THE
WITCHES
OF SANTHARIA |
Few groups of
humans have been detested as universally as
the witches. Accused of using magic to foul
ends, they have been hunted, imprisoned and butchered for as long as history
remembers. Yet as a group, the witches have survived, which is due partly to the
secretive and close-knit networks of solidarity they have developed, and partly
to their usefulness: ordinary people keep requesting the witches'
magical services, despite the fear and contempt
they hold for them.
Witchcraft is a type of
magic that relies on the attainment of a state
of ecstasy, or rapture, that allows the witch to look beyond appearances and
perceive the fabric of the world, where everything is connected with everything
else. The performance of witchcraft is
always linked to an art or craft, which is why witches are skilled craftspeople
as well as sorcerers. Folk beliefs, whose mothers are fears and whose fathers
dreams, tend to exaggerate the magical
abilities of witches, many of whom reach the limit of their talent after
mastering a handful of minor spells. It is not true that all witches fly around
on broomsticks, and it is not known whether any do. Nonetheless,
Santharia is home to some very powerful
witches, who often conceal the true nature of their craft and live as respected
– and in some cases, illustrious – subjects of the kingdom. And when witches
gather in their secret covens, they are able to combine their powers to wreak
charms or curses whose potency far exceeds the sum of what each individual could
do on her own.
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Appearance.
If you ask the average farmer, cobbler or tinker, he’ll tell you either of two
things: that witches are beautiful young women who spend their nights dancing
naked around bonfires, on which they roast the flesh of the men they have
seduced – or that they are old hags with warts on their noses, whose hands look
like gnarled branches covered in toad-skin, and who stink of nightshade and cat
poo. Actual witches are rather pleased with these misconceptions, for thanks to
their pervasiveness the witches get recognized far less often, and bothered far
less intensely by witch-hunters and young men on a trial of courage than they
otherwise might.
In actual fact, you cannot necessarily tell a witch by her appearance – or,
indeed, by his: for contrary to widely believed lore, witches may be male as
well as female, although it is true that of any thirteen witches you meet, nine
are likely to be human women, and three
human men, while the thirteenth may be either
a gnome or a
hobbit. Through millennia of prosecution, witches have learned to remain
inconspicuous to the uninitiated outsider, though it is said that they know
secret signs by which they recognize one another.
One characteristic that is indeed common to all witches is that every witch
knows a craft. The eight Great Covens of Witches, of which we will have more to
tell below, are distinguished by the art that their members practice. The eight
arts are: Dancing, Singing, Poetry, Whittling and Carving, Sewing, Cooking and
Brewing, Weaving, and Spinning. To the outside world, witches often pose as
ordinary craftspeople, wearing attires typical for their trade. Yet there are
certain types of characters who more than others draw suspicions of
witchcraft onto
themselves: Think, for example, of a farmer in the remotest house of the
village, who has the reputation of being the best cook in the duchy, and an
uncanny knack for healing sick sheep. Or maybe you have heard the tale of the
dance instructor at the New-Santhalan
court, who rescued the life of a lady-in-waiting by calming the krumhorn beast
of a Susilgerim ambassador, which
had bolted and was going to trample the helpless woman to death? Finally,
consider the Ciosan seamstress, who seems to
live the simplest of lives, but late at night receives mysterious, masked
customers that drive up in black coaches with veiled coats-of-arms, and upon
leaving carry away big parcels, presumably containing specially commissioned
needlework.
Since witchcraft is
always taught from witch to witch, another characteristic of witches is that
they often have young apprentices living with them, who are called “witchlings”.
At first sight, these boys or girls might seem to be learning nothing more than
the mundane craft of the witch in question. But in fact they study many other
things besides.
Finally, you may recognize witches by the supernatural understanding they often
seem to have with animals. Bees and wopses do not sting them; wild birds have no
fear of them and land on their outstretched hands; yes, in the presence of a
powerful witch, the fiercest guard-dog becomes a meek puppy, turning to lie on
its back, looking to have its belly tickled. Such, at any rate, are the signs
that witchfinders claim help them identify witches. Whether these signs are as
infallible as the witchfinders would like us to believe is not a matter on which
we dare pronounce an authoritative opinion.
