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

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

- Dying Edict of the Ash Witch

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

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

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

Dark Sun is making a comeback.

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

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

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

Athas is one thing, Yog is another.

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

How does one handle the hard topics?

This Is a Warning

Let me be extremely plain about this.

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

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

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

But there is another side to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which is why we come to the player characters.

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

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

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

The characters will have to decide.

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

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

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

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

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

That is a matter of some consequence. 

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

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

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

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

The Witch Gate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, they learn the Priest-Kings can bleed.

Then they can lose.

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

That last bit is likely to unnerve them.

And it is the most important part of the campaign.

The Ash Witch Falls

And then she is dead.

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

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

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

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

It doesn't really matter how the message travels.

Everyone hears the final Edict of the Ash Witch:

THE GATE IS OPEN! THE GATE IS DEFENDED!

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

The Gate is open; you can escape.

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

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

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

This Is Where the Heroes Come In

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

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

I could make no more telling statement about Yog. 

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

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

No. This is wrong.

And then acting on it.

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

With Yog, I know why. To be opposed.

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

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

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

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

Zothique, the Dying Earth, and Yog

 Last week I talked about the Dying Earth. Since this is last Monday before I get back to my Mirror Mondays, I do want to hold up another mirror, even if it is at an oblique angle.

So I find myself thinking of Yog again. More to the point, the Wasted Lands of Yog. Using the Wasted Lands RPG.

In a way, Yog is my own take on the Dying Earth setting, but I am not drawing from a single well. I have no desire for Yog to be just another Dying Earth or some other swords-and-sorcery affair with a red sun hanging over it all. Those are fun, of course, but we have a lot of games for that.

I want to convey to Yog an age that is almost impossible to put into words. The people who make their home now are walking atop entire civilizations that have come and gone. You will find kingdoms built on the ruins of older ones, by builders who could not have told you who put those ruins in place. The magic is as old as it is perilous, and one gets the impression it was better known to those who perished millennia ago than to the ones making use of it today.

History here does not run in a straight line; it is a matter of layers. Some of those layers get turned over, others have a way of waking up. I would say that is Vance’s influence.

But The Dying Earth is not what Yog is. Not exactly, anyway. 

Look at the gaming DNA, and you will also see plenty of Hyperborea. Jeffrey Talanian has put together an RPG that is part old-school D&D, part weird science-fantasy, and part swords & sorcery. He takes his cues from Howard, Lovecraft, and above all Clark Ashton Smith, yet he never loses sight of the fact that it has to function as a game. That is something I value.

Yog can have its share of dying-world philosophy, but at the end of the day I need my characters to be out there breaking down doors, sifting through ruins for ancient magic and the like, or putting an end to monsters. They will uncover things best left in the ground. Hyperborea allows for that sort of thing, with its mix of horror and the odd bit of impossible science.

Then you have Zothique.

For the mood of Yog, Clark Ashton Smith’s work is perhaps the most significant. I have talked a lot about Zothique in the past. It is the final continent of an Earth in the far future. The lands we know have been under the sea for eons while others have made their appearance and sunk again in the vastness of time. The sun is old, the world is in its last age, and much of history and science is a memory. Magic is back.

Smith was at it in the 1930s, well before Vance put pen to paper for The Dying Earth in 1950. And if Vance can be dangerous, Zothique is consumed by death.

You will find necromancers everywhere. It is not confined to the fellow in black robes in the tower on the edge of town. Sorcerers are raising kingdoms from corpses, lovers won’t stay in their graves, and tombs hold things with ambitions of their own. One could be in a city and feel as though it were a monument to a civilization that has already had its funeral.

In tales like "The Empire of the Necromancers" or "The Charnel God" (two of my favorites), death is not an interruption. It is the landscape. In some places, you might not be able to tell where life leaves off and death takes over.

That is very much how I see Yog. In a sense, Zothique is as decadent as I would have it be for Yog. You will find your share of kings and princes, merchants and priests, sorcerers and torturers, not to mention thieves and wanderers. Yet one gets the impression that very few are concerned with making tomorrow any better.

Then again, why put in the effort? There is little tomorrow to be had.

Kingdoms may come and go, but no one has much faith that they will endure. Religions make their way, though their deities are likely just old ghosts from a bygone era. And while cities hold on to life, the deserts are there to swallow them up, kingdom by kingdom. It all has a temporary quality about it, even civilization itself. That is what I am after on Yog.

Vance provides the ancient world, the oddity of magic and knowledge long since put aside, and the absurdity of folk carrying on with their small-time schemes under a waning sun. Hyperborea offers the gameable swords & sorcery structure; on its map a barbarian or a witch can rub shoulders with a weird monster or some relic of ancient tech, and no one needs to make an issue of it.

But from Zothique, I take the death.

Not in the sense of a high body count, but as entropy. The end of empires and languages and gods. A city left to rot. A tradition of magic is vanishing because the last adept who knew it is gone and taught no one. Whole ways of seeing the world are being buried in the sand.

I want to put that into Yog. I want ruins whose names are no one’s recollection. Gods known only by what was chiseled into a tomb. Spells so old that the question of whether their maker was human is a matter of debate. Dead civilizations layered on top of other dead ones. The people of Yog don’t live amid the detritus of a single past, but of many. That makes a difference.

It goes some way to explaining the necromancy on Yog. The living are a minority compared to the dead, and the weight of those ages is upon us. To a necromancer, it is less a transgression than tapping into the world’s greatest resource: its history.

