Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. What I Learned from 40 Years of Larina

The Witch Queen and the Girl in Homeroom: What I Learned from Forty Years of One Character

I created Larina in July, 1986. 

That sentence feels simple enough, but it carries a lot of weight. It means she has been with me through six editions of D&D, most of high school, college games, new systems, abandoned campaigns, resurrected notebooks, lost files, new editions, new worlds, and more than a few versions of myself. She has been a magic-user, a witch, a sage, a horror heroine "last girl", a multiversal constant, and occasionally the person in the room who knows far more than she should.

I have known her longer than my kids have been alive, and I met her 15 months before I met the girl I would one day marry.

I wish I could remember the exact date, but failing that, and for reasons that make sense to me, I'll say it was 40 years ago today. July 6, 1986.

At some point, a character stops being just a character sheet. At some point, she becomes a mirror to what I am doing at the time. 

And Larina has always been a mirror.

Larina was not my first character. She was not even my first "witch" character. But over the years of playing her and using her in many games, she quickly became a favorite of mine.

If you like, you can read some more about her here on her own page and all the versions of her I have posted here over the years.

The Character You Start With Is Not the Character You Keep

That first version of Larina was nothing special at the time. Not really. She was a "witch" but only in the respect that she was a collection of ideas I had about witches. Some notes, some ideas, a rough draft. Her class at the time? Magic-user, 1st level. This was July 1986. I would use her a few times, but my main "wizard" was Phygora-Cronus. He was, and let's be honest here, my Doctor Who-ripoff character. A traveler who messed with the lives of others. Phygora did eventually become his own thing. But that very, very first version of Larina barely saw any adventures. Phygora even stopped traveling to be Larina's "advisor" at the magic school. 

Larina 1st Ed AD&D Character Sheets

Still, there was something that drew me back to her. She saw some play, but not a lot really. I am hard-pressed to remember any of her adventures between that summer and the Fall. 

Then came October 1986 and the release of Dragon Magazine #114 with its new take on the witch class. I really can't overstate how much that issue affected my ideas of how to play a witch. That put an end to her as a "fake-wizard". I made her into a 1st-level Magic-user/1st-level Witch right away with a brand-new sheet. I figured out that she had been to magic school, but the tuition was too much to keep up. Sound familiar? I was in the same boat with one school, so I took my second choice. Another mirror.

So I gave her a backstory to fit. She was working in the school library to make ends meet, and she picked up her witchcraft on the side. Libraries have always been where I study things on the edge of belief, so it was only natural. It was another mirror of my own situation.

That little bit of backstory did a lot more work than I realized at the time. It explained why she knew things she was not supposed to know. It explained why she had access to odd books, old languages, half-forgotten rituals, and dangerous scraps of lore. It made her something other than a spell list. She was not just a student of magic. She was a student of forbidden shelves, closing-time whispers, and books that should probably have been locked up better.

Looking back, that is where Larina really started to become Larina. Not by virtue of better hit points or power, but because she was the one who knew where to find the book. She was the one with the answers. 

This early Larina was hardly the best version of herself. Beginnings seldom are. But she had a spark. Her core was there.

Every Edition Reveals Something Different

I have done this with all of them. I currently have Vera Rook sitting on my desk, and I have six character sheets for her, maybe seven soon. I showed you all this as an experiment with Elowen Hale.  Vera began with a concept and then character options were used to support that concept. Elowen was built by looking at character options across the games and choosing the concept that fit them all. Every game and edition offers a chance to redefine a concept. With Elowen and Vera, it was a matter of deliberate design; with Larina, it has been a decades-long process.

Larina, 2nd Edition AD&D, the Witch Priestess

I have some 75 versions of her in posts for various systems now, each one a test to see if I could make a proper witch. For example, in AD&D 2nd Edition, she took on more of a priestess role. I called it her Wiccan side (to put it in modern terms) as she found her faith. The mechanics were simply there to put it on paper. 

And in a way, it was another mirror: while she was getting deeper into the supernatural, I was embracing my atheism and skepticism. There is a contradiction in all this that I have always found amusing. The further I put distance between myself and belief, the more exacting I became with hers. She became the High Priestess of faith and belief, while I rejected such ideas for myself. 

Perhaps that was her utility. She let me get at faith, ritual, gods, spirits, and the like without having to put my own stock in them. Where I was skeptical she could be sincere, she could stand in the circle and invoke the Goddess in earnest while I was on the periphery with a notebook to put in a word: "Yes, but what are the game terms for that?"

If you want an honest appraisal of my witch writing, there it is. I don’t need to believe in a thing to see its power.

I will ask her different questions depending on the game. D&D wants to know what she can cast. A horror game will ask what she has endured to survive. Superhero games make you wonder how much power she truly has. Sci-fi asks what she knows of the universe. Modern horror asks what she does when the monsters are not locked in some dungeon but are down the street. And so on. Every answer tells me how to play her and how to bring her into whatever comes next.

Converting a character is never a mere numbers game for me. You can have your fun making sure a 7th-level spell translates to the equivalent power in another system, but that is not the work. The task is to determine what the game deems important. Some games are about combat or social standing, others about trauma or whether you can afford rent and still be at the ritual on time. When I convert Larina, I am not just changing her stats; I am letting the game have its say with her.

Forty years on, she still has something to say.

Long-Lived Characters Become Mythology

Larina has been with me long enough to take on a mythic quality in these worlds. My players and my kids’ players are familiar with her. I have minis and 3D prints of her in the game room, art on the wall, even a Monster High doll someone went to the trouble of modifying for me (people love this post). Here, you will hear her name in the same breath as "The Simbul," "Circe," or "Tasha/Iggwilv."

I won’t pretend she is on their level in the annals of game history or literature, but at my table, she occupies that space. She is one of the names the young witches talk about in hushed tones. She is the woman who has already had her bout with the thing you have just come across, the one whose notes you find in the margin. She may be of assistance, or she may decide you are not ready for the truth.

Tea with the Witch Queens by Brian Brinlee

That is what mythology is. Not official canon or a publication record. It is what a name means when enough people at the table understand it.

It also means the little details start to matter more. Her red hair, the purple clothes, the dragon tooth necklace, the Triple Moon Goddess tattoo, and the scar below her left collarbone. Or the way she will tell you her birthday is Halloween when in fact it is the 25th of October. Things that were once just bits of color are now like relics. 

After a while, the details are no longer decoration; they are signs.

And because Larina has so many versions, those signs are what tell me she is still Larina. The stats can change. The edition can change. The cosmology can change. She can be in Mystoerth, Jackson, West Haven, WitchCraft, NIGHT SHIFT, Wasted Lands, or some far future starship-adjacent nonsense that probably started with me watching too much Doctor Who and WAY too much Star Trek. But if she is still the woman with the books, the questions, the occult knowledge, the stubborn compassion, the terrible habit of putting herself between people and the dark, and biting her nails, then she is still Larina.

Larina by Jeff Dee

She Taught Me What a Witch Is

Every Witch class I have ever written has Larina’s shadow somewhere in it. Sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden, but always there. Elowen is an "adopted daughter"; Vera is a dark shadow; Marrissia is the mother of hers that devours.  Even Sinéad, to a degree, is "what if Larina had been raised in the Forgotten Realms?" All these witches are part of what I call her extended coven. Which is more growth for her because from the start she was a solitary witch learning via books she borrowed from her library. 

My witch books don’t just appear out of a vacuum; they are born of a lived-in experience I have with her. One feeds the other. Another mirror.

Larina made it clear to me that a witch is more than a woman with magic, a druid who has taken to the indoors, a wizard with better jewelry, or a cleric with the wrong holy symbols.

A witch is a relationship.

That was a revelation when I first saw it. Which is odd since what I was looking at were my own notes and writings. But there it was. Was it my writing or hers? Sometimes it is hard to tell.