Territory.
This entry deals with Santharian witches
only. Individual witches may well go abroad from time to time – crossing the sea
to Nybelmar or Aeruillin, say, or venturing
North beyond the Tandala Highlands.
But as far as current knowledge goes, the
Santharian covens have not extended their activities beyond the borders of
the Kingdom. Within Santharia, you may
find witches in any area where humanoids can
live, and they may have any of a variety of relations towards the society of
humans, gnomes
or hobbits around them. Some witches lead
hermitic lives, dwelling in a shack or a cave deep in a forest or high up on a
mountain. Others hover on the fringes of human society, sufficiently remote not
to bother respectable folk in their daily business, but close enough to make a
living by serving villages that come with requests for advice or assistance. The
village herb-hag and the Black Butterfly
Rover fortune teller are archetypes of this sort of witch. However, most
Santharians would be surprised to learn
that a great many witches live right among them, in villages, towns and cities.
They may be your healer, your cloth-maker, your mayor’s wife, or even an
official in your Thane’s palace. None but the most discerning of observers
recognize them for what they are. Their designs may be selfish or virtuous,
avaricious or wise, vengeful or forgiving, just like anyone else’s. But of one
thing you can be sure: when they wreak their magic,
someone is going to notice the effect.
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Organization.
Some witches, having as a witchling picked up some basic tricks of their trade,
leave their teacher behind and never meet another witch except by chance. Such
loners do not generally advance far in the magic arts. It is in the community of
fellow witches that knowledge is exchanged, new spells are learned, and skills
are honed. In order to understand how witches cooperate and learn from one
another, it is necessary to grasp the concept of the “coven”. The word refers to
four things:
Most simply, a coven may be any meeting of witches. Second, the word may mean a
more or less loose network of witches, such as a group of friends who may or may
not live close to one another and gather occasionally to gossip, trade, and help
one another with problems large or small. Third, and more formally, a coven is
an association of witches that holds regular “covens” (that is, meetings), and
typically includes all witches from a small region within which travel is
relatively easy. The boundaries between such regional covens are often fuzzy,
and the same witch may belong to two, three, or even four such regional
associations. Forth, and last, there are the eight “Great Covens”, each of which
is defined by the particular craft that its members practice. These Great Covens
are also referred to as the “Eight Legs of the
Spider”.
The regular meetings of regional covens (in the third sense of the word, as
explained above), signifies the closest that witches have to an organization.
Covens will congregate at certain secluded places, such as clearings in forests,
mountain tops, or caves. In the larger cities, they may also occasionally meet
in a witch's house, although for larger meetings, even city witches will travel
to the country side. The locations of these meeting places are closely guarded
and revealed only to fellow witches. No non-witch is ever knowingly allowed to
attend.
Such meetings serve the witches to exchange news and gossip, learn craft and
witchcraft from one
another, and to introduce new witchlings to the coven. Also, it is at 'covens'
that witchlings who have completed their apprenticeship are initiated into their
new status of “spell crafter” (see the magic
entry on witchcraft for an explanation of
the hierarchy of achievement in witchcraft).
Covens are also occasions for witches to wreak “coven spells”:
magical acts achieved by a group of witches who
combine their powers toward a common goal, and thereby achieve results that far
exceed the sum of what each individual would be capable of on her own.
Any coven may be attended by witches from all Great Covens. Throughout their
troubled history, witches could never afford to renounce the help and comfort of
sisters practising crafts other than their own. Besides, everyone benefits from
the lively exchange of knowledge; it is the reason why many witch spells can be
achieved in more than one way, using either one craft or the other. Nonetheless,
each of the Great Covens has its own peculiar nature and is suited to different
types of spells than the others. It is to these peculiarities that we now turn.
Witchcraft: The Eight Crafts
of Witches. The general principles of witchcraft are explained in
the relevant entry in the
Compendium’s magic section. Here we will
concentrate on introducing the eight Great Covens: their peculiar qualities,
habits, ways of living, and knacks for crafting spells.
