prior to the great train crash of the 1860s that killed dozens. And when the Cholera epidemic killed scores, it was seen roaming outside the city limits.

The stories never matched in every detail. They agreed on one point. Seeing it meant something.

Years passed. Then the town did what small towns often do. It took something feared and turned it into a symbol. It painted the monster on helmets and pennants. It gave it school colors and a grin.

Some people in Jackson still say it is out there, waiting to foretell another disaster. 

CRIMSON COUGAR (AD&D 1st)

Frequency: Very rare/Unique
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 4
Move: 18
Hit Dice: 7+2
% in Lair: 0%* (no lair has been found)
Treasure Type: Nil
No. of Attacks: 3
Damage/Attack: 1-4/1-4/2-6
Special Attacks: Surprise, pounce, fear gaze
Special Defenses: Hit only by silver or magical weapons at night or in darkness
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: Low to Semi-
Alignment: Neutral
Size: L
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
Level/X.P. Value: VI / 825 + 10 per hit point

Crimson Cougar (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 1 
DV: 4
Move: 45 ft.
Vitality Dice: 7
Special: 3 attacks (2 claws and bite), move silently, silver or magical weapons to hit, cause fear.
XP Value: 1,400

Crimson Cougar is a large, mountain-lion-like creature with fur in a dark reddish, even blood-like, color. Some people think it is only an illusion formed by the sunset, but others have claimed to have seen it at night. The eyes are said to be gold, although scared eyewitnesses claim they glow red.

This being is extremely quiet and catches other creatures off guard on a roll of 1-4 on a d6 when found in forests, cornfields, creeks, or at twilight. If Crimson Cougar attacks by jumping out of hiding, it gains a +2 bonus to hit with both claw attacks in the first round. If both claw attacks hit one target, the being can bite the creature for 2-6 points of damage.

When looking at the creature in the eye within 30 feet, a creature must make a saving throw vs spells or flee for 1-4 rounds. If retreat is possible, creatures with at least 5 Hit Dice get +2 to their saving throw, as they find it harder to be intimidated by an unnatural creature such as the Crimson Cougar. A successful save grants immunity to this cougar's gaze attack for 24 hours.

If it is twilight, storm-dark, or nighttime, only silver or magic weapons will hurt this being; however, normal weapons may harm it in full daylight, although they offer little relief to someone under attack by the being's claw strikes. 

Although the creature is known to be fearsome, it is not normally malevolent to humans. It does not hunt them for pleasure and does not kill livestock without cause. The crimson cougar usually appears where the ancient boundaries have been violated, where blood is about to be spilled, or when the land has become angry. It can be an omen, a protective spirit, a ghost, or any supernatural animal.

Despite many hunts over the last two centuries, no lair of the Crimson Cougar has even been discovered. No cubs or mated pairs have ever been seen, leading many to speculate that there is only one Crimson Cougar, if it is a living creature, or a manifestation of the land. 

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

This Old Dragon: Issue #124

Let's go back to a transitional time for me personally. August 1987. I was starting my first year at university, and pretty much everything in my life was changing. I had moved to a town that would be my home for the next 7 years and 2.5 degrees. I was about to meet the woman I was going to marry, though we never actually dated in college. Just hung around each other like 24 hours a day for five years. And in gaming, I was getting ready to move over to the "new" 2nd edition of the game that had been part of my life for 10 years or so. Stakeout was the number one movie. U2 and Madonna filled the airwaves, and on tables and shelves everywhere was This Old Dragon #124.

I will admit, I don't recall this one very well. I don't think I actually owned it.

The cover by Teanna Byerts is good, but I am not sure I recognize her name at all. Like many of the Dragon of this time frame, it is a themed issue, this time on "Aerial Adventuring."

Also, my copy is in pretty terrible shape. There are a lot of pages falling out, and it is missing the Forgotten Realms map, much to my disappointment. Though given that it is nearly 40 years old, this is hardly a shock.

Letters cover some of the changes in Dragon and some of the ones coming up. 1986-88 was a big transitional time at TSR as we all know now and there is evidence everywhere. 