The witch is a relationship. With power and place and memory. With old gods, false ones, and things that were never gods. With a coven, be it made of ghosts, familiars, past lives, a very patient cat, and the odd book.

That informed my design. A witch needs magic, but she also requires the rituals, the pacts and taboos, the marks and the consequences. She needs to be able to heal, curse, bind, and banish. And most of all, to know. Intelligence is important. Wisdom informs. But it is Charisma that sets it all into motion. 

Larina was never at her finest when she was flinging the largest spell in the room. She was best when she could tell you what the monster was and where it came from, what book made a passing mention of it, and why you should have heeded the old woman at the start of the adventure. 

That is the witch I keep writing.

The witch girl and the Witch Queen

A Good Character Can Outlive the Campaign

This is something of a big deal. Groups disband, people move on, editions are replaced, files go missing, and books get sold. Most campaigns have an end. Yet some characters endure.

Larina is my means of keeping old games from being set in amber. She is continuity, if sometimes of a confusing sort. I have four timelines for my main computer to make sense of what she has been up to since 1986, which is no small chore. In fact, trying to account for her "lost years" and sort out one of those timelines is what first put the notion of an updated Advanced Witches & Warlocks in my head. If you look at one of my playtest notebooks, you will find nothing but character sheets of her from various stages and reams of notes. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Why did she begin to embrace witchcraft as a practice and a religion more?

Will any of this make it to print? No, not all of it. Does it inform what does? You bet.

Those campaigns are history now. I am the only one left alive from some of them. But she has been here with me all along, my witness to the fact that it all happened. She was the chronicler of those long-lost campaigns. The people who were there are gone, but I have the notes I kept in her voice still tucked away in one of my 3-ring binders or stapled to a character sheet. It is strange when I read something like "Must talk to Killian" or "Find out what Morgan Highstar knows." Notes on Larina's sheet by her (by me for her) directed at characters who can no longer answer. Another mirror: Larina, when she is a GMPC or DMPC, often acts as the party's translator or chronicler. There is a certain sadness to it, and a comfort as well. Knowing that she is still bearing witness to deeds of glory.

Old campaigns are like ghosts. You hold on to the recollection of the character deaths and the lucky rolls, the big set pieces and the arguments over rules, not to mention the maps we were sure we would have for all time, only to mislay them. And the dumb jokes. But memory is no good at archiving; it will let go of what you once deemed important and hang on to the odd bits.

She reminds me that those games happened. Those people sat at those tables. That we cared very much about things written in pencil on loose-leaf paper. That we spent entire afternoons arguing over what a spell could do. For a little while, the world was bigger than the room we were sitting in, and the room we were sitting in was bigger than the world outside.

Larina is not the campaign itself, but you can smell it on her clothes.

The trick with an old character is not keeping her exactly the same. It is letting her change without letting her become someone else. Larina from 1986 is not the same character as Larina from 2026, because I am not the same either.

She has become something of a creative engine for me. What she needs is what my books need. It may sound mad, but then again, I once put in some time as a QMHP at an institution for schizophrenics, so perhaps it rubbed off. Or I just know this character well enough to tell the difference between what works and what I might want.

The WitchCraft RPG made clear to me the distinction between her magic and her psychic side, and I carried that over to Ghosts of Albion with its separate Magic and Faith abilities. From her I got the Wicca and the Witch Priestess for Advanced Witches & Warlocks, and the Witch Queen for Liber Mysterium and my 3rd Edition book. She was the six-year-old in my AD&D Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks. 

Which is the strangest thing of all: the adult Witch Queen and the girl in homeroom with glasses, wearing her watch on her right wrist, are one and the same. Not in any tidy, linear way, but in the manner of a dream or a myth, or an RPG you have been at for a while.

The child answers the call. The teenager comes across the book. The young witch puts up with the vampire. The adult who becomes the teacher. And the Witch Queen who becomes the warning. 

And somewhere in there is a guy (also with glasses) with a notebook, trying to figure out what all of that means in terms of saving throws, spell levels, and whether or not this really belongs in the next book.

Forty years on, and Larina is still around. 

I don’t hold on to her out of stubbornness (though there is a lot of that too); she has a way of showing me something new. Just when I think I have had my fill of her lessons, another one of her turns up. A stat block in a folder I have not opened in ages. A picture. Some class feature that is there only because, at some point, Larina did that at the table. A spell that is logical in a way only she could make it so.

Maybe that is the real lesson.

The best characters are not the ones who stay frozen on the page. They are the ones who follow us out of the dungeon, through the years, and into whatever strange country comes next.

For me, Larina has been a witch, a mirror, a witness, a test case, a mythology, and a creative engine.

Not bad for a little 1st-level magic-user girl from July of 1986.

Larina by Claudio Pozas

The Mirror Shard: The Dark Anima

This one is a little bit different than other mirror shards. Those typically cover concepts I can use in both my Occult D&D campaign and my Jackson, IL campaign, even if they appear different in each. 

I have talked about this before, but it is worth bringing up again here because it is part of Larina’s genesis.

My first foray into psychology was in the mid-80s. I went the way of most people and began with Freud and then Jung. Freud had his Id, Ego, and Superego, all very serviceable concepts. Jung I found a bit more philosophical, or at any rate more to my liking as a writer and a gamer. From him I took the archetypes, the Shadow, synchronicity, the Animus, and the Anima. That was what resonated. 

The Anima, in Jungian terms, is the inner feminine image in a man’s psyche. The Animus is the inner masculine image in a woman’s psyche. Now, I am not going to pretend this is modern psychology, or even particularly good psychology by today’s standards. This is armchair Jung, filtered through a teenage gamer in the 1980s who was reading books he only partly understood and immediately turning the interesting bits into D&D characters.

In a way, that was all I really needed then.

But the notion of the Anima held me. Jung would have you believe it is the inner feminine in a man’s mind (the Animus being the woman’s inner masculine). I wanted to know what mine looked like, and not in the pedestrian sense of an ideal type of woman. I was after something darker and more symbolic. If the feminine side of my imagination were to step into a dungeon with a spellbook and some secret she wasn’t in a hurry to share, who would she be?

Larina was the answer. Or perhaps she was there first, and I put the question to her later. In college, I worked on my undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees in Psychology. All the while, I had Larina by my side. Informing me, informed by me. I read Jung in highschool, I read it again in college and discussed him in History of Psychology classes I was in. Her first "publication" may have been a paper I wrote about the Anima with the Witch as archetype. That would have been at least 1989 or 1990. 

She is not simply “the girl character.” Sure, I like witches, and I have played a lot of women over the years, but that is not why she is here. She was curious and intuitive. She was compassion made into a weapon. She was the part of me still open to magic while the rest of me was being weaned off it. A useful tension.

As my Anima, Larina, is not merely soft and healing. She is dark. Not evil; there is a distinction. She is the witch standing at the periphery of the firelight; the one standing in the liminal space. The one who tells you there is more to it than you see. The librarian who will hand you a cursed tome because you need the lesson. The red-haired woman in purple who smiles when the monster misnames her.

Forget the seductress or the evil queen; they are too convenient and too cliché. The Dark Anima is your guide to the underworld. Think of Beatrice with a black cat, or Persephone once she has memorized the map of Hell. She won’t rescue you from the dark; she will show you how to navigate it. She is Innana and Ereshkigal. 

That is why she has a habit of appearing in my work as a sage, a mirror, or a teacher. She is the voice in my head that says the monster is a symbol, a wound, an old story in new clothes.

It also makes for good company with Nigel. He is my Id, all impulse and violence, the one who will put a blade to the problem and leave the philosophy for another day. Larina is his interpreter. She understands his danger and his necessity. Between them, I have Phygora as Animus, Johan as Super-ego, Retsam as Ego… a full psychological adventuring party in my head. It may not be entirely healthy, but it has given me my share of characters.