Cauldron Witches
Healing ointments, love soups, potions made of toad spit and the nightmares of
kuatus: the spells of the cauldron witches,
whose crafts are cooking and brewing, are better represented in
Santharian folklore than those of any
other Coven. The reasons for this are not difficult to ascertain: not only are
the cauldron witches the most numerous of all the Great Covens; their
magic also appears to be most suited to the
everyday concerns of ordinary Santharians,
as it contains the promise of providing solutions to problems of love and
jealousy, life and health, and the fertility of fields, animals, women, and men.
Not all results of a cauldron witch's cookery are meant for consumption, by the
way: salves and ointments, footbaths, magical fertilizers, and mixtures to be
spilled onto a mirror in order to read the future in the resulting mess – all
these and much more are among their competencies. Quite apart from their
magical skills, cauldron witches tend to be
versed in herblore, anatomy, and mineralogy, as a good cook and brewer has to
know her ingredients as well as how to obtain them. Indeed, the cauldron
witches' knowledge of medicinal and poisonous plants is said to rival that of
gnomish experts.
A cauldron witch living, say, in a Santharian
village, may not be known as such to her fellow
Santharians: rather, she may ply a trade
as herbwife, healer of animals and people, or fortune teller. She may not be
very powerful, and indeed may not know more than a handful of feeble and
fallible spells: many cauldron witchlings end their training prematurely,
choosing to live among ordinary people rather than seek the company of the
covens, using their magical gift for naught
more than to make their own and their friends' lives a little easier, and those
of their enemies, a little more difficult. And yet there exist powerful cauldron
witches whose works have left indelilable traces in
Santharian history. Think only of the
famous Snoring Banquet of Fort Snowcap, where a vengeful cauldron witch
contrived to be hired as court cook of the Duke of Huiscen’s Grassen Steading
and proceeded to put the whole of the duke's family to sleep for seven whole
days, along with three dozen noble guests and fourscore servants.
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Warble Witches
The crafts of the warble witches are singing and music. Ostensibly, they often
work as ordinary musicians, whether as wandering troubadours, as tavern singers,
or concert masters at court. A few warble witches perform their spells by means
of their voice alone, but most play one or several instruments, and history has
recorded some famous individuals whose magic was closely connected with their
virtuosity as instrumentalists. Think only of Filemon the Fiddler, whose
ethereal play on the violin had the power to induce the most frigid and stubborn
horses to mate ferociously (we bashfully
omit to describe the effect that Filemon’s art had on
humans). Or consider Corinessa of the
Candlebush: according to legend, she used her skill on the tambourine to first
enchant and then disperse the infamous groshmite hiveling that, in years of
lore, terrorized the villages around Weyring in
Nermeran Province.
The songs and tunes of the warble witches are particularly effective in spells
aiming to influence the emotions of people, beasts, and spirits. They may have a
hand in the rampage of a herd of oxen, in the bloodthirsty fury of a
human mob, or in the arrival of a banshee’s
haunting – but they may equally be of assistance when the task is to appease
over-excitement, fear, or wrath. It is said that a child that has once been put
to sleep by the lullaby of a warble witch will not have a nightmare again for
seven years.
Old warble witches like to hint that such magic
skills as are possessed by some members of the guild of bards are not unrelated
to their own craft, even though bards form a separate and indeed, in contrast to
the witches, widely respected organization. Sometime in the distant past, so the
story goes, a gaggle of warble witches renounced heretical beliefs, and
abandoned the destructive aspects of
witchcraft, although they retained knowledge of such skills as
magical healing, soothing, and seduction. These
renegade witches redefined themselves as 'bards', joined the ancient tradition
of minstrelry, and began teaching some of their
magic, thus creating a new branch of bardic art.