There are some ways in which I part company with both Vance and Smith.

As mentioned previously, I am also taking influence from other sources. Raven, Swordsmistress of Chaos is not great, but fun. I did my playtesting of Wasted Lands using Raven, and it was a lot of fun. The world fits. I am also mining Gor. Gor is not great, nor is it fun. BUT it does give me some great antagonists to fight against. Something that Vance and Smith do not really do. 

There are things about Gor that are useful to me.

The city-states. The strange cultures. The decadent courts. The merchants, warriors, priests, assassins, and thieves. A world that can feel ancient and brutal even when remnants of advanced technology are hiding behind the curtains. And, of course, the Priest-Kings.

I am even using that name on Yog, though my Priest-Kings are not Norman's alien rulers. Mine are human. Painfully, disappointingly human.  They rule the city-states of Yog through religion, tradition, violence, and fear.

And then there is slavery. You can't really talk about Gor without talking about slavery, particularly the sexual slavery of women. It is not some incidental bit of background decoration in those books. It becomes fundamental to Norman's vision of the world and, eventually, to the philosophy he is trying to sell.

That is where Yog takes a very different road. I don't want to recreate Gor, vis-à-vis a Dying Earth lens. 

I want to burn Gor to the fucking ground. 

Or, more to the point, I want the player characters to be able to do it. 

I want that fantasy woman on the cover of the sleazy 70s and 80s paperback to be the one saying to the oppressors, "Everything dies. But you are dying first."

Yog is a world at the end of things, to be sure. But I don’t see everyone there as ready to make peace with it. Let the sun die if it must. Let the empire become another stratum for someone to walk on. Those still drawing breath now are going to put up a fight for it. They will face down monsters and slavers and Priest-Kings and any king or sorcerer who thinks a dying world is a license to ruin the rest of your days. 

And quite a few of the people doing the fighting are going to be witches.

Perhaps that is the line between the two. The Dying Earth says "we are all going to die." Yog wants to know what you intend to do about it first.

EGG Con, NIGHT SHIFT and the Wasted Lands of Yog

 I am back from EGG Con this past weekend, and it was fantastic. I sold a lot of books and played a few games. Heidi Gygax Garland and Erik Garland did a hell of a good job with the Con. Reminds me of Gary Con in its early days. It is kind of small, but I hope it grows; it is really a great con.

Jackson, IL

I got to play some NIGHT SHIFT in Jackson. I ran a session of "For Whom the Bell Tolls." It was a fantastic experience to see Valentino, Renee, Andy, Rowan, Denise, and Candy brought to life by others. It was just so great. 

It really got me excited to do more with Jackson and Jason, and I talked about it quite a bit. I am pleased that people seem to really love it.

It also got me thinking a lot about my Dark Places & Demogorgons crossover as well and how the two games are getting further apart. 

Yog: The Dying Lands 

I also sold a lot of Wasted Lands. I mentioned to a lot of folks that I use Wasted Lands as my D&D replacement and that is true. I do often do that, but usually run something I have. Like some B/X or AD&D modules. What I was lacking was a solid idea. I was going to buy a copy of DCC's Dying Earth (I have the PDFs and I love them), but I was complaining that I have too many systems and not enough time. I told Jason then that Wasted Lands did everything that DCC did, and vice versa. 

It dawned on me that I had already put together an idea for a Dying Earth-like game, my Wasted Lands: The Dying Age. I also had another world I have been playing around with; a pastiche of cheap 1970s-80s Sword & Sorcery novels. And by cheap I mean dirt freaking cheap. Cheap and sleazy. Some of it has also come out of my exploration of Appendix N fantasy. I have been calling the world Yog. On my drive home, I combined them all into one idea: Yog The Dying Lands.

I'll detail some more Yog later on; it is turning into a fun little experiment. Spent quite a bit of time with it Sunday and Monday night. It went pretty fast since I combined three other ideas I had. "Yog" is the world and the last continent. 

This gives me my world, my desire to do Dying Earth, and my desire for some cheap pulpy novel action. AND I get to do it all in Wasted Lands. I want it to feel like a cheap used paperback you found in 1982 with a half-naked barbarian on the cover with a giant snake and an even more naked sorceress in the background summoning lightning. The cover was enticing, scandalous even; the words might be good or not. Doesn't matter really. 

It is a really fun idea, but not grabbing me as hard as Jackson is right now. 

As my habit, I tend to pool all the things I buy at a Con into a single idea, so I'll likely try to fit the various Gaxland adventures I picked up. 

I plan to play it very much as a dying world, and everyone knows it. The heroes are not really expected to save Yog, just merely survive. I know, not much of a reason for adventuring; I am working on it.

I DID have one idea.

Back on Facebook a month or so ago, this guy was lamenting that there had never been a good Gor movie. I replied back that this was because "Gor sucks."  Since starting this blog, I have read some of the Gor books in my efforts to complete my "Classical" education. Yeah. They suck. But I have been stewing this idea of a Gor-like world, BUT (and this is where it becomes mine) there is this group of witch "freedom fighters" who fly in on booms (flying is important, brooms are just fun) and rescue women and children and take them to a sanctuary. So part Gor and part "Logan's Run." Also, while drawing inspiration from the Soviet Night Witches and the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.). 