But Larina is the one who has stuck.

The Anima is no ordinary character. She is a mirror. She shows you desire and fear, and the things you put aside for being inconvenient. And as the person looking in the mirror changes, so does she. In a very literal sense, she has been my mirror, reflecting my turn away from religion, my skepticism, my fondness for libraries, my urge to codify the occult for a game, and my fascination with women who know more than they ought not to.

She is not me. But she is mine in a way my other characters are not. 

I suspect that is the reason for her forty-year run.

Urban Fantasy Friday: Slasher Flick Director's Cut

At the start of the week, I posted about Horror Movie rules and the Final Girl. The topic of the Steven Jackson Games Magazine's Slasher Flick came up. I had never played that, but I did know about the RPG Slasher Flick: Director's Cut from Spectrum Games. 

I went back to Slasher Flick to see what it has that I can use to help flesh out my ideas for Jackson, IL. Obviously, Slasher Flick leans hard into the whole slasher sub-genre of horror, whereas Jackson is more supernatural horror. The list of movies is, of course, fantastic and a must-have. Reading the video recommendations is really one of the book's treats.

The obvious overlap is in structure. Jackson, IL is not a slasher setting in the strictest sense. There are slashers in it, certainly. There are masked killers, urban legends, haunted campuses, missing girls, old crimes that repeat, and all the usual things that make people in horror movies say, "I'll be right back," right before they absolutely do not come back.

But Jackson is not really about a killer with a knife. Jackson is about the thing under the town.

Slasher Flick is not just a game about killing off teenagers. It is a game about horror movie pacing. It understands that the first third of a horror movie is not really about death. It is about relationships. Who likes whom. Who is lying. Who is jealous. Who is scared. Who is trying to act brave. Who is going to make the wrong choice for exactly the right emotional reason. The book even notes that slasher films often focus on teenagers or college-aged characters, isolation, and the relationships and conflicts among them, especially in the first part of the movie. That is very useful for Jackson.

A Slasher Flick game asks, "Who is killing these kids?"

A Jackson game asks, "Why is this happening again?"

I'll talk more about this next week, but July 2026 marks 40 years since I first rolled up Larina as an AD&D character. So it seems fitting that I try her and her friends out. Compare and contrast their Jackson and Slasher Flick counterparts.

Larina "Nix" Nichols
Primary Character
Stereotype: Weird Bookish Witch Girl
Role: Smart Girl

Brawn: Poor
Physically Small / Not Built for This (-)

Finesse: Normal

Brains: Good
Occult Research (+), Perceptive (+), Knows the Library (+) 

Spirit: Good
Cool When Things Get Weird (+)

Special Ability: Psychic Power

Tidbits: Has a short temper. Has nightmares.

Items: Backpack, compact mirror, library card, Greek II notebook, flashlight, occult book, wristwatch

Stephanie Vale
Primary Character
Stereotype: Sweet Cheerleader
Role: Ms Popular

Brawn: Normal
Healthy (+)

Finesse: Good
Flexible (+)

Brains: Normal

Spirit: Good
Attractive (+), Annoyingly Perky (-)

Special Ability: Wholesome

Tidbits: Feels like she is the only one holding everything together.

Items: Car keys, cosmetics, mace/pepper spray, sunglasses, brush

Faye "Thornie" Thorne
Primary Character
Stereotype: Snarky Goth Girl
Role: Oddball

Brawn: Poor

Finesse: Good

Brains: Normal
Unconvential Thuinker (+) 

Spirit: Good
Bluff (+), Courageous (+), Witty Remarks (+), Overly Sarcastic (-)

Special Ability: Steel Yourself

Tidbits: Doesn't like to be touched, Loves hot peppers, encyclopedic knowledge of music

Items: Pentagram necklace, knife (in boot), knife (in pocket), knife (in jacket sleeve), leather jacket, cigarettes.

Candace "Candy" Mercer
Primary Character
Stereotype: Fun-loving Party Girl
Role: Smartass

Brawn: Normal

Finesse: Good
Breaking & Entering (+), Stealthy (+)

Brains: Normal
Resourceful (+) 

Spirit: Good
Seduction (+), Inappropriate Humor (-)

Special Ability: Dumb Luck

Tidbits: Shockingly good at First Aid. Uses inappropriate humor as a shield. Uses sex as a means of connection.

Items: First Aid kit, knife, baseball bat, lighter, cheap sweet strawberry wine/

Denise "Duchess" Carver
Primary Character
Stereotype: Party Girl with a heart of gold
Role: Rebel

Brawn: Normal
Street fighter (+)

Finesse: Good
Stealthy (+)

Brains: Normal

Spirit: Good
Bluff (+), Courageous (+), Untrusting (-)

Special Ability: Overcome

Tidbits: Knows where all the exits are. Doesn't trust anyone but Candy

Items: Crowbar, cigarettes, perfume, cosmetics, knife

--

Wow. I rather love these. I was thinking that these could be have been the girls in their next adventure, but this feels like early school year 1985. Maybe their second adventure and the first one with all five of them together.

Originally Candy and Denise were going to be Secondary Characters. But like how they evolved in NIGHT SHIFT, I couldn't help but make them Primary characters. These versions are likely the ones we see in Shadows of the Night.

Slasher Flick Adventure: "Hey Mickey, You’re So Dead"

So I want a good "Slasher Flick"- style adventure that keeps all the characters involved. It's easy to keep Larina and Faye involved; they love spooky shit. Denise and Faye are always in trouble, but Stephanie. She was an issue in the beginning. She didn't have a lot of reason to stay with the others despite their magic connection. This helps me solve that. Granted. Your game will have different issues with different characters, but Steph is the stand-in for the Popular Guy/Girl who would normally not be hanging out with the High School weirdos. 

This adventure involves her.

Michele "Mickey" Wren was the head cheerleader in Jackson for the 1965/66 school year. A senior, popular, pretty, and hated by her rivals. So, while decorating for homecoming in the gym at the Old High School, the other cheerleaders and football players decide to prank her by taking away the ladder she was using. Mickey didn't see this and fell to her death.

20 years later, the pep-squad has convinced the school district to hold the Homecoming dance in the old High School Gym (the "new" gym is not ready yet). This wakes up Mickey's vengeful spirit, and she tries to kill the current roster of cheerleaders and football players. This includes Stephanie, Valentino, and Andy. Steph needs Faye, Larina, and strangely enough Candy and Denise to help.

I am including Candy and Denise, well, because I love them, but I also need someone to climb to where Mickey fell to her death, and frankly that screams Candy. She isn't afraid of heights. 

It starts when someone sees a girl in an older cheer uniform, but wearing a Crimson Cougar mask (Steph sees this first). Then killings start. The clues are in the library (old yearbooks, newspapers) the realization that someone has died in the school every year since there was a Jackson Public High School (Larina figures that out). Someone gets cut (allowing Candy to show off her first-aid skills), gets trapped under the old gym (allowing Denise to show them the way out), and, basically, I want everyone to have something to do. Faye is the one who figures out Mickey isn't mad because she died; she is mad because everyone forgot her. In the end, Steph decides that the Homecoming theme is 1965 and Mickey is remembered, so she doesn't come back to kill again. 

Mickey's Slasher Flick components would be:

Hard to Kill

She keeps coming back after being knocked down, drowned, electrocuted, or locked behind doors.

Linked Location: Jackson PHS Old Gym and Auditorium Wing

She is strongest in the old gym, locker rooms, stage, costume storage, catwalk, boiler access, and trophy hallway.

Signature Weapon: Sharpened Spirit Baton

The baton is part cheer prop, part ritual weapon, part murder implement.