Rhyme Witches
The rhyme witches are generally considered to be the most gregarious sort of
witches, always first to arrive at a witch night, always the last to leave, and
more willing than others to share knowledge and to learn new tricks. Maybe the
reason is that their craft, poetry, is in fact used by all witches to some
extent, as little incantations may accompany any witchery, whether it be
executed by needle, chisel, spinning wheel, or anything else. Therefore, a rhyme
witch may learn tricks from any of her sisters, regardless of their coven. Words
and phrases are the rhyme witch’s metier, and they are always eager to enrich
their word-hoard and stimulate their imagination through chatting with witches
(and indeed, non-witches) from all walks of life. For although the simple spells
of the rhyme witchlings usually rely on verses learned by rote, the secret to
unleashing the magic power of language is the
ability to improvise, to make up an incantation on the spot.
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The rhyme witches’ magic is often concerned with tricks of the mind: making people believe lies despite the evidence of their senses, sending them bad dreams, or compelling them to say certain things against their will (divulging secrets, for example, or using swear words at inappropriate times). Yet a rhyme witch's arsenal contains more terrifying powers, too: we have reason to believe that it is rhyme witches who are responsible for the sendings that have occasionally haunted individual Santharians and even whole families through the ages. The art of sending involves the summoning of the soul of a deceased person, by means of making the poor soul believe that its body is still alive, and then to send the ghost on a mission to torment a certain individual or group, or to haunt a certain place. Lest we incur the wrath of the rhyme witches by one-sidedly reporting only on the nefarious uses of their art, we hasten to add that they are engaged in the exorcism of ghosts at least as often as there are in their creation. In fact, the powers of a dream rhymer are second to none when the task is to convince a ghost to reveal the reasons for its undead restlessness, and to find out how the bodiless soul may be released from its unnatural attachment to this world and sent to its proper residence in Queprur’s realm.
Jiggle Witches
A famous tapestry that can be seen in the temple of
Etherus in
Carmalad depicts naked men and women
dancing around a campfire. Their dark silhouettes cut wild contorted shapes into
the flames' carnal red. The image leaves the viewer aghast and afraid, or
pretending to be aghast and afraid while trying to conceal the effects of a
blood rush to their loins. This tapestry is one of the most enduring popular
images, maybe of witches in general, but certainly of jiggle witches in
particular. The jiggle witches' craft is dance, and since dance is something you
do in the company of others, it is maybe no surprise that jiggle witches excel
in the execution of coven spells. “The witches have danced last night,” say
farmers when the hay harvest has to be postponed for damp weather, and indeed it
is rumoured that the dances of the jiggle witches can stir or calm the movements
of the winds, distort the shapes of the clouds, or bring forth lightning.[1]
Yet a jiggle witch is also capable of performing magic by herself. While rhyme
witch poetry works on a target's mind, and warble witch song on his heart,
jiggle witch dance works on his body: his limbs, his organs, his reflexes and
impulses. Jiggle witches are capable of making people, beasts, and plants move
against their will, of turning a victim's stomach upside down to make him ill,
and to wrench at his bones to cause him pain. On the other hand, witch dances
are also able to dispel melancholy, quench madness, and cure palsy.
When you see a jiggle witch dance, the word “enchanting” is more than a
metaphor. Many an audience of a travelling circus, such as a band of Butterfly
Rovers may put on, has been literally spellbound by the hypnotic movements of
the lady who invited them to watch, and was moved to spend much more time and
money at the show than they would otherwise have done. But lest the reader think
that to watch a jiggle witch perform brings them none but harm, we may emphasize
the following observation. As many reports from around the Kingdom indicate, at
no other time are so many babies born in a village than nine months after a
jiggle witch has visited and performed in public. There is no suggestion that
jiggle witches purposefully increase the fertility of their audience. But it is
said that watching a witch dance has a rather stimulating effect on certain
drives common to all humans who are young and
healthy and in love.
Chisel Witches
The chisel witches are carvers and whittlers, and more than any other coven they
are known for attaining great virtuosity in their craft, even aside from its use
in magic. Most chisel witches lead ostensibly
ordinary lives, making a living as simple woodwrights. Females remain
inconspicuous in this predominantly male profession by joining the
fymbels, an association of artisans famous
for its female founders and its predominantly female membership.