Roger E. Moore asks in the Editorial what other changes do people want, including a dedicated BBS (bulletin board system). Kudos for the forward thinking. I got onto a lot of BBS back in the day and TSR one would have been fun. 

Checking my PDF it looks like I am missing the Forum page.

Ken Rolston is up first with Role-playing Reviews. He covers two books from the Warhammer Fantasy line, though he spends a lot of time talking about the merits of various other Fantasy RPGs including AD&D/D&D, GURPS Fantasy, RuneQuest and Harnmaster among others. When we get to warhammer he likes the character creation and combat, but doesn't seem to care for the magic system. Though he loves the races and monsters. The review is long, but not so long as to be overpowering. Given the impact that Warhammer will soon have on the hobby, it is likely the right size. 

Sage Advice covers the Frank Mentzer-edited D&D Expert set. 

Ah, page 17, we get into our feature articles. 

Ed Greenwood is up first with Sailors on the Sea of Air, detailing the skyships of the Forgotten Realms. Since these pages were already falling out, I just took them and stuck them into my 1987 "Gray" Forgotten Realms boxed set.  These are not Spelljammer ships, at least not yet, but they are a nice fantastical piece that separates what makes the Realms the Realms and not Greyhawk. Does Greyhawk have flying ships? Maybe, but they seem to work well here. Ed, of course, is dropping names here that will soon become minor D&D celebrities in their own right.

On a Wing and a Prayer is next from L. Gregory Smith and covers gliders for AD&D. Not quite as fantastical as flying ships. It seems to be complete. When were gliders first used? 1880s it seems. 

Thomas Kane is back with Flying the Friendly (?) Skies, or a guide to aerial adventuring in the AD&D game. This covers mounts of various types and spells. He also gives us weather effects and altitude adjustments. 

The Wings of Eagles by J. E. Keeping details the aarakocra as a PC and NPC race choice. I don't recall ever seeing anyone ever play one back then, so not sure if this article had much traction. Of course, today they are ubiquitous enough to be a character and a plot point in the last Dungeons & Dragons movie.  Again my copy was falling out, so I just punched some holes into it and stuck it into my Monstrous Compendium for AD&D 2nd ed. There is even a god of aarakocra, Krocaa, listed. 

This ends the feature.

Buy quirk of layout, Sage advice continues here on the same page with the updated Beastmaster XP tables. Now I kinda want to make an aarakocra beastmaster. 

Joseph R. Ravitts is next with Kicks and Sticks, Introducing escrima to Oriental Adventures. A system of escrima martial arts as well as a class to use it, the Escrimador. It *seems* fine, but feels like a solution in search of a problem. Honestly, I never used Oriental Adventures much and got into their martial arts sections even less. 

Rich Stump is up with Front-End Alignments about "Quasi-alignments" of gamers like "Chaotic Everywhere" and "Lawful Bored."  Not really my thing, but I'm sure someone was amused. Feels like filler to me. 

Far more useful is Rich Baldwin's Arcane Lore: The Secrets of Odeen the Arch-Mage. This details the known background of the Arch-Mage Odeen and, more importantly, the discovered spells of the Arch-Mage. There are five new spells here, nothing earth-breaking, but fun ones. Perfect for a quest to uncover this lost book. 

Stuck in the middle of this issue is this AD&D Game 2d Edition Questionnaire. It is pretty comprehensive. The mail in reply card is still attached, but sadly I think I missed the window to send in my responses.

What is most interesting to me is what is here that made it into the game and what didn't. 

Packing It All Away by Ian Chapman offers tips on what to pack for a wilderness adventure. Most of the people I gamed with were at the time or had been Boy Scouts, present company included (yes, I was a Boy Scout, no, I didn't stick with it because they didn't like Atheists then, still don't I think.).  So this material was a bit of a repeat. We all had access to various Boy Scout manuals. Still this is a useful list of items and advice. Not sure if the GP values translate to other systems, though. 

Ah, now here is a fun one. Ed Greenwood is back with The Ecology of the Gelatinous Cube. A monster that, by all accounts, was created just so Gary could mess with his players gets the full Ecology treatment. Here the deadliest of the all the Jello-O flavors gets situated into the dungeons of the Undermountain. Ed even manages to make these things make sense. They even get a proper name, Athcoids. Since this was already falling out, I punched holes in this one too and put it in my Monstrous Compendium binder. Blasphemy? Eh. The magazine is falling apart anyway, and this at least allows me to keep the best parts. 