Stalking the Prey

She appears in mirrors, trophy case glass, polished locker doors, and the dark windows of the gym before she attacks.

Tidy

Bodies vanish, blood is wiped away, and the school keeps looking normal until the final act. This lets adults doubt the girls. It also makes Steph trust the others because they believe her right away.

Episode Theme Song: Mickey, which Candy will hum when they are supposed to be sneaking around. 

Candy: (softly) "Oh Mickey, what a pity..."
Faye: "Could you not do that?"
Candy: "Sorry, inappropriate behavior is how I deal with stress."
Denise: "I thought random sex was how you dealt with stress."
Candy: "I have a lot of stress."

Yeah. I like this. I don't think I need NIGHT SHIFT stats for Mickey Wren, but if she comes back, I'll certainly do them. 

This should also be the episode where the players learn that someone has died in the school every year since 1936.

Witchcraft Wednesday: Étaín Moonshadow

 I picked up a new Forgotten Realms game over the past weekend. Sorta. It is actually the same game I have been playing in, just with some new characters. In reality, I am worried less about the setting or background and more about the playtest. I am using this game to try out some more ideas from my Advanced Witches & Warlocks book. While I have the classes pretty much where I want them, I still want to "stress test" them a little more. 

Étaín Moonshadow

 I have half-jokingly referred to Étaín Moonshadow as my Margaret Murray of the Realms. She is a Moon Elf and was born in Evereska. She was an acolyte of Sehanine Moonbow and could have lived the quiet life of a priestess. That was until Sehanine came to her in a dream, telling her there was more to her faith than she knew. The dream, nearly half-forgotten, disturbed her at a fundamental level. She tried to forget it and ignore it, but the more she tried, the more it got to her. 

Her mother was a member of the clergy of Sehanine, and her father was an archivist. This gave her access to documents, scrolls, histories, and tales of the elven folk.  As she read, she remembered tales from her grandmother on how her own grandmother came from the Moonshae Isles, and her worship was different.  Much was the same, but other aspects seemed odd or incongruous at the time. Until she read more and discovered that some of the rituals were similar to those she had read about in Selûnite prayer texts. Liturgical texts lifted word-for-word from Sharan ones. At the start, she believed what any elf would, that humans had copied older elven texts. But as she read, she became less and less certain of that. She began to come to the conclusion that the worship of Sehanine Moonbow, Selûne, and Shar were all one and the same. Even more than the three goddesses were all but a face of a single Moon Goddess.

Étaín left Evereska to seek adventure, at least that is what she said. It was not uncommon for a young Moon Elf to do so. But what she didn't tell anyone was that is was not treasure she sought, but knowledge. Knowledge to support her idea of the Triple Moon Goddess.

--

So now I have this adventuring witch who is not looking for gold and glory, but for knowledge and divine truths.  She feels there is an ancient religion out there, and she just needs to reclaim it. She is also searching for others who share her beliefs. These will be members of the other classes from the book. Some will agree with her, others will challenge her. She will run into the orthodoxy of the Sehanine, Selûne, and Shar religions and she will have to deal with them as well.

Her interest in Selûne started out as an academic curiosity, until the dream of Sehanine. Then it became much more. 

This is also where she is less Margaret Murray and more Raymond Buckland. This ties back to my 1986 connections with his own "Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft" published that year. Étaín is not just searching; she is reconstructing this religion as she goes. "Moonshadow" then becomes the craft name she chooses for herself.

Calling Étaín the "Margaret Murray of the Realms" is only partly accurate. Like Murray, she is assembling scattered traditions into a larger theory. Unlike Murray, though, Étaín is willing to abandon her conclusions if better evidence appears. She is less interested in proving herself right than in following the evidence wherever it leads. In that sense, she also owes something to Raymond Buckland, who took fragments of older traditions and helped shape them into a living modern faith.

So she is a witch character to help me discover more about other witch characters.

Étaín Moonshadow

Moon Elf
Witch level 6

Secondary Skill: Scribe

S: 10
I: 14
W: 16
D: 12
C: 10
Ch: 15

Paralysis/Poison: 11
Petrify/Polymorph: 11
Rod, Staff, or Wand: 12
Breath Weapon: 14
Spells: 13

AC: 10 (None)
HP: 22
THAC0: 18

Weapon
Dagger 1d4/1d3
Staff 1d6

Familiar: Snowy Owl "Nóta"

Spells 
First level: Charm Person, Glamour, Mend Light Wounds, Read Languages, Speak with Animals 
Second level: Augury, Detect Thoughts, ESP, Knock, Suggestion
Third level: Clairvoyance, Tongues

Theme Song: The Mystic's Dream - Loreena McKennitt

Eyes: Blue with flecks of silver
Hair: Black
Born: 1230 DR (age 128)

What excites me most about Étaín isn't whether she'll discover the truth about the Triple Moon Goddess. It is whether she'll change her mind along the way. If the evidence leads somewhere unexpected, then so will she. That's the sort of character I want to spend time playing, and exactly the sort of witch I want Advanced Witches & Warlocks to encourage.

Now I just need to play her some more.

One of the things I want to test with Advanced Witches & Warlocks is whether a witch can drive an entire campaign through curiosity rather than combat. D&D often assumes adventurers are motivated by gold, glory, or survival. Étaín is motivated by questions. If there is an old moon shrine, she wants to read the inscriptions. If there is a forgotten library, she wants to compare its texts. If there is a village with unusual customs, she wants to talk to the oldest grandmother she can find. Success for her isn't measured by magic items recovered, but by another page filled in one of her journals.

When the party enters a ruin, the fighter looks for enemies, the thief looks for traps, and Étaín looks for inscriptions. If someone says, "We found treasure," she'll smile and congratulate them. If someone says, "We found an old prayer carved into the wall," she is already halfway across the room.

Unlike some of my other witches, Étaín does not have a Jackson, IL counterpart. Étaín is too linked to the history and the mythology of the Forgotten Realms in my mind.

The Witches of Appendix N: A. Merritt

Abraham Grace Merritt, also known by his byline A. Merritt, was a new name to me when I was reading through Appendix N for the first time many, many years ago. Not a surprise, really. He was a contemporary of Howard and Lovecraft, publishing in the same magazines, but he was older (20 and 10 years or so respectively) than both. He was also more successful in terms of publishing and earnings. However, he lacked what made Howard and Lovecraft household names: strong, recognizable characters. He had them, but they were largely cut from the same cloth.

In Appendix N, Gygax mentions three of A. Merritt's tales: "Creep, Shadow!" "The Moon Pool," and "Dwellers in the Mirage". He even said in the DMG, "The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt." That's a strong endorsement. 

In Merritt’s tales, you will find intrepid, but often normal, folk making their way out of the world they know and into territories subject to much older rules. Often "occult" in nature, with the "hidden" meaning of occult being the main focus. There are lost civilizations down in the earth, monsters that are holdovers from another time rather than simple beasts, ancient and forgotten religious practices, and a blurring of the line between sorcery and the super-science of antiquity. That same sort of imagination is at work in D&D’s underworlds and its odd ruins or cities that should not be there, right down to the dark domain of the drow and their queen. In a way, Merritt puts it into perspective: the dungeon is a threshold, not just a collection of rooms. 

Merritt was a collector of the odd, with an air about him that could have been plucked from one of his own tales. He would go traveling and come back with masks, carvings, weapons, and the like, or whatever unusual instrument he could find. At home, he put in order a private library of occult works that ran to several thousand volumes, and he even had a hand in growing plants with a history of poison, witchcraft, and visions.