Chisel spells are among the most notorious examples of
witchcraft, and loom large in popular
fears. Prejudice and superstition often exaggerate what ordinary witches can do,
but some rumours do indeed contain more than a grain of truth. You no doubt have
heard that chisel witches can bewitch a person by carving his likeness in wood,
creating a magical link whereby whatever the
witch does to the wooden puppet will befall the victim also. Sticking needles
into the puppet will cause the victim pain; making the puppet run or dance will
cause his heart to race or make him collapse from exhaustion, as though it were
he who had exerted himself. Accomplished chisel witches are even capable of
magically inducing malefic grip. Yet we hasten
to add that manipulation of wooden puppets can also be employed in the service
of speeding up the healing of broken limbs, loosening joints stiffened by gout,
or getting an inveterate lazy-bones out of bed.
Needle Witches
Due to their ostensive occupations, as tailors or seamstresses, needle witches
are among the poorest as well as among the richest witches in
Santharia. Many live the simple life of
ordinary seamstresses, barely earning enough to have a meal each day. Yet some
rise to high positions, becoming the personal tailors of noble families, who may
never learn that the single person who knows most about their bodies, their
tastes, their whims and their vanities is a witch. On the other hand, there are
examples in history of nobles who have not shied away from quite consciously
availing themselves of the services of a personal needle witch. It is popular
campfire entertainment of needle witches to list the names of famous
markgravens, dukes and even kings who have employed a spell seamstress.[2]
Needle witches have achieved great skill in signs of protection: spells that
ward off ghosts or demons, illness or
injury, thieves or liars. Such signs may be stitched or embroidered into
clothes, bedclothes, shoes, bags, or other items. The same goes, unfortunately,
for signs of malediction, which act like curses on the victim. An infamous
example is the faithful coat spell, a bewitchment of a piece of clothing that,
once put on by its owner, refuses to be taken off again. As we have said, many
needle witches are poor; it is maybe due to this that they have a notorious
predilection for mischievousness, and in particular for playing pranks on the
lordly and the snotnosed who enjoy looking down at the lowly and the
down-and-out.
Loom Witches
The loom witches’ art, weaving, is akin to the activity of the Great Spider who,
according to witch belief, makes the web that is our world (see the section on
Beliefs and Moral Codes below). The
powers of the loom witches are therefore considered to be immense, second only
to those of the spindle witches. It has been said that if a loom witch weaves an
image on a tapestry, that image will come true, whether it be in the future or
the past. The most powerful loom witches are thought to be mistresses of time
itself, and able to remain young forever by continually mending and re-weaving
their own youthful appearance. Witches believe that spell weaving is the most
difficult of all the witch crafts, and we have heard it said that of every
thirteen times thirteen witchlings who begin to learn the art, only one ever
attains the rank of spell weaver or beyond.
Spindle Witches
The spindle witches are the most mysterious of the eight great covens. Few in
number, they select their witchlings more carefully than any other coven.
Indeed, so fastidious are they that most of them are said to die before they
ever find a child that is both sufficiently gifted and pure of heart to be taken
on as a student. The spindle witches’ art, spinning, is the craft of the
spider, and as such it is thought to be
the most powerful of all the witch crats, bestowing the ability to fashion dream
threads and thus not only to manipulate the world, but to open windows into
other worlds that ordinary mortals cannot even imagine, let alone perceive. No
witches are more powerful soothsayers than the spinners. Moreover, their art is
said to give them power over life and death. Scholars have surmised that certain
sudden and otherwise inexplicable cases of death may be attributed to a spindle
witch having cut the deceased’s “life thread”. The most accomplished spindle
witches are said to know the secret of animating lifeless matter, such as rocks
or flames or fence posts. The thread that was employed in making the famous
Terquán Robe, which is said to allow
its wearer to fly, is rumoured to have been spun by a spindle witch. And if any
witch does indeed know the art riding a broomstick, her craft can be none other
than spinning.