Honestly, I rather love the idea of this world, with its slavers and abusers, being terrorized by a group of flying witches. It would give the setting some conflict. I can imagine guards standing watch at night and then suddenly hearing the cackle of witches and seeing their silhouettes against the starry skies. Sounds like a Falero painting to me. 

Of course I am on the side of the witches. Turn them into what our world's ultra conservatives think feminists are. Sounds like a freaking blast. Sounds a bit like the whole Hexengeddon line from Relentless Fiction. Witches vs. The Patriarchy, or in this case, Witches vs. The Priest-Kings. I kinda like that. 

I might have some version of Vera Rook/Veyra Shadoraven in charge of the witches. That sounds like fun.

Signings and AD&D 2nd Ed

I got a few books signed. I am not an autograph hound, but I do like talking with the original creators.

So I spoke with Jeff Easley and Ed Greenwood again; both are always a pleasure. And I got one I have been wanting for years, Tom Wham.

Getting these reminded me I really wanted to convert my AD&D 1st Ed Forgotten Realms game over to 2nd Edition, but it has also become my Advanced Witches & Warlocks playtest game. 

I'll have to think about it more. I do want to dust off my AD&D 2nd Edition.

Now to check eBay for some AD&D 2nd Ed books for my kids.

Mail Call Friday: Kibifig minis

 Rare Mail Call on a Friday since I normally do these on Tuesday. But Tuesday has become the day I report on my weekend game, so this works fine. Plus, what I have today is about my weekend games. 

I love new tech. If there is something I can do now that I couldn't do before, then I am interested. Current 3D printing is in that realm. We have a few 3D printers thanks to my youngest's major in engineering, and I take advantage of them every chance I get.  The new spate of image to 3D print has also caught my imagination. I have been playing around with many of them, they typically have similar offerings; upload a photo, pick a style, choose a size. There is typcially a preview, but I often don't trust those. But one, Kibifig, seemed a little better than the rest. Not so much with price, they are all very similar there, but in terms of features. Given I was working on my NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands games while going through these, I uploaded some images of my witch, Larina. Well I got them in the mail late last night and frankly I am thrilled with the results.

Jackson, IL, Larina and Ash Witch Larina

That picture really doesn't do them justice. These are the 70-mm versions. I am certain that the 90- or 120-mm versions would be much better. In fact, they don't really recommend the 70mm, but I wanted to try it first.

It was pretty simple. Upload the photos and click through. It took about 3 weeks to get here from China, which, honestly, given everything, is pretty fast. 

The minis were packed amazingly well. 

The minis themselves are quite good and made of stronger material than I have seen in the past.

They also compare very nicely to their 2D images.

These are just 2D images. Thankfully, there was enough for the AI to work with, and it filled out the rest. 

The backpack looks good, and so does the Ash Witch's cape. 

They came with plastic disc stands, but they stand pretty well on their own. 

I did a preview of the 120 mm version of Jackson, IL, Larina, and it looks great, really. The AI even gave her Doc Marten's purple boot laces. I might have to get it just for that.

It missed some details, like the Ash Witch's streaks of gray hair and the dirt on her legs. But otherwise these are rather perfect in my mind and I am pleased with them. I mean, even "Spells" is clearly legible on Jackson Larina's schoolbooks, if the pentagram is a bit small. 

So yeah, I am happy with these. 

I threw the cover for my Advanced Witches & Warlocks and this is what it came up with. 

I might have to get that one.

Elowen Hale: Night Shift/O.G.R.E.S.

“She gets it. I do not have to explain the quiet parts to her. When I am scared and shaking, she just sits beside me and waits until I am done. She does not treat me like I am fragile. She does not treat me like I am broken. She just treats me like I am still here. That is why she is my best friend.” - Aisling, the Dream Dancer

 Elowen belongs in West Haven, and that means all West Havens, including the one found in NIGHT SHIFT. 

In the NIGHT SHIFT version, West Haven is modern. Cell phones work. Coffee shops exist. The supernatural hides in plain sight.

Elowen Hale was a nice, if shy, girl. Trouble is, she died. She was at home, sitting at the dinner table, passing around the salad to her father, when she stopped, said "Ow," and fell over. 

She was clinically dead. Paramedics revived her. 

But she did not come back the same girl who sat at that diner table.

Since then, electronics glitch around her when spirits are near. She sees things in security footage that others miss. She occasionally zones out and mutters dates no one recognizes.

Therapists call it trauma. Occult investigators call it crossing contamination and talk about "hitchhikers" or other entities.

Elowen calls it "unfinished business."

She now records TikToks about West Haven’s hidden history. She acts as a tour guide to the town's strange corners. Most viewers assume she is leaning into aesthetic goth charm.

They have no idea she is cataloging liminal sites and haunted areas.

In this world, she is young, soft-spoken, dresses in black out of comfort rather than rebellion, and has chosen not to be bitter. She has friends who know what happened. They treat her like she is normal. She really shows off her personality when she is recording her videos.