I mention this because it goes some way to explaining the quality of his fiction. When Merritt put down a priestess or a lost god, he wasn’t working from the kind of thin pulp vocabulary you might expect. His head was full of folklore, botany, ritual, and the occasional nightmare, as well as his share of anthropology and occult theory. Read his best, and you get the sense of a room walled with forbidden books, each shelf suggesting a world far older and less human than we care to think. He was doing the same sort of research into writing his tales as I am doing into reading them.

For me, he feels like a go-to author for the ideas about "Occult D&D," a hidden world just behind the real world we all know. Even sometimes this hidden world is both metaphorically hidden, as in "Burn, Witch, Burn," and geographically hidden, as in "The Moon Pool." 

To explore this, I am going to go beyond the three tales Gygax mentions and into his other works; again, the focus here is not just on the contributions to AD&D/D&D but on how witches or witch-like characters appear in his stories.

Burn, Witch, Burn! (1932)

This is obviously an important one. 

In addtion to the titular witch(es) we get an idea that is very central to my notion of what occult magic needs to be in an AD&D game, namely an older form of magic. In "BWB" the witchcraft of the animated dolls is an older "Science" in Occult D&D witchcraft is an older magic. Both are occult in their nature. 

Based on his essays published at the time this story was heavily influenced by his own interest in witches, witchcraft and the plants used by witches. Madame Mandelip, the antagonist of the tale, gets her name from the Mandrake root used by witches and is also consequently seen as a miniature man. 

I was also impressed by his use of the nine-knot "witch's ladder" in the tale, a nice attention to detail. "Attention to detail" is key, Merritt's style includes a lot of detailed descriptions of what is happening and what things look like. 

The origin of the doll maker, Madame Mandelip, from Prague, reminds me of the tale of The Golem.

This story was also loosely adapted into the screenplay for the 1936 Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) movie, The Devil Doll. 

A. Merritt on Modern Witchcraft (1942)

Appearing later on in his career, this brief reflection deals with a case he witnessed of Pennsylvania Dutch Powwowing, or Witchcraft. Here, an anemic child was tied to a bloody sacrificed ewe and was "miraculously" healed. Honestly, it would have been as likely to kill the poor girl, too, but as Merritt points out, there might be some hitherto unknown science going on here. 

While the "hex doctor" here could have negative connotations ("hex" = "evil") this is obviously the case of healing sympathetic magic. The blood, or even the life force, of the ewe is being transferred to the little girl. 

I should note that Merritt's description of his participation here parallels that of many of his protagonists: a man of reason thrust into a world dominated by the supernatural. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that such practices occurred in Pennsylvania Dutch, Appalachian, and European folk magic. Did Merritt actually see this happen? I have no idea, but I am willing to take him on his word.

The Doctor in both tales is named Dr. Lowell.

Special thanks to Chrisladams Bizarretales and the A. Merritt Fan Group on Facebook for helping track this article down. 

The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932)

Here we have a lost Alaskan valley, a cult that worships an octopoid godlike being, human sacrifice, and the whole notion of reincarnation. Then there is the modern hero who finds himself confused with, or drawn into, some mythic identity of yore. Here again is another lost world and one many have seen as the prelude to Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness."

Khalk'ru certainly feels like another name for Cthulhu. You can almost squint and see that the names are related. 

There is a lot here that is foundational to D&D from an Appendix N perspective. 

Lur the witch woman is practically flirting with me. Strong, powerful, red hair, blue eyes. She is like Larina's distant ancestor. She is called the witch woman, but she doesn't do much that is really witchy, save for talking to wolves and stirring up memories in Leif/Dwayanu, though that could also have been just him or the past-life memories.  Or a "subconscious intracutaneous retro-fold memory loop" as Donna Noble would have called it. 

Lur has a witchy quality by virtue of being part of the threshold; she is of the hidden world and remains so until the hero gets his head around it. She is privy to the names and old identities, the cultic duties, the wolf-roads, and the emotional underpinnings of a place that ought not to be here any longer. You could call her a fine Appendix N witch for that, spell-casting or not. Put it in D&D parlance: she is the one who has an idea of what the dungeon is all about long before the party has found the stairs.

Certainly, the cover of this edition could have influenced the cover of the most witch-coded of the original D&D covers, Eldritch Wizardry.

Still quite an engaging tale.

The Moon Pool (1919)

I remember picking up "The Moon Pool" many years ago, reading it, thinking it was very good, and then never reading anything else of his after that.  Which is too bad, because he is quite good, and he sits at a nice intersection of fantasy and horror. 

There are many elements here similar to those of The Dwellers in the Mirage. Lost lands, lost races, powerful entities, the battle of good vs evil. 

Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One, plays the role of the tempter witch here...sort of. She uses her beauty as a weapon, but it is not her only one. She participates in rituals (called a Witches' Sabbath) and channels the power of the Shining Ones. She has glamours and even something like an evil eye. So even though her powers seem more like lost science than magic, she has more witch-coded powers than Lur the Witch Woman. She is even called an evil witch at one point.

For D&D, what appeals to me is that Yolara is more than just a "female magic-user." You have a priestess and a politician in her as much as a seductress or an occult technician. She has a firm grasp on the rules of her world and how to put them to work. That is exactly where Merritt is useful for Witches of Appendix N. His women of power are not always witches in the fairy-tale sense, but they often occupy the same role a witch occupies in myth and gaming. They are the ones who can stand in the presence of old power and know how to talk to it.

Ship of Ishtar by Virgil Finlay

The Ship of Ishtar (1924)

Sharane, priestess of Ishtar, is another near-witch figure. She is the priestess of a lost and secretive religion. Sharane is a good example of the divine witch. She has witch-like magic and serves Ishtar in a supernatural environment. 

She is what I would call a Witch Priestess. 

Sharane is especially useful because she shows how close the witch and the priestess can be in Appendix N fantasy. To be sure, she is in service to a goddess, but you would not mistake her for some tidy D&D cleric in his mail armor with a cure spell on his lips and a holy symbol at hand. Her world is one of beauty and desire, of temple mystery and curse, of mythic time. She hails from a more ancient religious sensibility where the divine is as intimate as it is perilous, and love, magic and death are all facets of the same issue. Where you have Yolara the tempter or Lur the wild witch of the hidden valley, Sharane is the sacred witch; her authority is drawn from the goddess, from rite and old obligations.

We certainly get the Charm Person spell from here. Or at least one source of it.  

The Near Witches

These tales have women who are near witches. They are not witches per se, but live in a world where witches could live. 

The Women of the Wood (1926)

While not a witch per se, this tale offers another glimpse into the idea of a hidden world next to our own. In the French countryside, a man encounters a woman who is not what she appears to be and then is exactly what she appears to be. Also, if you are not playing your dryads like this, you are missing out. 

Seven Footprints to Satan (1927)

While not really Satan (or his he?), this tale treats the world of crime and its underground, akin to an occult underground. While there are no witches here, it is a great tale on how to possibly use a criminal organization. Again, here is Eve, who is not a witch, but she does have some occult, as in hidden, knowledge.

--

You could say Merritt’s greatest gift to the concept of the Occult in D&D is his treatment of magic as an old science rather than a simple list of spells. He has put his stamp on it with the idea of an older order of powers just beneath the surface of what we know. You will find cults and priesthoods, forbidden things that have survived the ages, secret rites, odd plants, and ancient deities; modern folk may write them off as superstition because they can't think of anything better. A rational sort might come by this world, but he won’t find it easy to master. Case in point, nearly every Merritt hero. 

Then there are the Witches of Appendix N. Merritt presents the witch as one who stands at the threshold. Whether she is a villain or a queen, a living idol or a guide, she is the one who understands the world’s older rules ahead of the hero. Certainly, before the hero does. 

She might be Madame Mandilip in her shop with her murderous dolls, or Yolara, the priestess of the Shining One. Perhaps she is Lur, all red hair and danger in some forgotten Alaskan valley, or Sharane, Ishtar’s darling and victim to a divine curse you couldn’t put a date on. 