Spindle witches are the mystics among the witches, being more concerned with the
fabric of the world than with the world itself. Their thoughts and reasons
frequently mystify even fellow witches. Rarely do they accept requests to employ
their skills for the benefit of others, and if they do, the payment they demand
will never be coin or food or drink. It is said that a Markgraven of
Manthria once asked a spindle witch to
perform a service for him, and intended to pay with the life of his favourite
hunting hound – a price to which the witch neither agreed nor disagreed. After
the witch had spun the spell the duke had requested, he returned to his house to
find his hunting hound jumping about in the courtyard, alive and well. But in
the hall, his son lay dead.
Beliefs and Moral Codes.
Witches believe that everything in the world is connected with everything else,
as though the world were an enormous tapestry made of countless threads woven
together. And as a spider sitting on the
edge of her web can know, by sensing the vibrations that travel through the
treads, when and where the web has entrapped some creature, just so can witches
know what happens in a place and even a time far removed from them. What is
more, by manipulating and reweaving the threads that the world is made of, a
witch can change the world. And that is called
witchcraft.
According to the witches, the world is the work of Harash, the World Spider, who
spins the dream threads of which everything is made. Ordinary people are unable
to see these threads directly, and only perceive their effects – much like, when
we regard a well-made tapestry, our eyes see only the picture the weaver has put
before us, and fail to record the thousands of individual threads of which the
picture is composed.
Harash the World Spider is not believed to pursue any particular purpose with
her spinning; our world, which is so dear to us, is the result of her mindless,
stubborn, chaotic and incessant busy-ness. There is no sense, no meaning: only
existence. The witches therefore do not conceive of Harash as a deity; they do
not worship her, pray to her, or claim to serve her. Rather, they are in awe of
her, as much as they are in awe of the mystery why anything exists at all. To
the witches, Harash is as incomprehensible as the endless sky and as profound as
the deep sea.
Yet the Harash belief does have some practical consequences: a witch will under
no circumstances intentionally harm a spider,
or destroy a spider web. Witch houses are therefore often overgrown with
cobwebs, and witches have been known to climb in and out of their home through a
window rather than disturb a spider that
has spun her web between frame and knob of the front door. Witchfinders know of
witches reverence for spiders, and use it to their advantage by presenting
people they suspect of witchcraft with a
live spider and commanding them to kill
it. If the suspect refuses, this is taken as proof that she is a witch.
In general, the witches do not recognize the Twelvern, or any other gods as
gods. It is not that witches deny that
Etherus and Seyella,
Queprur and
Foiros exist; indeed, rhyme witches rather
frequently evoke them in their spell poems. However, the witches refuse to
assign the gods a status any higher than that of other beings. The gods may live
on a different plane of existence, and may be rather more powerful than, for
example, humans or
hobbits or hummingbirds, but that in itself
does not, in the witches' eyes, make them especially important or worthy of
reverence. It will not surprise our educated readers that this view has not
endeared witches to the clerics of the Twelve.
The witches' disregard for things held dear by most
humans extends to moral principles that are
otherwise rarely questioned. To wit: a witch may not value a
human life above that of an animal, or even
that of a plant. As all things are connected, and all are part of the web,
humans and humanoids are not necessarily worth
more than other beings. In any case, death and suffering are inescapable parts
of life, and a witch may not feel it appropriate to interfere to “prolong” (as
she might put it) the brief and fickle life of a human at the cost of, say,
disturbing the aeon-old peace of a tree. A witch's actions may therefore easily
offend or appal non-witches, and conflicts of value have doubtless contributed
to the mercilessness with which witches have been hunted throughout the ages.
It will come as no surprise to the attentive reader that witches do not accept
the human social order. Nor do they respect
the vast differences in status that the divisions between nobility, clergy,
patricians, and peasants imply. In the eyes of a witch, a princess is no nobler
than a peasant girl, the mayor of Marcogg no
cleaner than the ratcatcher who works the city's sordid sewers, and a warrior no
more glorious than a sickly child. It is clear, therefore, that the powers that
rule Santharia are never short of examples for what they must perceive as the
depravity of witches. And it is also clear that the most powerful and noble lord
cannot count on a witch's loyalty. It is this, above all else, that incites the
rulers' wrath and fear, and wakens their cruellest instincts, if there is even
the faintest suspicion that a witch may have been involved in some mishap or
other.