Elowen Hale

1st level Witch

Strength: 10 (0)
Agility: 12 (0)
Toughness: 14 (+1) S
Intelligence: 16 (+2)
Wits: 15 (+1) S
Persona: 17 (+2) P

Vit: 15
Alignment: Light
DV: 9
Attack: +0

Fate Points: 1d6
Check Bonus (P/S/T): +3/+2/0
Melee bonus: 0 Ranged bonus: +0
Saves: +3 against spells and magical effects

Witch Abilities

Arcana, Supernatural Senses, Spells, Arcane Powers

Arcane (Occult) Powers: See Dead People

Familiar: Cat, "Mirepoix"

Skills
Research, Insight, 

Spells
First Level: Summon Familiar

This Elowen doesn't keep a journal; she records TikToks. She walks around West Haven and talks about the scary places, the haunted houses, and the best places to get Chai Lattes and Bubble Tea. Her core is still a good girl who had a bad thing happen to her, but she is getting better. She still has her calico cat "Mirepoix," and she still favors black. 

--

The Shadow Girl

The Shadow Girl was an idea I had for a NIGHT SHIFT game set in the 1980s featuring a young Larina. I developed it a bit with Little Fears and Chill, but now I think I should bring her over to interact with Elowen. Besides, Larina has enough to do. Instead of bothering Larina, the Shadow Girl has turned her attentions to modern Elowen. Is it the same creature or just the same sort of "Returned from Beyond" creature? I don't know yet, but I like the idea that if Elowen came back from the dead, and then something followed her back. 

The Shadow Girl looks like Elowen, just as it looked like Larina. Though in both cases, it looks like a version of them that has been dead for a long time. See why this works better for Elowen. Elowen sometimes worries that "she" is not really herself, and she is a spirit haunting Elowen Hale's body, and the Shadow Girl is really the original Elowen Hale. She is worried it might even be a Fetch, or a "Hitch-hiker" of the original, and "real" Elowen Hale's spirit.

Whatever the Shadow Girl is, we know it is not done with Elowen yet. In fact, she has not even really started. 

Elowen would say, "I don't know if I am real, or she is."

--

Is this the end of my exploration into Elowen? No, but it does mark a shift to talking about my new weekly NIGHT SHIFT game. "Tales of Jackson After Dark" is not a new game, but it has recently gained some traction with the players of my son's group (my youngest is too busy with school to play much anymore).  The setting is Jackson, IL, and it is the Summer of 1985. There is a new girl in town that everyone thinks is a witch (they are right), and last night a bell rang, but only people with a connection to the supernatural heard it. Even if you didn't hear it, you will soon feel its effects. 

This game has been set up to allow people to come and go as they need, so a wide variety of characters around a central core and a high school filled with NPCs.

Looking forward to sharing more with you all on this one. 

I only just worked out the connection between 1985's Jackson and 2026's West Haven last night.

Night Shift® RPG is a registered trademark of Elf Lair, LLC. 2026, Authors Jason Vey and Timothy S. Brannan. 

Wasted Lands: The Dying Age

 In my rereading of many of the classic Appendix N titles, I have come around again to Jack Vance's Dying Earth. The Dying Earth genre is not one I spent much time with back in the heyday of my D&D/AD&D playing life in the 1980s, but one I came upon much later. 

Honestly, my first foray into this sub-genre of fantasy began with Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique tales. I later moved on to Vance and to other end-of-time works like the Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock, and even the ideas about it from the DC/Vertigo Comics Books of Magic. This also led me to Lin Carter's Gondwane tales and Gardner Fox's Kothar. Even the earliest story of all Dying Earth tales, H. G. Well's The Time Machine. 

What I find most fascinating about these works is that they are not just "post-apocalyptic." In fact, they are far more alien and mystical than that. We are not dealing with a world that is recovering from a disaster. We are dealing with a world that is simply old and run-down. Civilization has risen and fallen so many times that history itself is legend, and legend itself is rumor. Sorcerers are those who remember things that nobody else remembers, ruins are piled on top of even older ruins, and magic is something that nobody is quite sure how to stop.

These worlds are, in many ways, a mirror to many of the settings that we start with in our own works of fantasy. We love to start with a "fresh" setting. We love to start with a "fresh" kingdom. We love to start with a "fresh" magic. We love to start with a "fresh" hero. We don't start with a tired kingdom. We don't start with tired magic. We don't start with a tired hero.

Throughout my writing here, I've touched upon this genre a bit, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, by circling around it. I've written about my time spent in Zothique, Vance's strange future Earth, and games like Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, which draw upon that sense of weird future-antiquity. Indeed, even my writing about fantasy worlds and future lands touches upon this idea in some way. But what if fantasy isn't set in a distant past, but in a future beyond all human imagination?

This idea gave rise to a game idea that has been rattling around in my head for a bit now.

Wasted Lands: The Dying Age

The Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age RPG already gives us a mythic prehistory. It is a world of early civilizations, rising gods, ancient magic, and heroes who will eventually become legend. It is a world before recorded history, a time in which the myths of humankind are still being written.

But what of the last in that series?

What does the last mythic age look like?

This question gave rise to Wasted Lands: The Dying Age.

While the Dreaming Age marks the beginning of history, the Dying Age marks its end. Not centuries, not thousands of years. millions of years. More time between the Dying Age and us than between the Dreaming Age and us. The Dying Age is set so far in the future that everything familiar to us in the present day has become legend. The continents have merged yet again, one last time, into one last supercontinent, perhaps Pangea Ultima or Novopangea. The seas have risen and fallen and risen and fallen and risen yet again. The mountains have been uplifted and worn down many, many times.

The sun is growing old. In the sky above, it shines larger and redder than it did before. The days are longer and hotter, the seasons are stranger, and in the night sky, there are wonders beyond what our ancestors could have seen. The Moon, a constant companion to humanity since the Dreaming Age, is gone. Its recession from Earth since the dawn of time has reached a critical point, and it has been thrown free of Earth's gravity. Out there in the dark, beyond all of our worlds, patient observers can see the first hint of light from the Andromeda galaxy growing brighter as it moves closer to our own Milky Way. The heavens themselves are changing now.