He didn’t hand D&D the witch class on a plate, but he has provided a shelf full of witch-shaped ideas for us. In my book, that is enough to work with.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. The Familiar Is Not a Pet

Calling a witch’s familiar a pet is like calling a spellbook a notebook. It is technically close enough to be wrong.

In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the familiar is one of the key things that separates the Witch from the Magic-User. A Magic-User might have a familiar as an arcane aid. A Witch’s familiar is a relationship. It is part ally, part omen, part witness, part magical bond, part eyes and ears of their patron, and sometimes part debt.

A magic-user has access to the Find Familiar spell at 1st level, but few in practice take it at 1st level. It uses up a spell that could have been Magic Missile or Sleep. And as someone with typically the lowest hit points in the party, the loss of a familiar is a dangerous prospect. Though for AD&D, the spell is a good choice. Wizards are associated with familiars, but not as much as witches are. 

In Jackson, IL, the familiar becomes even more personal. It is the cat that keeps showing up outside the school. The crow on the power line. The dog that growls at a teacher no one else distrusts. The thing under the porch that only one girl can understand. The familiar is proof that the witch is no longer alone, but also proof that something has noticed her.  In Jackson, having magic means you can see things, but things can also see you. 

I will be honest. I have not thought a lot about familiars for my Jackson, IL game. I suppose technically my three witch NPCs (and stand-ins for your characters) have familiars. Larina very often has her white cat "Cotton-ball" and I have jotted down some ideas for him, but that is really about it. NIGHT SHIFT does have familiar rules, and with the Arcane Bond power, I can make them really special, but I just haven't yet.

If I had Elowen in Jackson, she would have Mirepoix. But I have not added her, and I am not likely to, since in my mind she always plays the role of Larina's adopted daughter. That is fine, she plays a bigger role in my West Haven games anyway.

Like everything else I have been talking about here, familiars are a relationship.

The familiar is not just a cute (or weird) animal that sits on the witch’s shoulder while she casts spells. It is not an accessory. It is not a mascot. It is not there to make the character look more witchy.

The familiar is a sign that the supernatural world has seen the witch.

Familiars are an extension of their patron. In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, patrons are often active and known to the witch. They have traditions, they beseech their Patrons. In Jackson, though, they may not be known at all. In fact this is one of the features of the Jackson setting; witches are never 100% sure where their power comes from. A familiar is proof that the patrons are there, but not very forthcoming. 

OR

Maybe the familiar was already there waiting. That animal is always there where it shouldn't be. The one that shows up right before things get really, really strange. 

Of course, it isn't really an animal at all. Not really. It is a spirit wearing the shape of an animal. This is why it can't really be a pet. A pet loves you. A familiar knows who you are.  

A pet will sleep by the witch's bed. A familiar sleeps by her bed because it knows that the Night Hag visits every night at 3:33 am. 

In fantasy, the familiar is part of the witch’s mythic presentation. The black cat on the shoulder. The raven in the tree. The toad in the garden. The serpent in the sleeve. The owl watching from the rafters.

In Jackson, the familiar has to live in the ordinary world.

That makes it stranger.

A cat can enter a teenager’s bedroom in a way a demon never could. A crow can watch the school from the football field lights. A dog can follow the characters down a street and make everyone think nothing odd is happening. A mouse can live in the walls of the library. A spider can listen in the girls’ bathroom.

A demon or a monster in the school hallway changes what the adventure is about in a rather dramatic way. A cat? That is different, but which one is more "supernatural?" Which one is a larger portent of what is going on here?  A cat in the hallway changes nothing, until it turns to look at the witch and she hears it say, "Not that door."

Most of all familiars tell me two things.

First, while AW&W and Jackson, IL as projects feature witches (and in a couple of cases the same witch), they can take on very different tones and be very different sorts of witches.

Secondly, while I have a lot figured out, I still don't have it all figured out yet. Familiars are a perfect example. 

Mirror Shard: Cotton-ball, the Mirror-Cat

On the surface, Cotton-ball in Jackson is an unremarkable white cat. Which is as it should be; it is his finest defense. He is small and soft with bright eyes, and he has no objection to being underestimated. The characters will find him where he has no business being, or gone in an instant when the adults come looking for him. He has a way of putting himself to sleep on top of whatever book or hand mirror Larina (or your characters) needs at the moment.

The majority of folks are under the impression he is nothing more than a cat. Yeah. That is exactly what I want.

Cotton-ball is Larina’s familiar in Jackson, though whether she understands that at first is another matter. He begins as the cat that follows her home, waits outside the school, appears on the library steps, or watches her from the cemetery fence. He is not dramatic. He does not arrive in lightning. He arrives like a cat.

Cotton-ball has an affinity for mirrors. He knows which ones are ordinary and which ones are pretending. He will not look into some mirrors at all. Others he stares into for long minutes, tail twitching, as if something on the other side is talking to him. When a mirror is about to show more than a reflection, Cotton-ball is often already in the room. Waiting and watching.

When you are running a game in Jackson, make of him what you will: a guide, an omen, a little agent of the Veil. But don’t have him laying things out for you. He is a cat. Let him communicate by knocking something off a shelf, by the way he looks at you, or by refusing to go through a doorway. He will be there at the worst possible time.

He can put Larina on notice that magic is in the air. He has a nose for ghosts, hags, and other witches, and can put himself in places she has only seen in her dreams. 

There are things he doesn't like: church bells, wet shoes, cheap perfume, or anyone who has been making deals with the things under the town. Give him cream and warm laundry and moonlight and old books, and he will be happy enough, particularly if there are secrets being told and he can listen in.

In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the Mirror-Cat can be used as a special familiar. It appears most often to witches with mirror magic, moon magic, spirit sight, or ties to other selves. A Mirror-Cat grants the witch an instinctive awareness of false reflections, glamours, scrying attempts, and spirits using reflective surfaces.

The Mirror-Cat cannot answer every question. It can tell the witch where to look. And that is usually enough. Or, more to the point, that is usually all you are going to get. 

Again. I still a lot more work to do on this idea. 

Witchcraft Wednesdays: It Takes Three to Make A Thing Go Right

 With all apologies to MC Rod Base and DJ EZ Rock (nobody rocked harder dressed like a pack of Newports, RIP), there is a reason you see covens of witches vs solitaries. 

I have said it here before, but witches are social. They see patterns in social dynamics and in social constructs. A cleric might ask why someone read a book on demonology. A wizard might ask why they read this particular book on demons. A witch will notice why the book is grouped with local maps and notes on when the graveyard was first used. They seek out the connections between people and each other; the living and the dead, people and the divine, and people and the arcane. 

And there is a reason that NIGHT SHIFT is called "Veterans of the Supernatural Wars."

People who fight the darkness rarely get to retire, and when they do, it is only to pass the fight down to the next generation. 

Today I want to talk a bit about Stephanie, Faye, and Larina in Jackson, or not really them specifically, what and who they are in the game. For me, they are the stand-ins for the PCs as I playtest and write. If and/or when I am able to move this from my computer and game table to yours, they might not even be there; your characters will. They will have their own organization and social dynamic, and they will have one, but more importantly, they will have a history. Not a backstory per se, but a history, things that went on before them. The people who fought this battle before they did. Some won. Most lost.

Let's look into how this plays out in my game.

So, before these witches walked the halls of Jackson,

Stephanie, Faye, and Larina (1986)

These witches did.