However, on closer inspection, we find nothing in the witches' world view that
predestines them to unkindness or heartlessness. While vengefulness, lust and
envy are probably as frequent among witches than among any other profession,
there are few witches that have used their craft to amass riches or to summon
armies of underlings to conquer lands or goods. In that respect, we may say that
witches are probably harmless compared to markgravens, dukes and kings.
The witches' ideas of a good example of their kind are embodied in the figure of
Dula the Witch, a colourful character
of countless stories, known to witches and non-witches alike. Dula tales tell of
a witch who is always wilful and never predictable, who is compassionate yet
vengeful, serene yet capricious. She may appear as the saviour of a humble
kuatu, as the nemesis of an evil step
mother, or as the bringer of fateful charms to star-crossed lovers. Since this
Dula never ages, since she travels
through the land in a hut that walks on spider
legs, and since her magical powers are without
bounds, she is widely believed to be a figure of myth. Yet many witches insist
that Dula is real enough, and that
whenever it pleases her she walks into history in the guise of the scholar
Hildula Hauntwell, writing books and
pamphlets, wreaking magic, and generally
interfering in human affairs as she pleases. Whatever the truth, there is
probably no better introduction to the morality of the witches than the
Dula lore that is told in all corners
of the Santharian kingdom. The
Santharian
Compendium devotes a whole
entry to summarizing what is known about
Dula the Witch.
Relations to Santharian Society.
To shed some light on the ambivalent relations of witches to
Santharian society, let's start with a
quote by Jakob Huckster, the notorious witchfinder:
“The night storm broke
the trunks of three trees that had stood tall and strong on the slope for
as long as any villager alive could remember. Yet the bonfire on the
mountain top flickered calm and big as if no breeze disturbed it. It
looked like a fat old dragon. Around that dragon they danced, women and
men, young and old, naked like demon children, their skins glowing with
sweat and red light. Each dancer's hair waved and wriggled, snakelike, as
if animated by its own magical wind. And even though the storm howled in
my ears, like the wails that will be heard at the end of the world, I
could distinguish a different sound also: a shrill baying as though of
warg whelps. This is what it is to hear witches sing. The infernal din
seemed to come not only from the contorted mouths of the dancers, but from
everywhere around me, as though the leaves behind which I hid and the soil
on which I crouched and the rocks, the bowels of the mountain, were all
humming along out of tune. If the song had words, they were of no language
that I had ever heard, or that I would wish ever to hear again, for surely
it was the tongue of the Netherworld, of Khalkoroth and Tsalokath, and if
that night it did not pierce my eardrums and wriggled through my brain and
into my body and ate the goodness of my heart, I know it is only to due to
the protection that the mighty and merciful Twelve afford me. Unworthy as
I am, they know the purity of my cause: to rid the kingdom of these naked
dancing fiends, to drive all witches to the Netherworld, where they
belong.” |
In
Styrásh, the elven tongue, the
word “ouídsh”, denotes a charlatan, a practitioner of twisted
magic. This word is undoubtedly the origin of
the Tharian “witch”. It is itself derived from “ouishán” (to twist; to pervert;
to contort; to wring) and “ouidshán” (short for "ouishán'dél'án": to practise
twisted magic). Contemplation of these
connections have led scholars of magic, such as
the Archmage Kar-ii Turya Firebane,
to speculate that the first witches may have been
humans who had been taught magic by
elves, but who later fell into disgrace in
their teacher's eyes. The witches themselves, however, do not have a story of
their origin. As far as they are concerned, their craft is as old as the world
spider's web.
The following, however, is undisputed: witchcraft has been despised and witches
have been persecuted for many ages, and at least since the Era of Consolidation,
which began 10,000 years ago. For a brief account of the history of witch-hunts,
we refer the reader to the
Compendium entry on witchcraft,
specifically to its historic section. As perusal of that entry makes clear, the
ostracism of witches continues to the present day. Although no Santhran has ever
sanctioned a witch-hunt, provincial rulers and town patricians have often found
it expedient to blame the witches for all kinds of ill befalling their grand or
petty realms. Droughts, plagues, floods, deadly hailstorms, troll attacks, wars,
and even holes in a duchy’s treasure chest have been blamed on the witches’
machinations.