Michael Dobson give us some sneak peaks of AD&D 2nd Edition in The Game Wizards. I know that at the time I was excited to get this new AD&D. Despite starting in 1979 I always felt I was on my back foot when it came to AD&D 1st ed. I began with Holmes Basic and then on to Moldvay Basic before getting into AD&D proper. This of course is silly for me to think, since the Holmes Basic I was playing then was a combination of that and the AD&D Monster Manual. So I was only two years late for the start of AD&D. But still, I felt AD&D 2nd Ed would be "mine" the one I could invest into. This article covers the new AD&D, but also other offerings from TSR. I didn't fully comprehend then what was happening with TSR and Gygax even if I new the broad strokes. Still, it felt like a change, and I was already in the middle of my own changes that this felt custom-made for me. College and AD&D, 2nd ed., would be forever linked in my mind.

Peter R. Jahn has some rules for guns for various systems in Blasters & Blunderbusses. Really, I should say it is more system-agnostic.

Following on that is A Shot in the Arm, or a new damage system for Star Frontiers by Jason Pamental and David Packard. I enjoyed SF back in the day, but by 1987 I had moved on to other sci-fi games in my search to find the perfect sch-fi game for me. Eventually, I just had to write my own. 

Thomas Kane is up again with The Most Secret of Secrets, real world secret tech for Top Secret and Top Secret/SI games. This includes such things as the Stealth Bomber and Stealth Fighter. I had a high-school buddy who became an engineer and was WAY into stealth tech. Then later on in college I had a roomate that bought all the flight simulators for the stealth fighters when they came out in the early 1990s. I liked this article for the coverage of the nearly forgotten Soviet "space plane," their answer to our space Shuttle. 

Friend of the Other Side, Jeff Grubb is up with his Marvel-Phile discussing The Hulk and the Hulkbusters. 

The Lessers are back with The Role of Computers, detailing what was high tech in the Summer of 1987. They cover the games Black Magic and Realms of Darkness as well some clues for other games. The DNA that all computer games share with D&D is always a little more obvious in these early games. 

Small ads are next with the Gamer's Guide. Always a ton of great stuff here. Avil Enterprises still has its ad for illustrating your character. An ad for "Christian Adventure Novels," "Discipleship Games," and a few more. 

Order form for back issues of Dragon. You can get issues as far back as #80 and all five volumes of "Best of Dragon." Minimum $15 for credit card orders, please. 

The Convention Calendar covers all the best cons for late summer/early fall 1987, including Gen Con 20 in Milwaukee, WI, on August 20-23. I see the Midwest still dominates the Con scene, followed by the West Coast. 

Dragonmirth, Snarf Quest, and Wormy provide us with our comics this issue. 

All said and told, not a bad issue at all. Part of the transitional time of Dragon, D&D, and TSR. Some of those transitions were pretty obvious, others we only see in retrospect.

While some people claim that the best days of Dragon were behind it, as part of the Golden Age of TSR/D&D, I would argue that Dragon gained more focus and direction in these years, between the height of AD&D 1st edition and the beginning of AD&D 2nd edition. We are seeing the direction AD&D is about to go (again, this is retrospective), and honestly, I thought and still think it looked pretty good. I was not so creator-focused back then that the news of Gygax's, Mohan's, and then later Mentzer's departure affected me much. I suspected then that AD&D/D&D would go on. It did in fact. 

Had I been more "creator-focused" I should have noticed more the rise of Ed Greenwood. It was not a meteroic rise, but a gradual one built up over years of steady and reliable output. Maybe I would have given the Realms more of a chance back then. But it would not be until the 2000s that I really looked into it all and not till much later that I would be playing in the Realms. 

Still. One of the big reasons to keep doing these "This Old Dragons" is to appreciate what we had, how it has shaped the game and the gamers, and what we can still learn from it all today. 

Speaking of which. I have been periodically buying large collections of Dragon magazines. I am now just about out. I'll have to check, but I might not have many of these left.