Lena, Alyssa, and Keely (1983)

Selene "Lena" Marquette, Alyssa Argent, and Keely "Q" Ellison were Jackson's witch protectors in the time before Larina got here and before Faye started paying attention. Lena was smart, popular, and already one foot out the door to study at MacAlister the summer of 83. Keely was popular, had a smile for everyone, and was on the cheerleading, dance, gymnastics teams, and the choir. Everyone loved her. Not liked, loved. And Alyssa. She wasn't the smartest girl in the room. She was the smartest person in the whole damn town. Brilliant, chaotic, she read theoretical physics for fun, translated languages in her spare time, and had a full-ride scholarship to pretty much every Ivy League school. 

And their story is tragic. I normally don't like to make characters fail, but sometimes they do, and that is the horror. In Jackson, horror is everywhere.

One night, when dealing with a monster, Lena and Keely never made it back. Alyssa did, but her mind was no longer intact. The official story is that Lena and Keely were coming back from school late at night and someone grabbed them. Upon hearing the story, Alyssa broke down. But the town's people knew something was not right. Lena and Keely were friends, but there was no reason for them both to be leaving the school that late at night and together. Alyssa had a nervous breakdown, which surprised no one, but it had been a long time coming, and whether it really had anything to do with the official events is anyone's guess.  Alyssa spent the next year at the Illinois State Mental Hospital in town. She didn't even get to go to the funeral of the two girls she called "sisters."

Last page of the Jackson PHS 1983 yearbook

One of the features I have with Jackson is that it is based on my real-life high school. One of those real Jacksonville things was that every year in high school, one or more students would die. Gruesome, right. Yeah, now imagine it is a small school of just over 1,500 students total. We used to say the school was cursed. I have no idea if it is still happening.

You can begin to see why I have so much material for this project.

It's not just that Lena and Q died. It's not even that they died because of Jackson's supernatural elements, or that it left the once-brilliant Alyssa a shell of her former self.

It's when Stephanie, Faye, and Larina (or YOUR characters) are walking the halls, the adults say things like "Oh, Larina, she is just like Alyssa," and then they go quiet. Or even "Stephanie Vale lights up a room, just like Keely used to."  But the worst part is the adults who never say anything at all. They watch the girls walk by laughing conspiratorially, and inside, they are thinking, "No. Please. Not again."

The fight in Jackson is old. It has been going on for a long time. And I want to impress upon the characters and the players that they are not the first here, they won't be the last. These are the Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. Kids that are not even old enough to drink (legally) or, in some cases, vote.

But Lena, Alyssa, and Q hold another lesson too.

You can't do this alone.

I am not sure of the details yet, but I do know this: they failed and died because they were not working together. Look. I don't want to blame them for their deaths. It was a horrible thing, and honestly? I have only had them for a couple of days, and I feel terrible. But they died because, as witches, they were not working together.

I love Stephanie, Faye, and Larina. I do. I want them to live happily ever after in the Jackson Game world for as long as I can. But I also know how I typically play these characters, and honestly, I am a little surprised that Jackson-Larina has not met the same fate as other Larinas on other worlds. 

In the past I have described Larina as "the girl who sets herself on fire to light the way for others," and yes, she has died. Many times on many worlds. I have a binder filled with her character sheets. But here in Jackson, her lesson (and the PC's lesson) is, you can't and should not do this alone. My own rule also says I can't raise her from the dead. Sorry, witches can't raise the dead, and this is an absolute rule in my games. So, Larina, as my iconic witch, cannot break that rule.

For witches and any character, these connections are important. I have not implemented coven casting rules in NIGHT SHIFT outside of the Arcane Bond power, but I really should. 

Coven casting is not just "three witches get together, and the spell gets bigger." That is wizard-thinking. That is math. Witches can do math, but that is not where the magic lives. 

The coven is the circuit for a witch. There is one to name the thing, one to hold the line, and another to mind the human toll. Put in different witches, and you have a different spell. Stephanie, Faye, and Larina are not some interchangeable cogs in a machine. Stephanie will be on to the lies people tell and the social fallout. Faye has her finger on the room’s emotional pulse. Larina spots the occult design. Put them together, and they can pull off things no one of them should be able to do by herself.

More to the point, they can survive it. Or at least they have a better chance.

I want to make that a rule in Jackson. Coven magic can give you an edge on a roll, but it should be more about sharing the danger, the cost, the insight. Let one witch absorb the psychic backlash while another steadies the ritual or makes sure the door does not shut. Or let one put her foot down and say "No, we’re done," and have it count for something in the mechanics. 

Lena, Alyssa, and Q lost that. Or perhaps they never really had it to begin with. I don't know, and niether will the players or characters.

Alyssa had power. Terrible power that made everyone stop and look. She was capable of more than Larina ever could be. But there is a difference between brilliance and wisdom, between power and the connection of a coven. On her own, a witch is a weapon, a flame, or a ghost story to be told in hushed tones in the hallways. A coven puts the humanity back in her. A coven gives that power a focus and meaning.

Jackson is full of monsters, of course. Haunted colleges, the bad land, old tragedies, and the odd book in the library where the Veil is thin. But it is also about the girl in the hallway beside you. The one who knows your real name and your worst ideas, and when you are lying or afraid. The one who will take your hand and tell you, "No, you are not alone."

That is witchcraft. I love my circles, candles, and athamés as much as the next person (ok, maybe more so than the next person), but this is more than spells or familiars. It is true connection made dangerous. Friendship with teeth. Love in a circle aimed at the dark.

I want Jackson to remember that. Lena, Alyssa, and Q are a reminder that the fight was here before your characters got to it. Stephanie, Faye, and Larina show us you don’t get to just assume you will make it. Your characters ought to feel the weight of all those names when they walk these halls.

The defeated and dead aren’t there to put a damper on the game. They are there to remind the living how to stand together.

Jackson, IL: NPCs, The Ones Who Know

One of the big hooks in the Jackson, IL NIGHT SHIFT game I am using is that the adults in the game know a little bit of what is going on. That is to say they know Jackson has more than its fair share of weirdness going on. 

Case in point. Devil Chairs or Witch Chairs. These are chairs found in many cemeteries across the Midwest. If a cemetery has one they typically have one, or maybe two. My real hometown of Jacksonville, IL (which Jackson is based on) has five. That town isn't normal. (Normal is about 120 miles NE of Jacksonville!)

There are also other teens who have figured out what is going on. These NPCs will interact with the PCs but may or may not get involved for their own reasons. 

Roderick Morgan, II, aka "Morgan Highstar"

Morgan, as he is known, is the "protector" of St. Michael's Catholic School and Academy. The "Academy" part is the older name and is used by the honor students. Morgan (and never, ever "Rod") is a psychic and covers the same role that Stephanie, Faye, and Larina cover for Jackson Public High School. 

Morgan, though, is a reluctant protector. Not because he can't, he is more than capable. He is reluctant because he doesn't really want to protect anyone. Well...he is doing it to prove his intellectual capabilities and his psychic ability, not because he actually likes any of the students at St. Michaels. On the contrary, he actively dislikes most of them. But it would wound his pride if a poltergeist or a demon got into the school. 

Morgan is a psychic and a rationalist. He doesn't believe in the supernatural. All the phenomena he encounters, he thinks, are the result of psychic interference. So ghosts, demons, hags, and the lot are all manifestations of the townspeople's own fears and psychic garbage. Psychic patterns or matrices. They believe the town is haunted, so they find ways to make it so. He finds it deeply offensive that others can't have the same mental discipline he does.

He also can't stand witches. 

Not hate per se. But they represent everything he thinks is wrong with this town. They feed into the superstitions and believe them themselves. The problem is also is that they are effective. He would argue that they are effective because they contribute to the problem. So it galls him anytime someone with magic shows up. And it destroys his world anytime Larina beats him in chess.

Concept: Psychic and intellectual snob with grades to back it up.
Song: "Subdivisions" by Rush
Quote: "A haunting is not a mystery. It is an unresolved pattern with delusions of personality."