Witches often live at the margins of society – feared and hated, but just about
tolerated on account of their skills. Therefore, a witch's best friends are
often her fellow witches. Yet some witches join groups of other outcasts. In
particular, many bands of Butterfly Rovers
have a witch in their midst. This witch may tell people’s future from a glass
ball, advise them on the trustworthiness of a young man who woos their daughter,
and sell them potions against warts. Some of her work may be pseudo-magical
humbug; some honest but non-magical; some
genuine magic. In this way, such a witch may be
a macanti as much as a practitioner of
witchcraft. It is also clear that popular
association of witches with outsiders such as the
Rovers does not help the reputation of
either group, as superstition and suspiction follow both the witches and the
Rovers wherever they go.
The witches’ situation is not helped by the existence of the so-called
witchfinders: men and women who claim expertise in the art of finding and
identifying the secretive witches, and of extracting confessions from those
suspected of witchery. Most witchfinders
are solitary individuals, who travel the land and offer their services to anyone
who will pay. Yet some dukes and lesser nobles have raised this occupation to a
regular office, and keep a witchfinder at their court, in order to protect their
family and their retinue from witches’ interference.
In short, being a witch in Santharia today
remains a precarious occupation. In response to the persecution they encounter,
witches have become rather secretive – which, while understandable, is liable to
reinforce the mistrust against them.
Myth/Lore. The witches' story of Harash, the
World Spider, and the web of spider
threads that is the fabric of the world, shares a certain poetic similarity with
the views of the Weaver magicians. According
to legend, the Old Weavers retreated from
the universe of ordinary mortals and took abode in
Delonaire, the Woven City, which exists in
a world called “The Web”, woven of
magic. Witches would find nothing unbelievable
in this story. According to witchlore, all the world is a web, and they see no
reason why there could not be several such worlds. Indeed, witches are convinced
that the most powerful practitioners of their art, the Handmaids of Harash, can
do more than just reweave a few threads of the world
web (which is the business of ordinary
witchcraft): they can leave our world and travel to others; yes, they can
even vanish from our time and reappear in another, be it in the future or the
past. Thus the Handmaids of Harash partake in experiences few mortals would be
capable of dreaming. It is said that these travellers through space and time
meet in the empty nooks between the woven worlds. In these no-man's-worlds,
loose bits of thread, which were spun by Harash but discarded as waste, drift
aimless beyond light and darkness, long forgotten by their maker. There the
Handmaids, having left their bodies and their faces behind, converse in silent
but ecstatic meditation, telling stories that are beyond truth and lie,
gathering Harash's abandoned snippets, playing at making worlds themselves.
Those that return from these journeys have seen and heard so much that they have
lost their name. Some say that this is why they all assume the same new name:
“Hildula Hauntwell”. And this may be
yet another explanation for the “Hildula
Hauntwell phenomenon” that has puzzled so many historians, including the
great Artheos Mirabilis Federkiel.[3]
______________________
Footnotes.
[1] This is certainly what the famous
Erpherionian witchfinder Jabok
Huckster believes; see the section “Relations to
Santharian Society” for a relevant
quotation from his work “The Witch Axe”. [Back]
[2] One of the most surprising
names on this list is that of Count Dekem Hammersfeld, whose son Dagolth became
king after the dynasty of Santhros the Wise had
apparently come to an end. The witches murmur that this royal succession would
not have taken place without the active help of Dekem's seamstress, who was
co-conspirator in an elaborate intrigue that involved deceiving the last queen
in Santhros' dynasty into believing that her only
child was dead. The recent discovery of the so-called Hammersfeld Parchments
corroborated the basic outlines of this witch tale, although said parchments do
not mention the involvement of a witch. [Back]
[3] For an introduction to the “Hildula
Hauntwell phenomenon”, please refer to the
Compendium entry on
“Dula the Witch”.
[Back]
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