Yet still, human beings linger on in a barely perceptible way.

Perhaps there are only a few thousand of them left, scattered across the surface of the Last Continent. They live in scattered cities, in wandering tribes, in strange little cultures built around traditions nobody really understands anymore. They remember a few of the old things. They tell tales of empires that perhaps existed a million years ago. They dig in ruins older than their own language.

And here is magic in the world.

Perhaps there has always been magic in the world, waiting patiently in the ruins of forgotten cultures. Perhaps it is returning now that the world is growing thin with age. In the Dying Age, there are sorcerers. They are not scholars, but archaeologists of the magical arts. Every single spell they use is from some civilization that perhaps existed a million years ago, or a cult that nobody really understands anymore.

The world itself is changing, too. The great beasts that used to rule over Earth are gone now, victims of a million years of slow decline. In their place, other creatures have risen to assume their places, giant arthropods and stranger creatures.

A farmer might hitch a wagon to a massive stag beetle instead of a mule. Herds of enormous cockroaches are raised for their surprisingly nutritious milk. Armored millipedes crawl through the forests like living trains of chitin. Some cities even keep domesticated mantises as guardians or war beasts. Giant ants and giant termite war with each other across the vast internal desert of the Last Continent. I have not figured out a replacement for horses yet. I am thinking of something akin to a smaller animal grown large, like a hare or jackrabbit. I do have giant riding bats, though. 

There are humans, now millions of years after us, who have evolved into other shapes, and some are only slightly recognizable as human. These will be my orc, goblin, and troll standins. 

It is strange, unsettling, and yet somehow perfectly natural in a world that has lasted for billions of years.

The Dying Age is not a despairing age, though it might seem that way to an outsider. No, it is something closer to quiet endurance. Humanity has survived ice ages, extinctions, and the rise and fall of countless civilizations. It may yet survive the long twilight of the sun itself. There is melancholy here and a general sense of ennui, but there are still humans fighting against the dying of the light.

The stories told in this age are not about building kingdoms that will last forever. Nothing lasts forever anymore. No, they are about what still matters when the world itself is nearing its final chapters. And perhaps the stubborn refusal to disappear quietly.

In many ways, the Dying Age is a completion of a circle that begins in the Dreaming Age. One is present at the birth of myth. The other is present at its final echo. Between them lies all of human history, from the first fires lit in a dark age to the last red sun setting over the last continent.

And yet, in that distant future, under that ancient red sun, there are still adventures waiting to be told.

The Dying Age: Mechanics

Here is where I get to cheat. Wasted Lands: The Dying Age is mechanically no different from Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age. This is just a different campaign model. Though the idea of Divine/Heroic Touchstone should be addressed. In the Dreaming Age, these are gifts of power that bring the characters closer to their divine apotheosis. In Thirteen Parsecs, they are also used to help define heroic characters. 

In the Dying Age, heroes take on a different tone. At first, I wanted to avoid using them, but in truth, they are loved by the players and me. So if there is a pervasive, light feeling of melancholia here, then these are the rewards for the characters who say, "No. I am not dead yet."

Even though I stressed this setting is not Post-Apocalyptic, I can see using some ideas from Gamma World here in search of lost civilizations. 

There are no cosmic horrors here. There are old gods, but their worship is more akin to sacrifice and cults than organized religion. The world is far too decadent and too old for that. 

The reasonable question arises. Why use Wasted Lands when Hyperboria 3rd edition (or any edition) does exactly this? The answer is largely, I have grown to like Wasted Lands more. Plus, I love the rather perfect symmetry of using Wasted Lands for both the beginning and ending of the human saga.  

Larina: The Ash Witch

The Doctor: At the end of everything, we should expect the company of immortals, so I've been told.

- Doctor Who: Hell Bent

I could not help but notice a trend in the various "end of time" tales that have been featured in my re-exploration of Appendix N. We have Fox's Red Lori, Vance's Javanne, and Carter's Queen of Red magic. What do they all have in common? They are all powerful red-headed witches.

Yeah. I noticed.

One of the first things I did was create a version of Larina here at the end of time. Why her and not, say, a new witch? I liked the idea of a character who could remember bits of all her past lives, something of a Larina Ultima. If Larina of the Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age is something of an Ur-Larina, then this is her ultimate form. In this world, she is a seeress and a prophetess, though she will admit that her sight is limited because there just isn't that much future actually left. 

In the far future of Wasted Lands: The Dying Age, Larina still exists, but she is no longer the vibrant witch of West Haven or the wandering occult scholar of earlier ages.

She is known simply as The Ash Witch. 

Like many of my GMPCs, she serves as a witness to the age. She appears to the PCs at strange moments, offering warnings, riddles, or fragments of half-remembered lore. Sometimes she seems to know them already. Sometimes she speaks as though she remembers lives that have not yet happened.

Unlike many of her other incarnations, this Larina is not trying to change the world. There is nothing left to change. 

Here, she also makes the last stand with The One Who Remains. 

She does know a truth. That when the last ember of this universe fades, something new will ignite. And witches have always been good at tending embers. She is the witness of the end and the midwife of the new beginning. 