Morgan is a 4th-level Psychic. He is a little more powerful than the other NPCs, but he is also doing all the work on his own. He is based on Morgan Highstar. 

Morgan is related to the Morgan Chemical family. His father, Roderick Morgan I, was not directly involved but is a professor at MacAlister College. They have a name and money.

Vera Rook

Vera is another witch at Jackson Public High. She and Stephanine go way back to Kindergarten together where they have always been rivals. She picked on Faye for loosing her parents and now she has set her sights on Larina as her newest target. 

Very is smart, incredibly cool, and popular. If this were the 2000s she would be described as a "mean girl." In the 1980s, we would have just called her "stuck up." 

Vera's deal is that she is a witch, and she could help, but she won't unless it somehow benefits herself. So there will be times when she pitches in and a lot more times when she just won't.  

While I don't want to make her into a cliché, I do admit I am having fun playing with the clichés. She is the worst qualities of the other witch NPCs distilled into one character with wit and flawless eyeliner.

Concept: Rival witch.
Song: "Cities in Dust" by Siouxsie and the Banshees
Quote: "And I care...why?"

Vera is a 2nd level witch. But don't expect her help or anything. Vera is brand new, but I rolled up her Pathfinder 2nd Ed and AD&D 1st edition character Veyra Shadowraven. Yes, more clichés! Might need to post all three stats one day.

Stephanie: "Ugh! Why is she such a bitch?"
Larina: "Why won't she help?"
Faye: "Why does she look so cool?"
Stephanie and Larina: "What?"
Faye: "What?"

The Rooks are also an old Jackson family. She would be a family tradition witch.

Kyra Bellamy 

Kyra: "There is evil in this town. It's old, and it is angry."

Kyra Bellamy is sharp, watchful, and not nearly as willing to take people at face value as they might hope. She has a serious streak, a cautious intelligence, and the habit of looking at the people around her like she is trying to solve them before they become dangerous. That wariness makes her seem distant, but it is born more from care than cruelty. Kyra wants the truth, even when it is uncomfortable, and she has little patience for sentimentality when the stakes are real. In a town built on secrets, that makes her both valuable and dangerous.

Kyra is the daughter of Rev. Jonah Bellamy, III. Preacher at "The Old Landmark Missionary Baptist Church", a predominantly African-American Baptist church. Kyra loves her church. Sundays are a day of dressing up, singing, worship, and, of course, the Sunday-afternoon cookout her father hosts. Yes, Kyra ends up working, giving out food, and is on her feet all day in a dress, but she still loves it, and when the local children ask "Miss Kyra" really nicely, she gives them extra Mac n Cheese. Ok, she gives them extra even if they don't ask.

The trouble is, Kyra is having a crisis of faith. Jackson is evil. She knows this. And there are witches walking the halls of her school. Some, like Faye and Vera, are easy to spot. Others wear a friendly face like Stephanie, and others look nice, like Larina, but Kyra sees the barely contained magic underneath. She doesn't understand how these girls can be allowed to walk around like they are normal.

Now, please keep in mind, Kyra is a good kid. She is just mistaken about what a witch really is. 

Kyra also likes things she knows her father would never approve of. She is on the track team, and she is quite good. She likes secular music and is enthralled by MTV when she goes over to friends' houses. And what confuses her most of all is she thinks she also likes Meriko in a more than just-friends way.

Concept: The Preacher's Kid
Song: "Dear God" by XTC
Quote: "Just because I’m polite doesn’t mean I agree with you."

Kyra is a 1st-level Theosophist. She is based on the Pathfinder iconic cleric Kyra. Kyra is here to provide some tension. She is not evil, quite the opposite, but she also wants to protect her family, her church, and her town. She isn't 100% sure where the evil is coming from. 

Spoiler: Kyra manages to come to terms with all her doubts. Later on she becomes a preacher of her own church, one that is a little more welcoming. 

Meriko Hayashida

Meriko: "So what is your deal? You are all witches, right?"

Meriko Hayashida is composed, intelligent, and far more perceptive than most of her classmates realize. She comes from a family that values discipline, accomplishment, and maintaining appearances, and she wears that training with quiet elegance. But Meriko is no passive observer. She notices patterns, remembers details, and understands more than she says. There is a calm confidence to her that makes her hard to rattle, and when she finally chooses to speak plainly, it tends to matter. She may not seek the center of the story, but she is far too smart to remain at its edges for long.

Meriko's father is a professor at MacAlister College. She has an older brother at Mac. Her parents want her to be more traditional, like her brother, but that is not Meriko's way. She discovered that dressing in what she calls "Ninja wear" or what Americans think Japanese people wear, she can really get under her parents' skin. She is also a tech junkie and shows off the new CD player "she got from Japan." Actually, she bought it in St. Louis, but since it's a Sony, it technically comes from Japan. 

Meriko is also something of a kleptomaniac and often shoplifts. She doesn't need these things, her family is very well off, but she likes the thrill of it. On the rare times she catches her, she fakes crying and speaking in Japanese, explaining she doesn't understand American customs and don't send her home to her super strict parents, she will dishonor them, and she lays it on so thick that most shop owners tell her to forget it just so they can get this hysterical girl out of their shop. The second she is out, she drops the act and shows the thing she actually stole.

Her best friend is Kyra. They relate because their families are both so strict and conservative. Meriko makes mixtapes for Kyra and labels them "French Lesson 1" and "Chemistry Notes" Kyra doesn't like the lies, but she loves the music Meriko picks for her.

Meriko also feels like Kyra is "more than a friend," but doesn't know how to act on that.

Concept: The Sharp One
Song: "Voices Carry" - 'Til Tuesday
Quote: 仕方がない。 Shikata ga nai. "It can’t be helped."

Meriko is a 2nd-level survivor. She is based on the Pathfinder iconic thief Merisiel.

Renee Sylvi Jäneläinen

Sylvia: "Now there is a face I did not expect to see darkening my threshold."

Renee: "Hello. Godmother."

Renee Jäneläinen is a girl of winter light and long dark nights, carrying with her the sense that she belongs to colder places and older tales. Thoughtful, self-contained, and a little mysterious even when she is being kind, Renee has the air of someone raised to respect things most people would laugh off until it was much too late. She is not dramatic, not loud, and not interested in making herself the center of attention, but there is depth in her that people feel even before they understand it. In Jackson, where so many dangers hide behind familiar faces, Renee stands out precisely because she seems to understand that the world has always been stranger than it looks.

If asked why she came to Jackson from her hometown of Jakobstad in Finland, she will say something simple like "I wanted to perfect my English," but she is already better than some of the locals. Or something odd like "I LOVE American Rock n' Roll," which is technically true; she has knowledge of classic rock that even impresses Faye.  In truth, Renee is not completely sure why she picked Jackson, other than that she was drawn to it. When she got here and felt the town's magic she knew she had picked the right town. 

AND for reasons I have not 100% figured out myself, I introduced her by having her walk into El Espejo Oscuro, and saying to Sylvia Velasco, "Hello. Godmother." I am not sure what I was thinking, other than it hit me one day, and I could not put it down. I still need to figure this one out.

Concept: The Foreign Exchange Student
Song: "In Silence" by Fra Lippo Lippi.
Quote: "Voin ymmärtää ja kunnioittaa pimeyttä ilman että tulen osaksi sitä."
"I can understand and respect the darkness without becoming a part of it."

Renee is a 2nd-level witch, but she tries to hide it. Renen is a nod to all the great foreign exchange students we used to get and all my friends who also went off to become foreign exchange students as well. Renee is also a witch and has her own reasons to keep her power quiet. Renee is based on Rhiannon. So it is possible that she and Morgan will have some dealings in the future. Likely not positive ones. 

These five NPCs are here to either help or impede the PCs as needed. Their motivations are complex.  While they have basic concepts, they are not basic characters.