Currently, I have a group playing NIGHT SHIFT. I might convince them of a Wasted Lands: The Dying Age one-shot. But it is a world I am certainly going back to. 

Monstrous Monday: The Piasa Bird for Wasted Lands

 Since I am moving my War of the Witch Queens over to Wasted Lands/O.G.R.E.S. I thought I would try out one of my favorite monsters in this system. Granted converting any monster over to Wasted Lands is pretty easy, sometimes it is nice to have the pre-converted stats in front of you.

So here is the Piasa Bird for the Wasted Lands game, and some background for the Dreaming Age.

A Piasa Bird sneaks up on our unsuspecting blogger enjoying his coffee.

Piasa Bird

"The Bird that Devours Men"

Among the haunted cliffs and ancient river valleys of Cruithnia, tales are told in trembling voices of a winged beast whose eyes glow like fire and whose shriek curdles blood. The Piasa Bird is not a true dragon but a nightmare-born predator, a twisted remnant of the Deeper Dark, possibly a lesser apresaur or something even older. It hunts alone, preying on isolated villages and lone travelers, often taunting them with screeches echoing through the night.

Its painted form appears on sacred stones, its legend preserved in desperate rites meant to ward it off. But when it comes, few are prepared. Shamans cast mighty spells to keep it away, and warriors take turns shooting arrows at effigies of the monster to prepare when they must face it in the horrible flesh. 

Piasa Bird Special Abilities

• Death Screech: Once per day, the Piasa Bird unleashes a bone-chilling screech. All within 60 feet must make a Wits or be paralyzed with fear (treat as per the paralyze other spell cast by a 10th-level caster) for 1d6 rounds. 

• Swallow Whole: On a successful bite attack against a target of human size or smaller, the Piasa Bird may attempt to swallow the victim. The target takes 2d6 damage per round inside the creature. Starting the second round, the victim may attempt an Easy (+5) Strength save to escape. Failure to escape by the sixth round results in death.

• Tearing Claws: The Piasa Bird's claws deal 1d6 damage each. If both claw attacks hit the same target in a single round, it automatically rends for an additional 2d6 damage.

• Dive Strike: If the Piasa Bird attacks from flight, it gains +2 to hit and deals an extra +1d6 damage with a single claw or bite attack. It must recover during the following round.

No. Appearing: 1
DV: 1
Move: 60 ft ground, 120 ft flight
Vitality Dice: 11
Attacks: Two claws (1d6 each), one bite (2d6), tail slap (3d6, keep best 2d6)
Special Abilities: Death Screech, Swallow Whole, Tearing Claws, Dive Strike
XP Value: 3,840

--

I like it.  I think this system conversion will work out fine. 

Here are some other stats.

• AD&D 1st Edition
• Basic-era OSR
• D&D 5e
• Basic Bestiary
• Cinematic Unisystem (Ghosts of Albion / Buffy)

War of the Witch Queens, Wasted Lands Edition

 I have put my massive War of the Witch Queens on pause for a little bit to focus on my 1st Edition Forgotten Realms game. It is fine, since I am using it to build up some of the myths and legends that War of the Witch Queens will rely on. While my current War of the Witch Queens uses Old School Essentials, I have been enjoying it a lot, but...I am running into some issues. Well. Issues of my own creation.

Limitation #1: Level Caps and Limits

Limits on levels. I love OSE, but one of its selling points/strengths is its limiting issue for me. Sure, 14 levels is a lot, but I am running into ideas that I want to run for characters of 15+ level. 17th level comes up a lot for me. This is also one of the reasons why I dropped Hyperborea early on for this reason too. 

This campaign isn’t just a dungeon crawl or hex-crawl, it's a mythic saga that spans worlds, timelines, and divine destinies. Characters in this game aren't just heroes; they are on the path to becoming legends, saints, or even immortals. And I keep finding myself writing material that expects 15th level and beyond. More and more often, 17th-level content crops up in my outlines. That’s not a comfortable fit for OSE without some heavy modification.

Not to mention level limits on any demi-human species. Of course Hyperborea had not demi-humans at all. 

Limitation #2: Multi-Classing

I love OSE. But one place it really falls down is Multi-classing. Yes, there are some rules, but the elegance of the system is lost when you try to do it. It's not my strongest reason, but it is a reason all the same. 

Limitation #3: Multiversal Storytelling

I want to explore various worlds and settings. OSE can do this, it can even do it well, but I want to go a little beyond the norm. 

OSE can absolutely be used to tell stories that span worlds. In fact, it does it better than many modern systems, since its rules are modular and light. But for War of the Witch Queens, I want to go beyond the norm. I’m not just talking about visiting the elemental planes or spending a session in Ravenloft. I’m talking about fully developed worlds with unique metaphysics, rules of magic, and mythic gravity, all of them linked by a larger cosmological mystery, the Witch Queens, their empowered thrones, and the shadow of The One Who Remains.

OSE can be made to do this. But I need a system that does this out of the box.

Solution: Wasted Lands

When I was participating in the 2025 Character Creation Challenge, I was reminded of how flexible Wasted Lands/O.G.R.E.S. really is.  

Wasted Lands is mythic fantasy turned up to eleven. It was designed for heroes who become gods, for magics that shape and warp reality itself, and for worlds so ancient they crumble under the weight of memory. The core assumption of Wasted Lands is that the characters matter in a way that changes the cosmos, which aligns exactly with my vision for War of the Witch Queens.

Why Wasted Lands Works for War of the Witch Queens

No Arbitrary Level Caps

Characters in Wasted Lands are meant to grow in power until they ascend to the ranks of the divine. There’s no artificial ceiling to limit storytelling or advancement. If I want characters to bind a dying god to a black star, I don’t need to “homebrew” Epic Levels; I just use the Divine/Heroic Touchstone system as written.

Built-In Mythic Scope

Wasted Lands expects multiversal and mythological play. Characters can literally change the nature of reality. That’s not just compatible with War of the Witch Queens; that’s the point of the entire campaign.

Flexible Mechanics for Multiple Worlds

O.G.R.E.S. is modular, allowing me to shift between gritty sword-and-sorcery realism, dreamlike metaphysics, or high-magic cosmic horror as needed. That’s ideal when a single session might take place in ancient Atlantis, the post-apocalyptic future, or a faerie world frozen in regret.

Ties to Night Shift and Thirteen Parsecs

Since Wasted Lands is cross-compatible with Night Shift (another system I use for witchy, modern supernatural tales), I can link stories and characters across eras and genres. My witches don’t just belong in this kind of cosmology; they thrive in it.

While the Wasted Lands mythology will certainly be in play here, I may or may not set any of these adventures in the time of The Dreaming Age or even the Earth of the Dreaming Age. I'll use this more as my Rosetta Stone to translate between all the various games I'll be using.

So What Happens Next?

While I’m still using my Forgotten Realms game to build some of the core myths behind War of the Witch Queens, I’ll be shifting the main campaign engine to Wasted Lands going forward. I may still post some OSE conversions or support for it, especially early-level material, but to experience War of the Witch Queens the way I envision it, it will live and breathe in the mythic realms of the Wasted Lands.

This also gives me an instant hook into my multiversal threat, The One Who Remains. I will already be featuring this threat in my Forgotten Realms game, and absolutely for War of the Witch Queen.  

The Witch Queens of the Wasted Lands

One of my conceits of the War of the Witch Queens was to "adopt" all sorts of witches from various games, settings, and the like, and bring them into this campaign. Given the Sword & Sorcery roots of Wasted Lands, I wanted to grab some witches from various S&S games. Some of these are familiar to you all here since I have already mentioned them in conjunction with War of the Witch Queens before: Methyn Sarr, Miriam, and newcomer, Tamsin Shalles. I will feature their native games tomorrow. 

Each of these characters is found on different worlds in vastly different times. But the wonderful thing about Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age is that versions of these characters can exist at the same time and place. Wasted Lands, Barbarians of Lemuria, Hyperborea, and Sword & Sorcery Codex all share enough of the same DNA to be cousins. I will say this: anyone playing one of these games can get a lot out of playing, or at least owning and reading, the other three.

I am also going with a pure D&D feel to these, so humans are humans and not the proto-humans of the Dreaming Age. I have already done Wasted Lands stats for Larina, Aradia, Darlessa, Kersy the Sea Witch, Skylla, Tanith Winters, and for two of Grenda's Forgotten Realms witches, Rhiannon and Briana Highstar. And of course, the current Big Bad of the War of the Witch Queens, Kelek the Cruel.

Note: The sorcerer of Wasted Lands is mechanically the same as NIGHT SHIFT's witch. But I am going to call them witches here. Also, since I am moving away from Hyperborea and OSE for this, I can go beyond their level limits of 12 and 14, respectively. 

Each also has a homeland in the Wasted Lands that is the closest analogue to their lands in their original games.

Methyn Sarr, Witch Queen of the Fire Coast
From Barbarians of Lemuria

I have mentioned Methyn Sarr here before; she is a great character and one of my favorite things about Barbarians of Lemuria. 

Methyn Sarr
Class: Sorceress (Witch) / Necromancer
Level: 10 / 5
Species: Human
Alignment: Dark Evil
Background: Cult
Homeland: Lemuria (West coast)

Abilities
Strength: 10 (0) 
Agility: 12 (0) 
Toughness: 10 (0) 
Intelligence: 17 (+2) N
Wits: 16 (+2) N
Persona: 18 (+3) A

Fate Points: 1d12
Defense Value: 4 (Battle Harness)
Vitality: 55
Degeneracy: 11
Corruption: 2 (Eyes turned yellow, Aura of discomfort)

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +7/+4/+3
Melee Bonus: +3 (base) 
Ranged Bonus: +3 (base)
Spell Attack: +5
Saves: +3 to Spells and Magical effects (Sorcerer)

Sorcerer Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers: Beguile Person, Enhanced Senses, Succubus, Psychic Power: Pyrokinesis 

Necromancer Abilities
Channel the Dead (43%), See Dead People, Summon the Dead (65%), Command Spirits, Protection from Spirits, Death Knell, Suggestion (Spirits), Protection from Undead, Taste the Grave

Sorceress Spells
First Level: Arcane Darts, Command, Drain Vitality, Mystical Senses
Second Level: Defile, Eternal Flame, Invoke Fear, Subtle Influence
Third Level: Concussive Blast, Dark Lightning, Globe of Darkness
Fourth Level: Beguile Monster, Kiss of the Succubus, Protection against the Deeper Dark
Fifth Level: Dominate Other, Shadow Armor

Heroic/Divine Touchstones 
1st Level: Unique Mode of Defense (Battle Harness) 
2nd Level: Additional Vitality Points
3rd Level: Charm Creatures
4th Level: Magical Recovery
5th Level: Great Power (Fire)

Heroic (Divine) Archetype: Magic, Evil

Gear
Blood Dagger of Zaggath (adds +1d6 damage due to dripping fire blood), Battle Harness, crown

I gave her levels of Necromancer in this version to replicate her levels of "Druid of Zaggarth" from Barbarians of Lemuria. I figure she gets a Heroic/Divine Touchstone every 3 character levels. 

Miriam, Witch-Queen of Yithorium
From Hyperborea

Miriam is the name I have given to the Witch-Queen of Yithorium from the Hyperborea RPG. Though I view her through the lens of Greyhawk. She is rather great, and I love using her. I have also decided that her loyal Cowan is a mighty warrior (10th level) named Zavoda. 

Miriam, Witch-Queen of Yithorium
Class: Sorceress (Witch)
Level: 15
Species: Human
Alignment: Dark Evil
Background: Scholar
Homeland: Hyperborea (Near the Blood Sea)

Abilities
Strength: 12 (0) 
Agility: 12 (0) 
Toughness: 13 (+1) 
Intelligence: 18 (+3) A
Wits: 16 (+2) N
Persona: 18 (+3) N

Fate Points: 1d12
Defense Value: 9
Vitality: 68
Degeneracy: 6
Corruption: 1 (Aura of discomfort)

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +7/+4/+3
Melee Bonus: +3 (base) 
Ranged Bonus: +3 (base)
Spell Attack: +8
Saves: +4 to Spells and Magical effects (Sorcerer).

Sorcerer Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers (5): Astral Projection, Succubus, Psychic Power: ESP, Beguile, Shadow Walking

Sorceress Spells
First Level: Beast Speech, Command, Chill Ray, Night Vision, Drain Vitality
Second Level: Invoke Fear, Animal Summoning, Subtle Influence, Defile, See Invisible
Third Level: Dark Lightning, Curse, Clairvoyance, Globe of Darkness
Fourth Level: Black Tentacles, Protection against the Deeper Dark, Forbearance of Dimensional Travel, Kiss of the Succubus
Fifth Level: Banishment, Create Soul Vessel, Dominate Other, Shadow Armor
Sixth Level: Destroy Undead, Shadow Duplicate, Uluation of the Deeper Dark
Seventh Level: Wave of Mutilation, Widdershins Dance
Eighth Level: Gaze of the Abyss

Heroic/Divine Touchstones
1st Level: Sense the Presence of the Deeper Dark
2nd Level: Luck Benefit
3rd Level: Spirit Guide
4th Level: Magical Recovery
5th Level: Glamour

Heroic (Divine) Archetype: Magic, Evil, Deeper Dark

Gear
Leather Armor, dagger, crown

Miriam has evolved some since I first stated her up. She has been moving to a witch of the Old Ones for some time now. In the Wasted Lands she would likely be that witch trying to bring the Old Ones back. 

Tamsin Shalles
From Sword & Sorcery Codex

Tamsin is a new one for me. I have been playing around with the Sword & Sorcery Codex (see tomorrow), and it is a great system and has a lot to offer in terms of feel and style. It can do about 80% of what I want. She is not as powerful as the other two, not yet anyway. 

Tamsin Shalles
Class: Sorceress (Witch) / Renegade
Level: 5 / 2
Species: Human
Alignment: Dark Evil
Background: Barbarian
Homeland: Fennokarelia

Abilities
Strength: 11 (0) 
Agility: 13 (+1) N
Toughness: 13 (+1) 
Intelligence: 16 (+2) N
Wits: 14 (+1) 
Persona: 16 (+2) A

Fate Points: 1d8
Defense Value: 8
Vitality: 30
Degeneracy: 2
Corruption: 0

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Melee Bonus: +2 (base) 
Ranged Bonus: +2 (base)
Spell Attack: +x
Saves: +2 to Spells and Magical effects (Sorcerer).

Sorcerer Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers (2): Beguile Person, Succubus

Renegade Abilities
Improved Defense, Ranged Combat, Stealth Skills, Climbing, Danger Sense (1-2), Perception, Vital Strike x2

Stealth Skills
Open Locks: 25%
Bypass Traps: 20%
Sleight of Hand: 30%
Sneak: 30%

Sorceress Spells
First Level: Summon Familiar (Imp), Mystical Senses, Armor of Earth
Second Level: Vampiric Augmentation, Eternal Flame
Third Level: Oily Cloud of the Deeper Dark

Heroic/Divine Touchstones
1st Level: Psychic Power: Glamour
2nd Level: Additional use of Beguile

Heroic (Divine) Archetype: Magic, Summoning

Gear
Dagger

She isn't quite there yet, but her specialty will be demon summoning and control. Right now, she relies on her charms (natural and supernatural) along with her renegade skills to cheat and con her way through most situations. 

I gave each of them the Beguile and Succubus powers to cover the levels of "Temptress" both Tamsin and Methyn have, and I assume Miriam would have. Beguile to well...beguile, and succubus to cause the up close damage.

These women are all evil and up to no good and I can't help but love them all. If they could put aside their mutual hate, they could team up and be a force to be reckoned with.

I kinda want a mini-series of War of the Witch Queens now to just cover these three and their drama. They are not responsible for the death of the High Witch Queen, but they are all vying for her throne. 

Doing these reminds me how much fun Wasted Lands really is.